★ 6 / 10
Idealistic priest “Fr. Joseph” (Kerwin Matthews) has arrived
CinemaSerf
Idealistic priest “Fr. Joseph” (Kerwin Matthews) has arrived on a remote French Polynesian island to take over from the weary and cantankerous old “Fr.…
Idealistic priest “Fr. Joseph” (Kerwin Matthews) has arrived on a remote French Polynesian island to take over from the weary and cantankerous old “Fr. Matthew” (Spencer Tracy) whose congregation consists of a leper colony and a prison. When the priests manage to recruit a few reluctant convicts to help out with some repair work in the leper village, they - led by “Harry” (Frank Sinatra) prove to be a bit bigoted and recalcitrant, but things soon change when their very own version of Krakatoa decides to make it’s presence felt putting everyone into a spin and giving the cons an idea as to how they might just escape. Of course, “Fr. Matthew” can’t just abandon his flock, nor their hospital, and with lava lava everywhere he has to convince as many as he can to help him mount a very daring rescue mission into the mountains to see if there is anyone left to evacuate. This is a perfectly competent vehicle for Tracy and Sinatra that doesn’t look remotely realistic until a bit of volcanic activity at the end. The forest scenes don’t quite involve potted plants, but this isn’t anyone’s most convincing south sea island adventure as it takes it’s time to get going. For my money, it’s Grégoire Aslan who steals what limelight there is, and Jean-Pierre Aumont adds a bit of low-key eye candy as the seaplane pilot “Jacques” but the rest of the acting and the writing aren’t up to very much. Some more judicious editing could have tightened up the pace a little but ultimately this is just standard afternoon fayre where most of the cash went on the stars, and very little on giving them much of substance to work with. Watchable, but forgettable, sorry.
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★ 7 / 10
Granddaddy of disaster flicks
mgruebel
Max Catto was a prolific novelist in the 50s and 60s, churning out adventure tales and dramas, just the right kind to turn into movies. Sort of like John…
Max Catto was a prolific novelist in the 50s and 60s, churning out adventure tales and dramas, just the right kind to turn into movies. Sort of like John Clancy, who will be equally forgotten in 50 years. Probably the most famous Catto oeuvre is "Trapeze," starring Burt Lancaster as a trapeze artist training Tony Curtis to do a deadly stunt, with Gina Lollobrigida to heat things up. It's quite a good movie, and in fact Catto's book was renamed after the film when "Trapeze" did well at the box office!
"Devil" is Catto's effort at combining drama and disaster: A disillusioned priest (Spencer Tracy) finds God again with the help of three convicts (one of them Frank Sinatra) when a Pacific volcano island is about to blow its top, and they must rescue a children's leper colony with a beautiful young nurse thrown in for Frankie. So we have everything here: lava, death, lepers, love story, drunk priests, evil French governors who turn out to have a heart after all, atheist doctors, prostitutes-turned nurse. Catto is at it with interesting characters!
Ultimately, this is what makes this film so watchable even decades later: it's got interesting people feeling each other out while the simple linear plot of "the big one's gonna blow, and we have a deadline to get outta here" takes its inevitable course. As in many films of that era, there's no happy ending for many of the characters, not just the token misfortune you get in most dramas nowadays because we know that "audiences don't like unhappy endings." Well, I do like good films, even if they have unhappy endings.
"Devil" is the granddaddy of disaster films, and spawned a whole industry in the 70s from "Towering Inferno" to "Poseidon Adventure" to "Earthquake" (all better than their remakes because they focused on the humans, not the buildings).
The special effects in this film are soooo much more realistic than the CGI crap we get in most disaster movies nowadays. The reason is they were all physical, with actual flames, mud pits, dust from collapsing building, boulders falling, churches shaking, cracks opening in the ground. Yes, some are rubber rocks and plants on sets, but they're still 'real.' The fakest-looking things are the lava flows and volcanic eruption flames, which do not quite match the real thing - but still look pretty good. For example, in the lava flows, which are well- simulated with crusty cooler rock flowing on red viscous rock, the thing that's missing is the shimmer you get from real superheated air above the rocks, as anyone familiar with volcano documentaries knows. Still, they are better than modern CGI lava flows, which behave completely nonphysically. (I confess I am a physics guy, so I am sensitive to totally unrealistic special effects that violate Newton's laws.)
A commendable movie, as are Catto's now-forgotten books, most of which of course have been ripped off knowingly or unknowingly by the current generation of equally doomed bestseller writers. A fun to watch, family-safe 7/10 if you can tolerate a bit of sermonizing by Tracy and his disciples, who are offset by plenty of doubting doctors, truck drivers and convicts.
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Devil's pretty punctual. Not the 3.48 devil, oh no he's bang on time.