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Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I suppose you could call "SOS Pacific" an early British attempt at a disaster movie as a motley crew of lower division 'stars', (Richard Attenborough, John Gregson, Pier Angeli, Eddie Constantine, Eva Bartok), find themselves stranded on a desert island after their plane crashes and if that wasn't bad enough, the island is about to become target practice for the Atom Bomb. Leaving aside the laughably clichéd script and the hackneyed acting, this is reasonably entertaining. It has one of Attenborough's rare bad performances and one of Constantine's rare good ones. Shot, very nicely in black and white, by Wilkie Cooper though now currently available in a very poorly desaturated colour version.

SOS Pacific is directed by Guy Green and adapted to screenplay by Robert Westerby from a story by Gilbert Travers Thomas and Bryan Forbes inputs additional dialogue and scenes. It stars Richard Attenborough, Pier Angeli, Eddie Constantine, John Gregson, Eva Bartok, Gunnar Möller, Clifford Evans, Jean Anderson, Harold Kasket and Cec Linder. Music is by Georges Auric and cinematography by Wilkie Cooper.When a flying boat encounters mid-air troubles it has to emergency land near an island in the Pacific. Apparently uninhabited, the island, as the survivors are soon to find out, has something shocking in store for all.A little British cracker, SOS Pacific might be out dated now with its big reveal of theme, but it's a perfect example of how to make a tight thriller on a modest budget. It's very much a film of two halves. The first half plays out as a disaster movie, here we are introduced to the folk who will ultimately make up the survivors on the island. It's a roll call of stock formula characters; a tough copper and his cheeky but hero-in-waiting prisoner, a good time girl, the weasel loose cannon who is also an informer, a prim and proper lady, a German physicist, the stoic and beautiful stewardess and the pilot with a drink problem! Familiar characters to a degree, but well blended and fleshed out by the astute Guy Green (A Patch of Blue) who deftly piles tension on top of tension with each passage of story.After the back stories involve us we then get the mid-air dramatics and the surprise that's awaiting us all on the island. Once there the characters shift in tone, they have to for various reasons, and then we are treated to heroics, suspicions, sacrifices, fights, hysteria and a thrilling "ticking clock" type finale. Wilkie Cooper's (I See A Dark Stranger/Green For Danger) black and white photography accentuates the sweaty atmospheric mood, and Auric (The Innocents) scores it in 2 x 2 thriller/drama fashion. Cast performances are uniformly good, with the stand outs being Constantine who makes for a good Bondian type alpha male, Attenborough a telling slime-ball and the gorgeous Angeli as the pivotal lady of the piece.Some of the dialogue is twee and the model work is not high grade stuff, while unlikely coincidences are evident throughout, but this is definitely worth seeking out by anyone interested in tight and taut British thrillers. 7.5/10

I have seen this movie when it premiered in Germany (in 1959 or 1960) at the age of 11 or 12. Despite my young age, I had already become an action movie addict and I remember to this day having been totally fascinated by Attenborough and Constantine's acting. (Must have been too young to notice Ms Angeli). Contrary to another reviewer I believe that Eddie Constantine's "Mark" character in this movie is definitely on the same acting level as his more famous "Lemmy Caution". SOS Pacific had an impact on me which had not diminished even when I saw that film many years later on TV. Let us hope, somebody will finally decide to release this excellent piece of action nostalgia on DVD.

I'm a little surprised at the positive comments posted about this film. Anti-climax after anti-climax is what I remember from seeing it as a 12-year-old in 1964. When the the actual climax came along, my buddy and I laughed out loud. Sure, Pier Angeli was good-looking and her character good-hearted. But Eddie Constantine was much better playing his Lemmy Caution character than he was in this picture. I've certainly seen worse films, but SOS Pacific is memorable to me only because of how lousy I thought it was at the time. Far-fetched plot, low-budget set, B-list cast, predictable directing... not much to recommend. (It was on a double bill with the original McHale's Navy movie, which wasn't very good, either, but Captain Binghamton was a dead ringer for my junior high school principal.)