User reviews

Very enjoyable thriller, with a strong ensemble cast. Distinguished by great actors who make the most of their small roles. I was specially impressed by Lucille Ball, surprisingly serious in the role of the "bad woman", and very attractive. John Carradine also shines as the contemptible bounty hunter and Joseph Calleia as his insightful and wise death row prisoner. The budget was very low and the sets show, but John Farrow's direction is very brisk and keeps the suspense and interest up through the short running time. Great dialogue, very well written exchanges between the characters, unsurprising given the three great talents on the script. The rhythm of the film benefits from the crisp timing: if they remade the movie today, it would probably be twice as long, and less interesting.

An example for disaster and stranded dramas to come. One of the most memorable classics of the thirties.

The Quick Pitch: Twelve people board a plane that crashes in the South American jungle. While they work to fix the plane and with angry natives closing in, the group realise the plane will generate enough thrust for only five passengers. Who will live and who will die?

What a nice, little B-film! Five Came Back was quite a nice watch. Director John Farrow should get a lot of the credit. He crafted a tight film with a very small budget and was able to inject well placed tension and atmosphere. There are few wasted moments in the 75 minute runtime. Every scene matters. I also like the way he and the writers turned societal norms on their head. The passengers you would expect to do well in the jungle, don't. Those who may have had problems in polite society end up being the heroes. It's a very interesting look at how adverse conditions can change people. The ending is very satisfying. The decisions about who will and who will not be on the plane lead to some very interesting drama.

Five Came Back is helped by having an outstanding cast. The most immediately recognizable name is Lucille Ball. This was long before she became Lucy. Here, she's the tough-talking sexpot. Allen Jenkins, Joseph Calleia, and Chester Morris are also standouts. Finally, has there ever been a more British looking actor than C. Aubrey Smith? One look at the man and you can all but hear God Save the Queen playing in the background. Overall, some strong performances.

I'm not sure I had ever heard of Five Came Back before watching it the other night. But it's a solid film that I plan to revisit again in future. My 8/10 is probably about right given the quality of the film and the enjoyment I got out of it.

8/10

I rated this film as a very good B picture when I first saw it 50 years ago - but having seen the remake "Flight to Eternity" (which was not too bad!), the original has gone higher in my estimation. The cast was much better and the effects were just as good as the remake, which is saying a lot when one considers the years in between. The good old stand -by actors like John Carradine, C. Aubrey Smith and Elizabeth Risdon gave it a bit of class, while Chester Morris had his best role, Lucille Ball and Wendy Barrie were surprisingly good, and Joseph Calleia made a good bad guy. This is one of the very few B pictures made so many years ago that has really stood up well, and if you get the chance to see it on Video or on TV, do not miss it - it is most entertaining.

Years ago in New York City I saw the re-make of this film Back from Eternity which was broadcast on WOR TV's Million Dollar movie program. For most of you too young to remember WOR was an RKO station and had access at the time to the entire RKO film library. Films would be run as much as five times a day for a week, like a movie theater.

Back from Eternity was fine, but Five Came Back was really something special. Fortunately RKO had those old King Kong jungle sets and used them for this film. Cut down the cost considerably.

No big names in the cast either. Lucille Ball was not a big name at the time she made it and she's light years from Lucy Ricardo in this. She's a cynical good time gal who's been hurt by one man too many. Chester Morris started the sound era in some A product at MGM, but now was at the B picture level. But they and the rest of the cast nicely fill their roles.

The plot is simple. Morris and co-pilot Kent Taylor are flying a small passenger airline over South America and are forced down in the middle of a rain forest. Some patch work repairs are done. But the plane won't get off the ground with a full load. Some choices have to be made.

But because Joseph Calleia gets a hold of a gun he winds up making the choices. He's a political prisoner being taken to his execution, escorted by policeman John Carradine. With native headhunters all around and them having killed a couple of the passengers already, time is critical.

It's a good film, but if you see either this one or the remake it will be spoiled should you have an opportunity to see the other later.

