Dick Sand ( Jose Luis Marcos , son of the producer Arturo Marcos) is assigned by his godfather Admiral Marlowe (Edmund Purdom) to care his stepmother in their travel aboard the "Pilgrim". The Pilgrim is a whale-ship captained by Captain Hull (Marc Cassot) , with a motley crew , as a suspicious cook (William Berger) , a hunk harpoonist (Luis Barboo) , a scientific (Sergio Mendizabal) , among others . But things go wrong when the stiff captain and the brave seamen die attacking a whale , following dramatic events, the ship becomes without a captain , then the fifteen Year Old Boy shall command the ship . As the young captain will attempt to keep all sailors in peace, and arrive in their destination .
Adventure movie by Jesus Franco full of action , thrills and made in short budget .The movie is narrated by means of a continuous pursuit in the jungle and we are seeing several African animals and use of stock-shots . The picture is filled with familiar faces from the 60s and 70s, that starred the ordinary co-prductions in Western , terror , and Euro-spy , such as : William Berger ,Howard Vernon, Fernando Bilbao, Sergio Mendizábal , and Alberto Dalbes . Freely based on Jules Verne novel , and the movies have been kind to Verne's best known films are the followings : George Melies immortalized FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON in an early film. Walt Disney did films on TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and THE CHILDREN OF CAPTAIN GRANT (the latter entitled IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS). Ray Harryhausen's special effects are one of the treats of MYSTERIOUS ISLAND. Mike Todd produced AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS. And James Mason did make that JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH. What is usually not realized is the lesser known titles that have gotten onto the screen - for Jules Verne wrote nearly 80 novels.Miguel Strogoff was made into a film in Great Britain in the 1930s with Anton Walbrook. Fve weeks in balloom was made into a comedy adventure (with Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Red Buttons) in the 1960s. A Mexican version of the long forgotten EIGHT HUNDRED LEAGUES OVER THE AMAZON was made in the 1950s. A French version title Matia Sandorff was made starring Louis Jordan in the 1960s.
The motion picture was regularly directed by Jess Frank . Jesus Franco was a Stajanovist filmmaker who realized 203 movies . However , here he doesn't use his trademarks , as he pulls off a traditional narration , without zooms , neither lousy pace . As the picture belongs to Franco's first period in which he made passable flicks . Jesus uses to sign under pseudonym , among the aliases he used, apart from the names Jess Franco or Franco Manera, were Jess Frank, Robert Zimmerman, Frank Hollman, Clifford Brown, David Khune , Toni Falt, James P. Johnson, Charlie Christian, David Tough , among others . Franco used to utilize usual marks such as zooms , nudism , foreground on objects , filmmaking in ¨do-it-yourself effort¨ style or DIY and managing to work extraordinarily quickly , realizing some fun diversions, and a lot of absolute crap . Many pictures had nice photography , full of lights and shades in Orson Welles style , in fact , Franco was direction-assistant in ¨Chimes at midnight¨ and edited ¨El Quijote¨ by Welles . He often used to introduce second , third or fourth versions , including Hardcore or Softcore inserts or sexual stocks many of them played by his muse Lina Romay . In many of the more than 200 films he's directed he has also worked as composer, writer, cinematographer and editor. His first was "We Are 18 Years Old" and the second picture was ¨Gritos en la Noche¨ (1962) , the best of all them , also titled "The Awful Dr. Orlof" , it's followed by various sequels such as El Secreto del Dr. Orloff (1964) aka "The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll" , " Orloff y el hombre invisible (1970) aka "Dr. Orloff's Invisible Monster" and finally "Faceless" (1987) . He also directed to the great Christopher Lee in 4 films : "The Bloody Judge" , ¨Count Dracula¨, ¨The Blood of Fu Manchu¨ and ¨The castle of Fu Manchu¨ . Jesús's influence has been notable all over Europe . From his huge body of work we can deduce that Jesús Franco is one of the most restless directors of Spanish cinema and often releasing several titles at the same time. Many of his films have had problems in getting released, and others have been made directly for video. More than once his staunchest supporters have found his "new" films to contain much footage from one or more of his older films . Jesús Franco is a survivor in a time when most of his colleagues tried to please the government administration. He broke up with all that and got the independence he was seeking. He always went upstream in an ephemeral industry that fed opportunists and curbed the activity of many professionals . But time doesn't pass in vain, and Jesus' production has diminished since the 90s ; however he went on shooting until his recent death .
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