Film Summary CCCXCVII (Miss Robin Crusoe)


The poster proclaims that it was done in pathecolor! From what I can gather, it's a gimmick. The original Pathécolour was nothing more than a technique for film tinting. Apparently it didn't last beyond the mid-1930s and what's being used here is nothing more than colourisation for black and white film.
They only named after this old film techniques so they could give it a sense of class or simply so they could stick a fancy word on their poster and Intrigue people with the idea of coloured film.

We follow the adventures of a seabrat named Robin. Her father dragged her around the world on his vessel. Apparently she was getting constantly harassed (or possibly even molested) by various members of the crew.
From what I gather she decided to try and escape from the ship onto some nearby excluded Island. And apparently she was either joined or followed by one or two other random Shipmates from her father's boat.
May also be true that she was Shipwrecked and was actually thought dead on the island and that her boat along with her father is gone and Dead. With only one other crew member surviving with her.
I have to debate what happened at the beginning of the story because I missed the first 10 minutes of the film.

She ends up fighting with this other crew member because even in this must dire strait this guy still wants a piece of her. He ends up falling off of a cliff and now she's all alone on what she thinks is a deserted island. In fact she's not even sure if this is an Island, it may be part of the larger continent.

She wastes little time and decides to gather up what resources were washed up on shore. And goes about trying to build a small tree house in a fairly well forested area which happens to be inhabited by various animals who all take a liking to her. Including this one random monkey who decides to sit around with her and even saved her from a snake.
Now this monkey is easily the best part of the entire movie. She's fun and jumps around. She gets involved in the action, She even covers her eyes while Robin swims around naked in a random River. Yes the monkey has more modesty than anyone else in the entire freaking film.

It all seems to be going well for Robin. She's living comfortably, she's got her monkey pal, she can even keep a log in a book that I guess she found. But then things get complicated when she discovers that she's not the only human on the island.
There's a group of Native men who are having some sort of ritual sacrifice and where they tear these two random women apart. Robin upon seeing this decides to save one of the women from her most certain Doom. After this we get a little Montage where Robin in this random girl (who gets named Friday) pal around and survive on the island doing whatever it is you do when you're trying to survive.

Robin decides to try and construct a boat so that she and Friday can escape the island and return to civilisation. Even though Friday is technically a native of this island and most likely would have an incredibly difficult time in the ''Sophisticated'' world. But none of that matters, I'm assuming Robin would help her out and probably get her settled into London life.

However it all becomes even more complicated when this one random man washes up on the island from his own Ship Wreck. At first Robin is very hesitant to deal with him. She sees all men is evil. And frankly I can't blame her. Every man she's been involved with in this movie has been a pig or a jerk. And even this guy that she finds will end up being something of a prev at some point too. Admittedly he's not a complete asshole but he still questionable.

Now we have an awkward scenario where Robin is trying to deal with this guy Friday wants to flat-out kill him (because she's been convinced that all men are evil). And he just wants to get off the island. Now he claims that he'll come back and save the other two if he takes the boat, but how can any of us be sure.
It's the only point in the movie where we get any true tension. After a while they all kind of get used to each other. Friday stops trying to kill him and Robin even starts to fall for him a little bit.
The two of them inevitably make love at one point and then he heads off on the boat without telling her.
This angers Robin to no end and she decides never to trust anyone ever again. Outside of Friday of course.
and it's here that we get this odd little scene where Robin is sleeping in her bed and Fridays sitting next to her rubbing her hand. Up to this point any jokes you can make about them being lesbians were just that. but now I'm starting to question the whole thing. Robin's a straight girl who just happens to hate men because they're jerks to her. But we have absolutely no information on Friday. She's never shown any interest towards men and the only person that's ever shown her any compassion was Robin. so the idea that Friday has some form of affection for her isn't out of the question. part of me almost Wishes the film went in this direction. After all the drama all the destruction all the fighting it was a story of two random women stranded on an island finding love in each other.
Now we have an awkward scenario where Robin is trying to deal with this guy Friday wants to flat-out kill him (because she's been convinced that all men are evil). And he just wants to get off the island. Now he claims that he'll come back and save the other two if he takes the boat, but how can any of us be sure.
It's the only point in the movie where we get any true tension. After a while they all kind of get used to each other. Friday stops trying to kill him and Robin even starts to fall for him a little bit.
The two of them inevitably make love at one point and then he heads off on the boat without telling her.
This angers Robin to no end and she decides never to trust anyone ever again. Outside of Friday of course.
and it's here that we get this odd little scene where Robin is sleeping in her bed and Fridays sitting next to her rubbing her hand. Up to this point any jokes you can make about them being lesbians were just that. But now I'm starting to question the whole thing. Robin's a straight girl who just happens to hate men because they're jerks to her. But we have absolutely no information on Friday. She's never shown any interest towards men and the only person that's ever shown her any compassion was Robin. So the idea that Friday has some form of affection for Robin isn't out of the question. Part of me almost wishes the film went in this direction. After all the drama, all the destruction, all the fighting. It was a story of two random women stranded on an island finding love in each other.

Could you imagine that. A lesbian mixed-race couple film from 1954!

But stepping back into the reality of the film this random man does show back up. Claiming that he tried to make a connection with a major shipping boat out in the Boating Lanes. Robin doesn't really believe him and I would be there with her too if it wasn't for the fact that they decided to have this conversation during a fight with the other natives from earlier in the film. Now luckily for the whole lot of them a boat does show up and they are able to save themselves from the ever encroaching native invasion.

Then we get the final scene of Robin writing in her log book that they escaped the treachery of the island and all is well. I'm wondering how the heck she got her book given that she didn't run off into the sea with her original log book.
Did they come back to the island later? That seems kind of unlikely to me unless it was an uninhabited Island and somebody decided to try and colonise it? It is the 1600s after all.

Conclusion: It's an okay little Adventure film. There's nothing particularly special about it. Robin (Amanda Blake) is a fun character and Friday (Rosalind Hayes)* is a surprisingly fun. George Nader is George Nader. He's perfectly serviceable and does his role fine. That's all I can really say about him because I can't even remember his character's name in the film.
The film only has three major characters. 4 if you include the monkey.  It was able to keep my attention the whole time so that's pretty good for a such a small cast (of major characters anyways).

This film does hold a unique position in that it was entertaining for my cat. She watched about half of the entire film. I think it was the sounds of animals and some of the brightly lit tropical scenery that kept her attention. Still it's the only film I know where a cat was entertained.

* From what I can gather this poor lady only ever got rolls as ''tribal woman'' in a bunch of films in the 50s. It's kind of a shame because she puts a lot of effort in. She only has a few lines of dialogue so most of her performance comes in body language. Perhaps she would have done better in the silent era of films where body language really paid off.
And of course it would have been a lot easier if she wasn't the Jamaican woman who was most likely look down upon from the Star. But that's part of a much bigger problem. What a shame.

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