A Ilha da Maldição

Adventure Island is a dime store version of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Ebb Tide which Paramount had already filmed on a considerably bigger budget a decade earlier. The difference between that A film and this B picture from the Pine-Thomas unit is readily noticeable.

Three derelicts on a beach get a chance to two escape imprisonment when they're offered a chance to sail a schooner with cargo that is flying a yellow flag of smallpox out of harbor. The captain and first mate are dead and it's up to Paul Kelly who used to be a captain and Rory Calhoun and John Abbott to take it out. The cargo also contains the late captain's daughter Rhonda Fleming.

This is not a happy quartet by any means and they have lots of differences of opinion until they reach an uncharted island where Alan Napier affecting the airs of an English squire rules the island because he's convinced the natives he's a god. Kind of like that other Paramount classic The Island of Dr. Moreau. He's a religious fanatic giving the natives guns and gospel while exploiting them to dive for pearls.

The main reason to see this film which is not one of the Pine-Thomas best films is Alan Napier who is having a ball with this part. If he could have he would have imported foxes to hunt.

It's not just greed over pearls and provisions it's Fleming. As a proper English gentleman and religious individual Napier is not about to go native as some of us would. But when redheaded Rhonda shows up, well let's say even the gods have their needs.

The print is washed out and the rest of the cast looks like they're waiting for the paychecks to clear from Paramount. But Napier is having a great old time gobbling away in a Thanksgiving special.