Rincon-7 Fun show to watch instead of the oft repeated reruns on TV. Saw it on TCM channel. No advertising was even better.The ship is the S.S. Banos. On the positive side, was it named after the city? Baños is located on the northern foothills of the Tungurahua volcano. The city is named after the hydrothermal springs of mineral water located around the city.Baños, pronounced correctly in the movie, is also Spanish for bathrooms (plural).Unintended or ?

henri sauvage You know you're in trouble from the moment you spot Barton MacLane in the title role, sporting a dueling scar and a Dollar Store Prussian accent. The arrival on the scene of John Mylong (Kroll) -- fresh from his major role in the same year's epically awful Phil Tucker extravaganza, "Robot Monster" -- hardly bodes well for the viewer, either.On the other hand, Leif Erickson is serviceable enough as a wise-cracking adventurer who needs to get out of the country fast, no questions asked, and assumes Kroll's identity. (Strangely, the country they're in is never identified, not even with a fictional appellation; the locals seem to have some sort of taboo against naming their own country, always referring instead to "South America". As in, "Goodbye! We hope you enjoyed your stay in South America." Now who the heck says that?) Virginia Grey is undeniably winsome and appealing as the romantic interest. Erickson and Grey aren't exactly Bogie and Bacall, but their presence helps elevate this cheapie at least one point above merely awful.I also give the film another point for an interesting premise: Fanatical Soviets (were there any other kind, in the 1950s?) plan to destroy the Panama Canal, by using a kamikaze freighter with a nuclear weapon hidden on board. (Although they must have known this would kick off WWIII, because after all, this is 1953, and only the U.S., Britain, and the Soviets have the bomb, so it's not as if there would be a bewildering array of suspects.) Regardless, the Poverty Row production values, constricted running time, pedestrian script, and uninspired direction make this movie much less interesting than it could have been. Plus, there are plot holes you could ... well, steer a freighter through.Like when Clegg -- the radio operator on the original Banos, who betrayed every one of his shipmates to a certain death -- kills Kroll in a dispute over his payoff, but then neglects to murder the hotel manager who witnesses the shooting. You'd think such a cold-blooded character would have plugged the manager, too, since he was unarmed and standing close by. (Judging from the obvious budget constraints, my theory is they couldn't afford the extra blanks.) Also, you'd think that fully four years after the Russkis detonated their first nuke, the bad guys could have come up with a simpler and more reliable way to set the thing off than some hare-brained rigmarole involving springing a scientist from the gulag, and threatening his daughter.And I did mention Barton MacLane's game-but-lame attempt at a menacing accent, right? He should have stuck with the "tough guy with a major character flaw" roles he did so well, epitomized by his corrupt ex-cop in "High Sierra".This one might hold some academic interest for you, if you're a student of early Cold War Era propaganda. But the slightly similar Sam Fuller film "Hell and High Water" -- which debuted a year later -- is in every way more watchable.

sol (Some Spoilers) One of many likewise movies released during the Cold War about the Commies, at home as well as in the USSR, trying to do their utmost to not only destroy our way of life. In this case destroy our, the Free Worlds, transportation centers and cause world wide panic and economic chaos by blowing up the vital Panama Canal. This will cause US shipping to travel almost 8,000 miles around South America, from San Fancisco to New York City, to get where it has to go without the use of the short-cut canal.Having blown up the banana boat "Banos" and replaced it with a ringer, another boat that looks just like it, the Communist operative Captain "Scarface" Trednor, Barton MacLane, is planning to use it as a guided missile, with him doing the guiding, by plowing it into the locks of the Panama Canal. Setting off an atomic device that he has hidden on the ship Capt. Scarface plans to blow himself his crew and the canal to smithereens. The captain just has one little problem he needs someone who knows just what button, the red or the blue, to push to both activate and set the bomb off!Having gotten German nuclear physicist Dr. Yager, Raldolph Anders, out of a Soviet Gulag the Commies want to dupe him into pushing the button by threatening to murder his daughter Isa, Virginia Grey, if he doesn't. Things would have gone all down hill for the good guys, the Free and Democratic World, if it wasn't for this scuzzy looking ship-hand Clegg, Paul Brineger. Scarface wanted to screw Clegg out of his pay in doing the Captains dirty work, sinking and killing everyone on the "Banos". It's that capitalistic disease, wanting to get paid for working, that in the end did the Scarface crew in by bringing the hero of the movie All-American, blond and blue eyed, Sam Wilton (Leif Erickson) on board. Sam had his own troubles and they didn't have to do with him having the burden on his head of saving the free world.With Clegg confronting this Soviet Agent Kroll, John Mylong, in his hotel room whom Scarface told him to contact, in getting his pay, he ended up killing Kroll. Clegg is then shot and killed himself, by the hotel manager, where Sam is staying and looking to check out of the country, San Brejo. Sam finds a golden opportunity in getting his hands on the dead Krolls passport and using it to get on the banana boat "Banos" to take him back to the states; not realizing that it's set to go off in a nuclear explosion at the entrance of the Panama Canal Zone. The rest of the movie has Sam impersonating Kroll and then finding out that he's, Kroll, not only a commie. The ships Captain Scarface is using Kroll to talk the very reluctant Dr. Yarger, who the real Kroll supposedly helped escaped from a Soviet Gulag, to push the magic button. With Isa on board we also have the handsome and clean cut looking Sam get to win her over, after she at first thought that he was that rotten Commie swine Kroll, and together with her and a number of other passenger Sam gets the drop on Scarface and his Commie. In the end has his entire mad and grandiose plan ends up at the bottom the Bermuda Triangle. Sam & Co. finally puts an end to this whole master plan on the part of Scarface and his Commie leaders in Moscow. Scarface and his commie cohorts who for all their smarts just couldn't find anyone, this in 1953 when the Soviet Union had both the Atomic and Hydrogen bomb, who knows where to push the right button in order to blow up the Panama Canal.

Snow Leopard This is a good B-grade action feature that makes good use of an involved story of intrigue. It's an example of how low-budget, shabby looking sets can actually help the atmosphere if they go with the right story, and meanwhile the story itself moves at a decent pace as things gradually unfold.Barton MacLane and Leif Erickson are the stars and antagonists. MacLane is "Captain Scarface", who is masterminding an evil and destructive scheme, while Erickson is a character designed as a Bogart-type antihero who finds himself in the right place and time to try to stop it. Erickson is solid in his role, while MacLane seems to relish his slightly outlandish character, making him interesting and menacing, if not always fully believable.All of the action takes place either at a shabby-looking port-side hotel or on the captain's equally rundown-looking freighter. The no-frills look of both sets makes them believable and helps the atmosphere, since putting the characters in such settings implicitly makes them too seem rather small and tattered.The story itself is easily interesting enough to hold your attention for the running time of slightly more than an hour. The actual plot of the bad guys comes across as somewhat far-fetched, but it is mostly a device to drive the intrigue. The story telling has a few rough edges, as can sometimes be the case with movies of this kind, but it has more than enough pluses to cancel these out. It's definitely worth seeing if you like movies of the genre.