The plot here is a plane caught in a rugged storm off the coast of South America, an engine goes bad, and they are forced to land in the jungle.

Twelve people on the flight: the pilot Bill Brooks(Morris) and the copilot Joe(Taylor), a young coupe eloping because neither family approved, Judson Ellis(Patric Knowles) and his secretary Wendy Barrie(Alice Melbourne), Mr. Crimp(Carridine) is a bounty hunter delivering an anarchist, Vasquez(Joseph Calleia) to his hanging for five thousand dollars, Pete(Jenkins) and his nephew, Tommy(Casey Johnson)(the boy’s mobster father wanted him out of the way while he conducted some business, which got him killed as the boy listened to the report on the radio during the flight), an elderly couple, Professor Henry Spengler(C. Aubrey Smith) and his wife Martha(Elisabeth Risdon), Peggy(Lucille Ball), and the third crew member, steward Larry(Dick Hogan).

This movie is of it’s time. The co-pilot is attracted to Wendy(unaware at this time of the elopement) and helps her get comfortable with a blanket when the window hangs open and allows in cold air. Lucille Ball’s character casually walks into the cockpit and chats up the pilot. There are two armed men aboard, Crimp and Pete, and no one finds that unusual. A couple of oxygen tanks break loose and hit the door in the storm, knocking it open. One goes out and the small boy is about to follow when Larry the steward heroically grabs him and hands him off. In doing so, he loses his balance and follows the tank out the door.

The title tells you how it ends. But the tale is how they get there. The steward is already gone, reducing the number to eleven people.

They manage to land in the jungle without cracking up, though one propeller is bent slightly. The professor is a botanist and recognizes several plants and knows they only grow in one area of South America: between two mountain ranges and no civilized areas anywhere. There are rumors of a headhunting tribe in that valley though.

Here’s another difference in more modern aircraft. The two pilots believe they can get the engines repaired, but it will take time, a couple of weeks. There’s only about a week supply of food so it’s fortunate there are weapons for hunting.

There’s a lot of tension among the people as well. The elderly couple have been married thirty-five years and no longer close. The rich boy doesn’t want to do anything to help, only drink(he carried a healthy supply of bottles in his luggage) and Wendy soon becomes disallusioned with her fiance.

As the days roll by though bonding goes on as each, except the rich boy pitch in to help. The elderly couple rediscover their early years and become close to the anarchist, the two men playing checkers in their free time. Peggy and Bill Brooks get close as she probes why he seems to dislike women and he reveals that his wife, a wing walker in their barnstorming days, had died in a crack-up. He’d survived.

Tension builds as they hear drums in the distance and two more, Crimp and Pete, are killed with poison darts. A runway had been cleared, extra weight discarded, and the engines were working. the first attempt causes an oil line to give. Once it’s repaired, Bill and Joe realize they’s never take off with nine people. Four will have to stay. They discuss drawing straws as time is running out.

Vasquez takes it out of their hands by grabbing a gun. He makes it clear he’s staying(one method of death isn’t much different from another) and he will decide who goes on the flight. Each one pleas their case if private. The rich boy begs for himself, and not his fiance. He;s rcih and can get good lawyers for Vasquez. The elderly couple decide they want to stay. They have fund themselves and have had a good life. Let the young survive.

The decisions Vasquez makes and one last decision as the natives close in make for a pretty good drama.

For more overlooked movies, Todd Mason is the man to see today over at SWEET FREEDOM.

His Father, Tony, the victim of several hear attacks, lives in a retirement home.

John gets called out of his bed, delightfully filled with a gorgeous redhead, and asked to find another killer by Bride. The victim is an older man, Roberto Swales, an ex-boxer who’d worked for his father and now presumably for Bride. He was Duct-taped to a chair with bullets in each leg and one arm. What had killed him, though, was the beating his head had taken from a champagne bottle, enough blows to shatter the skull. John remembers Swales from when he was a boy.

He begins his investigation and soon gets a connection to a twenty year old bombing, when the young John was on the other side of the world, New Zealand, pursuing a young woman. A bombing that haunted to this day for the scene of a young father bringing his two week old son out of the building, dead in his arms.

