Gesta heroica

I remember seeing this film way back in 1959 when it first came out in the theater. History was moving very fast back in this time in Cuba and within days this item was quickly withdrawn from circulation. Before 1959 was out you could never have made an American film with the Castro as the good guy and the Batista counterrevolutionaries as the bad guys.

Cameron Mitchell in the immediate days after the Castro revolution in Cuba comes to Havana to find his friend Logan Field who has gone missing. What he finds is Field's wife Allison Hayes now involved with Eduardo Noriega a rich plantation owner and singing at the nightclub in hotel owner Nestor Paiva's palatial resort hotel, once the playground of touring Americans as were many such places in Batista Havana.

Michael Granger the local Havana cop and Castro supporter is taking a real interest in the comings and goings of Mitchell. And before long Mitchell up to the neck in a counterrevolutionary assassination plot that the missing Mr. Field was involved in before.

Within days of this film's release public opinion changed radically about Fidel Castro and this film was buried. Not that it should have been unearthed for art's sake. This is sloppily put together with the villains making stupid moves that would have rivaled some of the movie Nazis of World War II vintage.

If Pier 5, Havana teaches us anything it is that with help like this no wonder Batista never regained power.

Cheesy melodrama set during the time after the fall of Battista in Cuba. While the film has a man shot in the airport for crimes that a never specified this film seems to be a starting point for Hollywood's fixation with tin pot Latin American dictators/despots. In this film the bad guys are the supporters of Battista and the law abiding guys are working for the Castro Government. The only thing missing is a rally for Che. Not a very good film the acting is surprisingly wooden. I had a lot of good memories of Cameron Mitchell but this film made me question my recollections. The film was obviously shot on sets and very little location work is done. The dialog is uninspiring, and unlike other films of this era this film is not much fun to watch.

Not a lot of background info on IMDb on this 67 minute shortie from "Premium Pictures", and even less info on the writer, Joseph Hoffman, and its director Ed Cahn; as of today, not even one message on the message boards at the bottom of the main page. "Pier 5" starts out with narrator (Cameron Mitchell as Steven Daggett) giving us the first-person background on Batista skipping town, and Castro moving in take over Cuba. Daggett tells us he is trying to find his best friend Hank Miller (Logan Field), but is quickly picked up by the police for questioning... we are introduced to the local bigshot Senor Ricardo (Eduardo Noriega), American singer Monica Gray (Allison Hayes), and local businessman Senor Schluss (Otto Waldis), who all may or may not be involved in something together.. Ms. Gray admits that she knows the missing man Miller, so Dagget starts following clues to try to find his missing friend. The biggest Hollywood name here is our narrator, Mitchell, who later had several successful TV series in the 1960s and 1970s (the Beachcomber, Swiss Family Robinson, High Chaparrel). The bombshell Hayes has an interesting bio.. apparently was a contestant in the Miss America Pagaent, but unfortunately died quite young at age 47, possibly from being overdosed with calcium...how strange.... she was even in "Tickle Me", with Elvis, and died a couple months before he did. "Pier 5 " Produced by Robert Kent aka James Gordon, who had started out as a writer in the 1930s, and wrote and produced many films with a foreign, exotic location. This one is a good solid script, with perfectly competent actors, but I guess isn't shown often, since it doesn't have any real big names. It's interesting that what some of the "bad guys" are involved in might today be treated differently than how it was regarded at the time.... but that's a matter for history to sort out...won't say any more to avoid giving away any plot points.

Story-line is fresh, even after all these years. Mitchell is OK, the lady is not too good, the bad-guy 'Fernando' is well acted. Set construction is B-grade, with several goofs. Script and dialog are a little better than you would expect. Simple action scenes are on par for this kind of movie. Overall production is about what you would expect for a B-grade movie. Some real shots in/near Havana add a special touch to the film. Trying to protect Castro from pro-Baustista forces seems a bit odd these days, but probably spot-on for 1959. The cast all seemed to work together well.

Good, rainy-day film.

This is one of three low-budget programmers made by Cameron Mitchell for director Edward L. Cahn and the same production company (all UA releases) in 1959-60, all of which are worth seeing. Living in Miami, small businessman Cameron Mitchell comes to post-revolution Havana to find an old friend who was going to come and work for him, but never arrived and seems to have vanished. Although Mitchell's character is not a detective, this plays a lot like a detective film, and director Cahn is a master at pacing, so despite the miniscule budget (Havana is evoked by a few small sets and a few California exteriors with Spanish-language signs on them!), the film plays like a good little paperback-original mystery novel--especially so since Mitchell provides voice-over narration here and there to speed things along and to mention things that would be too expensive to show on camera. As always, Mitchell treats the role with the greatest respect, digging into the character and turning what could have been a generic role into someone the viewer cares about and roots for. Michael Granger is also excellent as the honest, professional Cuban police investigator who stays on the case himself and keeps running into Mitchell along the way. The film also features legendary 50s leading lady Allison Hayes (Gunslinger, The Unearthly, Attack of the 50 ft. Woman)as a woman who once knew Mitchell and was married to the missing man. Although a low-budget programmer that is only 67 minutes long and was no doubt made in a few weeks, PIER 5, HAVANA provides good, honest, hard-boiled entertainment and plays like a good 1950s detective TV show. Director Edward L. Cahn was the best kind of journeyman director, a true pro who could take a talented cast, a few small sets, and a genre-based script, and turn it all into a solid, unpretentious feature film that still entertains and engages decades after it was made. If you come to this film with enough willing suspension of disbelief, it won't matter that the punches thrown in the fight scenes miss by at least eight inches--the sound effects are synched accurately so you THINK the punch must have landed, and the scene has moved on before you have time to analyze it. I'll take honest entertainment like this over CGI effects any day of the week. This film was probably made for less than the bottled water budget on the last Eddie Murphy film. Bravo to director Cahn and star Cameron Mitchell!