As students of a film genre inspired by the Pacific islands and often executed (in more ways than one) on Hollywood sound stages, the good-humored men and women of the South Seas Cinema Society are well-versed in such engaging topics as:

The Virgin Dance of Taboo!

The Circle of Fire: Passionate Pagan Ritual!

While not the everyday stuff of serious scholarly pursuit, films like "The Last Paradise" — which sold itself on those very inducements — represent a larger body of work rich with social, cultural and historical meaning, a cinematic genre whose significance has rarely been recognized outside of the society's modest ranks.

"Contained within South Seas cinema is the larger question of how Hawai'i and Pacific culture has been depicted and the motivations behind that," says DeSoto Brown, collections manager of the Bishop Museum's archives department and the society's vice president. "It's a subject that deserves more attention than it has been given. It's an opportunity to learn more about what people think about us."

On a warm autumn night, in the audio-visual fantasy land that is member Dan Long's Kuapa Isle home, Brown and a dozen society members have assembled to watch the 1937 film "Paradise Isle" starring Warren Hull and the Mexican-American actress Movita.

(And who could resist a film that was originally released with the tag line: "His strong arms drew this red-lipped beauty to him!")

The extemporaneous commentary begins well before the first words are uttered on screen.

Brown notes the film's re-issue title ("Siren of the South Seas") and rattles off a quick biography of lead actress Movita, including her marriage to Marlon Brando.

Doug Mossman, local actor best known for his role as Moke on the seminal Hawai'i series "Hawaiian Eye," chimes in about the steel-guitar music that opens the film. It's his longtime friend Stan Koki.

Matt Locey, the club president and one of Hawai'i's most active film and TV directors, draws attention to the smooth transitions between the Hollywood set where the film was shot and the stock footage of Samoa used for scene-setting transitions. (Brown recognizes the latter from Robert Flaherty's 1926 film "Moana.")

And so it goes through the evening. The group snickers at lines like "Good to know there's a white man here," rolls its collective eyes when Movita swipes a pipe for her Caucasian paramour ("Natives steal!"), and titters knowingly when one of the faux-Samoan natives sings a song in distinctly Hawaiian falsetto accompanied by 'ukulele and steel guitar.

Lighthearted on the surface, the society's relationship with the material is a mix of serious academic inquiry and earnest, uncomplicated affection.

The club formed about a decade ago when journalist, author and filmmaker Ed Rampell — whose fascination with Pacific peoples brought him from New York to the South Seas and Hawai'i — invited Locey, Brown and former state statistician and Hawai'i historian Bob Schmitt to get together to talk about their shared passion.

Rampell collaborated with film historian Luis Reyes on the book "Made in Hawaii," a survey of 150 canonical South Seas films, which society members affectionately refer to as the bible of the genre.

REWIND: DOCUMENTATION

It is difficult to pinpoint how many South Seas films have been made, because many of those produced before the 1930s no longer exist. Still, Locey estimates there are at least 600 feature films — including musicals, War in the Pacific films, and hundreds of "stranded haole" clones — that can be clearly identified as South Seas cinema. (Numerically speaking, Locey says John Wayne and Dorothy Lamour are the king and queen of the genre.)

Locey says the archetypal South Seas film involves a white man who finds himself stranded on an island — sometimes in Hawai'i or Samoa, often just a made-up locale. He falls in love with a beautiful half-white/half-native woman (mediating fears of miscegenation), but is conflicted because he has a fiancee back home. Thrown into the mix are a wise but stubborn chief (often the woman's father), an evil kahuna, a jealous native rival, a white woman escaping a dubious past, an old drunk beachcomber and perhaps a few evil pearl poachers.

"In the end, there is always some sort of natural disaster," Locey says. "This shows that paradise isn't what it's cracked up to be. The white guy survives the disaster, then packs up and leaves."

However simple the setup, the films can be appreciated on different levels, says Brown.

"On a superficial level, these films can be very enjoyable, and if you have an awareness of the reality, comparing the two can be fun," Brown says. "On a deeper level, there is a desire to know how truthful these depictions are, and, if they are not true, then what are the motivations behind them? Is there an agenda? Do these films depict Pacific culture in a certain way?"

The society also keeps track of South Seas images and themes in other genres of film and television. Before the "Paradise Isle" screening, the group viewed a clip of Shirley Temple dancing the hula in "Curly Top," an elaborate homage to South Seas cinema from "The Carol Burnett Show," and a short clip of The Rock doing a slap dance in the film "Be Cool."

Many society members trace their interest in South Seas cinema to early adolescence.

Brown said his interest was stoked watching old movies on television.

"I remember 'Waikiki Wedding' was one of the first films that I looked at and said, 'Is this really how (Hawai'i) was in 1937? Is this how it is now?' " he says. "It made me think and question."

Locey, who was born in Hawai'i but spent much of his adolescent and teen years in Moses Lake, Wash., recalls going to see "Hawaii" with his homesick mother when he was 12.

"In the first scene, they reach the island and all the women are topless," Locey says with a smile. "My mom was embarrassed and she didn't know if she should cover my eyes, but I was enthralled. I fell in love with the genre."

But it was an odd sense of nostalgia, not pubescent titillation, that moved Locey. He says he spent years feeling homesick for a place he scarcely remembered.

Locey and his family returned to Hawai'i in 1974, just in time for the 16-year-old to experience the politicizing effect of the Hawaiian renaissance. While his affection for South Seas cinema remained intact, he gradually came to approach the subject with a more critical eye.

Locey, who is half-Hawaiian, says the genre is inherently problematic for Pacific islanders.

"I try to look at it from a historical perspective and take it for what it is," he says. "A lot of it is politically incorrect — we had actors in brown paint instead of black face — but I also think a lot of it is positive."

FAST-FORWARD: INTEREST

Over the years, the society's membership has grown to include academics, collectors and cinephiles of all stripes. Special insight is provided by actors like Mossman, Don Stroud, and Benny Chapman. In recent months, Ray and Andy Bumatai, and "Lost" producer Jean Higgins have also stopped by.

"It's a kick to watch these films," says Mossman, who helped find acting jobs for scores of Polynesians and Asians during his time in Hollywood. "I remember seeing a lot of these when they first came out. I can recognize a lot of people, a lot of friends, who have since passed away."

A few years ago, Locey heard about a film buff in Kailua named Ernie Carvelo who had a big collection of Hawai'i films. Locey stopped by and found that Carvelo, a retired Hawaiian Tel worker, not only had an impressive collection of travelogues, industrial films and regular features, but a home theater complete with projection booth and 28-foot screen.

Dorothy Carvelo said her husband had been collecting films for years, storing them wherever he could find space, even under their bed. It wasn't until he started having heart problems that he decided to build a proper storage room. That eventually expanded and turned into the theater, a dream room that sat mostly empty until Ernie Carvelo met up with the South Seas Cinema Society.

For nearly a year, until Carvelo passed away, the group alternated between Carvelo's theater and Dan Long's house.

"He had a lot of fun with them," Dorothy Carvelo says.

Among the group's prized possessions — scores of original movie posters, a woven shirt from "Hawaii," a bomb prop from "Pearl Harbor" — is a photo Dorothy sent Locey after Ernie's funeral.

That's Ernie, surrounded by his new friends, smiling broadly.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.