Starring Laura Elliott, James Arness, William Kennedy, Gloria Petroff, Pierre Watkin
Directed by Norman Dawn
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
The first mate of an American clipper ship is dropped off in Queensland to recover from an injury, where he falls in love with the magistrate's daughter, and tries to help the people prepare for a pirate attack.
An early pre-Gunsmoke starring role for James Arness comes in in a pretty well done historical drama, with plenty of action scenes and some nice chemistry between Arness and Elliott (later to be billed as Kasey Rogers in her career). There's a love triangle, some western-flavor scenes on horses, and battles with pirates. However, the film's best known for its climactic scenes, in which a party of survivors are stranded on a volcanic island with giant lizards, courtesy of footage from One Million B.C. It's odd the filmmakers chose to go that way after staying within the realm of a period piece for the majority of the picture, but I love it that they chose the sci-fi angle, and probably wouldn't have paid much attention to the film without it. The actors are well-integrated into the footage and it adds some excitement that otherwise probably would have been lacking in a more pedestrian finale.
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