DISNEY - IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS(1962)
Hayley Mills(Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, That
Darn Cat, Summer Magic), Wilfred Hyde-White(My
Fair Lady, The Third Man, Buck Rogers[TV],
Battlestar Galctica), George Sanders(the Saint
and the Falcon movies of the 30's and 40's,
Rebecca,) and Maurice Chevalier(Gigi, many
French films)! How can you go wrong?!!! Welp,
you can't! This is a fun little tale about
Hayley in search of her father who was lost
on an expidition! Maurice plays a kindly old
professor who finds a note in a bottler supposedly
from her father! They gang up on Wilfred who
owned the ship that her father was on when he
was lost and persuade him to go with them to
South America to search for him! The music
is simple and sweet, but it's the story(and
Hayley) that carries this movie! A
A review from Amazon:
In Search of the Castaways was Hayley Mills's third
feature for Disney, an agreeable adventure--loosely
based on a Jules Verne story--with enough derring-do
to make kids happy and with the right touch of self-conscious
silliness to keep adults smiling. Mills plays Mary Grant, a
missing freighter captain's daughter convinced her father
is still alive somewhere in Earth's southern hemisphere.
With the help of her brother (Keith Hamshire) and a
veteran seaman (an extremely unlikely if charming
Maurice Chevalier), Mary convinces a shipping magnate,
Lord Glenarvan (Wilfrid Hyde-White), to set sail and find
the missing Captain Grant. The team survives freezing
weather, avalanches, a menacing condor, an active volcano,
Maori captors, and a plot by a slick George Sanders to
steal a ship. Meanwhile, Mary and Glenarvan's rakish son,
John (Michael Anderson Jr.), engage in flirtatious feuding.
The many memorable action sequences are wildly
improbable (all the more so watching the nonchalant
Chevalier have a go at Indiana Jones-like heroics) and
liberally employ old-fashioned process shots, mattes,
paintings, and other pre-digital special effects. The
incomparable Hyde-White looks as if he's having fun
alternately harrumphing and encouraging good old
British resolve, while Sanders effortlessly portrays,
for the umpteenth time, his brand of enchanting
villainy. Directed by Robert Stevenson (Mary Poppins).
In Search of the Castaways is presented here in its
original, full-screen format. --Tom Keogh