ShangLuda Admirable film.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Michael_Elliott Back from Eternity (1956) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Director Farrow joins a small group of filmmakers who were able to remake one of their earlier pictures and this here is pretty much the same story he told in FIVE CAME BACK. The story is pretty simple as a group of people have their plane crash in a South American jungle where they try to survive not only the elements but the possible threat of attack by some natives. They finally catch a couple breaks to where they might be able to get the plane in working order but then they're confronted with a bigger choice on who will get to leave. I can understand why Farrow decided to remake his earlier picture as he made it clear that he thought the special effects could improve the film. I watched FIVE CAME BACK a few years earlier and thought it was a decent little film but I remember thinking that at just 75-minutes there wasn't enough time devoted to the characters to make us really care about them. That is something changed here because the first forty-five minutes is completely devoted to the characters but I think they go a bit overboard. While the remake gives us a lot of character development the majority of it is just boring melodrama stuff that we've seen in countless other disaster pictures. You have the bad guy (Rod Steiger) on his way to a firing squad. You have the pilot (Robert Ryan) who is hiding a dark secret. You got the sexy blonde (Anita Ekberg) who is running towards a questionable job. You have an elderly couple (Beulah Bondi, Cameron Homme) trying to enjoy their final years. You have a young couple (Phyllis Kirk, Gene Berry) who find themselves constantly fighting. We've seen these characters so many times in so many movies that you really don't feel that connected to them. Another problem is that pretty much nothing happens in terms of suspense until the final ten-minutes. At 100-minutes this film takes a long time getting to the conclusion and when it finally does come there's some nice drama but why they didn't try to have a few threats earlier in the picture is beyond me. Performances are good for the most part as all the actors fit their parts nicely and that includes Steiger and that Spanish accent. Farrow mixes in a few new scenes including two of the women fighting in a lake, which really seems out of place and another silly scene involving a crime boss. This RKO picture was hampered with a low-budget, which prevented the crash from being that good but then again I've seen worse. Both FIVE CAME BACK and BACK TO ETERNITY are interesting films but neither one really rises to a level to where I'd call them good. If I had to pick I'd probably go with the original as being the better movie but I think film buffs will enjoy watching both and seeing what Farrow tried to change and improve nearly twenty-years after his first attempt.

Jonathon Dabell For a film director to remake one of his own movies is a fairly rare occurrence, but that's not to say it hasn't happened down the years. Cecil B DeMille made two versions of The Ten Commandments (1923 and 1956); Alfred Hitchcock made two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 and 1956); The Vanishing was also done twice by George Sluizer (1988 and 1993).Back From Eternity marks the turn of John Farrow to join this select band of movie makers who have remade one of their own pictures. In this case, Farrow resurrects his 1939 philosophical jungle adventure Five Came Back, but his purpose in doing so is never particularly clear. Indeed, in most aspects this film is actually INFERIOR to its predecessor. Yes, there are occasional moving and exciting moments…. but on the whole it should have been a lot better.A plane flying across South America runs into difficulties during a freak storm and crash lands in the jungle. The pilot Bill Lonagan (Robert Ryan) and his co-pilot Joe Brooks (Keith Andes) reckon they can fix the damaged aircraft, at least partially, but unfortunately for the passengers it's not just a simple case of sitting around waiting for the plane to be repaired. Gradually they come to realise that they're in cannibal country, with a tribe of headhunters preparing to close in for the kill. Things get even worse when the pilots announce they'll only be able to take five passengers aboard the plane – any more will make it impossible to take off due to the weakened engines. Tensions boil as the group debate and argue over who should go and who should stay to face horrible and certain death…..Back From Eternity definitely has a strong cast, with Ryan doing solid work as the pilot with a booze addiction and Rod Steiger in splendid form as a Death Row criminal among their number. Keith Andes makes a surprisingly big impression too as the co-pilot who gets involved in a love triangle. The plot automatically throws up fascinating philosophical questions about the value of life. How can you say one life is more precious than another? How would YOU persuade your way aboard the makeshift plane if you were in those circumstances? Is there a purely methodical way of choosing five worthy survivors… and would there be any way of avoiding the inevitable emotional implications when making such a choice? Unfortunately, though, these inherent philosophical ideas don't make for as engrossing a picture as you might expect. Maybe it's the wordy and over-extended script, or maybe it's the silly extraneous details (e.g a needless love triangle, an exploitative female swamp-wrestling scene, etc.), but Back From Eternity just never quite fulfils its potential.

