cult film freak: DANA ANDREWS AND JANE POWELL IN 'ENCHANTED ISLAND'

Title: ENCHANTED ISLAND Year: 1958 Rating: **

In the 1940's, minimalist Dana Andrews seemed like a real person in movies surrounded by actors... but by the mid-to-late 1950's he sometimes looked like a hired stock actor completely misplaced, especially for the Hermann Melville adaptation of Typee titled ENCHANTED ISLAND...

Where he and equally miscast Don Dubbins are two sailors from a late 9th Century ship (captained by a grouchy Ted de Corsia) that lands on the titular South Pacific location, and they aren't allowed to have fun with the loose native girls...

Title Caption for ENCHANTED ISLAND

So Andrews helps an injured Dubbins, too weak to even cross a small creek, into a jungle setting where the rest of the programmer's highlighted by Dana's far too easy male-fantasy courtship with Jane Powell as a gorgeous, blue-eyed native whose leader (Friedrich von Ledebur) may or may not be a cannibal...

Yet this matters little since the ISLAND is too limited for an adventure; young Dubbins splits too soon for a buddy-action flick; the couple has meager chemistry for a genuine romance; and with natives so friendly there's hardly any suspense, making Powell's scantily-clad garb and the richly-colored pulp aesthetic the only ENCHANTING aspects on board.