Reap the Wild Wind

Wayne plays a sea captain who, as the film opens, is unconscious, having been knocked out by a treacherous first mate who’s been paid to scuttle the ship by an underhanded salvager, played by Raymond Massey.

Wayne is saved by Scarlett O’Hara-clone Goddard and the two fall in love, but things get complicated when a foppish lawyer, played by Milland, enters the picture. Milland falls for Goddard too and soon Wayne’s making a deal with the devil in the form of Massey, planning to scuttle his dream ship in return for enough money to ensure he and Goddard can live a good life together. Things don’t go as planned, however, and Wayne finds himself on trial for deliberately wrecking the vessel.

Then Wayne and Milland fight a giant squid.

Reap the Wild Wind was director Cecil B. DeMille’s answer to Gone with the Wind. He spared no expense. He shot in technicolor. He packed his set pieces with the then-pinnacle of special effects.

But all the gloss can’t distract from the wealth of lines delivered by characters gazing at nothing in particular. Nor from a script that goes from a court room sequence to the prosecutor and defendant fighting a sea-monster for evidence. Wayne and Lynne Overman, who plays Loxi’s old salt skipper, are the lone bright spots. It’s a dull mess of a movie that’s only notable today as one of the few instances where Wayne plays a bad guy. Or at least, a good guy gone bad.