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Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

More 1950's detail was put into this expanded version of the 1939 programmer "Five Came Back" which director John Farrow helped make a cult classic due to its interesting cast, a better than average screenplay and atmospheric photography. Now, towards the end of RKO's years as a movie making studio, Farrow was back with basically the same story where really nothing changed but the year.That being said, a 1950's sexuality with the "almost spilling out of her dress" presence of Anita Ekberg, playing the mistress of a powerful businessman who suddenly kicks her to the curb. She is traveling to South America with an assorted group of troubled passengers which include an aging couple (Cameron Prud'Homme and Beaulah Bondi), a mobster's son (Jon Provost) with his reluctant caretaker ("Maytag" repairman commercial vet Jesse White), a long-separated couple desperate to marry (Keith Andes and Phyllis Kirk), and eventually the political prisoner (Rod Steiger) and the bounty man (Fred Clark at his snarkiest) on their way to Steiger's execution. Add into the fix a boozy pilot (Robert Ryan) and his co-pilot (Gene Barry) who has admired him from afar for years.The first half introduces the story of all these people and is simply a retread of what audiences had seen the year earlier in the much better "The High and the Mighty". However, once the plane crashes in the jungle (with only Bondi passing out, presumably out of shock), the film takes off as fast as the plane crashed, and the conflicts of these people stuck together in the Amazon (with a head-shrinking tribe rumored to be in the area) explodes into tensions civilization couldn't fix. Steiger's prisoner is actually the wisest man among the plane-wrecked crew, spouting wisdoms to try and keep them from killing each other. Once the plane is fixed, only some of them can return, the rest doomed to stay to take their chances with the natives who's drums are already beating.Steiger's character reminded me of Walter Slezak's Nazi villain in the 1944 Hitchcock classic "Lifeboat", the prisoner who is actually smarter than the people holding him hostage. Steiger, however, isn't using his smarts to turn everyone against each other; He's actually better in many ways than the ones living inside the law, and it is touching to see him bonding with the elderly couple who are at first shocked by his crime of being a political assassin.This film might have been a bit better had it been in color, especially since the original was in black and white. However, that doesn't keep this from being a good film, giving us a good cat-fight between Ekberg and Kirk, a seemingly hard as nails mobster with White hiding a big heart for the kid he's protecting, and an amusing villain in Clark who shows that not everybody who is on the side of the law is actually on the side of justice.

Bound for South America, buxom blonde Anita Ekberg (as Rena) ends her tenure as apparent sex play-mate for a Las Vegas bigwig; not to worry, he has two beautiful women standing sexily by, ready to assume her positions. Also headed down south are retiring professor Cameron Prud'Homme and his exacting wife Beulah Bondi (as Henry and Martha Spangler), gangster affiliated Jesse White (as Pete Boswick) and his quickly orphaned nephew Jon Provost (as Tommy Malone), plus slightly smarmy businessman Gene Barry (as Jud Ellis) and his pretty fiancée Phyllis Kirk (as Louise Melhorn). The co-pilots on our flight are possibly alcoholic Robert Ryan (as Bill Lonagan) and handsome hero-type Keith Andes (as Joe Brooks); the stewardess is Adele Mara (as Maria Alvarez)...Before the long flight, they pick up German-accented Rod Steiger (as Vasquez), on his way to execution, and armed guard Fred Clark (as Crimp). It should be no surprise the plane encounters turbulence, then the passengers are informed only four people, plus young Provost (who has "Lassie" in his future), will be able to make the trip out of an Amazon jungle, which is possibly inhabited with cannibals looking for human heads to shrink. Nasty business. Writer Richard Carroll and adapters do well in foreshadowing the shrunken head threat, as Provost is presented with one early; and later, Mr. Steiger describes the grisly process. This film is director John Farrow's re-make of his own "Five Came Back" (1939); the original film seems to be the most favored, but this one works, too.******* Back from Eternity (9/7/56) John Farrow ~ Robert Ryan, Rod Steiger, Anita Ekberg, Keith Andes

