SOS Pacific

A flying boat is forced to ditch in the Pacific during a thunderstorm. Aboard are the owner-pilot Jack Bennett (John Gregson), the navigator Willy (Cec Linder), the flight attendant Teresa (Pier Angeli) and six passengers: a policeman, Petersen (Clifford Evans); his prisoner Mark (Eddie Constantine); Whitey Mullen (Richard Attenborough), a witness against Mark; Dr Strauss, a German scientist (Gunnar Möller); Miss Shaw, a middle-aged Englishwoman (Jean Anderson) and Maria, a young European woman (Eva Bartok).

The plane comes down near an island. The navigator has been killed by toxic gas produced when the wrong kind of extinguisher is used on an electrical fire aboard the plane but the others make it to land in two rubber dinghies. Just offshore a fleet of derelict ships is anchored. On the island are two concrete bunkers. In one, a number of goats are tethered. The other, which is lead-lined, contains cameras and measuring instruments. The cameras are trained on a device standing on a smaller island some distance away.

The castaways realise that they are in the middle of an H-Bomb testing range and that a bomb is to be detonated in a few hours.

• Richard Attenborough as Whitey Mullen
• Pier Angeli as Teresa
• John Gregson as Jack Bennett
• Eva Bartok as Maria
• Eddie Constantine as Mark Reisner
• Jean Anderson as Miss Shaw
• Cec Linder as Willy
• Clifford Evans as Petersen
• Gunnar Möller as Krauss
• Harold Kasket as Monk (as Harold Kaskett)
• Andrew Faulds as Sea Captain
• Cyril Shaps as Louis
• Tom Bowman as Alberto

The script was originally developed by Joseph Losey and Ben Barzman which Losey called a "melodrama... intended as a warning about the dangers of the bomb and the moral consequences of exploding it." Sydney Box was to produce and Columbia agreed to finance subject to a star agreeing to play the lead. Box sent Losey to meet with Hardy Krüger who was making a film at Cambridge University called Bachelor of Hearts. Kruger agreed to make the film{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43199855 |title=A BACHELOR OF HEARTS |newspaper=The Australian Women's Weekly |volume=26 |issue=34 |location=Australia, Australia |date=28 January 1959 |accessdate=22 March 2023 |page=48 |via=National Library of Australia}} but Box said Columbia would not approve Losey as a director because of the Hollywood blacklist. However Box had a lower budgeted film he could finance, Blind Date, and Losey made that with Kruger instead.{{cite book|page=169=170|url=https://archive.org/details/conversationswit0000lose/page/169/mode/1up?|publisher=Methuen| title=Conversations with Losey|last=Losey|first= Joseph|year=1985}}

Filming took place at Pinewood Studios with location work over five weeks shot on the Canary Islands.{{cite magazine|url=https://archive.org/details/variety214-1959-05/page/n9/mode/1up?|title=Sevilla Crawls with Crews|page=11|date=6 May 1959|magazine=Variety}} It was one of a number of movies the Rank Organisation financed around this time featuring European stars to appeal to European audiences.{{cite magazine|magazine=Filmink|url=https://www.filmink.com.au/forgotten-british-film-moguls-john-davis/|first=Stephen|last=Vagg|date=26 April 2025|access-date=26 April 2025|title=Forgotten British film moguls: John Davis}}

Richard Attenborough called it "a pretty indifferent picture" but he enjoyed working with Pier Angeli so much he invited her to co star in his and Green's next film, The Angry Silence.{{cite book|first=Brian|last=McFarlane|url=https://archive.org/details/autobiographyofb0000unse_i5w8/page/235/mode/1up?q=%22sos+pacific%22+|pages=235–236|title= An autobiography of British cinema : as told by the filmmakers and actors who made it|year=1997 }} According to Jean Anderson, Attenborough almost died filming an action sequence which rendered him unconscious.{{cite book|page=4|url=https://archive.org/details/sixtyvoicesceleb0000unse/page/4/mode/1up?q=%22sos+pacific%22+|publisher=BFI|title= Sixty voices : celebrities recall the golden age of British cinema|year=1992 }}

Green later said there was "nothing remarkable" about the film.{{cite web|url=https://historyproject.org.uk/interview/guy-green|website=British Entertainment History Project|title=Interview with Guy Green side 3|date=19 November 1991|first=Arnold|last= Schwartzman}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{IMDb title|id=0053234|title=SOS Pacific}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20170620184550/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6b6846ae SOS Pacific] at the British Film Institute{{better source needed|reason=Help request: a live link can be searched for at https://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/search/expert - if available, replace the archive URL with the live link. Or if none found, remove this 'better source needed' template. | date=October 2023}}
• [https://letterboxd.com/film/sos-pacific/ SOS Pacific] at Letterbox DVD

{{Guy Green}}

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Category:1959 films

Category:1950s thriller films

Category:British thriller films

Category:British black-and-white films

Category:Films about aviation accidents or incidents

Category:Films directed by Guy Green

Category:Films about nuclear war and weapons

Category:Films set in Oceania

Category:Films set on uninhabited islands

Category:Films shot in the Canary Islands

Category:1950s English-language films

Category:1950s British films

Category:English-language thriller films