Passengers get ready for the ill-fated flight foreshadowed in the film's title "Five Came Back". Handsome businessman Patric Knowles (as Judson Ellis) and pretty blonde secretary Wendy Barrie (as Alice Melbourne) are going to elope. Looking like either a movie star or a classy call girl, beautiful Lucille Ball (as Peggy Nolan) wants to straighten up and fly right. Elderly botany professor C. Aubrey Smith and his wife Elisabeth Risdon (as Henry and Martha Spengler) want to enjoy their twilight years. As his gangster father is threatened with extinction, cute little Casey Johnson (as Tommy Mulvaney) is shuttled to safety with henchman uncle Allen Jenkins (as Pete)...

Veteran airman Chester Morris (and Bill Brooks) and co-pilot Kent Taylor (as Joe) announce a slight delay when they are asked to take on detective John Carradine (as Crimp) and his prisoner Joseph Calleia (as Vasquez)...

When the plane crashes in an Amazon jungle thought to be inhabited by hungry head-hunters, the crew must chose only five passengers to return home on their rickety, repaired plane. The director, John Farrow, re-made this as "Back from Eternity" in 1956. The later film has a stronger script, but with performances becoming overly obvious. Here, the swiftness highlights subtlety; for example, note the impassionate love between Mr. Knowles and Ms. Barrie, then how Mr. Taylor telegraphs his interest. The more toned-down tart played by Ms. Ball is superior, but lacks detail. You're well off seeing both versions as they make up for things lacking in each other.

******* Five Came Back (6/23/39) John Farrow ~ Chester Morris, Lucille Ball, Joseph Calleia, Patric Knowles

Five Came Back may not be the best B picture ever made, but it is a superior example of one, almost in a way the ideal B in terms of what's done with the subject matter. It's a standard enough story of several people stuck in an isolated setting,--in this case the jungles of South America--and how they cope with their predicament. The story is similar to the one in The Lost Patrol, and is similar to many war movies such as Bataan and Sahara; it was even remade (badly) by the same director, John Farrow, many years later under a different title. A plane carrying twelve people crashes in the jungle. After looking over the damage it is determined that the plane can be made to fly again, but it can carry no more than five people. The problem is that not too far off is a tribe of head-hunting Indians; whoever is left behind will almost certainly face a horrible death. Eventually the passengers' numbers are whittled down by various factors, and the character who seemed early on the most sinister undergoes a remarkable transformation. This is not a deep movie, nor, as a study in character is it remarkable, though the characters are far better realized than in most films, let alone second features like this one. I can't help but think that Five Came Back was designed as a sort of small or experimental A picture. It was a surprise hit when it came out and put director Farrow on the map in Hollywood. But he was an up and comer anyway, a screenwriter and husband to actress Maureen O'Sullivan. Although leading man Chester Morris had pretty much become a B actor by this time, he is fine as usual (one can easily imagine Clark Gable playing the role in a Metro A version). Lucille Ball has a good part, and so does Allen Jenkins, much softer than usual here. C. Aubrey Smith is prominently featured, which again makes me wonder just how B this picture really is. The jungle setting, like the story, is quite obviously artificial, which is no way detracts from the film, since we expect fake jungles in thirties movies anyway. Overall, the technical side of the movie is more than good enough, and since RKO produced it, there is a special quality here hard to pin down; for want of a better term I'll call it artistic, as opposed to slick, which is what most studio movies were. This artistic aspect of the film gives it a gravitas that it almost certainly wouldn't have had had it been made elsewhere. It's a good show, thoughtful and moving at the same time.

Twelve passengers in a twin-engine plane crash-land in a rain forest just east of the Andes. While the two pilots attempt to fix the aircraft, the travelers get to know each other. Fast-paced drama rolls right along, with the usual cast introductions handled this time with flair and flip sarcasm (Lucille Ball, apparently playing a tart, keeps getting put down by the others but takes all the criticism in stride!). Film is extremely compact, but this hinders it in the end as the final sequence doesn't feel fully played-out and the last shots are disappointing. Otherwise, well-scripted (Dalton Trumbo and Nathanael West are just two of the writers credited), acted with high style and briskly directed by John Farrow, who later remade this story as "Back From Eternity". *** from ****

I first saw this movie in 1939 when I was eight years old... and had never forgotten it! I viewed it again a few years back and enjoyed it as much if not more than the first time.

I was very much surprised when seeing it again I realized that the tough talking "shady lady" that I remembered so well turned out to be Lucille Ball. I was totally unaware (knowing her only as a comedienne) that she had the range to play this type of character... and play it well at that!

