Crosswinds ** (1951, John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Forrest Tucker) – Classic Movie Review 10,543

Director Lewis R Foster’s 1951 adventure film Crosswinds [Jungle Attack] is a humble, cheaply made, none-too-well-acted adventure programmer, but quite entertaining for all that. John Payne stars as Steve Singleton, who leads a boat expedition in New Guinea to salvage a gold shipment after an aircraft goes down.

The party comes to blows, with Forrest Tucker and Robert Lowery as the bad guys Gerald ‘Jumbo’ Johnson and Nick Brandon, and meets rampaging natives.

Rhonda Fleming also stars as a recently widowed Katherine Shelley, who takes to the bottle (possibly as a result of reading the script) and has to be rescued by Payne after being captured by headhunters.

It is business as usual from producers William H Pine and William C Thomas.

Also in the cast are Alan Mowbray, John Abbott, and Frank Kumangai.

Lewis R Foster’s screenplay is based on the novel New Guinea Gold by Thomson Burtis.

Lucien Cailliet films in Technicolor. Fleming was nicknamed the Queen of Technicolor, though she would have preferred to have been known for her acting.

It was shot between November and December 1950 at Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, 4150 S. Suncoast Boulevard, Homosassa, Florida; Weeki Wachee Springs, 6131 Commercial Way, Weeki Wachee, Florida; and at Paramount Studios, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood.

Every time the characters are shown underwater, they are swimming in exactly the same place. That would help to keep down the budget and so would the stock footage.

It was Payne’s sixth film for Pine-Thomas Productions and Fleming’s second of three, following The Last Outpost (1951) and preceding Hong Kong (1952).

RIP Rhonda Fleming (born Marilyn Louis; August 10, 1923 – October 14, 2020).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,543

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