Satan Never Sleeps

A priest (William Holden) deals with a smitten native girl, a cranky older priest, and Communist Revolutionaries at a mission in China.

Satan Never Sleeps is an awful movie. It’s a would-be romantic comedy featuring rape and murder topped off with some horrible special effects and a cringe-worthy ending. It also, unfortunately, marked the end of director Leo McCarey’s long career.

Apparently, some of the problems arose from tensions between McCarey and the cast, the largest of which was when star William Holden objected to McCarey’s original ending, which in turn caused McCarey to walk away from the film, which was then edited together without him.

That’s not to say Holden doomed the film, however. McCarey’s earlier Once Upon a Honeymoon is another disaster of a comedy that bears a passing resemblance to Satan Never Sleeps in that both seem oblivious of their own insensitivity. Much as Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers almost being mistaken for Jews wasn’t funny in Honeymoon, a romantic comedy involving rape isn’t funny in this film. Granted, it’s Holden’s ending that really hammers this home in a truly disturbing manner, but still, how did things even get to that point?

In the end there’s little to recommend Satan Never Sleeps aside from the morbid fascination of watching a two-hour train wreck.