HotToastyRag Get ready for an epic love quadrangle aquatic adventure with Cecil B. DeMille's Reap the Wild Wind. Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland, John Wayne, and Susan Hayward all sneak behind each other's backs, deceive, seduce, and fall in love for real. And it takes two hours to sort it all out!It's a little complex, though, and miraculously at the same time, a little tedious. It's as if screenwriters Charles Bennett, Jesse Lasky, Jr., Alan Le May, and Jeanie Macpherson, wanted the audience to take so long to figure out who's who and what they're doing that it would stretch the running time out. But, if you like large-scale adventures with lots of boat scenes, you might not mind. It reminded me of Tap Roots in a way, an attempt to recapture the epic splendor of Gone with the Wind but not really succeeding. You can tell everyone in this movie thinks it's an incredible blockbuster-which, to be fair, it was at the time-but nowadays with so many ship movies out there with more up-to-date special effects, it doesn't feel the same. The famous crane shot in Gone with the Wind doesn't feel the same today, either, so if you like stepping back in time, and you're totally riveted by hurricanes and shipwrecks, you might like this one.

utgard14 Cecil B. DeMille's romantic adventure tale about a love triangle between feisty Paulette Goddard, lawyer Ray Milland, and ship's captain John Wayne. There's also some stuff about salvager Raymond Massey who is really just a pirate. Interesting film in that it doesn't look the least bit authentic yet I still like the look of it. It's very setbound and the matte painting backdrops are obvious, as is the pool pretending to be the sea. But there's something charming about it all. Paulette Goddard is radiant in technicolor. John Wayne is solid as ever though he has to play runner-up to Ray Milland. For his part, Milland is pretty good considering he's outside of his comfort zone a bit. Raymond Massey is probably the best of the cast in his role as the villain. Susan Hayward and Robert Preston also appear. This is a DeMille picture so that obviously means the acting is broad and sometimes over-the-top. So expect that going in. The romantic stuff is the pits. The real selling point to the movie is the special effects which won an Oscar but are the butt of jokes today. As I said before, I enjoyed the look of the film even though I didn't believe for a second that they filmed on location anywhere. Also the giant squid at the end, while clearly fake, was pretty impressive for the time. It's undeniably cute today, though. The point behind this picture seems to have been to sell Ray Milland as a tough guy to audiences at the time. On that front, it's pretty silly stuff. I like Milland but even I wouldn't flinch at the thought of taking a punch from him and I'm hardly a tough guy.

Ben Larson This film had a plethora of stars from the 40s: Ray Milland who won an Oscar for The Lost Weekend, Paulette Goddard who was nominated for So Proudly We Hail!, Raymond Massey who was nominated for Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Susan Hayward with an Oscar for I Want to Live!, and four other nominations, Charles Bickford with three Oscar nominations in the 40s, Milburn Stone who played Doc Adams on Gunsmoke, and John Wayne who got his Oscar for True Grit, and who had two other nominations.It was directed by the great Cecil B. DeMille, who won three Oscars and had two other nominations. He was best know for The Ten Commandments.The film itself won an Oscar for Special Effects, and had two other nominations for Cinematography and Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration.The film is full of storms, ship wrecks and gang fights, and will entertain for the full 123 minutes.

r_w_a The first hour and a half centers around Paulette Goddard screaming, yelling at everyone, breaking and chopping things up and being very annoying. I have no idea how this won an Oscar. Far too much boring dialog. I was expecting a sea adventure down on the Florida keys with beautiful big sailing ships with great scenery. What you get is a lot of chaos on deck and meaningless chatter below deck. When you consider the budget, actors and atmosphere the potential was there. The last half hour finally gets going mostly because Paulette Goddard calms down. I am no expert movie reviewer but I know a good movie when I see one. I cannot and do not recommend this movie. A major disappointment.