There’s a mysterious “Puerto Rico Fever” that is plaguing the island but Don Pedro doesn’t want publicity as that will ruin the local economy (which I gather is the tourist trade), so the duplicitous honcho stifles any foreign researchers from saying it’s so (The Rockefeller Institute testing for the fever gave up after its failure eight years ago, which gives the Nazi propaganda machine a chance to slam the Americans as a people who are so easy to push aside). A scientific foundation sponsored by Astree’s aunt sends two researchers to the island on a mercy mission, Astree’s old flame from college and fellow countryman Dr. Sven Nagel (Karl Martell) and his Brazilian partner Dr. Luis Gomez (Boris Alekin). They accidentally discover an anti-toxin when a policeman dies at their feet from the fever and they do secret experiments in their hotel room. Don Pedro gets wind of this and invites them as dinner guests to his hacienda, where his associates break into their room and destroy their discoveries and police are sent to arrest them at the party for conducting secret experiments that will ruin Puerto Rico’s economy (which proves that the Puerto Rico leaders are merely greedy and don’t care about their citizens, while the Nordics never give up and want to help the citizens of the world). But, would you believe, Don Pedro gets the fever and dies right on the spot because there’s no anti-toxin. The happy ending has mother and son on the steamer heading for good ole Sweden and away from these savages.

Even Sirk’s wonderful visuals and attempt to keep it focused on being both an anti-colonial melodrama and bad vacation romance, can’t pull this one out of its murky Caribbean waters.