HotToastyRag If you like Jack Lemmon, Rita Hayworth, and Robert Mitchum, you'll be tempted to rent Fire Down Below, a love triangle set in the Caribbean. Since I've seen it, I can tell you the beginning and the end are the best parts. The middle isn't that great.To set the scene, the first scene is in a nightclub. The aptly named "Stretch" Cox and his troupe are filmed doing a ridiculously impossible limbo, impressing the audience and making them expect just as much fire from the rest of the movie. Jack and Bob are introduced, as friends and partners in the smuggling business, but when they take a job from icy Rita, their friendship is tested. At first she's drawn to the sweet and safe Jack, but when Bob is around, there's just no ignoring her real feelings. For the most part, the love triangle is overshadowed by the smuggling and boat businesses, and that's why the movie isn't very interesting. I'm really not a Rita Hayworth fan, so I tended to fast forward her scenes. I've never understood why she played in roles where she was supposed to be irresistible, but to each his own. If you agree with me, you can check out the beginning, get the gist of the love triangle, and then skip to the last fifteen or twenty minutes when things get really exciting. No spoilers here, but the last few scenes are very good.

writers_reign Not, it has to be said, Irwin Shaw's finest hour. Shaw wrote his first screenplay, The Big Game, in 1936, on the strength of his hit One- Act Broadway play, Bury The Dead, and in the intervening 21 years he'd turned out some fine stuff, The Talk Of The Town, Easy Living (not the 1937 entry with Jean Arthur and Ray Milland but the 1948 film, same title, totally different story, with Victor Mature and Lucille Ball) etc. True, in this case he was adapting a pot- boiler by Max Catto but there aren't enough Shaw 'touches' that make his 'voice' unique. Over the years his novels - The Young Lions, Two Weeks In Another Town - plays - The Gentle People - and short stories - Tip On A Dead Jockey = have been adapted for the screen with varying results with the finest effort by far being In The French Style, which blended two of his short stories - A Year To Learn The Language, In The French Style - into one.On paper this looked tasty, Jack Lemmon, Bob Mitchum. Rita Hayworth plus a screenplay by Shaw, what's not to like. Alas, plenty, or at least more than enough. Lemmon and Mitchum can't quite convince as partners in a tramp steamer in Hemmingway country (To Have and Have Not uses a similar Caribbean backdrop, and Lemmon and Hayworth have even less chemistry. Forget fire there's not even Ired Down Below.

michfaldo I will have to order this movie to give a proper review... I have not watched it but plan on ordering it and coming back to hopefully give a full review about it! I'm glad it's on IMDb. My mother told me she was an extra in this when production went to Trinidad to film. She, along with friends were all 'background/extra's.' She told me all the young ladies became fascinated with the movie business and wanted to become actresses after being in the background! So ironic... I'm in the business and have been for a few years now, started as an extra and also work on the production side of things... guess show biz is meant to be in the family! According to the reviews, seems like it's a good 'ole Classic!

arieliondotcom There are more fumes than fire in this film. And some of those fumes are downright stinky. Rita Hayworth's performance is silly to the point of being laughable. She barely mumbles her way through in what I've got to assume is supposed to be a sexy voice but comes across as a parody of herself as the female lead in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?Jack Lemmon, spoiled playboy son of a wealthy man befriends vagobond loser Mitchum and both wind up with fading femme fatale Hayworth in a romp in a boat. A large part of the problem of the movie is that it can't decide what it wants to be. It starts out as what seems to be a lighthearted musical (which captured my interest considering I'd never seen any of these three leads in a musical). But then the road suddenly dips into adventure, then suddenly turns into sultry love story, then adventure, then drama then...Well, frankly I lost count...then suddenly you're thrown against a wall as it comes to a sudden stop. But none of these bends in the road were done well. They should have stuck to the music because that was the most memorable part.Jack Lemmon made the movie and it might be worth watching for him alone. But otherwise it is a dull flicker of what should have been a fiery film.