Krakatoa, East of Java

Krakatoa, East of Java is a 1968 American disaster film starring Maximilian Schell and Brian Keith. During the 1970s, the film was re-released under the title Volcano. The story is loosely based on events surrounding the 1883 eruption of the volcano on the island of Krakatoa, with the characters engaged in the recovery of a cargo of pearls from a shipwreck perilously close to the volcano. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Special Visual Effects. Krakatoa is actually due west of Java, but the movie's producers thought that "East" sounded more atmospheric.

Plot

In 1883, the volcano on the island of Krakatoa begins to erupt, terrorizing the children at a mission school in Palembang on nearby Sumatra. In Anjer, Java, the steamer Batavia Queen, commanded by Captain Chris Hanson, takes aboard passengers: Douglas Rigby, owner and operator of a diving bell; balloonists Giovanni and Leoncavallo Borghese; diver Harry Connerly; Connerly's mistress Charley Adams; four female Japanese pearl divers led by Toshi; and Laura Travis, who had an extramarital affair with Hanson in Batavia. Laura was married to an abusive man with whom she had a son named Peter. When she asked for a divorce in order to stay with Hanson, her husband left her, taking both Peter and a fortune in pearls with him aboard the steamer Arianna. The Arianna had sunk off Krakatoa, and a guilt-ridden Laura, fearing that Peter had died, had spent a year in a mental institution.

Hanson has organized the voyage to find the Arianna, salvage the pearls, and find Peter if he is still alive. Colonial authorities arrive just before the Batavia Queen departs and force Hanson to take 30 convicts and their jailer aboard for transportation to Madura Island. Hanson plans to deliver the convicts to Madura after recovering the pearls off Krakatoa. One of the prisoners, Lester Danzig, is an acquaintance of Hanson's, and Hanson allows him to make the voyage on deck instead of in the hold. A colonial official warns that the island is a "raging volcano", but Hanson ignores him.

During the voyage to Krakatoa, her crew and passengers observe strange phenomena: seabirds swarming in huge flocks by day, a series of fiery explosions erupting from the sea, and a high-pitched, ear-splitting sound like that of escaping steam. Danzig discovers that Connerly is secretly using laudanum to kill the pain of a lung disease because it might interfere with his diving abilities. Danzig informs Connerly of Laura's time in the mental institution, calling into question the veracity of her story about the pearls. The Borgheses, Connerly, Charley, Rigby, and Toshi confront Hanson, but he assures them that her story is true.

The Batavia Queen arrives off Krakatoa to find the island shrouded in thick smoke. After it clears the Borgheses ascend in their balloon while Rigby descends in his diving bell. The Borgheses discover the wreck of the Arianna and guide the Batavia Queen and the submerged Rigby to it. Immediately afterwards, the motor driving the steering propeller fails and they careen helplessly into the volcano's crater. They jettison the useless engine to reduce weight and are blown clear by a volcanic explosion which sets their balloon afire. Drifting away from the island, they leap into the sea and are rescued.

Danzig tells Hanson of Connerly's lung problems, and Hanson decides that he will dive instead of Connerly. While Connerly and Hanson argue, Rigby's diving bell becomes snagged on coral. The pearl divers, Hanson, and Connerly all dive into the water to free Rigby. While everyone is occupied, Danzig steals a pistol and frees the prisoners. They take over the ship, throw the jailer overboard, and imprison the passengers and crew in the hold. Unaware of the events aboard the Batavia Queen, Hanson and Connerly find the Ariannas safe, and attach a cable to it to have it hoisted aboard. Upon their return, Danzig has Connerly lowered into the hold but forces Hanson to look on at gunpoint as he opens the Ariannas safe. They find nothing inside but a cheap pocket watch. When an explosion on Krakatoa distracts Danzig, Hanson overpowers him, and manages to drive the remaining prisoners off the ship.

After Hanson frees the passengers and crew, Rigby finds another compartment in the safe which contains the Ariannas logbook. The logbook reveals the Arianna made a port call at Palembang before sinking, and a letter tucked into the logbook says Peter disembarked there to attend the mission school. Hanson steams to Palembang to find Peter. By now, Krakatoa is erupting continually, hurling lava bombs into the surrounding sea. Toshi is killed when one of the lava bombs strikes her.

The Batavia Queen arrives off Palembang to find the mission school heavily damaged and abandoned. Hanson hails a passing junk and is informed that the school's staff and students had fled Palembang that morning, intending to sail to Java. The Batavia Queen comes to the assistance of a sinking sampan, which proves to be the school's boat. The Batavia Queens rescue everyone aboard the sampan, including Peter, who has a joyful reunion with Laura. A chest belonging to Peter is brought aboard the Batavia Queen. It contains the missing pearls, and Connerly, Rigby, the Borgheses, and the three surviving pearl divers receive their shares of the fortune.

