Torrid Zone

Torrid Zone (1940) starring James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Pat O'Brien, Andy Devine. Light-hearted, lightweight movie takes place in the tropics, where Cagney plays a banana plantation manager who desperately wants to go back to the states, while Sheridan stars as a nightclub singer who wants to continue traveling south to try her luck in South America. Naturally, they fall in love. While Cagney tries to move bananas, an outlaw named Rosario tries to push the plantation off the land and reclaim it for the original inhabitants. The film doesn't take much of anything seriously, and gives the impression of having been tossed off in a couple of weeks in 1940 to fulfill the need for movies to play in the theaters. It's not bad. (Subtitles in English are available, as well as closed captions.) Grade: B