I've been waiting for years for "Back from Eternity" to come out on DVD. It, along with many other older movies, is on my Website King Spud's Movie & TV Pages on my Up to the Minute Page. For a time many films on my List were coming out on DVD, but of late nothing, save The African Queen has been released. Back from Eternity is an absolutely terrific little film, albeit a B movie. It has an excellent cast led by Robert Ryan and Rod Steiger in an early role. The rest of the cast are doing some of their best work, Beulah Bondi, Cameron PrudHomme, Jesse White, Phyllis Kirk, Gene Barry, Fred Clark, little Jon Provost and especially Keith Andes, who makes one wonder why he wasn't a bigger star. This is an edge of your seat film, a real nail-biter. The tension builds as the pilots and passengers scuttle to repair the downed plane's engine while the danger of an attack by Jivaro headhunters increases. A fine score by the great Franz Waxman also helps elevate this film to almost classic stature. I saw it as a kid and never forgot it. After all these years it was great to see it has held up to all my expectations of its thrills.

**SPOILERS** Remake of the 1939 classic "Five Came Home" by the same director John Farrow with Rod Steiger stealing the acting honors as convicted criminal Vasquez being sent back to Boca Grande, in Pararico, to face the firing squad for the attempted murder of the country's dictator General Gomaz.Getting caught in a violent lightning storm over the unexplored jungles of South America the PLA passenger plane, minus it's stewardess who fell overboard, crash lands with it's engines in operation but in the middle of headhunter country. Trying to get the plane fixed before the local headhunters get a beat on the planes passengers and crew tempers start to flair between bounty hunter Crimp, Fread Clark, and his prisoner Vasquez. Crimp is a bit taken by the change of events with Vasquez now the man who's in charge, since Vasquez is an expert on the habits of the South American headhunters, not him starts to panic. Crimp ends up running off in the unfriendly jungle with the only gun among the people on the plane and ends up losing his head over it. As the days go by it becomes evident that there's no rescue party on the way to save them and both the pilot and co-pilot Bill Lonagan & Joe Brooks, Robert Ryan & Kieth Andes, work around the clock fixing the planes engines. Everything possibly is done to get the plane airborne before the drums start to beat meaning that the headhunters are on their way to finish off the planes survivors.Tense drama in the South American Amazon basin with a stellar cast knowing that the end is near but not exactly who among them will end up being killed by the headhunters. It's decided that only five will come back since the planes engines can't carry any more weight. The disabled airplane has to have as light as possible a payload in order to take off and fly over the dense jungle mountain range to become fully airborne. Gut-wrenching final where it's decided who will live and who will die, by being left behind, at the hands of the headhunters and for the most part Vasquez and the elderly couple Henry & Martha Spangler, Cameron Prud'Homm & Beula Bondi voluntarily stay behind to meet their fate. The Spanglers, in their 70's, knowing that they don't have long to live anyway and Vasquez facing execution. The movie "Back from Eternity" also has a love triangle between Jud Ellis, Gene Barry, and his fiancé Louise Melhorn, Phillis Kirk, and co-pilot Joe Brooks. The poor and terrified Jud ends up coming out on the losing end. Jud gets gunned down, trying to get on the plane, at the end of the movie by Vasquez with his bride-to-be Louise not bothering to come to his aid but not even giving Jud as much a second glance as he lay dying! There's also the gorgeous and voluptuous Anita Ekberg, the former Miss Sweden, as singer and bar girl Rena who's trying to get her papers straighten out in order to become a legal American citizen. There's also little six year old Jon Provost, of Lassie fame, as Tommy Malone the son of a Las Vegas mobster who just got knocked off. Tommy is being looked after and protected by his late dad's best friend and right hand man Jesse white, Pete Boswick. It turns out that Rena, not Jesse, ends up on the departing plane with little Tommy as the movie "Back From Eternity" comes to an end.