Way Down South (1939)
Genre : Crime, Music
Runtime : 1H 1M
Director : Leslie Goodwins, Bernard Vorhaus
Synopsis
In the pre-Civil War South, a plantation owner dies and leaves all his possessions, including his slaves, to his young son. While the deceased treated his slaves decently, his corrupt executor abuses them unmercifully, beating them without provocation, and he is planning to sell off the father'e estate--including the slaves--at the earliest opportunity so he and his mistress can steal the money and move to France. The young boy doesn't want to sell his father's estate or break up an of the slave families, and he has to find someone to help him thwart the crooked executor's plans.
Tells the story of Fisher Willow, the disliked 1920s Memphis débutante daughter of a plantation owner with a distaste for narrow-minded people and a penchant for shocking and insulting those around her. After returning from studies overseas, Fisher falls in love with Jimmy, the down-and-out son of an alcoholic father and an insane mother who works at a store on her family's plantation.
Gangster Zac Cotton and his two henchmen, Mitch and Sonny, try to get a boat to get off a tropical island after a botched robbery heist.
In Haiti, a wealthy landowner convinces a sorcerer to lure the American woman he has fallen for away from her fiance, only to have the madman decide to keep the woman for himself, as a zombie.
A nurse in the Caribbean turns to voodoo in hopes of curing her patient, a mindless woman whose husband she's fallen in love with.
An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
Can a girl from Little Rock find happiness with a mature French planter she got to know one enchanted evening away from the military hospital where she is a nurse? Or should she just wash that man out of her hair? Bloody Mary is the philosopher of the island and it's hard to believe she could be the mother of Liat who has captured the heart of Lt. Joseph Cable USMC. While waiting for action in the war in the South Pacific, sailors and nurses put on a musical comedy show. The war gets closer and the saga of Nellie Forbush and Emile de Becque becomes serious drama.
A group of Confederate soldiers hole up on an abandoned plantation after robbing a bank, and find themselves at the mercy of supernatural forces.
Rock and Dr. Andrea travel up the Amazon to find out why the plantation workers have left their work in panic, allegedly because of attacks from Curucu, a monster who is said to live up the river where no white man has ever been before...
The Leiningen South American cocoa plantation is threatened by a 2-mile-wide, 20-mile-long column of army ants.
A British mercenary arrives in pre-Revolution Cuba to help train the corrupt General Batista's army against Castro's guerrillas while he also romances a former lover now married to an unscrupulous plantation owner.
In Colombia, mining engineer Rian Mitchell discovers Carrero, the lost emerald mine of the Conquistadors, but has to contend with notorious local bandit El Moro's gang and with coffee planter Catherine Knowland's love.
In February, 1962, as the civil rights movement reaches Bayonne, Louisiana, a New York journalist arrives to interview Jane Pittman, who has just turned 110. She tells him her story dating back to her earliest memories before slavery ended. In between the chapters of her life, the present-day struggles of Blacks in Bayonne, urged on by Jimmy, are dramatized.
Maisie gets lost in a jungle in Africa and the jungle of romance. The African jungle has snakes, crocodiles and witch doctors. The romantic jungle has a dedicated doctor with an un-dedicated wife and an embittered doctor who is dedicated to no one.
The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
Sylvia Walton returns from Harlem to take over a Jamaican plantation from her vindictive half-sister, amid the growing sound of drums.
In Africa early in World War II, a British rubber plantation executive reminisces about his arrival in the Congo in 1910. He tells the story of a love-hate triangle involving Harry Witzel, an in-country station superintendent who'd seen it all, Langford, a new manager sent from England for a four-year stint, and Tondelayo, a siren of great beauty who desires silk and baubles. Witzel is gruff and seasoned, certain that Langford won't be able to cut it. Langford responds with determination and anger, attracted to Tondelayo because of her beauty, her wiles, and to get at Witzel. Manipulation, jealousy, revenge, and responsibility play out as alliances within the triangle shift.
Rhonda Fleming shines as Pamela, an American film star who falls in love with coffee grower Claudio (Rossano Brazzi) while in Brazil. When the two are hastily married, Pamela finds herself entwined in a clash of cultures in this rarely seen romantic comedy.
A black voodoo priestess comes out of the Louisians swamps to take revenge on the white plantation owner she believes killed her husband. The old conjure woman Mandy returns with her daughter Chloe to their bayou home after fifteen years. Chloe was too young to remember much about the bayou, but once Mandy had been a famous voodoo priestess in these parts. But after the whites lynched her husband Sam, she took her little girl & moved away into the Everglades. She seems to have gone a little mad in the intervening years & has returned swearing a belated vengeance against the murdering white folks.
A Central American plantation manager and his boss battle over a traveling showgirl.
