Waste of time

Very well executed

Overrated and overhyped

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie was Alan Dwan's 406th as director. It was also his next to last. It stars a sozzled Dana Andrews as a sailor who has jumped ship on a tropical Island and Jane Powell as the Polynesian princess he falls in love with. She is, of course, the member of a tribe of cannibals.The script takes Herman Melville's turgid novel about religion masquerading as evil and vice versa, and converts it into a brightly-lit Technicolor adventure story. Like others of Dwan's movies of the period, it combines a lesson about duality -- I'm not sure what the lesson was, but it's clearly there. Blond, slight Don Dubbins offers that contrast.Mostly it's interesting for the way cinematographer Jorge Stahl manages to light bright greens and blues in a sepia world.

Jane Powell and Dana Andrews star in this exotic, south seas story by Herman Melville. Sailor Aber Bedford falls for island beauty "Fayaway". Mean whaler captain Vangs tells the men they have only ONE hour ashore. There's a cheesy fight scene on the beach, when two of the sailors decide to stay on the island, but that's the beginning of the trouble. One of them has an infection from a knife wound, and they have stumbled into the cannibal part of the island. Don Dubbins is "Tom", the wing man. I think part of the charm of this film is that not many people were traveling in the 1940s and 1950s, so seeing a film about "south sea adventures" was extra fun. The story itself is okay. But why would sailors WANT to stay in the village where they could be killed by the natives? They had numerous chances to leave. Run-of-the-mill love story. Boy meets native girl. Boy falls for native. Can this work out, or will their traditions get in the way? Directed by Allan Dwan... he only directed one more film after this one. Pretty good film, mostly for the island adventure theme.

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.

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.