User reviews

Coming after Hitchcock's "lifeboat" and before Richard Sale's "seven waves away" aka "abandon ship" , "seven were saved" suffers by comparison ; it has neither the suspense of the former nor the cruel realistic strength of the latter.

The title is stupid ,for it spoils most of the interest ; okay ,it's not the person one thinks the wreck will cost him his life but that's it .Made on a shoestring budget , the movie makes the best of it ,even though it has not much to offer.

There is absolutely nothing fancy about this. It's a simple story with a simple set. While escorting an accused Japanese war criminal to his trial in Manila, an American air force plane crashes in the South China Sea, and the passengers and crew (including the Japanese war criminal) have to find a way to work together to survive until they're rescued. Along the way they face the sorts of things you would expect in the circumstances - a lack of food and water, injuries from the crash, tension around the presence of Colonel Yamura, shark attacks, etc. Almost the entire movie is set on the life raft, so the composite cast had to work together pretty well in order to make this interesting - and for the most part they succeeded. Catherine Craig and Richard Denning had the most significant parts as the two on the raft who seemed to be the most in control, and they did well with their parts. The basic bit of suspense in the movie is which seven are going to survive. The title tells us that there will be seven, but there are eight survivors of the crash, so it's a bit of a guessing game as to which one isn't going to make it.

This seems to be a bit of a tribute to American air and sea rescue forces, and it's interesting enough to see how they handle the rescue once the raft is discovered. It's a definite B-Movie, but it's not a bad one. (6/10)

A plane bound for Manilla is skyjacked by Richard Loo and crashes several hundred miles off course. While the survivors squabble and struggle in a life raft, the Sea Air Rescue Service searches for them.

If that half-sounds like Hitchcock's LIFEBOAT with Catherine Craig sitting in for Tallulah Bankhead, that's how it struck me. It's produced by William Pine and William Thomas, and the Dollar Bills never saw a plot they didn't like -- even if the Hitchcock original was one of his few financial failures. Add in the rescue effort, and have William Pine make one of his occasional directorial appearance, and profits would flow. A few Hero Poses of Richard Denning -- doing a Joel McCrea impersonation -- with Miss Craig looking up at him adoringly, and Bob's your uncle.

Any subtext is buried way down, and the bravura composition work that Hitch and his crew accomplished is missing, but the Dollar Bills knew how to get a bang for their buck. It doesn't aspire to be a great picture, but it accomplishes its modest goals of filling 75 minutes entertainingly.

A Japanese colonel being transported to face war crimes charges in the Philippines causes his transport plane to crash in the middle of the South China Sea and the survivors must battle each other and the elements whilst the air sea rescue service try to find them. At times there is a little jeopardy as they gradually run out of supplies and mishaps begin to befall their party, and tensions mount too as the pilot "Capt. Danton" (Richard Denning) insists that they share their meagre rations with their enemy but oddly enough the film is just too short to do the plot justice and the ending is really rather flat.

This film is a bad combination of Lifeboat and a hundred other films. The acting is pretty bad, and the cinematography reminded me of Stan and Ollie in the French Foreign Legion in Flying Deuces. Other than that the film is almost watchable. Actually, its not watchable; don't waste your time.

Seven Were Saved was another project from the 'Dollar Bills' of Paramount, that B unit production company that churned out a lot of the second features for Paramount, stuff that got 2nd billed to main features that Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Alan Ladd when they were being shown. It's a story of air/sea rescue post World War II and had they stuck to that it might have been a decent film. William Pine and William Thomas were the 'dollar bills'.

Instead we got a cut rate version of Lifeboat when an army transport plane went down and several people were stranded in a rubber lifeboat the plane carried. How it happened was a bit on the bizarre side also. Richard Loo who was of Chinese background played many a cruel Japanese officer during and after World War II. He's in custody going to trial for war crimes in the Phillipines, but breaks free and tries to hijack the plane. It goes sufficiently off course to make tracking most difficult.

Richard Denning is piloting the plane and Catherine Craig otherwise known as Mrs. Robert Preston is an army nurse is one of the passengers and married to Russell Hayden. Hayden is one of the air/sea rescue pilots who's temporarily out of action and he breaks regulation to aid in the rescue.

I won't go into the melodrama in the lifeboat, you saw it all before and better with Alfred Hitchcock.

