Adventure Island ** (1947, Rory Calhoun, Rhonda Fleming, Paul Kelly, John Abbott, Alan Napier) – Classic Movie Review 10,538

Director Sam Newfield’s 1947 lower-budget action film Adventure Island gives Rhonda Fleming her first leading role. Made by Pine-Thomas Productions for release by Paramount Pictures, it is shot in the two-color Cinecolor process (or ‘gorgeous tropic color’, according to the poster) and also stars Fleming’s fellow David O Selznick contract star Rory Calhoun, both of them loaned out.

You may recognise this escapist nonsense about a trio of sailors (Rory Calhoun, Paul Kelly, John Abbott) and a woman (Rhonda Fleming) shipwrecked on a mysterious tropical island and being terrorised by a crazed despot ruler (Alan Napier) as a reworking of the novel The Ebb-Tide by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne.

Napier is over-the-top fun as the maniac Attwater, and Fleming and Calhoun camp it up gamely as the marooned innocents Faith Wishart and Mr Herrick, in this fairly feeble, lower-budget stuff. Despite the cheese-paring all round, it doesn’t look too bad with the location filming and Jack Greenhalgh’s cinematography, and it helps entertainment value that it is often unintentionally quite funny.

Low budget action specialists Pine-Thomas Productions splashed out a bit for this one with a budget in the range of $250,000 to $300,000. About 90 percent of the film was shot at the rocky Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California to save studio space. Its 29 days shooting schedule was the longest director Newfield had enjoyed.

Also in the cast are Julian Rivero, Lilo Yarson, Joe Medina and Iris Bynam.

There is a good 1937 version of the book with Ray Milland as Ebb Tide, as well as 1915 and 1922 silents, plus Le Reflux (1961).

The owner of the boat in the film sued the producers for damage.

The film is in the public domain in the United States. Adventure Island is available for free download at the Internet Archive (though unfortunately the print is in black and white, and rather dark and soft focused). Here it is:

https://archive.org/details/AdventureIsland

Though this film was made in Cinecolor, Rhonda Fleming was nicknamed the Queen of Technicolor. The Spellbound and Out of the Past actress died on 14 October 2020, aged 97.

Paramount Pictures released it in the US on 13 August 1947.

It is one of the few times director Newfield worked for a major studio but he used the pseudonym Peter Stewart.

Adventure Island is directed by Sam Newfield (as Peter Stewart), runs 66 minutes, is made by Pine-Thomas Productions, is released by Paramount, is written by Maxwell Shane, based on the novel The Ebb-Tide by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, is shot in Cinecolor by Jack Greenhalgh, is produced by William H Pine and William C Thomas, is scored by Darrell Calker and designed by Frank Paul Sylos.

The Ebb-Tide. A Trio and a Quartette (1894) is a short novel published the year Stevenson died.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,538

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Design by T B Meteyard for The Ebb Tide’s first US printing (1894).