Growing up as a "Boston Blackie" fan, I have always loved Chester Morris in any role, and he was certainly fine here as the planes Captain. I also admired Allen Jenkins role as the tough gangster who looked after his boss' son with unswerving loyalty and kindness. It was a departure from his usual gangster roles.

In short, if you're looking for an Academy Award movie... you won't find it here. Sure as one reviewer stated, its' somewhat predictable... sure its' not a big budget production... but it's very well done none the less.

Bottom line? If you just want a very watchable movie with a little drama, a little action and a lot of emotion, do yourself a favor and rent it or catch it on TV if you can.

A well mounted 1939 adventure yarn which would be the blueprint for future disaster films to come like the Airport series or even The Poseidon Adventure. A cross section of character actors are on a flight from the States to South America when during an engine outage, the plane goes down in the Aztec region prompting the survivors to work together to repair the plane, learn something about themselves & hopefully pull all the disparate strings together before an unseen tribe of natives knock them off one by one. Featuring Lucille Ball (?) & John Carradine, this movie is a delight just from an film aficionado's standpoint since we get to see where a lot of the later stories got their DNA from.

FIVE CAME BACK is a standard RKO B-film, capably directed by John Farrow with a cast headed by a bunch of veterans who were now entering the B-film phase of their careers--CHESTER MORRIS, KENT SMITH, PATRIC KNOWLES, WENDY BARRIE--and some very good character actors like Joseph CALLEIA, SIR C. AUBREY SMITH and JOHN CARRADINE.

At that time, even LUCILLE BALL could be called a veteran actress, having adorned many a B-film in less than impressive ingenue roles, usually as a brassy type with a heart of gold--but this is certainly one of her lesser early assignments. It's easy to get the feeling that you've seen this sort of plot before, perhaps in a different setting.

She's rather wasted here since most of the footage concentrates on the men who have more to do in this tale of a plane crash in the Amazon jungle that leaves them stranded near some dangerous natives until they can get the plane fixed. The pilots (CHESTER MORRIS, KENT SMITH) then have to give the others the bad news--the plane can only take off if there are five passengers aboard it. As it turns out, it's up to reformed revolutionary Joseph CALLEIA to choose who stays and who goes. PATRIC KNOWLES is the cowardly suitor of WENDY BARRIE who gets his comeuppance at the hands of the reformed man when he attempts to bribe his way to escape.

If this sounds familiar, it's because Farrow directed the same story again years later, called BACK FROM ETERNITY.

It's absorbing but obviously a low-budget film, rather murkily photographed using some of the old KING KONG jungle sets (unless that's the fault of the print I viewed on TCM), and the script is better than average for this type of story.

But if you have the feeling that you've seen this all before, you probably have. The stock characters facing peril will remind you of those STAGECOACH characters, most of whom had to worry about their fate, some brave and heroic, others more like cowards. Still, it works.

"The Flight of the Phoenix," Robert Aldrich's plane crash survivor story from 1965, was based on a novel. If it hadn't been, I might have thought it was a loose remake of "Five Came Back."

In this 75-minute movie from director John Farrow (father of Mia), a group of passengers are stranded in a Central American jungle when their plane crashes en route from L.A. to Guatemala. Holding out no hope for a rescue, they take it upon themselves to fix the plane and fly to safety while the various dramas introduced with the characters play out. They succeed in fixing the plane just in time for a swarm of savage headhunters to come calling; the hitch is that the plane can only carry five of them to safety, meaning four have to stay behind.

The headhunter and "who gets left behind?" plot twists are the most talked up in reviews of the movie, but really these events comprise only the last 5 minutes of the film. We never even see the headhunters, aside from a stray leg or arm peeking through Cedric Gibbons' impressive jungle set. And even the dramatic threads of these characters' stories aren't that dramatic. After all, a screenplay can only do so much in 75 minutes. The appeal of the film is the cast, featuring a fetching Lucille Ball, who doesn't get to do much but mope around the set and drop hints about a hard-luck-girl backstory, but who nevertheless displays a tremendous screen presence. C. Aubrey Smith and Elisabeth Risdon make probably the biggest impression as an older couple whose romance is rekindled as a result of being stranded in a jungle together. And Joseph Caiella is impressive as well as an anarchist on the run who meets the bleakest fate of any of them.

