I will have to order this movie to give a proper review... I have not watched it but plan on ordering it and coming back to hopefully give a full review about it! I'm glad it's on IMDb. My mother told me she was an extra in this when production went to Trinidad to film. She, along with friends were all 'background/extra's.' She told me all the young ladies became fascinated with the movie business and wanted to become actresses after being in the background! So ironic... I'm in the business and have been for a few years now, started as an extra and also work on the production side of things... guess show biz is meant to be in the family! According to the reviews, seems like it's a good 'ole Classic!

Rita Hayworth, Robert Mitchum, and Jack Lemmon star in "Fire Down Below," a 1957 film. Hayworth plays Irena, a woman with a mysterious European past and no passport. Mitchum and Lemmon are Felix and Tony, who run a ferry boat in the Caribbean. They are paid to take Irena to another island. Felix (Mitchum) knows she's trouble and worse than that, he's attracted to her. Tony (Lemmon) falls for Irena and, when she leaves the ferry, he accompanies her.The film takes an odd turn here - Tony wants to marry Irena, so he takes a job transporting illegal goods to get some money together. But someone has tipped off the police. Tony and his associate escape, and Tony ends up on a Greek ship. The ship has an accident, and Tony is trapped in the hold.This film starts out as one thing - a love triangle, a mysterious woman with a checkered past, two friends who become enemies - and becomes the story of a man facing death in the cargo hold of a ship. That part goes on too long, and we don't see the happenings on dry land. We are told about them toward the end of the film. It just felt like something was missing.There are suspenseful moments and good acting. Mitchum plays the sardonic Felix well, and Lemmon is, as always, likable as Tony and handles both the light and dramatic scenes very well. I do think for this role his casting was somewhat strange. I think like Hayworth he was trying to fulfill contractual obligations to Columbia. Hayworth is a long way from her Gilda days, but a striking woman. Her hard life, like the life of the character, has caught up with her. She doesn't display a lot of range in the role but has a knockout dance number during Mardi Gras that is very much the old Rita.Interesting for the cast.

This is the first time I've seen this in many years. The first time, the people I lived with loved it so fiercely they bought a long-playing record of the calliopean musical score and they played it a thousand times in a row. And, boy, is the film scored. Hardly a moment passes without bongo drums pounding and violins throbbing. Rita Hayworth gets to do what I hope was her last dance number on film. On hearing the melody behind the opening credits I was whisked back to San Bruno, California, with the instruments inside my head.Once over that initial spasm, though, I was able to get into the film and saw it a little differently than I had the first time. Mitchum is a creep, true, but not the unmitigated son of bitch that I'd first thought. Now -- with so much more experience -- I can even consider the proposition that by betraying Jack Lemmon to the authorities and stealing Hayworth away from Lemmon -- he was actually doing the younger, more innocent man, a favor.Briefly, the story is that Mitchum and Lemmon are partners in an old boat in the Caribbean and engage in small-time smuggling for a living. When their cargo on one trip turns out to be Rita Hayworth, Lemmon falls for her, but Mitchum is able to see that this is a mismatch made in Heaven. Lemmon is all Ga Ga and wants to marry her and Hayworth, a lady with no country but lots of history, is desperate enough to accept. Mitchum short circuits the plan through devious means. The direction is sometimes misguided. Lemmon and Mitchum have a fist fight aboard the boat, which Jimmy Jean interprets as "working off some steam," but it's too brutal. In the end, Lemmon is trapped aboard a small freighter about to blow up and is saved by Mitchum. The incident is anything but typical Hollywood heroism -- and those last twenty minutes are genuinely gripping. The denouement in the tavern is simply unbelievable.The screenplay is by Irwin Shaw and, though some of the dialog is surely from the novel, it has its felicities. When Lemmon first proposes marriage, Hayworth tries to explain to him why it wouldn't work. It's a cue for a dull speech, but it's very neatly done, and with aspirations. "I've been debased," she tells him. "Armies have marched over me." It doesn't make a dent in Lemon's erotic mania, a nice college kid from Indianapolis. The narrative ribbon occasionally scintillates with such almost subliminal sequins.The location shooting is expertly done. This isn't Montego Bay with its meticulously placed palms and pina coladas served by native girls in flowered dresses. This is the seamier side of Trinidad and Tobago, where the houses are slapped together of weather-beaten boards, the streets are littered with banana peels, and the beds in the seedy hotels are probably harboring bugs. The T shirts are dirty and soggy with sweat. You want a drink? Fine -- here's a bottle. It's a long way from the old studio productions with the men in white suits and panama hats and colorful but sanitary interiors veiled by beaded curtains.This isn't one of Mitchum's more impressive performances but he seems sober and hits his marks and says what he's supposed to, even while bleary eyed with rum and listening to a 78 record of Mozart on a wind-up phonograph. In life, Jack Lemmon was a nice guy, not erratic like Mitchum, but I've always thought he was better at comedy than drama. Rita Hayworth's performance is a blank. Her expression seem pasted on like a postage stamp. This must have been one of her last movies before she began to self destruct. The supporting players are just fine -- Bernard Lee as a quietly empathic doctor, Edric Connor with his jumbo baritone. Mitchum asks Connor, "Do you want to quit, Jimmy Jean?" And Connor stares back intently for a moment before replying, "I do believe I do."

FIRE DOWN BELOW is watchable for the performances of ROBERT MITCHUM, RITA HAYWORTH and JACK LEMMON, as well as some good supporting actors, but there's a major disappointment.The first half of the film deals with relationships and just starts to get added interest from the Mitchum-Hayworth chemistry when the story shifts gears and turns the rest of the plot over to Jack Lemmon for the film's climactic sub-plot. Ordinarily, this would have been fine, but not when viewers are expecting to see the Mitchum-Hayworth pairing develop into a deeper story of its own.There's a lot of local color and some gorgeous scenery in Trinidad and Jamaica, but the story is an uninspired one that finally gets going once Hayworth enters the scene, then evaporates once she and Mitchum are given less to do.Lemmon is fine as the happy go lucky, naive sort of bumbler he always played at this stage in his career. Hayworth is an even more jaded version of "Gilda" (maturing now and still quite attractive), and Mitchum is his usual laconic self.Uneven as drama but watchable for its star appeal.