John Ford's 'Hurricaine'

Recently I watched director John Ford's 1936 film The Hurricaine on Turner Classic Movies.
This big, sweeping film was the forerunner of the modern-day disaster movie.
It's an incredible achievement especially when you consider that there were no computer-generated special effects in 1936.
This black and white epic stars Dorothy Lamour (in a sarong, of course), C. Aubrey Smith, Raymond Massey, Mary Astor, John Hall, John Carradine and Thomas Mitchell (who garnered an Oscar nomination for his performance). The film is replete with dreadful south sea island stereotypes and since it contains sparse dialogue it is defined by its long and repetitive action sequences. In this respect it is greatly influenced by the silent era.
According to Life Magazine, special effects wizard James Basevi was given a budget of $400,000 to create his effects. He spent $150,000 to build a native village with a lagoon 200 yards long, and then spent $250,000 destroying it.
Actual outdoor shots were filmed on the islands but the native village set that the actors inhabited was constructed on two-and-a-half acres of United Artists' back lot.
Doubles were not used for Mary Astor and Dorothy Lamour when they were lashed to a tree during the hurricane. In her autobiography, Astor said that the sand and water whipping their faces sometimes left pinpricks of blood on their cheeks.
This film has stunning black and white photography and the love scenes with Hall and Lamour are remarkably sultry and daringly revealing.
This is one you'll want to catch if you're at all interested in the history of the movies and/or special effects -- or if you simply enjoy watching beautiful bodies in an exotic island setting.
BTW: You'll have to wait and wait for the hurricaine. But it's worth the wait!