kathcongdrb1 This is one of my favorite "little" movies. It is better than the original "Five Came Back" and is a curiosity because of John Farrow's having directed both versions. The fact that it IS all done on a sound stage fits it perfectly, as well as the black and white. It reminds me of another of my favorites: "The Thing (From Another World)" with Kenneth Tobey. Great ensemble acting and not a word of dialog wasted. I think Robert Ryan's height helps him here; Chester Morris is on the short side. The story? Plane goes up, plane comes down. In jungle. People must get out of jungle to safety. However, there are problems with the plane and with the very unfriendly folds who live in the jungle. Kind of like an early version of "Lost."

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Remake of the 1939 classic "Five Came Home" by the same director John Farrow with Rod Steiger stealing the acting honors as convicted criminal Vasquez being sent back to Boca Grande, in Pararico, to face the firing squad for the attempted murder of the country's dictator General Gomaz.Getting caught in a violent lightning storm over the unexplored jungles of South America the PLA passenger plane, minus it's stewardess who fell overboard, crash lands with it's engines in operation but in the middle of headhunter country. Trying to get the plane fixed before the local headhunters get a beat on the planes passengers and crew tempers start to flair between bounty hunter Crimp, Fread Clark, and his prisoner Vasquez. Crimp is a bit taken by the change of events with Vasquez now the man who's in charge, since Vasquez is an expert on the habits of the South American headhunters, not him starts to panic. Crimp ends up running off in the unfriendly jungle with the only gun among the people on the plane and ends up losing his head over it. As the days go by it becomes evident that there's no rescue party on the way to save them and both the pilot and co-pilot Bill Lonagan & Joe Brooks, Robert Ryan & Kieth Andes, work around the clock fixing the planes engines. Everything possibly is done to get the plane airborne before the drums start to beat meaning that the headhunters are on their way to finish off the planes survivors.Tense drama in the South American Amazon basin with a stellar cast knowing that the end is near but not exactly who among them will end up being killed by the headhunters. It's decided that only five will come back since the planes engines can't carry any more weight. The disabled airplane has to have as light as possible a payload in order to take off and fly over the dense jungle mountain range to become fully airborne. Gut-wrenching final where it's decided who will live and who will die, by being left behind, at the hands of the headhunters and for the most part Vasquez and the elderly couple Henry & Martha Spangler, Cameron Prud'Homm & Beula Bondi voluntarily stay behind to meet their fate. The Spanglers, in their 70's, knowing that they don't have long to live anyway and Vasquez facing execution. The movie "Back from Eternity" also has a love triangle between Jud Ellis, Gene Barry, and his fiancé Louise Melhorn, Phillis Kirk, and co-pilot Joe Brooks. The poor and terrified Jud ends up coming out on the losing end. Jud gets gunned down, trying to get on the plane, at the end of the movie by Vasquez with his bride-to-be Louise not bothering to come to his aid but not even giving Jud as much a second glance as he lay dying! There's also the gorgeous and voluptuous Anita Ekberg, the former Miss Sweden, as singer and bar girl Rena who's trying to get her papers straighten out in order to become a legal American citizen. There's also little six year old Jon Provost, of Lassie fame, as Tommy Malone the son of a Las Vegas mobster who just got knocked off. Tommy is being looked after and protected by his late dad's best friend and right hand man Jesse white, Pete Boswick. It turns out that Rena, not Jesse, ends up on the departing plane with little Tommy as the movie "Back From Eternity" comes to an end.