Walk into Paradise (Lee Robinson & Giorgio Pagliero, 1956) aka Walk into Hell; produced by Southern Films International (Lee Robinson & Chips Rafferty); Chips Rafferty, Françoise Christophe, Reg Lye; filmed in both French and English in PNG; action adventure exploring for oil in PNG; 93 min.
This was Southern International's first of three co-productions made in French as well as English, and, like the third, The Restless and the Damned, the story's basis is in exploration/exploitation. Chips Rafferty's character, Steve, has to walk into an area of the PNG highlands because Reg Lye's character, Ned, has discovered oil there. They have to take a beautiful Frenchwoman with them (as you do) and meet a good-looking Frenchman (played by a bad actor) not far along, which is convenient as they end up as an item at the end. The main thing Steve has to do, when he gets there, apart from appease the locals (with some tricky whiteman's magic called medicine) is make an airstrip. There's some flat land, but it's grass-covered, and there's no time to cut it, so Steve asks the big chief (it was his sons who are cured by the Frenchwoman, who conveniently happens to be a doctor of medicine) to arrange for a big 'singsing' - which consists of a day of trampling which results of the grass being sufficiently flattened. (Tho when the aircraft finally does land, it is on cleared ground.)
Quite a lot of this might as well be seen as almost a documentary. There are literally thousands of 'extras', who may be acting the big singsing but only as themselves in party mode. I suggest that the residual interest is in seeing so many PNG people—as they were in 1956.
I think this is one of only two fictional narrative features made wholly in PNG (along with To Have and To Hold, John Hillcoat 1997).
Garry Gillard | New: 30 November, 2012 | Now: 2 December, 2019