We have an ex-Irish terrorist killed first, then Swales. What did they have in common? Both had been interviewed by the redheaded bed mate of John’s mentioned earlier. She was a writer doing a book on John’s father Tony.

John soon has the cops interested in him once again. They’d never believed he was straight, even when Baron, the lead cop on John’s early investigation, got all the credit for what John had uncovered.

Quite liked this one. Again told in present tense, I found myself engrossed again in the story. Ready for more John Ray.

Strongly recommended, both this one and the first, HOPE ROAD. Can be found HERE.

1: The Cast-Iron Star & Other Western Stories – Robert J. Randisi: a collection by one of our finest western writers,

2: Valdez Is Coming _ Elmore Leonard: the novel made into a film starring Burt Lancaster.

3: Reckoning at Rainrock _ Wayne D. Dundee: the second novel featuring Lone McGantry from a fine writer. Loved the first one, expect the same here.

4: The Renegades – Tom Young: a thriller where an earthquake in Afghanistan sends relief & medical workers in. Then insurgents start killing them.

and the ebooks:

5: Father And Son(review copy) – John Barlow: the second John Ray crime novel. The son of a retired English crime boss who has never liked the family business. Here he’s looking into the murder of an old family friend.

6: Collected Sci-Fi Stories Pack 1(review copy) – Marco Guarda; a collection by an Italian writer I’ve reviewed before.

7: Blood On Blood – Frank Zafiro & Jim Wilsky: recommended by James Reasoner.

As the film opens, Cjamango MacDonald is leaving the family ranch to withdraw the final payment from the bank for the mortgage owned by the hated Stuarts. I snickered when we see the father working in a small garden and strains of “Old MacDonald had a farm” briefly crossed my mind. While Cjamango is away, a half dozen riders raid the place and slaughter his father, kid brother, and little sister. In the distance we see a man observing the proceedings through a one barrel spy glass.

Garcia Barrica Ramirez(Ignazio Spalla, billed as Pedro Sanchez) had been passing by and heard the gunfire, investigating. A portly fellow in duster and derby, he will be the key to Cjamango finding the killer and eventually who hired them. He will also be the comic relief in the film. You see some of that in the trailer below.

Cjamango returns home to find his family murdered, does the crying over little sister’s body, and though we don’t see it, one presumes buries them. Next we see him riding up to the Stuart ranch with the payment, demanding the deed, and riding off. Old man Stuart is confined to a wheelchair and complains it’s Cjamango’s fault. Cjamango points out that his father had simply been faster on the draw.

Barrica is watching this through his little spyglass and follows Cjamango when he leaves the Stuart place. When he’s confronted, he explains what he saw and how he can help Cjamango. Whcih sets up his vengeance trial. The first pair are found playing poker in the town saloon. Our hero invites himself in and then clears the room when he produces a picture of his family. Just the pair of them and him, cutting them down. The third man is in the Mexican sector of town. While Cjamango goes for him, we see Barrica’s real motives. He collects the two bodies and puts them in a wagon. He’s colecting bounties and letting his “friend” collect the bodies for him.

When Cjamango confronts the Mexican, entertaining a topless hooker in a room, the man begs for his life, claiming he was forced to go along, finally trying to get Cjamango with a knife. He gives off another clue when he reveals that the Smart brothers, in the pay of wheelchair bound Stuart, led the raid on the MacDonald ranch. As he begs for his life, Cjamango puts his gun in his mouth(see the first poster) and pulls the trigger. The title of the English dubbed version derives from a line in this sequence. The man begs for forgiveness and Cjamango delivers the title back at him(also in the trailer).

The Smarts, Dick(Anthony Ghidra) and Jack(Pete Martell), lead a ruthless band of about thirty outlaws. Both have five thousand dollar bounties on their heads.The younger Jack is a fast gun, but also a heavy drinking alcoholic. Cjamango cuts him down in a saloon after his brother and the gang have left to pull a bank job. Barrica plays the friend of Jack Smar wanting to take him back to the family to be buried. The undertaker laughs at him, knowing of the reward. But he will take a bribe. Dick Smart has already paid him for a first class funeral, one he dare not provide, so a bit more money and an empty coffin are much easier.

