Rubbish

AAdaSC

Capt. Boll (Fred MacMurray) is sailing in the Dutch East Indies in search of diamonds. A slave girl Kim Kim (Vera Ralston) that he buys holds the key to the whereabouts of the diamonds and she becomes the target of pirates, led by Pulo (Robert Douglas) who are also after the same thing. The film is a race between Boll and Pulo to find the diamonds which are located on Krakatoa. As it happens, this all takes place at the same time as the volcano erupts.

Its crap. I challenge the viewer to stay with it without wandering off and daydreaming about better things. There is no interest, drama, tension - its a straightforward plodding adventure. Its slow moving and the acting is terrible. Vera Ralston puts on a terrible accent - I mean, imagine pronouncing the word "volcano" as "volcarno" - that is an accent from nowhere! Also extremely irritating is Wilson (Paul Fix) as a pirate. Why have these false, unfunny comedy characters in stories? They are not needed and they provide no humour. Boll has a troop of comedy pirates with Wilson as the worst offender. He wears a ridiculous ear-ring as well. I'd have pushed him overboard.

Robert Taylor's mask is quite effective when we first see it, and the volcano wakes you up in the last 10 minutes, but the film is just a waste of time. The sets are so obviously fake (the speed at which the water moves in the background is so laughably unnatural), the sound quality is poor and the model ships are pushed along at speeds that defy belief. At the end of the film you will be drained and just want to go to bed because you have been so bored for the last hour and a half.

score 2/10

AAdaSC 18 July 2009

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2097943/