Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) on Netflix
Approved19571h 47mAdventureDramaWar
Left behind when his submarine dives, Corporal Allison drifts for days before reaching a Pacific island, where the only other inhabitant is Sister Angela, an Irish nun. Japanese troops arrive.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.3/1010,589 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1944, Corporal Allison goes ashore in the South Pacific with a Marine reconnaissance party from a submarine. Japanese troops spot the landing, the submarine dives, and the scouts are left behind. Allison gets to a rubber raft and drifts for days before landing on an island that holds an empty settlement and one resident: Sister Angela, an Irish nun in her novitiate. She came four days earlier with an elderly priest to bring out another clergyman, found that the Japanese had beaten them there, and the people who had brought them there had gone; the priest did not live long. The two live on fruit, fish and game, and they intend to sail his raft three hundred miles south to Fiji. Then a Japanese detachment comes ashore, and they hide in a cave.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The National Legion of Decency monitored the production closely and sent a representative to observe the filming; Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum ad-libbed a spoof scene, left out of the final print, in which their characters kissed and grabbed at each other.
- Screenwriter John Lee Mahin called Charles Shaw's source novel "a very dirty book" and said producer Gene Frenke kept pushing for more sex to be added; Mahin and director John Huston resisted.
- The U.S. Marines provided troops for the invasion climax; six Japanese people living in Brazil played some leading Japanese characters, and Chinese people from laundries and restaurants in Trinidad and Tobago played the rest of the Japanese soldiers.
