Please don't spend money on this.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This movie was Alan Dwan's 406th as director. It was also his next to last. It stars a sozzled Dana Andrews as a sailor who has jumped ship on a tropical Island and Jane Powell as the Polynesian princess he falls in love with. She is, of course, the member of a tribe of cannibals.The script takes Herman Melville's turgid novel about religion masquerading as evil and vice versa, and converts it into a brightly-lit Technicolor adventure story. Like others of Dwan's movies of the period, it combines a lesson about duality -- I'm not sure what the lesson was, but it's clearly there. Blond, slight Don Dubbins offers that contrast.Mostly it's interesting for the way cinematographer Jorge Stahl manages to light bright greens and blues in a sepia world.

There was a time in the Hollywood past when major film actresses bound to studio contracts had to play roles exotic women in wigs and dark makeup. Hedy Lamarr was one of the first. In this film Jane Powell is an exotic native girl who is the interest of Dana Andrews once jumping to avoid persecution willing to settle an in an exotic land to merely escape free world punishment. Although widely buzzed as an exotic island of cannibals the people are merely afraid once their identity is discovered armed European men will conquer them and destroy their family life and culture. The construct of cannibalism in the film is escapees ruin their chance of freedom and even survival and must be killed as their security measure. The person who is eaten is not done so for ritual or for sustenance but because as an escapee likely to blow their cover and destroy them they must hide all evidence of his body once they murder him.

This odd adventure film, set in the tropics and probably shot in Hawaii, stars the horrendously miscast Dana Andrews as a lawless sailor who falls in love with an island maiden, essayed here by whiter than white Jane Powell in an equally turgid performance. I can't comment on the faithfulness of the adaptation, as I haven't read Melville's novel Typee, but Enchanted Island looks cheap (regardless of the colourful locales), is poorly acted, and is thoroughly dull. Even Jorge Stahl's colour cinematography looks like it was shot on leftover stock or 'ends'. A less than satisfactory late career move by director Allan Dwan, Enchanted Island is only for extremely loyal Andrews completists.

This is an interesting and fun movie. Evidently filmed in the Pacific - the extras appear to be Polynesian. Typical of '50's movies, however, the stars are all white. The use of the native Polynesian language adds an element of realism. The ending is more romantic than Melville's book, but the movie appears to have kept the general feeling of "Typee" from which the story is taken. In all it is movie to enjoy.