Five Came Back

Twelve people are on a plane bound for South America. It runs into a storm, goes off course and comes down in the Amazon. On board are a couple, a gangster, a politician's son, the bounty hunter taking him back, a child, and the pilots. The engine can be repaired, but for the plane to lift, weight has to come off. The arithmetic emerges: of the twelve, only five can go. They have to decide who stays, and the forest is closing in. John Farrow directs the American film; seventy-five minutes, with Chester Morris, Lucille Ball and John Carradine in the cast. It is one of the earliest survival-after-a-crash pictures; Farrow filmed the same story again in 1956 as Back from Eternity.