Supelice Dreadfully Boring

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

st-shot The airliner Silver Queen on its way to South America is forced to make an emergency landing on a remote island. Blown off course and with no way to communicate with the outside world it is left up to the survivors to dig themselves out of this hole if they are ever to see the civilized world again. Also lending a sense of urgency are the distant drums of the island headhunters. Only five will be allowed to leave if they ever get the plane airborne again.During film's annus mirabalis that was 1939 Five Came Back elbows it's way into the line-up with this adventure thriller that will you keep you guessing up until the picture's final minutes as the natives move in on passengers and crew in the midst of group catharsis.With his cast of B-listers and character actors director John Farrow has the luxury of eschewing the star treatment and placing everyone on the same tenuous level of being offed at any time. The cast with its variety of pasts, all out of their comfort zone begin to morph to their environment far from the polite society they come from and from it roles are reversed. Acts of nobility and doing the right thing surface from the unexpected. The cast is uniformly adequate though C. Aubrey Smith and Joseph Calleia deserve mention for some very sober powerful moments. Farrow also amps up the tension by never showing the faces of the headhunters, allowing the jungle in its entirety to be the threat, the unseeable more unspeakable to our imaginations. He also in its brief running time manages to define character while keeping suspense high as you ponder who will make the final cut.

wes-connors Passengers get ready for the ill-fated flight foreshadowed in the film's title "Five Came Back". Handsome businessman Patric Knowles (as Judson Ellis) and pretty blonde secretary Wendy Barrie (as Alice Melbourne) are going to elope. Looking like either a movie star or a classy call girl, beautiful Lucille Ball (as Peggy Nolan) wants to straighten up and fly right. Elderly botany professor C. Aubrey Smith and his wife Elisabeth Risdon (as Henry and Martha Spengler) want to enjoy their twilight years. As his gangster father is threatened with extinction, cute little Casey Johnson (as Tommy Mulvaney) is shuttled to safety with henchman uncle Allen Jenkins (as Pete)...Veteran airman Chester Morris (and Bill Brooks) and co-pilot Kent Taylor (as Joe) announce a slight delay when they are asked to take on detective John Carradine (as Crimp) and his prisoner Joseph Calleia (as Vasquez)...When the plane crashes in an Amazon jungle thought to be inhabited by hungry head-hunters, the crew must chose only five passengers to return home on their rickety, repaired plane. The director, John Farrow, re-made this as "Back from Eternity" in 1956. The later film has a stronger script, but with performances becoming overly obvious. Here, the swiftness highlights subtlety; for example, note the impassionate love between Mr. Knowles and Ms. Barrie, then how Mr. Taylor telegraphs his interest. The more toned-down tart played by Ms. Ball is superior, but lacks detail. You're well off seeing both versions as they make up for things lacking in each other.******* Five Came Back (6/23/39) John Farrow ~ Chester Morris, Lucille Ball, Joseph Calleia, Patric Knowles

Ralph I Tivo'd this because I was told this was a "minor classic". Watched it with my wife and she seemed to stay into it, I was thinking this was a serious "dog". The running line between us was, "which 5?" well we ruled the kid from the start, so I'm thinking OK do the pilots count? The crash (which happens a long almost half way point) yields no new deaths, just a bruised shoulder from the old lovable professor (of Shirley Temple and 4 Feathers fame among many other roles). Anyway a total waste of John Caradine, I was hoping he would be good here, but no luck, he's dead in the jungle after a very bad start. I mean c'mon, is this a chick action flick or what? Hey, its Hollywood, its couples going out, its not about grim realities, its a kind of boy that was cool action flick (if your a woman), its lame (if your a dude). 5 of 10. I don't know why I rate it that high, but the wife didn't fall asleep which is saying something for a old black and white film. I'm into them, and old planes; but this one was barking loud like a dog in heat. I predicted the head hunters also long before they showed up. yawn. Was waiting for some savagery among the survivors (all of them survived, sheesh) but we got nothing like that. Boring B flick worth forgetting about. Also, Lucy isn't in much here if thats why you are are curious.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Early disaster-like movie that has some dozen or so people stranded in the dangerous head-hunter infested and uncharted South American jungle after their plane crash landed in a violent tropical storm.With only enough food and drinking water to last for about a month the plane passengers try to fix the disabled plane so that they can fly out of the valley that their stuck in before the head-hunters get a lock on them and move in for the kill.The movie "Five came Back" has an unlikely hero in the person of convicted assassin and anarchist Vasques, Joesph Calleia. Vasques is was to be brought back to Panama by bounty hunter Mr. Chimp, John Carradine,to be hung for his crimes against that country's leadership. We get to see Vasquez lose his hostility to humanity and the world at large when he's confronted with the kindness shown to him by the elderly Professor Henry, and his wife Martha, Spengler, C. Aubrey Smith & Elisabeth Risdon. If there were more like you, Vasquez heart-fully tells Prof. Spengler, in the world there would be less like me.Mr. Chimp who's interest in the $5,000.00 reward for turning in Vasquez is superseded by his wanting to save his life from being captured and beheaded by the head-hunters. This fear on Chimp's part has him make a blind and drunken run for it in the dark and unfriendly jungle, only to be killed by a native's poison dart blow gun. The rich and arrogant playboy Judson Ellis, Patrick Knowles,who's eloping with his sweetheart Alice Melbourne, Wendy Barrie,becomes panic-stricken when he realizes that his money can't buy him everything; as Vasquez tells him that he's, together with himself and the Spengler's who volunteered to stay, to be one of those left behind. the rest of the stranded passengers and crew which includes Alice and the planes pilot Bill Brooks, Chester Morris, and co-pilot Joe (Kent Taylor), whom Alice fell in love with. Together with young five-year-old Tommy Mulvaney, Casey Johson, who's dad, Pat O'Malley, was just the victim of a mob rub-out in San Francisco together. There's also a 28 year-old pre-"I Love Lucy" Lucille Ball as the tough-talking dame with the heart of gold Peggy Noland. The now ready to fly plane is to take take off as soon the jungle drums stop beating and the head-hunters slowly move in to finish the survivor's off one by one. Tommy's guardian and his dad's best friend Pete, Allen Jenkins, was also one of those passengers who didn't make it back when he was shot and killed by a poison dart from a head-hunter's blow gun.Vasquez telling Professor Spengler that he has three bullets left in his revolver, to do them and himself in before the head-hunters get a hold of them, really has only two and uses them on the elderly couple. We then see the plane, with the five who came back, fly off over the jungle sky and into the safety of modern 20th century civilization.With Vasquez himself feeling in some strange sort of way a sense of freedom and redemption due to the unique turn of events that he finds himself in. By outliving his captor Mr. Chimp and denying his life to his Panamanian executioners, Vasquez now faces death at the hands of the jungle head-hunters. Whom to them the only crime that he committed was not being a member of their tribe.