In Search of the Castaways
                              
Director: Robert Stevenson
Year: 1962
Rating: 7.0
I have watched this film before, but it was about 60 years ago. As a ten-year-old, this was a fabulous adventure tale with lots of derring-do, nasty villains and traveling around the world on a ship. It also had Hayley Mills who every young boy had a crush on. Big smile, marble blue eyes and straw colored hair. She had a contract with Disney for five years. The films she made for them - That Darn Cat, Moon-Spinners, Summer Magic, The Parent Trap, Pollyanna and this film were all family fare with the adorably innocent Hayley reaching into our hearts. But her father was the well-respected actor John Mills and between the Disney films, he had her appear in a few adult oriented films such as Tiger Bay, Whistle Down the Wind and The Chalk Garden. Once she hit puberty, either Disney lost interest in her or vice-versa and though she has gone on to a lengthy career, people basically remember her for her teenage films with Disney.



This is a good fun film in which a small group of five people have to face a flood, a volcano, an earthquake, pirates, natives out to kill them and being stuck in a large tree with a jaguar. Not to mention Maurice Chevalier breaking out into song. As a kid, I must have loved this. It was pretty good as an adult too. There is a ton of blue screen shots that I expect fooled me back then, but I am so much smarter now. I wonder if they ever even left the studio.  It is based on a Jules Verne novel, The Children of Captain Grant and has some connective tissue to Captain Nemo. Lots of differences from the book but the essence remains the same. But no songs in the book.




Professor Paganel (Maurice) has discovered a bottle inside a shark that he caught fishing. There is a message in the bottle, "I'll send an S.O.S to the world. I hope that someone gets my S.O.S.". It is from Captain Grant writing that his ship sank and that he is a castaway at a certain latitude but the longitude is unreadable. The Professor contacts the Captain's children (Hayley and Keith Hamshire) and they contact the owner of the ship, Lord Glenarvan. After much convincing he agrees to go in search of his friend Captain Grant with the Professor, the two children and his own son (Michael Anderson Jr.) The Lord is played by the always welcome lovable curmudgeon Wilfred Hyde-White. Usually, I come across him in small character roles, but it is a delight getting him for a whole film.



Because the longitude can't be read they start off traversing the Andes and then New Zealand. In the book there were other locations. George Sanders shows up as the main villain Ayerton who takes their ship. Ayerton was to re-appear in Verne's The Mysterious Island. Directed by Robert Stevenson who after some excellent crime films in the 1950s became one of Disney's top directors of children films - Johnny Tremaine, Darby O'Gill, Old Yeller, Kidnapped, The Absent Minded Professor and the classic Mary Poppins.