Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

In the days before Disneyland & old retirement homes. Florida was best known for the savage and brutal swamp land call the Everglades. Directed by R. John Hugh, the movie showcase how violent, the land can be. The movie tells the story of five Confederate deserters AKA Yellownecks trying to get a sympathetic Seminole to guide them south to the ocean, where a British blockade runner awaits to ferry the fugitives to Cuba. As the five argue at their first meeting, a mortally wounded Indian guide stumbles upon them. Now they have no choice, but to blindly travel through miles of swamp known as the Everglades, using only the sun as reference. This small group encounters many dangerous hazards: a tropical storm, alligators, rattlesnakes, a bobcat, malarial mosquitoes, hostile natives, and quicksand. Can they survive their ordeal or will Mother Nature get the upper hand? Without spoiling the movie, too much, despite its main characters being soldiers, Yellowneck feels least than a war movie and more like a survivor movie. The movie really makes Florida look like, the worst place to be, at the time. I think the movie works in that survival concept. It's hard to root for cowards, but similar civil war films like 1951's The Red Badge of Courage & 2003's Cold Mountain made it work, but giving their audience something in their characters to hook on, mostly redemption or the will to love. It's too bad, that the film felt to make their characters as unlikeable as possible, without giving much to root for. I guess the movie was trying to portray sinners going to the depths of hell. The movie shows their vice, and their punishment for that crime. First off, you got the Colonel (Stephen Courtleigh), whom suffer from alcoholism. His crime was giving drunk orders on the field of battle, which cause many of his men to die. His punishment, was a drought that make him, hallucinating to the point, that he might get himself killed in battle with a Seminole tribe. It's really brilliant if you think about it. The second man, nickname Cockney (Harold Gordon) for his odd English cockney accent that felt like jarring, happens to be very homicidal, and willing to strike anybody that get in his way. His castigation mirrors his actions. While, he's quick on trying to get his comrades killed, he finds himself, paralyzed in fear, in front of snakes. Can he survive or will he die in a lame, but funny death scene? Berry Kroeger stars as the strained and paranoid gold theft, Plunkett. He's by far, the worst of them all in hideous way, but the most humorous character in the film. Without spoiling too much, about what happen to him, let's just say, the price of his crimes isn't worth it. While, Plunkett is the worst character and well developed, the movie two best characters weren't. They don't even have names nor characteristics. One is known as the Sergeant (Lin McCarthy) and the other is just 'the Kid' (Bill Mason). Since, there was no strong reasons to root for any of these guys. The ending of the film felt very anti-climax. I give the movie, some credit. It really did capture, the harsh life in the Everglades. The scenes that take place during a storm were actually shot during a hurricane that visited Florida during the shooting schedule. It's by far, the best part of the film. The Snakes and Alligators were real, but it was awkwardly shot, with the actors. The film really did lost its menace look, when the alligators look like they didn't want, no part in this film. Another problem of the film with the film copy. Since the movie is public domain, most of the DVDs are in poor production. Lots of the footage hasn't aged well. Lots of film dust and scratches in the visuals. The music score by Laurence Rosenthal was alright, but the audio is a bit out of sync. It make it difficult or even painful to get through. While, Technicolor process were expensive and difficultly in the 1950s. There were versions of this film that were in color. The original film was made in Trucolor and released by Republic Pictures, but the copies of that version are rare. The version, I got on my DVD, wasn't in color. It was in black and white. It really hurt the film. The problem lies in that fact that the Everglades had plenty of color contrast, but without dark and light contrasts, the black and white footage looks flat and white-wash. Overall: Yellowneck was an interesting premise that could had better. Left Much to Be Desired. Hope, one day, it gets the remade, it deserves.

Never waste 90 minutes of your time on this terrible take on Civil War. Some old films were never good, and this is one of them. The story of 5 Cofederate deserters (Yellownecks, as they were called) could have been OK, but here it was not. Slow, poorly shot film is only good for the Florida Everglade views, animals, snakes, gators, jungles, bogs and rivers. The 5 actors are intermittently forgettable ad pathetic. They encounter almost every ordeal on the way and it is obvious which next they will come soon into. Nay, sirs, this was not good in the 50's, it is boring and dull now. What is especially bad, is that we feel no pity for them. The film is cold and bland, and the performance is rather mediocre. Just going slowly and very predictably. You know the end at the very beginning and you know it will be not cool to watch it with any interest. Utterly forgettable and banal

This is a strange little film about five confederate deserters trying to make their way through the Everglades to escape capture. They find the wilderness to be a less merciful enemy than the union, as they battle hurricanes, snakes, Senecas, quicksand, and each other. Essentially, this is a raw, real - but not realistic, struggle for survival pitting men who have been branded cowards against nature and other men.Although the film is over-acted, over-dramatized and over-long, it made a lasting impression on me as an adolescent. I first saw Yellowneck when I was between 9 and 12 years old. When I watched it last night, I remembered having seen it then about a quarter of the way through the film. There are aspects of this film which, at a very young age, I found frightening. As an adult who frequently works in environments such as the one depicted in the film, I can only reflect on my own (and the writer's) ignorant fearfulness today.The script has too many soliloquies and generally over-dramatizes most of the story. The acting is OK, but the script forces almost all of the cast members to go overboard frequently. Lin McCarthy and Bill Mason both turn in solid performances. The directing, cinematography and editing are all good, but the film could have been 10-15 minutes shorter and just as good. As much as I appreciate character development, a few of the soliloquies and conversation scenes might have improved the film had they been left out.Weakly recommended.

This modestly budgeted oddity from the mid-fifties is as good an example as I can think of of how to make something out of nothing. Set in the waning days of the Civil War, Yellowneck follows several Confederate army deserters in their flight through the Florida Everglades. The actors are all good and the predicament these characters are in is dramatized with a fair amount of realism. Poisonous snakes, insects and alligators abound, as these unfortunate men have gone from the hell of the Civil War into the frying pan of the swamp. They squabble amongst one another a good deal, but their biggest enemy is nature itself, which seems to be conspiring against them at every turn. One comes to like some of these men very much, and despise others. The pathetic nature of their plight is always apparent, and we cannot help but feel for them as they slog through the mud, their hopes diminishing with each passing day. A fine. psychologically provocative piece of film-making, in tone and sensibility, a sort of cross between Ambrose Bierce and Albert Camus.