Safe in Hell
Safe in Hell

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- 70/100 based on 1,706 votes

Sought by the New Orleans police for accidentally killing the man who raped her and forced her into prostitution, a woman flees New Orleans for a Caribbean island. Surrounded by lecherous criminals, she awaits the return of her fiancé and seems to be holding her own until the treachery of the local police chief leaves her but one choice to gain her freedom.... (Full plot summary below)

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Actors in Safe in Hell:

Dorothy Mackaill
Donald Cook
Ralf Harolde
John Wray
Ivan F. Simpson
Victor Varconi

Full Plot Details

Sought by the New Orleans police for accidentally killing the man who raped her and forced her into prostitution, a woman flees New Orleans for a Caribbean island. Surrounded by lecherous criminals, she awaits the return of her fiancé and seems to be holding her own until the treachery of the local police chief leaves her but one choice to gain her freedom.

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Movie Reviews

Arts Fuse - 9/10 by Betsy ShermanA shout-out is deserved as well for two of the finest African-American performers working in Hollywood in the 1930s, Nina Mae McKinney and Clarence Muse.
Chicago Reader - 8/10 by Reece PendletonWellman’s splendid direction animates an otherwise static script, deftly blending comedic moments with surprisingly dark undertones. This 1931 drama may lack the punch of Wellman’s The Public Enemy, released the same year, but it’s still a fine display of his talents.
New York Post - 6/10 by Lou LumenickSafe in Hell doesn’t offer anything extraordinary in the way of skin or innuendo, but it’s chockablock with the kind of situations and characters that would be verboten on screen for nearly three decades commencing in mid-1934.
The New York Times - 5/10 by Mordaunt HallSafe in Hell is a little reminiscent of "The Unholy Garden," with its tropic sanctuary where rogues of various nationalities live out their days in happy oblivion, safe from the long arm of extradition. The theme is a good deal sadder, a sort of meldodramatization of all those sad songs about the women who will die rapturously for their men.
User Review - 10/10 by Eric RGives meaning to the designation "pre-code." I mean, it's a 1931 film in which a prostitute absconds from a murder trial to a near-anonymous island where she's forced to wait for a well-meaning but negligent husband while horny criminals try day-in-day-out to get her in bed -- all of it ending in a gross perversion of justice. It's the kind of pulpy, almost farcical material that can make for real stinkers of movies -- especially early sound movies where the resources are generally limited and the filmmaking is often static. Thankfully though Wellman was a competent director from the start, and 'Safe in Hell' is great (I prefer it even to some of Wellman's other slightly better-known early works like 'Other Men's Women'). The film is patterned with subversions (some abiding and some film-historical), from the priestless marriage to the humanized African Americans to the lawless policeman. These touches make for a continually surprising viewing experience, whether your perspective is limited and casual or informed by knowledge of this particular period in American movies. It's a moving film with a whole lot of charm (Mackaill being the most charming of all as the movie's emotional center -- she's nearly as good as Stanwyck, whom the part was originally intended for). I wish TCM would air this more often so we could all get a closer look.
User Review - 8/10 by X. TA lean, well scripted melodrama about a prostitute who escapes to a Caribbean island populated by criminals after accidentally killing a client, where she's the only white woman there. Most of the criminals are used as comic relief in an otherwise very bleak film. Not much I can say except that Mackaill was really good and that it doesn't settle for anything less than a heartbreaking ending.
User Review - 6/10 by Gregory Wgood stuff an interesting pre-code movie about a hooker who thinks she committed manslaughter
User Review - 6/10 by Art SPre-Code (i.e., before censorship and enforced happy endings) Hollywood feature by William Wellman and starring Dorothy Mackaill (who is in every virtually scene). She is a call girl (the only way she can make a living, she claims, and the woeful status of women might support it) who accidentally kills her former pimp. When her true love, a sailor, returns just at that moment, he loyally helpls her to escape to a Caribbean isle with no extradition laws to the US. She promises to be faithful and, despite the fact that alcohol is not banned, not to party either. As you would expect, her new land is filled with dissipated criminals who are sex-starved for a white woman (the film is as racist as it is sexist, although the two black characters, who run the hotel, are not caricatured fortunately). Eventually gives in but still keeps her chastity awaiting the return of her sailor; instead her pimp arrives seemingly back from the dead (but of course he was never really killed, just using the opportunity to score some insurance money). But, lo and behold, when he makes a move on Gilda this time, she kills him for good. The plot goes on - will she get the death penalty or not? And there are a few more twists and a fully downbeat conclusion (after only 73 minutes). At the end, I thought, well that wasn't much -- but somehow, over night, it haunted me a bit. Mackaill is a charismatic figure and she evokes the desperation of her plight and the psychological issues (faithfulness vs. hedonism in the face of a cruel unjust world) pretty well. Director Wellman is better known for The Public Enemy (1931) and A Star is Born (1937).
