User Reviews

Edward Ludwig was a specialist of adventure movies: WAKE OF THE RED WITCH, JIVARO, CARIBBEAN, FLAME OF THE ISLANDS. This one is a good film, for those who are nostalgic of this fifties period, a period that provided an atmosphere which we will never see again. Jeff Chandler is as good as usual in this role made for him. Exotic perfume, action scenes, romance on the South seas and islands, what else can we ask for?

"Smugler's Island" is the sort of adventure film you might watch and soon after forget that you ever saw it in the first place. It's because the film is incredibly mediocre...neither good nor bad...just a very standard adventure story and no more. I can't help but wonder if perhaps the cast had been different (such as Robert Mitchum playing Jeff Chandler's role) or a re-write might have helped.

Steve (Chandler) is an American expatriate who lives in Macao, a colony on the coast of China that was controlled by Portugal until 1999. There he makes money doing odd jobs with his boat. However, in the case of Vivian Craig (Evelyn Keyes), she wants him to do something VERY dangerous and potentially VERY rewarding. She wants him to use his boat and diving equipment to retrieve $200,000 in missing gold. But there turn out to be several important things she failed to mention...such as her being married. She also doesn't mention that some very bad people are likely to get in their way!

While the movie is okay, one scene in particular is among the worst I've seen in recent memory. Vivian is angry at Steve and slaps him. He slaps her back! But soon the pair have a liplock on each other that is one of the most passionate kissing scenes you can imagine...just after the two slapped each other! Talk about weird!

As for the rest of the film, it features some decent diving sequences and action...but also Marvin Mitchell playing an Asian guy! His accent is actually pretty good, but Mitchell looks about as Asian as Ricardo Montalban! Overall, a film that really looks as if Univesal Pictures really wasn't trying very hard....just trying to get it done and then on to the next project.

The problem is the gold is actually there. Evelyn Keyes tricks him to go hunting for it by fooling him with a false bait: he is hired as a diver to go saving a cargo from a wrecked plane loaded with medicines and drugs, but when the cargo is is saved it is pure gold worth $200,000. She wants to share it with him ignorant of the dangers of smuggling gold around Hongkong, the word goes around, and soon the whole area of smugglers and pirates are interested in their cargo, which they intend to sell in Hongkong, including the authorities and a real pirate, and naturally everything goes wrong, particularly since Evelyn's husband turns up and wants to share the party. In the end everyone double-crosses everyone and almost no one is left alive, some getting hoist by their own petards. It's an ordinary adventure yarn, worth watching for the sake of Jeff Chandler, as it is always a pleasure to find old films with him that you haven't seen before. Prepare yourself for some fireworks.