STATE THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1939, Page 2

STATE THEATRE

“FIVE COME BACK.” Bringing together' one of the strongest groups of players ever assembled for a single picture, that unique screen drama, “Five Came Back,” which will be shown tonight at the State Theatre, reveals a striking cross-section of life among eleven people marooned in a Brazilian jungle following a plane accident. Heading the imposing cast and providing one 9! the two romances in the story are Chester Morris, in the role of a courageous transport pilot, and Lucille Ball, as a chorus girl. Another romantic team is formed by Kent Taylor, cast as a co-pilot, and Wendy Barrie, a runaway heiress. Other fine players who are seen as the ill-fated passengers forced down in the wilds of the upper Amazon are Joseph Calleia, as an anarchist returning to stand trial for murder; John Carradine, as a private detective escorting him; C. Aubrey Smith and Elisabeth Risdon as a botanist and his wife; Allen Jenkins and little Casey Robinson as a gangster and the tiny son of a public enemy running away from a gang war; and Dick Hogan as the airplane steward. The sharply etched characterisations of these noted players are said to add much to the realism and tense drama of the gripping picture. Adding a unique touch to the story is the stark climax, in which a confessed murderer is obliged to choose from the survivors the five fortunate people who may return to civilisation on board the crippled plane, the remaining to be left behind to face certain death. Woven into this web of fate and destiny are a romance between the pilot and one of his passengers; a triangle between the co-pilot, an heiress and the selfish young millionaire to whom she’s engaged; the conflict between a brutal detective and his murderer-prisoner, and the heroism of a gangster in rescuing a girl and a small boy from a native attack at the cost of his own life.