Dick Smart wants him bad now and when Stuart demands he do something immediately, he guns the old man and his son down, sets out with his band to find Django.

That is all the way in a circle as Cjamango heads to the Stuart ranch to confront Stuart.

Let me take a moment here to touch on the Shakespearean elements of our story. Stuart has a daughter, Virginia(Cristina Iosani), who was once Cjamango’s fiance. But the feuding families broke them up. Hmm, sounds familiar doesn’t it.

Over the last half of the film, Cjamango is captured, beaten nearly to death, and as Dick Smart is about to put a bullet in his head, is saved by Barrica, who arrives and points out that ten thousand has been collected by Cjamango, failing to mention that it’s in his own pocket, and only he knows where it’s hid. Cjamango is tied hand and foot and tossed in a barn until they can torture the location out of him. Our hero then manages a miracle of an escape. Producing a match from his pocket and sets the straw on fire, then sets the ropes binding his hands, behind his back, afire without burning his hands, until they separate.

A merry chase where he plays cat and mouse with Smart and his band, picking them off one at a time from high ground(in the trailer) until he loses them. Visiting an old friend of his father’s who he knows has a Gatling gun from the war, he sets the band up, Barrica and him cutting a swath through the men whittling them down until only Smart and his lieutenant are left for that final showdown. The lieutenant violates a cardinal rule in his battle with Cjamango: never bring a knife to a gunfight.

Here was another miracle(heh) in the Gatling scenes. With all those bullets flying, and the gang ruthlessly obliterated, not a single horse was hit. We see bodies strewn over a large area, not a horse body in sight. At the beginning of the sequence, we do see a couple tripped up by that technique of yanking their front legs out from under them. Forget what it’s called and it’s not used anymore I believe.

An otherwise routine effort directed by Vincenzo Musolini(he did two), the film score by Felice de Stefano saves it. Pretty decent though not the best I’ve heard.

The story Ellison tells is of gang life in New York in the fifties and to do research he was a member for a while of a real life gang of young people. In the brief introduction(he says one should never write an introduction for a novel, but he will), he admits to a fondness for the book written by “that punk kid.”

I recall it fondly as one of his better novel length works(and there was only a few). I think he prefers the shorter length and was unparalleled in that regard.

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For more truly forgtten books, check in today at Patti Abbott’s PATTINASE.

I know other areas of the country have been hit far worse and we sympathize with them. Stay safe folks.

update: outages and damage have risen considerably as reports come in. Still haven’t heard about any deaths. We’re lucky I guess.

Compare the one that started it all(I believe).

The show was to be called Sins of The Family. A sleazy writer is brought in. Dr. Martin Leavenworth(Harry Hayden). He pries into the family representing himself as a minister. They ask him for help when they hear about the announced program. The daughter knows nothing of her mother’s past.

The woman had changed her name and remarried shortly after the trial. She’s Martha Carstairs(Helen McKeller) now and married to a banker. They have a daughter about to get married to Malcolm Sims, Jr., son of a rich steel family.

Scott(Bogart) doesn’t like the whole idea to start with. The woman had been acquitted and the station intends to play it up as a murder. Leavenworth, without even meeting the daughter, has declared her as bad as her mother and about to ruin a young man’s life.

The film boils down to destroying a family in the name of money. When the girl’s parents commit suicide, all avenues had been for help closed it seemed(the father’s bank had asked for his resignation to protect the establishment’s reputation), it sets things off. Reynolds wants to buy the daughter off to air the program. The station had already been under investigation by the Feds for unsavory practices. Scott and his secretary are willing to testify.

Thank goodness the young man she’s marrying has a backbone. Mother and father are putting pressure on him not to marry to daughter of a murderer, not good for the family image, but he resists, even in the face of threats to cut him off if he goes through with it.

The title could represent them or Scott and his secretary.

Based on a 1932 play A DANGEROUS SET, I watched it on Turner Classic under the title ONE FATAL HOUR. A short film, just under an hour, wikipedia says it has been edited and I’m not sure if an uncut print exists anymore.

For more overlooked movies, check out SWEET FREEDOM on Tuesdays.