Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

I enjoyed this 1951 film written and directed by Lewis R. Foster. It plays like a run-through of B-movie tropes: bits of aviation films, adventure films, safari films float around in the mix (there’s even some underwater photography, still a novelty in 1951), and the carpet of talky double-crossing is reminiscent of noirish vacation jaunts like “His Kind of Woman.” It’s derivative, but it’s also excellently paced, and the narrative is varied and propulsive enough to mask its essential lumpishness. (It’s like a well-compacted serial.) The plot concerns a hunky schooner pilot played by John Payne. His well-tended boat is a reflection of the uncompromised character of his masculinity, but it’s also the instrument of his abnegation — like so many movie (and Hemingway) men of the era, he’s on the run from some unnamed anguish derived from the war. So is Rhonda Fleming’s Katherine; she arrives in the locale (New Guinea) on a break from her alcoholism but looking just as accomodating as you’d expect. For a while the movie looks to be shaping up as a standoff between cheesecake and beefcake, but Fleming is eventually marginalized as Foster tightens his grip on the ritualism of masculine skullduggery and invents new excuses for Payne to go shirtless. (The movie’s main thrust is male-on-male.) Having used a gold-swiping scheme to build up a “Sierra Madre”-like network of tension, Foster then allows the film to slacken and dissipate without ceremony. Right around the 90-minute mark all of Payne’s competitors are suddenly pierced by arrows or swallowed by crocodiles.

The movie is available on Netflix Instant along with a few of Foster’s other productions.