If you like Jack Lemmon, Rita Hayworth, and Robert Mitchum, you'll be tempted to rent Fire Down Below, a love triangle set in the Caribbean. Since I've seen it, I can tell you the beginning and the end are the best parts. The middle isn't that great.To set the scene, the first scene is in a nightclub. The aptly named "Stretch" Cox and his troupe are filmed doing a ridiculously impossible limbo, impressing the audience and making them expect just as much fire from the rest of the movie. Jack and Bob are introduced, as friends and partners in the smuggling business, but when they take a job from icy Rita, their friendship is tested. At first she's drawn to the sweet and safe Jack, but when Bob is around, there's just no ignoring her real feelings. For the most part, the love triangle is overshadowed by the smuggling and boat businesses, and that's why the movie isn't very interesting. I'm really not a Rita Hayworth fan, so I tended to fast forward her scenes. I've never understood why she played in roles where she was supposed to be irresistible, but to each his own. If you agree with me, you can check out the beginning, get the gist of the love triangle, and then skip to the last fifteen or twenty minutes when things get really exciting. No spoilers here, but the last few scenes are very good.

No-one would ever accuse "Fire Down Below" of being a good film but photographed in Cinemascope and Technicolour on location in the Caribbean it's certainly a handsome one, Throw in Robert Mitchum, Rita Hayworth and Jack Lemmon and it becomes a film with star quality as well. The plot is as old as the hills as pals Mitchum and Lemmon fall out over Hayworth, the woman they are transporting 'from nowhere to nowhere'. The film generates a little excitement, (though not much), when Lemmon gets trapped in a ship that is about to blow up. The terrible dialogue is courtesy of Irwin Shaw from a book by Max Catto and director Robert Parrish was hardly the man to turn a pig's ear into a silk purse.

Two American sailors, Felix and Tony, are co-owners of a tramp boat which they use for small-scale smuggling around the Caribbean. One day, however, they receive a more lucrative proposition. They are offered $1000 to transport Irena, a beautiful but stateless Eastern European refugee, from one island to another. As normally happens in films like this, both men fall in love with her, and they come to blows, their friendship forgotten.The two men are quite different in character. Tony, a bachelor, is a romantic and idealistic young man who has come to care deeply for Irena. Felix is a divorcée, several years older than Tony; the failure of his brief marriage has left him a hard-bitten and cynical misogynist. He also has a nasty streak in him, shown when, under a pretence of friendship, he tells Tony to beware of Irena who is a woman of immoral character. His real motive, of course, is to leave Irena free for himself. When this ploy fails, he tips off the coastguard about Tony's smuggling activities.The first part of the film is dominated by the Tony/Felix/Irena love triangle, but about halfway through Felix and Irena suddenly disappear from the action and the film abruptly changes from a romantic melodrama to a disaster movie, a sort of poor man's "Poseidon Adventure". Tony has signed as a crewman on board a Greek freighter and is injured when it is involved in a collision with a liner. Tony's injuries are in themselves relatively minor, certainly not life-threatening, but he is nevertheless in grave danger as he is trapped by a fallen iron girder and the ship is on fire. To make things worse, it is carrying a potentially explosive cargo.This was Rita Hayworth's first film after a four-year absence from the screen, caused by events in her private life. Rita remained a major sex symbol for over two decades because she was able to change her style of beauty as she got older. In early films such as "You'll Never Get Rich" she was an innocent, girl-next-door type. In what might be called her "middle period", the period of "Gilda" or "The Lady from Shanghai" she was a seductive femme fatale. Here, at the age of 39, she plays a glamorous, sophisticated older woman, and still looks as attractive as ever, especially in a swimsuit.This is, moreover, a very accomplished acting performance. Irena seems to have had a somewhat shady past, the full details of which are never made clear in the film, but one does not sense from Rita's interpretation that she is as immoral as Felix makes out. There is a sense that Irena has had a difficult life in Europe and that she has known sadness, perhaps even tragedy. She is reserved on the surface but one senses strong feelings beneath. (This is one of two meanings of the title "Fire down Below", the other referring to the literal fire which has broken out on the ship).Jack Lemmon as Tony plays his part reasonably well, but this is not a particularly good film. There are several reasons for this. The race against time to free Tony from the burning ship does not generate as much tension as one might have expected. The two halves of the film do not fit together well, and the change from one to the other is too abrupt. Irena and Felix reappear towards the end, but only Robert Mitchum has much to do; Rita's participation is effectively over by half-time.Felix is a key character, but Mitchum hesitates between two possible interpretations of the role. He seems unsure whether Felix is basically a decent but flawed individual or basically a nasty piece of work who redeems himself by one act of selfless bravery. He attempts both interpretations in the course of the film, and ends up making neither convincing. The film-makers were obviously guided by the normal convention that in any film involving a love-triangle it will be the first name above the title who gets the girl. (Lemmon was later to become one of Hollywood's biggest names, but in 1957 it was Mitchum who got first billing). The ending, in which Irena ends up with Felix rather than Tony, struck me as psychologically implausible and dramatically false. A marriage between Irena and Tony might have had some chance of working; one between her and Felix would serve no purpose except to provide employment for the divorce lawyers. Despite its three major-league stars, "Fire Down Below" is no more than a minor-league melodrama. 5/10

Notice I didn't say "Ahead of it's (it is) time." Sorry, I just have to be different and use the English language correctly.That out of the way, this movie was a very pleasant surprise. Sure it has its cliché moments, such as the obligatory fight between Mitchum and Lemmon over the lady. But even that scene ends semi-realistically, with Mitchum kicking poor Lemmon's ass (as you would expect), not the good, decent guy (Lemmon) triumphing over the larger and meaner bully. I respect that choice by the director/writers. Similarly, the ending also is not a pat happy ending -- nice guys DO finish last, just as in real life! I was already rolling my eyes as soon as the rescue against all hope occurred, but then the realistic twist at the end brought me home again.I simply cannot resist thinking that the title has something to do with whether or not Hayworth is a natural redhead! Sorry, but the double (or triple) entendre is there, and you can't ignore it! You've got the fire simmering between the three lead characters, the fire on the Ulysses, and...well, you know.I was delighted to recognize Anthony Newley in a minor role as the bartender who introduces Mitchum and Lemmon to Rita Hayworth and her current protector. I kept waiting for him to belt out "What Kind of Fool Am I?" He was quite amusing as the unabashedly greedy go-between.Almost 50 years down the road, this movie still retains its "fire."