More 1950's detail was put into this expanded version of the 1939 programmer "Five Came Back" which director John Farrow helped make a cult classic due to its interesting cast, a better than average screenplay and atmospheric photography. Now, towards the end of RKO's years as a movie making studio, Farrow was back with basically the same story where really nothing changed but the year.
That being said, a 1950's sexuality with the "almost spilling out of her dress" presence of Anita Ekberg, playing the mistress of a powerful businessman who suddenly kicks her to the curb. She is traveling to South America with an assorted group of troubled passengers which include an aging couple (Cameron Prud'Homme and Beaulah Bondi), a mobster's son (Jon Provost) with his reluctant caretaker ("Maytag" repairman commercial vet Jesse White), a long-separated couple desperate to marry (Keith Andes and Phyllis Kirk), and eventually the political prisoner (Rod Steiger) and the bounty man (Fred Clark at his snarkiest) on their way to Steiger's execution. Add into the fix a boozy pilot (Robert Ryan) and his co-pilot (Gene Barry) who has admired him from afar for years.
The first half introduces the story of all these people and is simply a retread of what audiences had seen the year earlier in the much better "The High and the Mighty". However, once the plane crashes in the jungle (with only Bondi passing out, presumably out of shock), the film takes off as fast as the plane crashed, and the conflicts of these people stuck together in the Amazon (with a head-shrinking tribe rumored to be in the area) explodes into tensions civilization couldn't fix. Steiger's prisoner is actually the wisest man among the plane-wrecked crew, spouting wisdoms to try and keep them from killing each other. Once the plane is fixed, only some of them can return, the rest doomed to stay to take their chances with the natives who's drums are already beating.
Steiger's character reminded me of Walter Slezak's Nazi villain in the 1944 Hitchcock classic "Lifeboat", the prisoner who is actually smarter than the people holding him hostage. Steiger, however, isn't using his smarts to turn everyone against each other; He's actually better in many ways than the ones living inside the law, and it is touching to see him bonding with the elderly couple who are at first shocked by his crime of being a political assassin.
This film might have been a bit better had it been in color, especially since the original was in black and white. However, that doesn't keep this from being a good film, giving us a good cat-fight between Ekberg and Kirk, a seemingly hard as nails mobster with White hiding a big heart for the kid he's protecting, and an amusing villain in Clark who shows that not everybody who is on the side of the law is actually on the side of justice.
That being said, a 1950's sexuality with the "almost spilling out of her dress" presence of Anita Ekberg, playing the mistress of a powerful businessman who suddenly kicks her to the curb. She is traveling to South America with an assorted group of troubled passengers which include an aging couple (Cameron Prud'Homme and Beaulah Bondi), a mobster's son (Jon Provost) with his reluctant caretaker ("Maytag" repairman commercial vet Jesse White), a long-separated couple desperate to marry (Keith Andes and Phyllis Kirk), and eventually the political prisoner (Rod Steiger) and the bounty man (Fred Clark at his snarkiest) on their way to Steiger's execution. Add into the fix a boozy pilot (Robert Ryan) and his co-pilot (Gene Barry) who has admired him from afar for years.
The first half introduces the story of all these people and is simply a retread of what audiences had seen the year earlier in the much better "The High and the Mighty". However, once the plane crashes in the jungle (with only Bondi passing out, presumably out of shock), the film takes off as fast as the plane crashed, and the conflicts of these people stuck together in the Amazon (with a head-shrinking tribe rumored to be in the area) explodes into tensions civilization couldn't fix. Steiger's prisoner is actually the wisest man among the plane-wrecked crew, spouting wisdoms to try and keep them from killing each other. Once the plane is fixed, only some of them can return, the rest doomed to stay to take their chances with the natives who's drums are already beating.
Steiger's character reminded me of Walter Slezak's Nazi villain in the 1944 Hitchcock classic "Lifeboat", the prisoner who is actually smarter than the people holding him hostage. Steiger, however, isn't using his smarts to turn everyone against each other; He's actually better in many ways than the ones living inside the law, and it is touching to see him bonding with the elderly couple who are at first shocked by his crime of being a political assassin.
This film might have been a bit better had it been in color, especially since the original was in black and white. However, that doesn't keep this from being a good film, giving us a good cat-fight between Ekberg and Kirk, a seemingly hard as nails mobster with White hiding a big heart for the kid he's protecting, and an amusing villain in Clark who shows that not everybody who is on the side of the law is actually on the side of justice.