Krakatoa's violent explosions increase; Hanson assumes that they will cause a tsunami and prepares the Batavia Queen to ride it out. Hanson attempts to assure Connerly that they will be safer on the ship, but Connerly demands that he and any other passenger be allowed to disembark. Giovanni Borghese, Charley, and the three surviving pearl divers join Connerly in the lifeboat and row to Anjer.

Krakatoa disintegrates in one final, cataclysmic explosion, which generates an enormous tsunami. It strikes Anjer shortly after the Batavia Queens lifeboat arrives; unable to outrun the wave, Connerly and Charley embrace for the last time before the wave engulfs and kills them. At sea, Hanson, Laura, Peter, Rigby, Leoncavallo Borghese, the refugees from the mission school, and the ship's crew ride out the tsunami successfully aboard the Batavia Queen.

Cast

(as given in end credits)

Maximilian Schell as Captain Chris Hanson
Diane Baker as Laura Travis
Brian Keith as Harry Connerly
Barbara Werle as Charley Adams
Sal Mineo as Leoncavallo Borghese
Rossano Brazzi as Giovanni Borghese
John Leyton as Dr. Douglas Rigby
J.D. Cannon as Lester Danzig
Jacqui Chan as Toshi
Rob't Hall as Guard [spelled "Robert" in opening credits]
Victoria Young as Kiko
Marc Lawrence as Mr. Jacobs (First Mate)
Midori Arimoto as Midori
Niall MacGinnis as Harbor Master (David)
Joseph Hann as Mr. Kuan (Second Mate)
Sumi Haru as Sumi
Geoffrey Holder as Sailor
Alan Hoskins as Jan
Peter Kowalski as Peter Travis

Additionally, Peter Graves is listed in the opening credits.

Production

Development

In February 1955 Philip Yordan announced he would write and produce a film of the Krakatoa eruption with a budget of US$2 million to US$3 million being spent on special effects. It was going to be the first film made under Yordan's contract with Columbia Pictures. Jerry Wald would be executive producer. It took a number of years for the movie to be made, and in the meantime Yordan started making movies in Spain. In January 1967 he said he intended to film background footage for the movie in Indonesia and wanted Rock Hudson to star.

In February 1967 Milo Frank arrived in Madrid to begin supervising production of the film. Bernard L. Kowalski was attached to direct; Kowalski was best known for his television work, including the pilots for Mission Impossible, The Rat Patrol, The Monroes, and N.Y.P.D.. The director said "That seemed to impress the Cinerama people who were looking for a young director who could handle what looked to be a pretty difficult picture." The script was co-written by Bernard Gordon, a blacklisted writer who did a number of scripts for Yordan under pseudonyms.

Finance came in part from the ABC network.

Special effects

In an unusual approach to making the film, the producers of Krakatoa, East of Java had the special effects scenes shot before the script had been completed. The script then was written so as to incorporate the special effects sequences.

The French film director, art director, production designer, set designer, and screenwriter Eugène Lourié had worked for the film's producers as art and special-effects director for the 1965 movie Crack in the World, and they hired him to create the special effects for Krakatoa, East of Java.

In 1965, Lourié scouted the coast of Spain for a suitable steamer for use in the film as the fictional Batavia Queen; ultimately he chose a cargo ship – a former passenger-cargo ship employed as a tramp steamer between Spain and Morocco – he found unloading coal at a pier in Bilbao whose captain said she had been built in England sometime around 1880.

Lourié had the steamer remodeled in Málaga, Spain, at a shipyard which transformed her into the Batavia Queen by increasing the height of her funnel and masts and installing new yards on her masts and a new bowsprit and carved wooden figurehead on her bow. The steamer also was provided with functioning sails for her masts and yards. spraying water into the tank with powerful fire hoses, and employing a wind machine to disturb the water's surface.

Alex Weldon created the pyrotechnic sequences of Krakatoa erupting and, eventually, exploding. Scenes of the volcano erupting in the distance were created using a split screen, with real footage of the ocean in the lower part of the frame and a flopped volcano miniature reflection added above it in an optical printer.

The visual effects, relying entirely on in-camera model work, are still impressive today and considered an immense achievement by 1969 standards, enough so for it to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. It lost to Marooned.

Yordan's departure

In addition to its challenging special effects, the makers of Krakatoa, East of Java encountered various difficulties during the film's production. Producer Philip Yordan dropped out of the production after its special effects had already been shot, and a new associate producer came on board who commissioned a new script.

