Heat Wave

Buffoons meddle in a Latin-American revolution. Albert Burdon, Les Allen, Cyril Maude, Anna Lee. Slapsticky. Directed by Maurice Elvey., Venerable stage favorite Cyril Maude is pretty much the whole show in the British comedy-melodrama Heat Wave. Maude plays a cranky old vegetable trader who pulls into port at a mythical banana republic. Loudly announcing that he has potatoes, onions and cabbage for sale, the old man unwittingly spouts out the code words for a gun-running operation. He is hired by a revolutionary group to supply guns for an impending insurrection, but of course he thinks he’s merely making another produce run. When Maude shows up at his appointed destination with vegetables instead of rifles, it looks like he’s a goner, but through a series of logic-defying complications, our hero not only saves his own skin, but also those of the Presidente and his pretty daughter. Director Maurice Elvey manages to find a spot or two to showcase the talents of British radio singer Les Allen, here cast as the heroine’s sweetheart.