This film begins with the main character having a bullet extracted from him on the operating table, and then tells us the story of how it got there via flashbacks: After a bad breakup, Mike Cormack (John Payne) drinks himself out of a job in the L.A. district attorney's office and washes up as bouncer in a shady Vegas casino. There he languishes, until a wheelchair-bound stranger (Francis L. Sullivan) engages him to locate a fantastic ruby that disappeared in a Caribbean plane crash; the bait is that it may be in the possession of the woman (Mary Murphy) who jilted him. Payne flies off to Santo Rosario and into a lurid web of duplicity and backstabbing which will involve him in gunfights, cockfights, fistfights, and a prison break while he searches for the precious stone!

Having already produced the classics 99 River Street and Kansas City Confidential, John Payne and director Phil Karlson team up once again for Hell's Island - an enjoyable color noir. Payne works well as an angry noir hero who gets to confront his old flame, Mary Murphy, who is certainly one very dangerous scheming two-timing dame! The movie is woven around Payne still carrying a torch for Murphy which causes him to miss or ignore some of the clues and warning signals all around him. By the time he wises up, the stakes (and body count) have risen and boy is he is MAD! An enjoyable little film -- the Payne/Karlson combo rarely disappoints!