King of the Damned – 1936 | 81 mins | Drama, Action | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Conrad Veldt’s last film for Gaumont was King of the Damned, a naïve moralistic melodrama based on the stage play by John Chancellor about a penal colony in the tropics. The sordid conditions in the camp, and the subsequent violent riots, caused profound problems with the BBFC, who refused permission for a subplot about a half-caste girl and insisted that the film be set in an undefined "somewhere" so as not to offend anyone. The problem was that the film was `overcooked’, over designed and fussy, and that Bernard Knowles’ camerawork rarely had any depth of field.

Under the authority of a brutal deputy commandant Courvin (C.M. Hallard), members of a Caribbean convict settlement are sent in their masses to work on a ‘road’ under construction in a malaria-infested swamp. When the workers decide to revolt, there is trouble brewing. Captured by the navy, the cultured Convict 83 (Conrad Veidt) obtains permission for a public enquiry and successfully appeals for humane treatment and the right to self-determination for his fellow prisoners.