Proa al sol

Away All Boats is a World War II movie about men at sea. The first time I watched it, I thought it was rather slow moving. I've now seen it 5 times, and it gets better every time. I catch something new each time I watch it. I'm looking forward to seeing it again. How did I miss so much the first time I saw it? I now love the pace of this movie and see that it is well suited to telling the story. The photography is great and sometimes even spectacular in Away All Boats. There are also some nice moments of humor in this movie. I recommend this one. 8/10.

Away All Boats is directed by Joseph Pevney and adapted to screenplay by Ted Sherdeman from the novel written by Kenneth M. Dodson. It stars Jeff Chandler, George Nader, Lex Barker, Julie Adams, Richard Boone and Charles McGraw. A Technicolor/Vista/Vision production, music is by Frank Skinner and Heinz Roemheld and cinematography by William H. Daniels.

Captain Jebediah Hawks (Chandler) is determined to whip his newly acquired crew into shape aboard The Belinda, a transport ship serving the waters of the South Pacific as the Japanese hone in for the kill.

Standard rank and file war movie of the era here, it looks nice, action is decently put together and is dotted along the narrative at regular intervals. The cast are watchable thesps as well, but it lacks heart in the characterisations as written on the page. The core meat of the story is the emotional hodge-podge aboard the Belinda, as Captain Jebediah rules with an iron fist and his charges respond to varying degrees of annoyance, we await the inevitable bond of men and flag waving histrionics. It just takes too long to develop and when the finale comes, what should be a moment of emotional wallop, comes rather as a merciful release that finally the near two hour movie is over. 6/10

AWAY ALL BOATS differs from a lot of war movies at the time . It's shot in colour ( Don't forget that many prestigious war movies from the mid 1950s were still being done in monochrome )and doesn't suffer from the seriously deadpan pseudo intellectualism of many other war films of that period

The setting for the story is on the USS Belinda , a navy transport ( Assualt ? ) ship in the Pacific campaign . It should be pointed out that AWAY ALL BOATS is also a film that doesn't concentrate on action , so don't go into this film expecting massive explosions all the way through because it's a much more thoughtful film than that . We see why discipline is needed , why it's a bad idea to wax a floor on a ship and why aircraft identification is very important , it was very rare in those days for Hollywood to show a friendly fire scene and after seeing this movie you'll feel as though you've just served alongside Captain Hawks

A war film that's possibly more informative than it is exciting but one that has merit

Jeff Chandler's portrayal of Captain Jeb Hawks was an example of just how aloof a captain must be during a time of war. A captain's decision must not be made from friendship but what is best for the ship. Captain Hawks only real companion was a monkey. The men on the ship were almost all rookies that had never fought in a war. Hawks had to prepare them for "life and death" but made many enemies out of the crew because of his harsh techniques. The actual war scenes were very realistic. Overall a fine film to watch.

There was a time that I would watch any war movie I could find. A Saturday afternoon on KHQ in Spokane would have either the "Creature Features" or something else innocuous and old, like Away All Boats, a movie that boasted being the most expensive film ever made by its studio or Hollywood, back in 1956.

Having read the book and seen the movie (probably a dozen times), it would be fair to say that it's one of my favorites, the story an attack transport in the Pacific War, captained by a man who wants to command a real warship, but is willing to pay his dues first.

It's all so vanilla, with every darn stereotype you can imagine, only on a big, lumbering freighter instead of in a foxhole. The skipper is wound too tight, the XO can't figure him out, the officers and men hate him, and they're all up to the task when the Kamikazes show up and turn the Belinda into a big, lumbering piece of almost scrap iron.

It is fun watching and identifying all the character actors who man the guns in this classically antiseptic, very '50s, WWII shootemup. The special effects are pretty impressive, what with a lot of the ships the US Navy lent to the film makers still in service. Modern kiddies might groan at the matte photography of Japanese Zeroes hurtling in to smash the Belinda into a blazing hulk, but I still have an image burned (pun intended) in my memory of Jeff Chandler screaming at the oncoming plane, waving as if he could by force of will make the crippled plane and its Jihadist pilot miss, "Get away from my ship, get AWAY from MY ship!"

Strong stuff.

That scene made Away All Boats step up a rung on the quality-meter and makes me recommend it to you, if you can find it in the "classics" section of your larger video store.