KRAKATOA EAST OF JAVA came out in 1969 and as an eight year old seeing it at the Kachina Theatre in it's widescreen Cinerama glory, it was an amazing afternoon.
If you are 8 years old and reading this, you should absolutely get this immediately and check it out.
All others should run like a lava flow is chasing you away from this big budget, cheesy stinkbomb.
Maximillian Schell somehow escapes with his dignity with a quiet portrayal as the captain of the Batavia Queen.
To serve the story, his boat holds a widow (Diane Baker in a horrible, shrieking performance) looking for her son, along with a bell diver (Brian Keith) with claustrophobia, his wife who is on screen only to sing annoying songs, a balloon pilot (Rosanno Brazzi) and his assistant (Sal Mineo) who use their balloon to assist looking for treasure and rounding out the passengers, a bunch of convicts.
All their soap opera stories converge at the base of Krakatoa, the massive volcano you will be begging to explode long before it finally erupts.
The music score by sixties film music maestro DeVol is horrible, even funny it's so bad. Kids and night club singers are constantly bursting into songs meant to be covered in lava.
When the volcano finally does explode, its pretty repetitive and done with some pretty Godzilla movie level minatures and effects.
When you are 8, this movie rocks.
Now, not so much. By the way, Krakatoa is actually WEST of Java. When that's the level of research that went into your title, you can only imagine the care that went into the rest of this stinkbomb.
A magma, lava, tidal wave covered F.
