The Pine-Thomas independent releases of the 1940's appear on the surface to be more important than they were because they were all released from Paramount. Of course, some of them are going to be better than the others, but for the most part, they are the equivalent of Monogram and PRC films from the same era with mostly less than adequate casts and plots, budgets that seem distinctly low, and the quality of early television. In the case of "Adventure Island", Pine-Thomas has taken an old Paramount film ("Ebb Tide", based upon a story by Robert Louis Stevenson) and given it a streamlined remake with one-dimensional characters and a feeling of exploitation.
The story has two sailors (Paul Kelly and Rory Calhoun) becoming involved in a smuggling ring, all of a sudden shipwrecked on a deserted island with their beautiful passenger (Rhonda Fleming), and at the mercy of a mad man (John Abbott) who makes himself a God to the people on the island and punishes those who disobey him with a cruel and unusual punishment. It is up to Kelly and Calhoun, in an effort to survive, to prove to Abbott's people that he is as human as they are, and get off the island in one piece.
The melodrama is so silly here that you spend more time shaking your head at the film than watching it, and I was also raising my eyebrows so far back, I was afraid my eyes might get stuck inside looking up. Fleming and Calhoun provide definite eye-candy, but the characters played by Kelly and Abbott are so one-dimensional that they become more like cartoon characters than actual people. Then, there's the disturbing way Abbott disposes of his enemies. This is a tough film to get through, and it is barely over an hour.
The story has two sailors (Paul Kelly and Rory Calhoun) becoming involved in a smuggling ring, all of a sudden shipwrecked on a deserted island with their beautiful passenger (Rhonda Fleming), and at the mercy of a mad man (John Abbott) who makes himself a God to the people on the island and punishes those who disobey him with a cruel and unusual punishment. It is up to Kelly and Calhoun, in an effort to survive, to prove to Abbott's people that he is as human as they are, and get off the island in one piece.
The melodrama is so silly here that you spend more time shaking your head at the film than watching it, and I was also raising my eyebrows so far back, I was afraid my eyes might get stuck inside looking up. Fleming and Calhoun provide definite eye-candy, but the characters played by Kelly and Abbott are so one-dimensional that they become more like cartoon characters than actual people. Then, there's the disturbing way Abbott disposes of his enemies. This is a tough film to get through, and it is barely over an hour.