Five Came Back (1939)

An airplane flying from Los Angeles to Panama crashes in a dense jungle in the Amazon populated by tribes of headhunters. The diverse group includes the pilot (Chester Morris), co-pilot (Kent Taylor), a scarlet woman (Lucille Ball), a condemned murderer (Joseph Calleia), his police escort (John Carradine), a wealthy playboy (Patric Knowles) and his fiancee (Wendy Barrie), a mob gunsel (Allen Jenkins) traveling with a child (Casey Johnson), an elderly professor (C. Aubrey Smith) and his wife (Elisabeth Risdon). Directed by John Farrow, this early precursor to the "disaster" movie genre was remade by Farrow (a rare case of a director remaking his own film) in 1956 as BACK FROM ETERNITY with its plot virtually intact. It's an excellent example of a "B" movie that transcends its pulp roots and provides a gripping and economical (1 hour, 15 minutes) narrative. For a stage bound jungle, the cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca (CAT PEOPLE) manages to give the movie a realistic sheen which keeps you in the story. Ball in a dramatic role stands out as a reminder that she was a good dramatic actress before she became the Queen of Comedy.