The premise has inbuilt suspense—a passenger plane crash lands in a head-hunter infested jungle, leading to who will survive and how. This version, however, fails to generate the suspense of the 1939 original. For one, the 100-minute screenplay here is not as tight as the 75-minute Five Came Back (1939). The extra 25-minutes flattens out in too many places. Plus, the many relationship threads do not coordinate well. At the same time, the jungle photography is muddy in the extreme, probably to disguise the sets. Then there's a significant lapse in the narrative when the boy wanders off into the jungle and we're shown a headhunter observing him. Yet the boy returns to camp unharmed, without explanation. That's not to say this version is without merits. The lightning storm, for one, including Adele Mara's quick exit without a ladder, for another. It's also thought provoking to see how conditions affect character. Specifically, the outcasts from larger society (Ekberg & Steiger) redeem themselves in crisis, while establishment types (Clark & Barry) diminish without their usual supporting conditions. There seems to be a societal allegory here of some significance, (check my review of Five Came Back for an extended discussion).Anyway, thanks reviewer bkoganbing for the background info. Too bad this remake doesn't improve on the original. But then the original didn't have to compete with TV by offering a longer run time, two girls mud wrestling, and a top-heavy non-actress.

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.

This film completely surprised me the way it started out with various people all planning to take a trip on a plane, there is an old couple, a prisoner, Vasquel, (Rod Steiger) and a fallen lady Rena, (Anita Ekberg). There is even a little boy who is being cared for by a mobster who decides the last minute to catch this same plane. The pilot of this plane is Bill Lonagan, (Robert Ryan) who is a veteran pilot but is also a heavy drinker. This plane crashes into a very thick jungle where head hunters occupy this territory which most of the people have not been told about this fact. All of a sudden, the little boy asks everyone to say the "Lord's Prayer" and after this, Vasquel turns religious and many people seem to change their thinking and the way they treat each other. Of course, there is evil vs. good among some of these people and this story goes into a completely different direction.

I am fortunate enough to have seen both this movie and the original version (FIVE CAME BACK)--both of which were directed by John Farrow. So it was in light of this that I felt pretty disappointed in this film--even though it stars Robert Ryan (one of my favorite actors). Most of it is because there just didn't seem to be a reason for the remake--in no way did it really seem like an improvement over the old material. Instead, it was actually worse and by the mid-1950s, it hardly seemed very original (coming just after John Wayne's THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY). I think that a lot of the problem is that the ensemble cast just didn't seem all that good and there was no gimmick to hook the viewer (other than Anita Ekberg's breasts--which feature quite prominently in this film).