This movie takes place a year after World War II and features a United States air-sea rescue pilot by the name of "Captain Jim Willis" (Russell Hayden) who is stationed on an island in the South China Sea and flies a PBY in search of survivors who might be shipwrecked in that area. His fiancé, "Lieutenant Susan Briscoe" (Catherine Craig) is a nurse who also works in that area and is eager for the both of them to return to the United States where they can get married and start a family. Unfortunately, a quarrel breaks out between them when Jim decides to extend his tour of duty and as a result Susan decides to leave not long afterward in order to escort a sick patient to Manila and from there to the United States. Another key passenger just happens to be a Japanese prisoner by the name of "Colonel Yamura" (Richard Loo) who is about to be tried for war crimes. As luck would have it, Colonel Yamura manages to temporarily skyjack the plane which then results in it crashing into the ocean. Eight passengers manage to survive in a life raft but with limited rations the question soon becomes whether any of them will be able to survive the rough seas of the shark-infested waters long enough to be rescued. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this turned out to be an okay film which suffered from a lack of suspense and a rather predictable ending. Part of the problem for that was the title which clearly disclosed how many passengers would eventually be saved. Additionally, it also had a grade-B quality to it from start-to-finish. In any case, while this movie clearly wasn't great by any means, it still managed to keep my attention for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

"Seven Were Saved" takes place at the end of World War II. An Army Air Force plane is flying to the Philippines with several military passengers on board. One is a nurse and one is a POW Japanese colonel. He is under guard and going to the Philippines to stand trial there for war crimes. He throws hot coffee on the solder guarding him and grabs the pistol from his holster. After shooting the officer escort, knocking out the navigator and shooting the copilot, he hijacks the plane. He sends it off in a different direction, apparently intending to take his chances on a small island somewhere. But when the plane runs out of gas and crashes in the sea, eight people make it to the raft.

The colonel has lost the pistol and now all have to try to stay alive until rescued But they have flown a couple hundred miles off their course. So, the sea rescue planes sent out don't find them anywhere. After more than a week, the head of the rescue operations decides to stop the searches. But, one pilot, who had been sick and grounded, decided to make one last sweep outside their known route. The nurse onboard was his sweetheart. Well, one can guess how this will come out. Before they are ultimately rescued, one of the men who had been ill disappears over the side during the night.

This isn't a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 "Lifeboat," but that film no doubt influenced Paramount on this film. The prologue on the screen dedicates the film "to the men of the AAF Air Sea Rescue Service, who risk their lives daily that others may live."

Instead of trying to be so sociable and humorous, the Sergeant should have been more alert guarding the prisoner. After he tells the nurse that he would have a cup of coffee and it would be okay for the prisoner to have a cup, he says, "You know, I really can't stand coffee. I just take it to cure my insomnia."

This is a B-level film with no prominent actors among the cast. But, they all give good performances.

Apart from Richard Denning, of whom I have not seen very much anyway, I know nobody in this obviously amateurish cast orchestrated by Mr Pine, a complete unknown as a director who, on the strength of this work, really should consider some other profession for a living.

Two Hitchcock films come to mind as the film opens: FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (1940) and LIFEBOAT (1944). Of course, unless you mistake the forest for the tree, Mr Pine is unable to even slightly imitate the plane crash into the ocean in FOREIGN, and he certainly cannot keep dialogue flowing in the lifeboat, besides a sad inbility to extract decent acting from the players.

With cinematography typical of C, at best a B production, it is the script that really sends this film down the chutes: a Japanese Army colonel is being taken WITHOUT so much as handcuffs clapped on him to a trial for war crimes in Manila, the Philippines. Needless to say, the Japanese officer is no dimwit and has nothing to lose, so he grabs his watcher's gun, takes over the aircraft and forces it to change course until brave Denning dives into the sea with his arms around his head for protection.

Before that, we learn of the completely unnecessary presence of an amnesiac. That amnesia is recognized by his wife (small world and even smaller lifeboat!) and he leaves a written message which somehow survives the lifeboat's capsizing. Most curious of all, Catherine Craig leaves her hubby-to-be on land and starts having the hots for Captain Denning, who first gets a bandage over his left eye, then is blinded by sun glare in his right eye, but somehow knows the course thanks to the stars. Craig French-kisses him when they are back on land, under the watchful eye of hubby-to-be. Her explanation: she wants kids with the cuckold.

I caught myself wondering about such trivial things as how did the lifeboat occupants get rid of their excretions? Back in WWII, it was poor form for women to do it in public.

It was commendable that the Japanese colonel was kept alive but he just disappears from the narrative when the rescue happens, and whether or not he reached Manila and paid for his evil doings we will never know. And, frankly, I could not care.

Total waste of 71 minutes in one's life. 3/10.