Rivers with tiger fish that can devour a crocodile in seconds; Man eating ants, giant cats, blood thirsty bats, just a few. Just some of the dangers that follow a group of people kidnapped off of a passenger ship in an effort to find a treasure in war torn Honduras. If the alligators, ants or tiger fish don't get them, government agents will, no questions asks before the guns fire.Taking a trip over to RKO from Columbia, Glenn Ford replaces redhead Rita Hayworth with the slightly older but still sultry Ann Sheridan, here playing the wife of Zachary Scott and proving that she is as tough as any man as she faces these dangers, even falling into the tiger fish infested waters. She deals with the lustful looks of the Hispanic bandits who kidnapped her and Scott, allegedly in cahoots with Ford but eventually at odds over lustful greed.Enjoyable for the kind of film it is, this is colorful and filled with a ton of adventure, and is equally as fast moving. Neither a rip-off of "The African Queen" or a pre-cursor to the "Indiana Jones" series, this is just pure entertainment, pure and simple, and who could ask for more?

Since Tarzan went to Guatemala in 1935, Charlie Chan to Panamá in 1940 and Fox organized a "Carnival in Costa Rica" in 1947, I decided to watch Jacques Tourneur's "Appointment in Honduras", just to have a richer view of how Hollywood depicted Central America in the old days. Now they are a bit more exact, although the approach (from the "exotic value" perspective) has changed little, if we consider how Costa Rica has been a Jurassic garden for T-Rexes, Panamá a center for tailors who are UK spies, while Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are still the settings of stories of violence. But back then things were so corny (and not from the natives' side, but from Hollywood's), that one has to take most of these films with a grain of salt and laugh. Of those I think that "Charlie Chan in Panamá" is the best, due to its dark plot of treason during II World War, but this fabrication is as ugly as it is opportunistic, using recent facts as starting points without even considering all the tragedy, deaths and losses that can be originated by a political assassination or a coup d'état (with the assistance of the CIA or any other American "industry"). In days of the real overthrowing of Jacobo Arbenz (president of Guatemala), with the collaboration of highly paid American hired-assassins (1954), Glenn Ford plays Corbett, somebody quite close to those men, who supposedly has to help an overthrown president instead. Guatemala is replaced by Honduras, the president is called Prieto, and he has to receive money "for the cause" from Corbett. To do so Corbett has to take command of a ship, make it stop by the Honduran shore, and then cross the jungle up a river in search of Prieto to fulfill his mission. You can have three guesses to determine why Corbett does all that, but in the end, when he identifies himself as a farmer, no character in the film and nor the audience watching believes him. Before he finds Prieto, of course, Corbett has to make that dangerous jungle trip with four convicts that helped execute the operation, led by wicked Rodolfo Acosta, who took two passengers along as hostages: Ann Sheridan, who has to cross the jungle in her night gown, and her rich, mean and coward husband, played by Zachary Scott, good as usual. In their way they meet soldiers, crocodiles, ants, serpents, jungle cats, tropical storms, swarms, piranhas that swam all the way up from South America to appear in this film, an anopheles mosquito that transmits malaria to Corbett and all the clichés scriptwriter Karen DeWolf imagined or believed you would find in the Central American jungles. They never see an orchid, a high full moon, a bright butterfly or a marijuana plant that would have been so helpful to keep them relaxed. All that is left is bare tension by primitive motives, bad acting and Tourneur's boredom or indifference to the material, all in Technicolor. I don't know you, but I'd rather stick to Tarzan, Charlie Chan and the Costa Rican carnival.

On board a tramp steamer sailing of the coast of South America is Corbett – a mysterious man trying to get to Honduras. However with a revolution raging within its borders, the captain refuses to land there. Desperate to get his package to the leaders of the counter-revolution, Corbett frees some prisoners on the ship and takes control. Drifting close enough to the coast to make it into the delta and head up river, they take a rich American couple (the Sheppards) along for the ride as hostages. However none of them are really prepared for a jungle voyage that sees them face crocodiles, tiger fish, ants, pumas and the Honduran military.When I started this film I was a bit put off by the stiff tone but I didn't know anything about the Honduran revolution and thought it would be interesting. Very quickly I found that this backdrop was no more than the background for a fairly standard jungle adventure film that sees all the usual stuff bring rolled out in regards animal attacks etc. The story is not that interesting on the surface and I did find it hard to really get into even with such a short running time; however it did have some interesting aspects at times that it could (and should) have made more of. Chiefly the power battle between Corbett and Reyes is too obvious for the most part and could have been written with more subtlety and intelligence – it produces some good stuff and a reasonable conclusion. The dynamics between Corbett and Harry Sheppard while Sylvia appears to long for the tough man over her own husband is very interesting but given too little time – but still made me wake up every so often.Unfortunately the film tends to shy away from this stuff in favour of more crowd-pleasing stuff with all the usual animal attacks. Wrestling with pumas and shooting at stock footage crocodiles is not great fun but I did draw breath at the stock footage of a crocodile being picked bare by tiger fish. The effects for ants and flies are terrible by modern standards and may get some laughs but none of it is really exciting. The cast do OK when given the chance with the material but mostly they are pretty average. Ford is nothing special and is mostly just tough jawed and nothing more. Acosta's Reyes is by the numbers and his crew match him. Sheridan and Scott are more interesting and their tense interplay is interesting – sadly they are not the focus and they really could have bee better used than this.Overall this is an average jungle adventure film with all the usual fare in a plot that doesn't really use its setting very well. The plot does allow some interesting stuff in the characters but these are not made the most of, leaving a film that is fairly enjoyable but is really nothing special and is certainly not comparable to the more famous films in the Jacques Tourneur back catalogue.

Unfortunately, disAppointment in Honduras does a good job of wasting talent. The only thing worth watching in this movie is Ann Sheridan, who looks fabulous but is given much too little to do.On a minor side note, it was interesting to see Ann Sheridan and Zachary Scott teamed up again as a couple with marital problems, as in the 1947 release The Unfaithful.Leonard Maltin's 1987 movie guide pretty much summed up this movie when it said, "Sheridan is not focal point, and a pity."