User Reviews

Filmed in Mexico with the Co-operation of Sotomayor Productions. Photographed in Regalscope (some Fox publicity says CinemaScope, thereby proving once again my claim that Regalscope is Bausch & Lomb CinemaScope and vice-versa). Producer: Jack Leewood.

Copyright 1959 by Associated Producers, Inc. Released through 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. No recorded New York opening. U.S. release: March 1959. U.K. release: May 1960. Australian release not recorded. 7,066 feet. 78 minutes. This full-length version was released in the U.K., but in the U.S.A. the film was cut to 73 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: Taursus, a buccaneer, shoots down his comrade Tiburon after helping him bury a treasure-chest on a desert island. Tiburon, left for dead, recovers, and in his wanderings about the isle meets a young boy, Frank, a marooned ship's helper with a pet seal who has adopted the ways of a savage. The two build themselves a jungle hideaway while waiting through the years for the proverbial ship that never comes; soon the young savage becomes a handsome muscular youth.

COMMENT: In their admirable rush to make "B" versions of well-known children's classics, it was inevitable that Associated Producers would turn to Captain Marryat (1792-1848). I still remember reading "Mr. Midshipman Easy" (1836) and "Masterman Ready" (1842). "The Little Savage" (not published in America until 1877) is obviously one of the author's lesser works, but it makes an entertaining movie (even if much of its amusement is unintentional) all the same.

One Third Treasure Island and one third Blue Lagoon, and one third Robinson Crusoe, The Little Savage for the most part features only the marooned Pedro Armendariz as a pirate captain whose second mate has abandoned him on a deserted uninhabited island in the 18th century Caribbean. It's Rodolfo Hoyos who's done Armendariz wrong, yet Armendariz is on the island where the pirate loot is buried, but he doesn't know where it is.

He's also not alone, he has 10 year old Terry Rangno on there as well. And they're stuck there for the duration.

So it's Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins who kind of take to each other in much the same fashion as Robert Louis Stevenson's characters do. And in that tropic paradise along comes Christiane Martel to teach the grown Rangno, now played by Robert Palmer the facts of life. I imagine none too soon because if I had been stuck those many years as Armendariz I might have gotten ideas.

Of course in the end Hoyos and Armendariz do have a reckoning as you might have figured they would.

Production values are on the cheap, they should have sprung for color cinematography so at least you could have a lovely view of a tropic Caribbean isle. The Blue Lagoon angle renders this one kind of unsuitable for family viewing. Adults might find it titillating but that's all.