The Hurricane (1937)

THE HURRICANE  (1937)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: John Ford
    Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Raymond Massey,
    Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Thomas Mitchell,
    Al Kikume, John Carradine, Movita Castenada
If this isn't the original special-effects disaster movie, it's at least a prototype, about what happens to a tropical island and its inhabitants when a devastating storm blows in. Raymond Massey plays the inflexible colonial governor. Mary Astor's his sympathetic wife. Dorothy Lamour (of course) plays a native girl married to dashing island hunk Jon Hall. Thomas Mitchell's a rum-soaked doctor and John Carradine's the sadistic warden of the prison where Hall ends up incarcerated. Which is more than you really need to know, because what it all leads up to is that killer storm, which pretty much wrecks everything that stands in its path. The storm is awesome, and this was long before you could fake it with digital imaging. It's real wind (created using airplane propellers) and real water (a lot of it). It's one of the movies my dad remembers seeing as a kid. It's not the kind of movie a kid back then would forget.