These changes in leadership led to conceptual changes that created some inconsistency in tone and odd moments in the finished film. Krakatoa, East of Java is only very loosely based on the actual events surrounding the eruption, which it uses merely as a backdrop for its storyline.

Hanson's statement early in the film that Krakatoa had been quiet for 200 years is accurate – the last eruption prior to 1883 appears to have been in 1680 – and his view that the ongoing volcanic activity on the island, which had begun in May 1883, did not pose a threat to anyone not actually on Krakatoa itself reflected the attitude of many people in the area during the summer of 1883, some of whom treated the erupting volcano as a tourist attraction.

Krakatoa is actually located west, not east, of Java.

The Batavia Queen appears to require at least three days to make the voyage from Anjer to Krakatoa. In fact, the two locations are only apart, and the ship could have made the voyage in a few hours.

The beginning sequence of the film depicts the fictional mission school at Palembang as lying within sight of Krakatoa; in fact, Palembang lies from Krakatoa. Late in the film, when the Batavia Queen arrives off Palembang in search of Peter Travis, Palembang appears to be along the coast of Sumatra; however, Palembang, while accessible to ships via the Musi River, lies well inland. The Batavia Queen finds the mission school in ruins and ablaze because of Krakatoa's eruption; although Krakatoa's eruption was audible in Palembang and the air pressure wave from its final explosion was strong enough to shake the walls of houses and cause cracks to appear in some, the town did not suffer the serious damage implied by the condition of the mission school in the film.

The violent and continuous explosions on Krakatoa as the Batavia Queen steams from Krakatoa to Palembang and then to the vicinity of Anjer late in the film appear to depict the final, cataclysmic eruption of the volcano on 26–27 August 1883. The huge tsunami that engulfs Anjer and its lighthouse in the film's climactic sequence is consistent with the wave that struck the west coast of Java on the morning of 27 August 1883, rising to a height of at Merak and destroying both Anjer – where it was tall – and the Fourth Point Lighthouse.

While the Batavia Queen, her passengers and crew, and the story of her voyage are entirely fictitious, her experience in encountering the tsunami at sea at the end of the film bears a striking resemblance to that of the interisland steamer Gouverneur-Generaal Loudon, which rode out a very large tsunami while steaming in the Sunda Strait on the morning of 27 August 1883.

The film's depiction of the salvage participants dividing up the pearls among themselves is legally flawed. The pearls are not found on the wreck; they are later located in the possession of Laura's son. Nevertheless, the salvage partners divide the treasure equally. According to maritime law, the pearls are not salvage and are the legal property of the boy. The salvage partners have no right to the pearls.

Reception

Critical reception

Krakatoa, East of Java received generally poor reviews, with critics claiming that the story was pedestrian, badly paced, and poorly told, and the special effects so constant and overwhelming as to become numbing. However, a few critics declared the film enjoyable and a vivid depiction of exotic places and life at sea. Stanley Newman in Cue magazine called it "simple-minded fun" and Francis Herridge in the New York Post had kind words for its recreation of the devastation. Based on the cities used by Variety for their weekly box office chart, it was the seventeenth highest-grossing film of the year in the United States.

Later releases

Reprocessed in "Feelarama", a version of the then-popular Sensurround, the movie was re-released under the title Volcano during the 1970s.

The phrase "Krakatoa, east of Java" is used in the lyrics to the 1979 song "Lava" by The B-52's, included in their first album The B-52's: "My heart's crackin' like a Krakatoa. Krakatoa, east of Java, molten bodies, fiery lava." It also appears in the song "New World Disorder" by Biohazard, from the album of the same name.

The film is mentioned in the Wings episode "Just Say No". When Brian jokes that if his date the previous night had been a movie, "waves would be crashing, rockets would be launching, and volcanoes would be erupting," Lowell replies, "I've seen that movie: Krakatoa, East of Java. There wasn't much sex, but nobody had any time."

In 1982 the French group Indochine wrote the song, À l'est de Java, narrating the story of the movie. The lyrics were written by Nicola Sirkis and the music was composed by Dominik Nicolas.

An exterior shot of the Cinerama Dome in the 2019 Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood depicts the theater in 1969 advertising Krakatoa, East of Java. The recreated vintage posters were left on the theater's exterior as part of Once Upon a Time in Hollywoods 70mm engagement there.

Notes

References

External links

Photo gallery of models, miniatures, and special effects used in Krakatoa, East of Java and Eugène Lourié's account of filming the special effects sequences at Model Ships in the Cinema << LINK changed to https://www.modelshipsinthecinema.com/search?q=krakatoa+east+of+java
Krakatoa, East of Java (full movie) on YouTube