"Fair Wind to Java" is a seafaring adventure set in the Dutch East Indies. It follows Captain Boll, a determined sea captain played by none other than Fred MacMurray, who is on a mission to find a lost treasure of diamonds.
The film is filled with swashbuckling action, exotic locales, and a touch of romance. As Boll's journey unfolds, he encounters treacherous pirates, a mysterious, and frankly rather odd, kidnapped woman named Kim Kim (the mysterious, and frankly rather odd Vera Ralston), and the looming threat of volcanic eruption.
As this sort of film goes, this one isn't bad. The story mostly makes scene and doesn't feel like everything popular tossed into a blender, or simply made up on the spot as so many of these B adventures do. The acting however is true to the form (decidedly so-so), and the locations and locals are a weird mix of vaguely Arabian and vaguely Asian (or as Hollywood at that time would say, Oriental). It isn't at all realistic in anyway, but the primitive practical effects are fun, particularly the depiction of the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa. Fred MacMurray gets into an extended and not half bad fight scene (with his shirt off no less).
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