Sometimes you can tell a book by its cover, or a movie by its title. This one is notorious for getting it wrong right at the start: the volcano Krakatoa, which famously erupted in 1883, killing over 30,000 people and affecting worldwide climate for years, is actually west of Java. Things mostly go downhill from that title, though viewers who hang around for the climax will be rewarded by some good disaster effects. The story on which the effects are hung has potential. Maximilian Schell is the captain of a salvage ship which is headed out from Java to find the wreck of a ship rumored to have been carrying a small fortune in pearls. Diane Baker, Schell's mistress, is the motivating force for the search: the pearls belonged to her estranged husband, and he and her son were also on the ship, and she'd like to know what happened. She's also recovering from a recent mental breakdown and is emotionally fragile. Along to help with the search: a father-son team of balloonists (Rossano Brazzi and Sal Mineo), a scientist (John Leyton), an aging deep sea diver (Brian Keith) with weakening lungs and an addiction to laudanum, his mistress, and four female Japanese pearl divers who are experienced in holding their breaths a long time. Last but not least, there's a group of convicts in chains whom Schell has been forced to accept and drop off on a prison island. One of the prisoners is a former crew member of Schell's and Schell gives him a certain amount of freedom, which, of course, he comes to regret. Of course, all the plot lines are disrupted by the explosion of Krakatoa.
This was a flop in its day and is rarely seen or discussed now, except to make fun of its erroneous title. To me, it feels very much like a dry run for the disaster movie boom of the 70s (The Poseidon Adventure, Airplane, The Towering Inferno). Like those films, it's got: a varied group of characters thrown together with bonding between some and friction between others; the group eventually in isolation; a build-up of warning signs of dangerous conditions ahead; a lengthy special effects-filled climax. What it doesn't have is an all-star roster of actors (no disrespect meant to the actors, but when your biggest names are Schell and Mineo, you're not in the same league as something like Inferno with Paul Newman, Fred Astaire, Faye Dunaway, and Steve McQueen). It also has a slow-moving, muddled plot with not enough interesting separate strands—very little is done with Keith's addiction, and I have no idea why Brazzi and Mineo's characters are present except for a 2-minute sequence of their balloon almost going down into the volcano. Schell, Keith and Mineo are good, the rest of the cast less so, and Keith provides some nice burly eye candy--he'll make you forget his Uncle Bill persona from the 60s TV show Family Affair. The pre-CGI-era volcano effects are pulled off well with an adequate amount of death and destruction. The version of this I saw on Amazon Prime was the edited reissue (titled Volcano), with almost 30 minutes cut, including what sounds like a jaw-droppingly bad musical number involving nuns and orphans. The movie was not terrible, but I'm not sure it's worth tracking down the full-length version just for that song. Pictured at top right are Mineo and Brazzi; below are Keith and Barbara Werle. [Amazon Prime]
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