Seven Were Saved (1947) watch online HD

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 C-47 carrying diverse passengers crashes at sea off course and after several days of tribulation are finally found and picked up by an Air/Sea Rescue PBY flying boat.

Seven seems to be a popular number in movie titles -- "Seven Men From Now," "Seven Ways from Sundown," "Se7en." There's a regularity to the word. You could almost eliminate the vowels and it would still be intelligible, as it would be in Hebrew or Arabic. And "seven" is euphonious. It's neatly balanced. It just wouldn't be the same if it were "Eighteen Were Saved." If we ignore the requisite romantic triangles -- there are two -- it's basically two stories: the search for survivors of the crash, adrift somewhere in a rubber life raft, and the procedures used by Air/Sea Rescue. The emphasis is on the trials experienced by the survivors. This could be Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" if it had more money, better actors, and more talented writers and director. The similarities are obvious. Aboard the raft are a nurse, a pilot who is nominally in charge but is blinded, a suicide, a wisecracking enlisted man with a wounded leg, and an enemy prisoner of war.

The prisoner is Captain Yamura, headed for a war-crimes trial and the noose. He's played with the usual sneer by Richard Loo, the Hawaiian-born Chinese, Hollywood's favorite "Jap" during the war years. This movie was released two years after the war but apparently we hadn't forgiven the Japanese because Loo is nothing if not treacherous and cynical. Ironically, his lines were designed to make him sound bloodthirsty but in fact he makes one or two good points.

Good shots of PBYs taking off and landing, several times at an airport in the Pacific and one on the sea. The PBYs were an old design, dating from the mid-30s, and they had long range, as befits a patrol plane, but nothing else that was special. They were slow and underarmed compared to their Japanese counterparts. But they LOOKED inviting. The fuselage had all sorts of bumps and blisters and windows, suggesting an interior made of nooks and crannies. The flight engineer sat inside the pylon that held the parasol wing high up above the spray. Most multi-engined aircraft of the period, like the C-47, although aerodynamically much more sound, were dull inside. Nothing but empty space.

You don't see many flying boats anymore, just light airplanes with floats that enable them to land on isolated lakes. Nobody needs flying boats. Every one-horse town, every minuscule island, now has its own airstrip. How extraordinarily ordinary.

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.

***SPOILERS*** What can truly be said to be a re-make, three years later, of the Alfred Hitchcock lost at sea thriller "Lifeboat" the film "Seven Were Saved" has a number of American service men & women stranded on a life raft in the middle of the South China Sea due to the treachery of a Japanese POW Col. Yamura played by Chinese/American actor Richard Loo a veteran in playing Japanese bad guys in movies during WWII. It was Col. Yamura who on his way to Manila to be tried as a war criminal who hijacked the plane and, in a kamikaze like swan dive, crashed it into the sea with all aboard!

In the middle of nowhere and with no help in sight the plane's captain Allen Denton,Richard Denning, takes command of the life raft guiding it, by following the stars, to the safety of the nearest land mass or island that could well be as far as 800 miles away. As for that suicidal creep Col. Yamura, he was lucky that, unlike U-boat Captain Schmit in the movie "Lifeboat", he wasn't lynched and thrown overboard, as shark bait,by the enraged plane crash survivors! We also have the story of US Navy nurse Susan Briscoe, Catherine Craig, who's believe to be dead, shot by the Japs in WWII, husband Philip Smith, Keith Richards, who had since lost his memory due to malaria is also, small world isn't it, one of the plane passenger on his way home to be treated in a US military hospital.

****SPOILERS****Life saving ending with Susan's boyfriend and future husband Capt. Jim Willis,Russell Hayden, suffering from a high fever sneaking out of the hospital and without the proper papers taking command of the rescue crew in finding the life raft with all those on board. As if by extrasensory perception Wills does contacts the life raft and in the end saves Susan and the all it's surviving members including the ungrateful, in not being killed on the spot, Col.Namura who's well on his way to be executed, after being found guilty, in Malia as war major war criminal. As for both Susan and Captain Willis they don't have to worry about Susan's known to be dead husband Philip Smith standing in the way of their marriage! In a supreme act of self sacrifice he earlier committed suicide by jumping overboard after his memory came back and he found out he'll, in being legally married to Susan, prevent the marriage, as well as committing an act of bigamy, from happening!

This film is barely over an hour long but it ia an active hour. It is about a sea rescue of 7 victims of an attempted air high jacking in the 1940's that is so stupid that it goes entirely wrong. The pilot winds up having to crash the plane into the ocean and 8 folks including one of the most foolish high jackers ever on film wind up on a life boat for several days,

The story is also about the the air sea rescue teams who go out lookings for air flight crash survivors. The film is made slickly by a small production company which asembles a largely unknown cast into a pretty good script for the ensemble cast to make a pretty good dramatic effort. It differs from Hitchcocks "Lifeboat" from the same film era because of the World War 2 theme and the lower price production by an independent producer.

While not a classic, it is an okay film whose short length is a benefit because it makes the drama better with few of the dead spots a longer film would have. The title indicates how things turn out.

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.

This is an enjoyable film, however, it's very far from a great film--mostly due to an uneven script. Like many B-movies, you can see this one was rushed into production--warts and all.

"Seven Were Saved" is set in the final days of WWII in the Pacific. The focus in the beginning of the film is on an air-sea rescue pilot that flies Catalinas. He is planning on getting married to a young lieutenant but just before they are separated, they argue. Not surprisingly, due to the film title and cliché, the lady is among a group lost at sea. The survivors cling to life in a raft--hoping to somehow be saved in the very vast ocean.

The idea isn't bad--sort of like a poor man's version of "Lifeboat". But unlike the Hitchcock film, the writing has an awful lot of clichés. For example, just by chance, one member of this group recognizes the injured man brought aboard--he's her husband!!! And, while she loves him, he was assume killed and she's remarried. And, given the clichéd style, you KNOW that by the end of the film this guy will be dead!! There are a few other minor glitches here and there, but the actors (Especially Richard Denning) try their best. Interesting but quite flawed.