Return to Treasure Island

Pretty awful picture. A descendant of Jack Hawkins named Jamie Hawkins (played by lovely Dawn Addams) is tricked into revealing where some hidden loot is hidden on a desert island. There happens to be hunky shirtless Clive Stone (Tab Hunter). She and him try to find the treasure and battle the bad guys.

The color is nice, Addams is beautiful and Hunter is hot...but the picture is TERRIBLE! It's slow, boring and horrendously acted. Even Hunter himself hates it! In his autobiography he says it's abysmal and a stinker and his acting was terrible. Even his MOTHER said it was bad! There's also a mildly kinky scene where Addams is tied to a tree and briefly whipped--but her shirt is on and no marks are shown. This type of picture was popular in the 1950s--it played as the second feature of double bills everywhere. Some patient kids might enjoy this but aside from the lovely color, Addams beauty and Hunter shirtless there's little here to enjoy. A 1 all the way.

Peachy Jamesina "Jamie" Hawkins, femme descendant of guess who, is lured by Porter Hall into taking a jaunt to Treasure Island to find the loot that was overlooked back in 1753. (She's English, so maybe she never saw any Porter Hall movies. Her great-grandfather also trusted the wrong fellow at first.) On the island Jamie meets marooned sailor Tab Hunter (no shirt, bushy red beard) and together they fend off the bad guys while searching for the treasure. Basically kid-level programmer from UA, but Dawn Addams' fresh-faced good looks help quite a lot. OK 75 minute timewaster as long as you're not expecting Wallace Beery or Robert Newton to shiver your timbers.

Return To Treasure Island was the farewell film for noted character actor Porter Hall. But aside from a chance for Hall to play one of his sniveling rat villain type characters once more and for Tab Hunter to go around bare chested for most of the film there's not much else to recommend this film.

Hunter also narrates the film from flashback, he's a graduate student and his contention is that there's more treasure to be found on Treasure Island. The famous Robert Louis Stevenson novel is treated as a factual account of a voyage. He interests a descendent of Jim Hawkins played by Dawn Addams in taking a look for some more. There is also a flashback showing Captain Flint coming back to bury some more so we know this to be true.

Unfortunately they also interest some greedy villains like Hall, like the blind James Seay who has his own gang of pirates 20th century style.

Hunter looks fabulous, Addams who is scantily clad herself look pretty good, something for everyone's prurient interest. Too bad they weren't provided with a decent story and the acting is amateurish.

Hunter did have sex appeal though. Otherwise this film would have sunk his career without a trace.

The two interests of the film : Tab Hunter shirtless and following the story of his shoes and stripy socks, they keep disappearing and reappearing throughout the movie. Before the fight is barefoot, then he suddenly has shoes, when captured they take his shoes off, he escapes barefoot, but back in the rocks his shoes reappear, then disappear, sometimes with socks sometimes not, terrible continuity.

He's acting is not bad, excepted for his awful Voice-over, here to help us understand a film with pretty bad "mise en scene", there's lots of tiring and pointless trips back and forth to the ships , too many baddies, a pretty funny special effect where a boat is supposed to explore, we see an explosion but the boat remains then when the camera changes angle disappear.

There is also a random love story, that comes out of nowhere just so that tab hunter can kiss a girl in order to get teenage girls to swoon, before they yawn back to boredom the next scene. Adams is beautiful and Hunter is jaw breaking gorgeous but when they're off screen it gets UN interesting .

The locations are not cinematic, or maybe it's all due to the bad framing, it's kind of entertaining in bits and because the whole narration is hilariously bad, a good film to watch when you're hungover

Derring-do hampered by lackadaisical direction and a less then gripping story. Still not bad in a colorful Saturday morning matinée way with a handsome hero and lovely leading lady.

Part of the problem is that after an initial skirmish the villains and the supposedly imperiled couple rarely intersect, it's almost as if they are on separate islands in their search for the loot until the very last minute. Even at a brief 75 minute running time it seems to take everyone forever to achieve the goal of tracking down the loot.

As an actor and narrator Tab Hunter is very beautiful. His blonde shirtless attractiveness is a nice distraction but his line readings are so flat and his reactions to almost every situation so non-reactive he makes you yearn for the over the top scenery chewing of Robert Newton in the original Treasure Island.