Picture Brides on AllMovie

Although former Ziegfeld girl Dorothy Mackaill is top-billed, Alan Hale steals the show as a debaucher in this lurid melodrama set in a remote outpost in the Brazilian jungle. Mackaill plays Mame, one of a boatload of pretty girls en route to marry lonely workers at the Standard Diamond Mine in Lottogrosso. The place is lorded over by the evil Von Luden (Hale), who thinks nothing of killing a native simply because the man is in the way and who attempts to deflower the most innocent among the brides, Mary Lee (Dorothy Libaire). The latter is rescued in the nick of time by the worldly Mame and Dave Hart (Regis Toomey), a young man wanted for embezzlement in the States. Von Luden, meanwhile, murders a beautiful half-caste (Mary Kornman) and is about to hand over Dave to American representatives when he himself is killed by the dead girl's grieving father, the local doctor (Harvey Clark). In love with Mary, Dave leaves to face justice in America, while Mame marries the new mining boss, Brownie (Will Ahearn).