Mexican Spitfire at Sea (1942)
(On Cable TV, November 2019) It’s one thing to have star vehicles, and it’s another to have a series of films tailored to your screen persona. Anyone unfamiliar with Lupe Velez’s brand of comedy as an attractive but stereotypically tempestuous Latina will know everything they need to know from Mexican Spitfire at Sea, the fourth in a seven-film series all featuring Velez and her “Mexican Spitfire” moniker. Here, we’re aboard an ocean liner as our heroine thinks she’s finally getting her honeymoon but instead gets tangled in a mix of social climbing, husband shaming, impersonations and rapid-fire dialogue often punctuated by comic rages from the protagonist. At 72 minutes, Mexican Spitfire at Sea has no time for niceties, and no appetite for subtlety: this is classic community theatre farce material with mistaken identities and misunderstandings powering much of the plot, with the actors mugging for the camera so that we don’t miss a single double take, confusion or lustful thought. The ending is a bit weak, but it actually works quite well if you’re in the mood for that kind of sitcom-level comedy … and it works even better if you like the “Mexican Spitfire” archetype that Velez plays so well. Added attraction may come from the easy-to-digest pace of life aboard an ocean liner (you can cut production costs by going through the same five sets), funny dialogue and a performance from veteran actress Zasu Pitts that’s far funnier than anything she did in Greed. What may limit the appeal of the film is that the series is focused so extensively of a specific screen persona. I was curious about Velez and sympathetic to that kind of role, but I’m not so sure that I’d watch all seven movies back-to-back. As a small discovery, though, Mexican Spitfire at Sea is just good enough to make me happy.