Because he once ran a gang of smugglers who even engaged the coast
guards in a gunfight in his boat, skipper Mark (Eddie Constantine) is
arrested and to be flown to capital by cop Peterson (Clifford Evans).
However, their plane - the only plane of a privately owned airline
operating on a shoestring - doesn't make the trip, and ultimately Mark
himself has to land the plane on open water, after the co-pilot dies, and
pilot John (John Gregson) is put out of action. Thank God there is an
island nearby ...
But everything is not over yet, once on the island, several conflicts
arise: There's prostitute Maria (Eva Bartok) and the sister of the consule
Miss Shaw (Jean Anderson), who just don't get along, there's pilot John,
jealous that his stewardess (and girlfriend) Teresa (Pier Angeli) feels
drawn to Mark, and then there's Whitey (Richard Attenborough), a no-good
little rat who even sold Mark to the police, and who now wants to escape
both Mark and cop Peterson ... and to that end he steals Peterson's gun,
and leaves the isalnd by one of the group's lifeboats while destroying the
other.
Now this would be trouble enough, but then our heroes realize they have
been stranded at an Atomic testing site, with the actual bomb detonator on
an island 2 miles away - yikes. and they only got 5 and a half hours.
To save their hide, Mark, an excellent swimmer, agrees to swim to the
other island to try to disengage the bomb after instructions by Dr Strauss
(Gunnar Möller), a nuclear scientist who also happened to be on the
plane. On the way to the island though, Mark is soon pursued by sharks,
but saved by pilot John, who bravely gives his life as bait for the sharks
to save the others. Arriving on the other island only minutes before the
bomb goes up, Mark bumps into Whitey, who is just hell-bent on finishing
him off ... but of course, everything ends happily, and Mark gets the girl
- stewardess Teresa that is.
The story might sound conventional, but this is actually a pretty cool,
suspenseful, well-paced and well-placed andventure-thriller, with Eddie
Constantine proving to be a capable leading man in a role that is more
serious than most of the parts he was playing in the 1950's.
Definitely worth a look.
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