The Passing At Highway 10, part 26.

BOOM…BOOM, the door thundered time and again. I only wished that it was thunder, although the rain still came down like a typhoon outside. The rattling of the door, the patter of the rain, and our heavy breathing were the only sounds in that kitchen. We were breathing like asthmatics, we were all so damn shattered. You know how it is in the movies, where the heroes are always calm and cool and kicking asses with expressionless faces? Yeah, it ain’t like that in real life. We sure didn’t look like Hollywood tough guys back there. That booming was working my brain into a frenzy, and I could feel its effects in the trembling of my hands. I’d been scared before, sure. Many times. But never like this. I guess it didn’t matter how many fuckers there were out there, as long as we could hold them off for as long as we could. It didn’t matter right now, the reasons, the meanings, the who’s, the why’s, or the what’s. All that mattered was making it until the morning. Shit, just making it through the next few hours. Fuck it, I thought…I’d rather be a sitting duck in here than somebody’s damn buffet out there. At least for a while…at least until we could figure this thing out. We need a plan. We need a plan, I kept telling myself. 
My mind raced as the three of us reached the cabinet at the same time, a heavy beast of old steel, and pushed our weight against it. I hadn’t even bothered to ask the other guy what his name was; my brain wasn’t processing courtesies, but I noticed his hands kept slipping off of the steel like they were coated in butter. Sweaty palms. “Push”, I whispered into the darkness, and we heaved and shoved inch by inch, foot by foot, until it reached the door. We gave it one last grunt for good measure. Hell, if it took three of us to drive this thing fifteen feet, then it was gonna take an army of those bastards outside to knock it down. I’d wanted to breathe a long, deep sigh of relief, but all I could muster was a stuttered few breaths. We did it though. The front doors were chained, and the back door was blocked. We were officially sitting…or dead…ducks. We held onto our weapons and made our way back to the bar.

Theatrical Thursday – Five Came Back (1939).

Danger infested jungle? Check. Damsel in distress? You know it. Stylized heroes and cringe worthy villains? Absolutely. These and many other tried and true cinematic cliches are proudly on display in 1939’s Five Came Back, an archetypal RKO Radio Pictures disaster story said to be the forefather of the now popular genre. And as you can guess from the not so subtle title, Five Came Back. But who? The story revolves around the events of a plane crash; en route to Panama, a plane goes down in a fierce storm and plunges violently through the thick canopy of the Amazon jungle. When the plane crashes, all aboard are left to scratch about and fend for survival in the jungle, with the usual love and drama and intrigue craftily interwoven. Relationships bud and dwindle under the jungle sun, and the heroes struggle in earnest to repair the downed jet.

 

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Once there, the story begins to flesh out the individual stories of the intriguing cargo of nine characters, including a beautiful woman with a sketchy reputation, a gangster and his young nephew, an elderly married couple, a convicted anarchist and his handler, and a young couple eloping. And as time passes, each of them must endure their own personal setbacks and triumphs as they attempt to clear a path through the brush and repair the damaged aircraft.

 
Being an RKO Radio Pictures production, it’s considered somewhat of a B movie, however it plays like a solid blockbuster. Although handily cheesy at times, the plot plays out quite smoothly, the acting is up to par, you really learn to care about the fate of the characters and root for their survival, and the action builds and develops with intensity.

Featuring great early performances by Lucille Ball, Chester Morris, and Kent Taylor, Five Came Back is a must watch for any film aficionado. Check it out!