The most fun to be had from the movie is the antiquated peek it gives into air travel from long ago, when passengers could mosey into the cockpit anytime they wanted to chat with the pilots. It's also a hoot to watch Ball stroll around the jungle campsite in a luxurious bathrobe. I wouldn't mind being stranded in the wilderness if the wilderness were as comfortable as it's portrayed in this film.

Came across this late at night on TCM. I would probably never have discovered this film on my own.

Grade: B-

I never tire of seeing this film. "Five Came Back" has a reasonably simple premise: twelve passengers and crew on an airliner flying from the United States to Panama are stranded in a remote South American rain forest after a storm drives their aircraft off course. They must struggle to survive in this harsh wilderness and repair their crippled aircraft before the local headhunters get them.

The film follows the profound impact the crash and its aftermath has on each of the characters. Performances are solid and motivations, though obvious, are logical and well presented. This film has a lot working for it, not the least of which is an excellent cast and fine director and screenplay. For those interested in a classic drama with a touch of suspense and adventure, "Five Came Back" is a wonderful choice.

Various people board a plane flying to Panama. They encounter a storm and crash land in the jungle rumored to be populated with headhunters. They must hack an airstrip out of the jungle, repair the aircraft, and survive. It doesn't help when the jungle's inhabitants attack. One engine is damaged and the aircraft can only carry five people.

This is Lucille Ball scrapping by as a B-level actress. She wasn't always a comedic icon and a Hollywood titan. She plays a sexy smart side character. She's young and uses her sex appeal. The jungle is obviously interior but it is loaded with plant life. I expected lots of cannibal natives but it's not until the last half hour that the natives attack. They are off-screen and the first hour lacks any thrills. It's a well-made B-movie that exceeds its limitations.

The airliner Silver Queen on its way to South America is forced to make an emergency landing on a remote island. Blown off course and with no way to communicate with the outside world it is left up to the survivors to dig themselves out of this hole if they are ever to see the civilized world again. Also lending a sense of urgency are the distant drums of the island headhunters. Only five will be allowed to leave if they ever get the plane airborne again.

During film's annus mirabalis that was 1939 Five Came Back elbows it's way into the line-up with this adventure thriller that will you keep you guessing up until the picture's final minutes as the natives move in on passengers and crew in the midst of group catharsis.

With his cast of B-listers and character actors director John Farrow has the luxury of eschewing the star treatment and placing everyone on the same tenuous level of being offed at any time. The cast with its variety of pasts, all out of their comfort zone begin to morph to their environment far from the polite society they come from and from it roles are reversed. Acts of nobility and doing the right thing surface from the unexpected. The cast is uniformly adequate though C. Aubrey Smith and Joseph Calleia deserve mention for some very sober powerful moments.

Farrow also amps up the tension by never showing the faces of the headhunters, allowing the jungle in its entirety to be the threat, the unseeable more unspeakable to our imaginations. He also in its brief running time manages to define character while keeping suspense high as you ponder who will make the final cut.

Often the smaller "B" pictures were better than the expensive "A" pictures that they frequently were shown with. "Five Came Back" is a perfect example of that. This film has excellent pacing, fine performances from everyone, especially C. Aubrey Smith and Lucille Ball. It is one of her best film performances. The story is solid and always interesting, it's well photographed and the character development is outstanding. Finely written with crisp dialog. The film is very memorable as well, with an ending you won't easily forget. John Farrow's direction is definitely a plus, and it is a good example of his flair for direction toward the beginning of his career.

A small plane, flying over the untracked reaches of the Amazon, crash lands into the jungle. Twelve people are on board - eleven survive. Even if the plane can take-off again, which is far from certain, there is only fuel enough to carry five to safety. Who will leave and who will stay to face certain death from the watching headhunters? Who would you choose?

Thus the premise of this fine little adventure thriller, in which we get to know the eleven very well. Some will rise to nobility & self-sacrifice, others will sink to cruel cowardice.

In the cast: Lucille Ball, Chester Morris, Wendy Barrie, Patric Knowles, John Carradine, Allen Jenkins, Joseph Calleia & Sir C. Aubrey Smith.

Time grows short. The tension mounts. Who will survive?