Back from Eternity

Despite a typically fine, tormented performance from Ryan as the drunken pilot, Farrow's remake of his own Five Came Back loses out to its predecessor, partly because (without adding anything of note) it takes significantly longer to tell its tale of crashed air passengers fending off headhunters in the Amazon jungle, partly because the stereotype characters and situations had by now lost their freshness. Steiger, over-acting, is no match for the original's Joseph Calleia; Ekberg is purely ornamental; and the voluntary self-sacrifice of elderly professor Prud'homme and his scared but loving wife (Bondi) carries less weight than in the earlier film. Tense in parts, but largely formulaic.