It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Krakatoa: East of Java tells of a boatload of assorted people swanning about in the vicinity of Krakatoa in the period immediately before and during the biggest volcanic eruption in recorded human history.This is the sort of spectacular special effects epic we used to get in the days before film effects were advanced enough to be truly spectacular. Oh, how we loved them in those days. Nowadays, we see a well-built model boat (telltale giveaway being the absence of anyone on deck), less effective model sets, some poor matte lines, big water out of scale with the models, some fun pyrotechnics on a model island on a water tank skyline, far too many obviously repeated shots, and some stock footage of tidal waves.All of this takes place as a backdrop to the tedious goings on between a not-very-interesting group of people, so that you don't really care who survives and who doesn't (in fact there are those who you want the volcano to polish off even though you're not supposed to).I bet this was better back in 1969, when big water was still acceptable.

When I was a lad, in the Cutler Ridge Cinema, after having paid 10 cents, and spent a buck at the Rexall Candy aisle.. jeez, no wonder my teeth rotted by 14! Anyway, as I was saying, Id sit in the theater among other kids my age, in plush (to me) theater seats, looking at the most marvelous blue screen.. sweeping from side to side in a grand arc, the glory of CINERAMA. The reverse embossed edge of the screen spilled the color into the front 10 rows of the seats. I saw many a good 60'z s sci fi like The Lost World, with David Hedison and Claude Rains, the original Voyage to The Bottom of the Sea movie with Walter Pidgeon as Admiral Nelson.I saw Krakatoa, East of Java in such a theater. Then it was the quintessential volcano movie with spectacular fireworks, a monstrous tidal wave that wipes out all of Sumatra.. and Java and everything else, by the looks of it. The human story is a droll treasure hunt looking for a box full of sacs of large perfect pearls, lost when a woman loses track of her husband and now cast-a-way son. Maximillian Schell plays a crusty but benevolent captain of a steel boat called the Batavia Queen. He is money-whipped into taking a group of convicts that look like they just got up out of the pit at Devils Island.Also are a father son team of balloonists (Sal Mineo's last film I believe) A deep sea explorer who has brought along an experimental diving bell, and a laudanum junkie ex diver played by Brian Keith and his floozy wife.."and smokers!". Ooops, I forgot the Japanese pearl divers (Toshi et el), although Sal Mineo says Tushy.. I swear.The cheesy soundtrack is peppered with amateurish musical numbers, a pseudo-Beachboy tenor obbligato.piece.Java Girl.Even when I saw this movie the first time, I knew the plastic volcano mountain was hokey. Krakatoa was a gentle island volcano with a low slope, not the alpine Matter-cano in the film. Also it is located WEST, not EAST of Java, but that would have made a clumsy title.. Krakatoa, West of Java.. doesn't click does it? Anyway, I bought the DVD cause I collect sorry cheesy B movies like this. That it has such screen greats as Schell, Keith, Brazzi, Mineo and Baker among others, is a definite plus. Well worth the $5.99!

Adventure/epic movie with a light and plain plot about a vessel weigh anchor from Singapur and with a motley and disparate crew (Diane Baker, Rossano Brazzi, Sal Mineo, Barbara Werle, among others) looking for a hidden treasure in a shipwrecked long time ago . The ship captain (Maximilian Schell) will have to confront rebels , deep-sea divers (Brian Keith), prisoner breakouts (J.D.Cannon) , mutiny , fire and facing specially the Krakatoa volcanic explosion (1883) , which proved to be the most spectacular natural disaster in history .This jumbled picture was exhibited in big screen called Cinerama . This became one of the last features to use Todd-AO for principal photography . The film unites the Julio Verne's spirit with melodrama and the action footage is top-notch . There are varied procession of characters , typical shallow roles of catastrophic cinema that a few years later consecrates ¨ Airport ¨ (by George Seaton) , but is hampered by simple characterizations . Breathtaking , spectacular cinematography by Manuel Berenguer , outdoors have been shot in Islands Canarias (Spain) and scenarios are glimmer and glittering as when the ship cross through the cliffs while the volcano erupts . The climax is served by overwhelming special effects by Alex Weldon and the master Eugene Lorie (who had Oscar nomination) , it has main issue the volcano Krakatoa (in the map on the west , no east) and the historical eruption and continuing a demolishing seaquake , climaxed by volcanic explosion , tidal wave or tsunami . Krakatoa Island remained destroyed and died approximately 35.000 people in the catastrophe . The producers learned of the geographic error , Krakatoa was west of Java in the Sundra Strait , only after all of the advertising and publicity materials had been prepared. It was deemed too costly to re-do these materials, and possibly delay the release, for the sake of simple geographic accuracy . Frank De Vol musical score (Robert Aldrich's habitual musician) is good and evocative . Heavily cut after premiere , leaving tale more muddle than before . The motion picture was regularly directed by Bernard L.Kowalski . Rating : Passable and entertaining .

I first saw this movie at the cinema when I was a kid, and it blew me away, if you'll excuse the expression. Probably also started my lifelong interest in Tidal Waves, as I think it was the first time I'd ever heard of them. Watching it 35 years later was not, unfortunately, a particularly rewarding experience.For a start, purely by coincidence, a couple of days before my online rental copy arrived in the mail, a local station played a documentary about the disaster, which despite being a slapped together TV production, made the documentary aspect of the film look outright pathetic. 'Krakatoa' won the special effects Oscar for 1969, and it's quite amazing how old and limited those effects actually seem, compared even with movies of a few years later, like 'The Poseidon Adventure'.Probably what disappointed me most about 'East of Java' is that I had remembered it as focusing much more on the volcanic eruption than it actually does. The film is far more concerned with the adventure yarn about diving for pearls, and the romance between the two main characters. Krakatoa almost seems like just a backdrop sometimes. People rarely even refer to the fact that there's a mountain in the process of blowing itself into the stratosphere, a few hundred yards away. Maximilian Schell as the unflappable captain is particularly infuriating in this regard, as nothing the volcano throws up seems to phase him in the slightest. He barely seems interested in it, as if mountains explode during diving expeditions on a fairly regular basis.The rest of the cast are all adequate, but nobody excels. There is a rather distasteful sequence where an admittedly laudanum-sozzled Brian Keith assaults a Japanese diving girl, and after he dries out by being suspended in a crate for a few hours, nobody seems to think it was a particularly noteworthy incident.It's a decent adventure yarn, but there is little effort made to summon the sense of foreboding and dread which would have been appropriate given what was about to happen. I suppose the art of building tension in disaster movies wasn't really honed until the early to mid 70's.