MartinHafer
Cameron Mitchell plays an American who has come to Castro's Cuba in order to locate a friend who has mysteriously disappeared. The police are quite nice and helpful but Mitchell's life is constantly at risk due to evil counter-revolutionaries. In addition, Mitchell's old girlfriend and their past relationship together is a simmering subplot.This film was made during a tiny window in which the American film industry fell in love with Castro's Cuba and the Cubans moved towards Communism and repression. Errol Flynn made a couple films about this Cuba and "Pier 5, Havana" is another--odd little American relics where the new government was seen as very good and reasonable.Seeing this film and its very idealistic view of the new Cuba is pretty interesting. Here in Castro's new utopia, the police allow people to walk around town with handguns, they don't send suspects to political prisons and there are no purges and executions. Instead, the bad guys are all the counter-revolutionaries bent on undoing the recent revolution and a bringing about a return of the Batista government through violence and murder.Now all this is naive, but at the time it looked like this could be the new Cuba--so I can forgive this. However, what I had more trouble with was the occasionally bad dialog and awkward plotting. Now I am NO saying it's a bad film--it's just not a very good one. I'd recommend it more as an unusual curiosity as opposed to a good film.HORRIBLE Cliché WARNING: At the end, Mitchell catches the bad guy and is holding a gun on him. Does he shoot this dangerous man? NOPE! He drops the gun to duke it out man-to-man! Also, CONVENIENTLY, the lady's husband just happens to die so she and Mitchell can have each other. The way this is handled is SUPER-awkward.
sol1218
**SPOILERS** With his arrival to Havana just days after Cuban Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, known to his many followers as "El Beardo", and his man took over the city American businessman Steve Daggett, Cameron Mitchell, tries to find his good friend and army buddy, who saved his life in Korea, Hank Miller, Logan Field. Having dropped out of sight and very possibly into the Caribbean Sea after one of his drunken binges, that he's become famous for, Hank has been given up by everyone, except Steve, for deadGetting in touch with the newly installed, by Castro, Havana police chief Let. Garcia, Michael Granger, Steve is introduced to Hank's grieving wife Monica played by the statuesque 5 foot 7 inch tall Allison Hayes. This a year after Allison achieved motion picture immortality playing the part of Nancy Archer in "The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman". As we soon see Steve and, even though she refuses to acknowledge it, Monica have been lover from way back before she dropped him for his friend the helplessly alcoholic Hank Miller. It's when Lt. Garcia enlightens Monica with that fact, by showing Monica a photo of her Hank and Steve together, that she grudgingly admits that she and Steve have known each other for a number of years. All this soon becomes moot a minute later when it's brought out that Monica is now married to the handsome Cuban speed boat enthusiast and millionaire tobacco farmer Fernando Ricardo, Eduardo Noriaga.As it soon turns out Hank a cracker-jack airplane and speed boat mechanic somehow got involved with a gang of Batista, the Cuban dictator whom Castro ousted from power, supporters who want him to convert a number of outdated transport planes into fighter-bombers. These out of power gangsters, courtesy of the Castro Revoluton, are now planning to get their boy-Batista-back in power by any means possible! Even if they have to carpet bomb Havana to do it! Steve who never expected any of this cloak and dagger stuff has now, by his friendship with the missing Hank Miller, become the target of the Cuban Police in trying to overthrow the Castro Regime.The action gets hot and heavy with Steve trying to prevent a "Bay of Pigs", two years before it actually happened, like assault on Castro's Cuba from the air not, like the "Bay of Pigs" itself, the sea. It doesn't help Steve that much when the missing and reportedly dead Hank Miller shows up, drunk as usual, to make things even worse, for Steve and his ex-wife Monica, then they already were!It's just when the pro-Batista men were about to execute their devious plan, the bombing of Havana, that the police lead by Let. Garcia got the drop on them having them scurry for safety, as well as their lives, out of Cuba. Steve himself played no favorites between the two sides, Castro and Batista, now has a score to settle with the man, the the leader of Castro guy group, who not only kidnapped and later had his good friend Hank Miller murdered but ordered one of his goons, who was more then happy to do it, to try to assault Monica! This attempted rape on his, the goons, part failed miserably when Steve came to Monica's rescue and judo-chopped him to death!It's surreal to see an American made motion picture released in 1959 that actually championed Fidel Castro and his Marxist Regime in Cuba as the good guys in the movie! It was a year later that the US Government started through its CIA and Miami based Free Castro Cubans volunteers a number of major covert, and in the case of the "Bay of Pigs" overt, military actions to overthrow Castro that has lasted, some 50 years, until he himself voluntarily resigned from office because of ill health! Not because of any of the extensive military economic as well as political, in forcing country's to boycott trade with the Cuban Government, pressures put on him by the United States Government!
django-1
This is one of three low-budget programmers made by Cameron Mitchell for director Edward L. Cahn and the same production company (all UA releases) in 1959-60, all of which are worth seeing. Living in Miami, small businessman Cameron Mitchell comes to post-revolution Havana to find an old friend who was going to come and work for him, but never arrived and seems to have vanished. Although Mitchell's character is not a detective, this plays a lot like a detective film, and director Cahn is a master at pacing, so despite the miniscule budget (Havana is evoked by a few small sets and a few California exteriors with Spanish-language signs on them!), the film plays like a good little paperback-original mystery novel--especially so since Mitchell provides voice-over narration here and there to speed things along and to mention things that would be too expensive to show on camera. As always, Mitchell treats the role with the greatest respect, digging into the character and turning what could have been a generic role into someone the viewer cares about and roots for. Michael Granger is also excellent as the honest, professional Cuban police investigator who stays on the case himself and keeps running into Mitchell along the way. The film also features legendary 50s leading lady Allison Hayes (Gunslinger, The Unearthly, Attack of the 50 ft. Woman)as a woman who once knew Mitchell and was married to the missing man. Although a low-budget programmer that is only 67 minutes long and was no doubt made in a few weeks, PIER 5, HAVANA provides good, honest, hard-boiled entertainment and plays like a good 1950s detective TV show. Director Edward L. Cahn was the best kind of journeyman director, a true pro who could take a talented cast, a few small sets, and a genre-based script, and turn it all into a solid, unpretentious feature film that still entertains and engages decades after it was made. If you come to this film with enough willing suspension of disbelief, it won't matter that the punches thrown in the fight scenes miss by at least eight inches--the sound effects are synched accurately so you THINK the punch must have landed, and the scene has moved on before you have time to analyze it. I'll take honest entertainment like this over CGI effects any day of the week. This film was probably made for less than the bottled water budget on the last Eddie Murphy film. Bravo to director Cahn and star Cameron Mitchell!
