Back from Eternity (1956)

Truly Dreadful Film

To me, this movie is perfection.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I have now seen Back From Eternity several times and find it an exiting and gripping thriller.A motley collection of passengers including a young boy, a murderer, an elderly couple and a blonde lass board a dodgy aircraft, not knowing further danger lies ahead when a storm forces the plane to crash land in a very remote and unexplored jungle, inhabited by cannibals! After eventually fixing the aircraft, only 5 of the group will be able to escape...This movie has a great cast with Robert Ryan as the pilot, 1950s glamour queen Anita Eckberg, a great performance by Rod Steiger as the murder and Gene Barry (War of the Worlds).Back From Eternity is well worth a look if you haven't seen it. Excellent.

This tale was previously filmed in 1939 ,by the same director ,John Farrow and in that version it was a lean,mean and exciting B-movie.Here it lasts 20 minutes or so longer and this additional running time consists mainly of padding ,which serves to dilute the impact of the movie.It means that the minor classic of an earlier era has become a solid and enjoyable movie from the era in which it was made . The story revolves around a plane crash in the remote jungles of South America. The pilot declares he is able to repair the plane and it will fly some of them back to safety ,the problem being there is only room for 5 people on board the repaired vessel ,which means some will have to stay behind and take their chances with the inhospitable terrain and the hostile natives who are unhappy about this incursion into their domain . The survivors are a disparate group-there is the hard drinking pilot (Robert Ryan) ,a Vegas performer (Anita Ekberg),a criminal en route to execution (Rod Steiger) and the sadistic cop accompanying him (Fred Clark),a socialite and her milquetoast fiancé (Phyllis Kirk and Gene Barry),the co-pilot (Keith Andes),a distinguished elderly academic and his wife of many years (Cameron Proudhomme and Beulah Bondi).The party is rounded out by a 4 year old boy(Jon Provost) The movie sees the party disintegrate under the strain as tensions erupt and violence breaks out before the final decision is a made The movie is well acted -,especially by Steiger ,Barry and Ryan ,has a crisp Franz Waxman score and delivers solid entertainment all round .It would ,in my view have benefited from being a tad leaner and more economical but there is still a good time to be had from watching it

Not a bad B movie, but why did they remake it? I suppose because it's cheaper to recycle stories that the studio already owns than to buy new ones. Even the title seems designed by a bricoleur. ("From Here to Eternity" (1953) to "Back From Eternity" (1956).)The director is the same and so is the story but, alas, the pace is slower and heavier. In the original, no time was wasted on padding. The actors spoke their lines quickly, as if rushing through them to save a few frames of expensive film stock. This one carries with it a kind of languid lack of energy, as if everyone involved in the production had caught yellow fever. More time is spent on romance and less on practical matters.Further, we get more emphasis on a few of the characters who must explain their current state of disillusion or develop their growing love for one another. It's less of an ensemble movie than the 1939 version. Just two examples. Robert Ryan gets far more screen time than Chester Morris did in the same role. And Gene Barry's role as the spoiled, cowardly, rich drunk is reduced to a few nasty lines.And the evolution of the group's self consciousness is weakened by the absence of a montage in the original, in which we see everyone working happily away at their tasks, laughing and getting to know each other. There is no such animation here, only fatigue.Robert Ryan's part, the pilot, is given greater emphasis but his specialty is doing an impression of a boiler whose valves are closed and which is just about to explode at the seams. And here he more or less walks through the part, unusual for him because of his inherent dynamism. Rod Steiger is more important than Joseph Callaeia in the original too. The old professor is no longer the expert on Jivaro headhunting. Steiger is now the authority. That's fine for Steiger, but it leaves the elderly professor twisting in the wind. Just exactly what the hell does he TEACH anyway? Nobody seems to care.In some ways this film makes more of an impression than the earlier one. The airplane is bigger, for instance, as are Anita Ekberg's bosoms. And it has one or two unforgettable scenes. The beautiful, wooden Phyllis Kirk helping the guys heave the airplane off the ground, tottering in the middle of the Amazon jungle in her chic outfit and high heels. Kirk and Ekberg having a heck of a good time fighting in a studio-bound pool of jungle water, unable to stop from laughing as they wrestle and bat at each other. Come to think of it, any normal man wouldn't mind joining the fight. How about some mud and bikinis in the NEXT remake?

**SPOILERS** Remake of the 1939 classic "Five Came Home" by the same director John Farrow with Rod Steiger stealing the acting honors as convicted criminal Vasquez being sent back to Boca Grande, in Pararico, to face the firing squad for the attempted murder of the country's dictator General Gomaz.Getting caught in a violent lightning storm over the unexplored jungles of South America the PLA passenger plane, minus it's stewardess who fell overboard, crash lands with it's engines in operation but in the middle of headhunter country. Trying to get the plane fixed before the local headhunters get a beat on the planes passengers and crew tempers start to flair between bounty hunter Crimp, Fread Clark, and his prisoner Vasquez. Crimp is a bit taken by the change of events with Vasquez now the man who's in charge, since Vasquez is an expert on the habits of the South American headhunters, not him starts to panic. Crimp ends up running off in the unfriendly jungle with the only gun among the people on the plane and ends up losing his head over it. As the days go by it becomes evident that there's no rescue party on the way to save them and both the pilot and co-pilot Bill Lonagan & Joe Brooks, Robert Ryan & Kieth Andes, work around the clock fixing the planes engines. Everything possibly is done to get the plane airborne before the drums start to beat meaning that the headhunters are on their way to finish off the planes survivors.Tense drama in the South American Amazon basin with a stellar cast knowing that the end is near but not exactly who among them will end up being killed by the headhunters. It's decided that only five will come back since the planes engines can't carry any more weight. The disabled airplane has to have as light as possible a payload in order to take off and fly over the dense jungle mountain range to become fully airborne. Gut-wrenching final where it's decided who will live and who will die, by being left behind, at the hands of the headhunters and for the most part Vasquez and the elderly couple Henry & Martha Spangler, Cameron Prud'Homm & Beula Bondi voluntarily stay behind to meet their fate. The Spanglers, in their 70's, knowing that they don't have long to live anyway and Vasquez facing execution. The movie "Back from Eternity" also has a love triangle between Jud Ellis, Gene Barry, and his fiancé Louise Melhorn, Phillis Kirk, and co-pilot Joe Brooks. The poor and terrified Jud ends up coming out on the losing end. Jud gets gunned down, trying to get on the plane, at the end of the movie by Vasquez with his bride-to-be Louise not bothering to come to his aid but not even giving Jud as much a second glance as he lay dying! There's also the gorgeous and voluptuous Anita Ekberg, the former Miss Sweden, as singer and bar girl Rena who's trying to get her papers straighten out in order to become a legal American citizen. There's also little six year old Jon Provost, of Lassie fame, as Tommy Malone the son of a Las Vegas mobster who just got knocked off. Tommy is being looked after and protected by his late dad's best friend and right hand man Jesse white, Pete Boswick. It turns out that Rena, not Jesse, ends up on the departing plane with little Tommy as the movie "Back From Eternity" comes to an end.