Murder on the High Seas (1932) (aka “Love Bound”)

This was the movie that got me hooked on Natalie, I purchased this movie because it was a part of a two pack, I didn’t care about this movie I wanted the other (The Sunset Murder Case), but what a surprise I got when I finally watched Murder on the High Seas. This time Natalie has a leading part, it’s basically her movie, although Jack Mulhall gets top billing. Natalie plays Verna Wilson, a woman who makes money buy black mailing rich men. She wins a lawsuit against Mr. Randolph, which threatens his marriage, when his son Dick finds out, he comes up with a plan to get back at Verna and save his parents marriage. Dick gets on the same ship as Verna and plans to get her to fall for his friend who is posing as a rich oil man, and bust her, that way he can prove to his mother that his father was innocent. The plan seems to be working but slowing Verna is falling in love for real this time with Dick. But just when everything seems to be going ok, a former victim of Verna is also on board and wants her dead, along with her accomplice. Verna accomplice kills the former victim during a fight with Dick, and when the police come to take Dick because they believe he did it, Verna comes clean with everything, and she leaves. Not a great ending, you see Dick had a fiancé, so we figure he was happy that his plan kind of worked and he goes back to his fiancé and his parents get back together, but what happened to Verna? At one point she was planning on killing herself because she loved Dick and she didn’t want the other guy to get his revenge and kill her. So when she walks off into the shadows at the end does she go to kill her self, or does she go to jail, or does she go away and live a good life, who knows. This of course was a fairly low budget movie, but it did have some good moments, for the most part the acting wasn’t bad, there where some bad cut jobs from scene to scene, but I’m not sure if that was really like that back then or was this a part of trying to save the film now. There was two fights scenes that were awful, the two guys looked more like they were just slapping each other, and at times I swear they were just bumping chests, it was so bad it was funny. Natalie did a great job, she looked great, you can see why all those men would fall for her, she had that great look. There was some cool scenes with some good interesting lighting, and for a low budget studio Natalie had some great clothes, for the most part this was a very good movie, and it was only an hour long.