User Reviews

Disaster films can be great fun—they can also live up to their title... Disaster films also have a tendency to be very formulated and very clichéd... To see a disaster film with actual originality, or at least a decent plot twist, would definitely be a welcome surprise...

'The Devil at 4 O'Clock' takes place before the actual eruption... There is enough tension in the air to keep the audience interested... The film opens with a small plane bound for Tahiti, stopping for the night at the small French island of Kalua, where the Governor is notifying the authorities of a disturbance at the mouth of the island volcano...

The passengers are three chained convicts—Harry, Mareel, and Charlie— and Father Perreau (Kerwin Mathews), who has come to replace Father Doonan... The Governor releases the three convicts into Father Doonan's charge, and they are sent to repair the chapel at a children's leper hospital...

When Father Doonan prepares to leave Kalua, the volcano erupts and an earthquake rocks the island... So he enlists the convicts' aid, promising to speak up for commuting their sentences if they will help him evacuate the hospital and rescue the children...

Spencer Tracy is very well suited to the movie and gives the boost it needs to be a successful action film... He does a great job in the leading man role as the strong, determined priest trapped with the outgoing tide that following afternoon...

Frank Sinatra backs up the legendary actor as the brave Harry who brings the children safely to the waiting schooner, bids his new bride farewell, and returns to meet the devil at 4 o'clock...

Barbara Luna—the lovely blind girl dangerously in love—gives a nice aspect of romance to the film but there is a severe lack of chemistry between her and Sinatra... Their relationship seems extremely rushed...

'The Devil at 4 O'Clock,' vaguely resembling 'The Inn of the Sixth Happiness,' is a film that builds momentum slowly before unleashing its fury...

Max Catto was a prolific novelist in the 50s and 60s, churning out adventure tales and dramas, just the right kind to turn into movies. Sort of like John Clancy, who will be equally forgotten in 50 years. Probably the most famous Catto oeuvre is "Trapeze," starring Burt Lancaster as a trapeze artist training Tony Curtis to do a deadly stunt, with Gina Lollobrigida to heat things up. It's quite a good movie, and in fact Catto's book was renamed after the film when "Trapeze" did well at the box office!

"Devil" is Catto's effort at combining drama and disaster: A disillusioned priest (Spencer Tracy) finds God again with the help of three convicts (one of them Frank Sinatra) when a Pacific volcano island is about to blow its top, and they must rescue a children's leper colony with a beautiful young nurse thrown in for Frankie. So we have everything here: lava, death, lepers, love story, drunk priests, evil French governors who turn out to have a heart after all, atheist doctors, prostitutes-turned nurse. Catto is at it with interesting characters!

Ultimately, this is what makes this film so watchable even decades later: it's got interesting people feeling each other out while the simple linear plot of "the big one's gonna blow, and we have a deadline to get outta here" takes its inevitable course. As in many films of that era, there's no happy ending for many of the characters, not just the token misfortune you get in most dramas nowadays because we know that "audiences don't like unhappy endings." Well, I do like good films, even if they have unhappy endings.

"Devil" is the granddaddy of disaster films, and spawned a whole industry in the 70s from "Towering Inferno" to "Poseidon Adventure" to "Earthquake" (all better than their remakes because they focused on the humans, not the buildings).

The special effects in this film are soooo much more realistic than the CGI crap we get in most disaster movies nowadays. The reason is they were all physical, with actual flames, mud pits, dust from collapsing building, boulders falling, churches shaking, cracks opening in the ground. Yes, some are rubber rocks and plants on sets, but they're still 'real.' The fakest-looking things are the lava flows and volcanic eruption flames, which do not quite match the real thing - but still look pretty good. For example, in the lava flows, which are well- simulated with crusty cooler rock flowing on red viscous rock, the thing that's missing is the shimmer you get from real superheated air above the rocks, as anyone familiar with volcano documentaries knows. Still, they are better than modern CGI lava flows, which behave completely nonphysically. (I confess I am a physics guy, so I am sensitive to totally unrealistic special effects that violate Newton's laws.)