User Review - 4/10 by The Movie WSafe in Hell (William A. Wellman, 1931) William Wellman was notorious for loving the ladies off camera and hating them on. He was also notorious for bullying actors of both sexes until they simply gave up and did what he wanted in the way he wanted it when he wanted, no matter how incomparably wrong he may have been. You can see how low these twin afflictions could make Wellman sink in Safe in Hell, today one of Wellman's most obscure releases. There's a good reason for that. Gilda (The Office Wife's Dorothy Mackaill, whose career pretty much ended with the enforcement of the Hays Code) is a prostitute in New Orelans. She kills an ex-boyfriend in self-defense, but who's going to take her word for that? So she enlists the help of another old friend, Carl (The Public Enemy's Donald Cook), who whisks her out of the country and sets her up in a seedy hotel on a Caribbean island. She's safe from the American law there, but immediately becomes the enamored of every guy there, from the corrupt police chief (Murder, My Sweet's Ralf Harolde) to the local drunks. Having promised fidelity to Carl, who's posing as her husband, she tries to remain chaste and sober while he's away at sea, but it's awfully tempting to go back to her old self... When you had an actress who was capable of standing up to Wellman, like Barbara Stanwyck in Night Nurse or Ruth Chatterton in Frisco Jenny, that particular synthesis made for a solid, strong heroine equally capable of charming the teeth off anyone else in the film and eating nails. Mackaill, on the other hand, is something of a shrinking violet-or was when dealing with Wellman-and what we end up with is a doormat, and not a very interesting one, either, who's willing to do whatever's necessary to keep her man safe. But it's not just that she's playing the doormat, it's that everyone else around town is perfectly okay with her playing the doormat; if she's going to be nothing more than a sex object, well okay, let's treat her like one! (There's one marginally infamous scene where Mackaill is ascending the hotel staircase and the town drunks are trying to see up her dress that is, in fact, synecdochic of every male in the film's attitude towards her the entire time.) To say this is not Wellman's finest work would be something of an understatement. I can't make a claim to having seen anywhere near all of Wellman's eighty big-screen features, but of those I've seen, this is easily the worst. Unless you're a Wellman completist, you can ignore this one entirely. **
User Review - 4/10 by Robert BSafe in Hell (William A. Wellman, 1931) William Wellman was notorious for loving the ladies off camera and hating them on. He was also notorious for bullying actors of both sexes until they simply gave up and did what he wanted in the way he wanted it when he wanted, no matter how incomparably wrong he may have been. You can see how low these twin afflictions could make Wellman sink in Safe in Hell, today one of Wellman's most obscure releases. There's a good reason for that. Gilda (The Office Wife's Dorothy Mackaill, whose career pretty much ended with the enforcement of the Hays Code) is a prostitute in New Orelans. She kills an ex-boyfriend in self-defense, but who's going to take her word for that? So she enlists the help of another old friend, Carl (The Public Enemy's Donald Cook), who whisks her out of the country and sets her up in a seedy hotel on a Caribbean island. She's safe from the American law there, but immediately becomes the enamored of every guy there, from the corrupt police chief (Murder, My Sweet's Ralf Harolde) to the local drunks. Having promised fidelity to Carl, who's posing as her husband, she tries to remain chaste and sober while he's away at sea, but it's awfully tempting to go back to her old self... When you had an actress who was capable of standing up to Wellman, like Barbara Stanwyck in Night Nurse or Ruth Chatterton in Frisco Jenny, that particular synthesis made for a solid, strong heroine equally capable of charming the teeth off anyone else in the film and eating nails. Mackaill, on the other hand, is something of a shrinking violet-or was when dealing with Wellman-and what we end up with is a doormat, and not a very interesting one, either, who's willing to do whatever's necessary to keep her man safe. But it's not just that she's playing the doormat, it's that everyone else around town is perfectly okay with her playing the doormat; if she's going to be nothing more than a sex object, well okay, let's treat her like one! (There's one marginally infamous scene where Mackaill is ascending the hotel staircase and the town drunks are trying to see up her dress that is, in fact, synecdochic of every male in the film's attitude towards her the entire time.) To say this is not Wellman's finest work would be something of an understatement. I can't make a claim to having seen anywhere near all of Wellman's eighty big-screen features, but of those I've seen, this is easily the worst. Unless you're a Wellman completist, you can ignore this one entirely. **

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