Enchanted Island

It's Nukuheva 1842 in the South Seas. The crew of a passing ship is collecting supplies. Their demanding captain refuses to give the men shore leave with the beautiful island girls. Abner (Dana Andrews) and Tom (Don Dubbins) decide to jump ship and head for their imagined paradise.

This is a B-movie and it's a rather boring one. It's more important as one of the last few production by RKO before its bankruptcy. It's a fitting movie to show the decline of the once great studio. It's got great palm trees in the Acapulco adjacent locations. That's the best part of the movie.

"Mutiny On The Bounty" with an enema. Wonder if being in ghastly crap like this drove Dana Andrews to drink or if the bottle steered him to the movie steerage, so to speak? Probably the later, but oh my god what a long, depressing end to a great acting career! Almost Kay Francis-like, huh? And as long as we're on the general subject of artistic declension how about this film's director, Alan Dwan, one of Hollywood's better dream meisters, whose attitude toward the female Polynesians in this, his penultimate, film resembles that of a drunken Shriner at a Luau? Give it a C minus.

PS...Has Hollywood ever done right by Melville? Can't think of any examples off the top of my head. I mean "Billy Budd" was embalmed Oscar bait and Huston's "Moby Dick" was just a botched job all around.

Jane Powell shakes her coconuts for Dana Andrews on an island paradise he's run away to in order to escape the wrath of mean Captain Ted de Corsia.

Roundabout adventure flick with paper-thin plot. Jane's native girl learns to speak English pretty good.... supposed to be believable if she speaks 'haltingly' enough.

This is an interesting and fun movie. Evidently filmed in the Pacific - the extras appear to be Polynesian. Typical of '50's movies, however, the stars are all white. The use of the native Polynesian language adds an element of realism. The ending is more romantic than Melville's book, but the movie appears to have kept the general feeling of "Typee" from which the story is taken. In all it is movie to enjoy.

This odd adventure film, set in the tropics and probably shot in Hawaii, stars the horrendously miscast Dana Andrews as a lawless sailor who falls in love with an island maiden, essayed here by whiter than white Jane Powell in an equally turgid performance. I can't comment on the faithfulness of the adaptation, as I haven't read Melville's novel Typee, but Enchanted Island looks cheap (regardless of the colourful locales), is poorly acted, and is thoroughly dull. Even Jorge Stahl's colour cinematography looks like it was shot on leftover stock or 'ends'. A less than satisfactory late career move by director Allan Dwan, Enchanted Island is only for extremely loyal Andrews completists.