A commendable movie, as are Catto's now-forgotten books, most of which of course have been ripped off knowingly or unknowingly by the current generation of equally doomed bestseller writers. A fun to watch, family-safe 7/10 if you can tolerate a bit of sermonizing by Tracy and his disciples, who are offset by plenty of doubting doctors, truck drivers and convicts.

Own this movie and always enjoy watching it. I remember first seeing it at the drive-in theater when I was a kid. The volcanic eruption and lava is really awesome...whether it's realistic or not, I don't know, but it's sure neat to watch. The island setting is beautiful and the filming is well done. The earthquake was pretty cool, too. I like the fact that the 3 convicts turn out to be decent guys who do what has to be done. Frank Sinatra, especially changes from the cocky smart-mouthed know-it-all to a person with feelings for others. The ending, with the island exploding is pretty outrageous, but, again, fun to watch. I really like this show! Watch it for fun, not to critique its realism.

The Devil at 4 O'Clock is an excellent disaster movie from 1961.

Three convicts on their way to Tahiti land on a volcanic island in the South Seas to allow a new priest to alight. They help out at a leper hospital there but a volcano blows its top and the children at the hospital are in danger. Outgoing Father Dunnon and the three convicts team up and go to rescue the children but a footbridge collapses, stranding Dunoon and one of the convicts, who later dies. The children make it to safety and Ol' Blue Eyes, who plays one of the convicts goes back to be with Dunoon and the island finally explodes and sinks into the sea.

This movie has excellent special effects, especially the eruption scenes.

As well as Frank Sinartra, the cast also includes the excellent Spencer Tracy as Dunoon and Kerwin Mathews (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jack the Giant Killer).

The Devil at 4 O'Clock is a great way to spend a couple of hours. Excellent.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

While not as great as two of Spencer Tracy's late-career films of about the same time ("Inherit The Wind" and "Judgment At Nuremberg"), this is still a darned good film which got very good reviews at the time...higher than the ratings here at IMDb would indicate.

Spencer Tracy is excellent as the weathered old priest who founded a leper colony hospital. His acting is as good here as almost any of his other films...well, not as stunning as in "Inherit The Wind"...but still a lesson for any aspiring actor. Tracy was beginning to be ill at this point in his life, and there are a number of scenes here where he looks not well.

Frank Sinatra does well as one of the convicts...but his behavior on the set was, according to the new Tracy biography, churlish.

Other supporting roles are also excellent, although for the most part, the actors will not be particularly familiar to the American audience.

The special effects -- the earthquakes and especially the volcano eruptions -- were quite advanced for 1960, and received a great deal of recognition at the time. However, there are also some stupid errors in the film. For example,when did you ever hear tires squealing on a sandy dirt road? This is a very good film, worth watching, and worth consideration for your DVD shelf.

I'm astounded at the generally good reviews this film has received. The farther along you get in this movie, the worse the writing becomes. I'm a huge Frank Sinatra fan, and an even bigger Spencer Tracy fan, but neither of them can save this cliché-ridden mess. The idea of this old man parachuting into the jungle is absurd enough, but what was the point of it? Logically, they should have found the leper colony abandoned. There were plenty of adults there. Why were they just sitting around, meekly awaiting death? Why didn't they pack up their charges and try to get out of there? Then, of course, all the rescuers have to die, in order that their sacrifice appears noble. The convict who dies in the quicksand is the silliest. I've always seen people die in quicksand in movies by sinking downwards. In this case the poor man encounters quicksand with a current, and he's swept away from his would-be rescuer at an absurd speed. The worst writing is saved for the very end, when Sinatra throws his life away, for no reason whatsoever. Noble? He's committing suicide! The nobility escapes me.

this is an excellent movie: the characters are multi-dimensional, and particularly Spencer Tracy reveals a rare depth in character development.

overall, many of the personal developments throughout the movie remind me of graham Greene's "the burnt out case", not because of the leprosy association, but because of the definition of "terminal".

warmly recommended for fans of Sinatra, Spencer Tracy, and graham Greene.

generally, a good movie. somehow, it gets a bit sentimental, but the overall idea does not disappear until 2/3 of the movie.