Forbidden Island

For a board game, see Forbidden Island (game).
Forbidden Island
Directed by Charles B. Griffith
Produced by Charles B. Griffith
Written by Charles B. Griffith
Starring Jon Hall
Nan Adams
John Farrow
Jonathan Haze
Edited by Jerome Thoms
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release dates
  • 1959
Running time
66 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $90,000[1]

Forbidden Island is a 1959 film directed by Charles B. Griffith. It was his debut as director, although he had directed second unit on Attack of the Crab Monsters.

Plot

A freelance frogman (Jon Hall) is hired by a psychotic treasure hunter to recover an emerald that went down in a shipwreck.

Cast

Production

Griffith had signed with Columbia under a five-film writer-producer-director contract; he ended up only making two of them, the other being Ghost of the China Sea, which he did not direct.

"They were really terrible," he recalled later. "It stopped me for twenty years from ever directing again. They were really rank. You see, I got chicken and started to write very safely within a formula to please the major studios, and of course, you can't do that."[2]

The film was shot on location in Hawaii.[3] Rebecca Welles was originally cast in the lead role but had to pull out and was replaced by Nan Adams.[4]

"I had an early chance to direct but was too dumb to know that I had to work with the editor," Griffith said later. "They told me I had an Oscar-winning editor; I told them we needed an Oscar-winning firestarter."[1]

References

External links