Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Rivers with tiger fish that can devour a crocodile in seconds; Man eating ants, giant cats, blood thirsty bats, just a few. Just some of the dangers that follow a group of people kidnapped off of a passenger ship in an effort to find a treasure in war torn Honduras. If the alligators, ants or tiger fish don't get them, government agents will, no questions asks before the guns fire.Taking a trip over to RKO from Columbia, Glenn Ford replaces redhead Rita Hayworth with the slightly older but still sultry Ann Sheridan, here playing the wife of Zachary Scott and proving that she is as tough as any man as she faces these dangers, even falling into the tiger fish infested waters. She deals with the lustful looks of the Hispanic bandits who kidnapped her and Scott, allegedly in cahoots with Ford but eventually at odds over lustful greed.Enjoyable for the kind of film it is, this is colorful and filled with a ton of adventure, and is equally as fast moving. Neither a rip-off of "The African Queen" or a pre-cursor to the "Indiana Jones" series, this is just pure entertainment, pure and simple, and who could ask for more?

Since Tarzan went to Guatemala in 1935, Charlie Chan to Panamá in 1940 and Fox organized a "Carnival in Costa Rica" in 1947, I decided to watch Jacques Tourneur's "Appointment in Honduras", just to have a richer view of how Hollywood depicted Central America in the old days. Now they are a bit more exact, although the approach (from the "exotic value" perspective) has changed little, if we consider how Costa Rica has been a Jurassic garden for T-Rexes, Panamá a center for tailors who are UK spies, while Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are still the settings of stories of violence. But back then things were so corny (and not from the natives' side, but from Hollywood's), that one has to take most of these films with a grain of salt and laugh. Of those I think that "Charlie Chan in Panamá" is the best, due to its dark plot of treason during II World War, but this fabrication is as ugly as it is opportunistic, using recent facts as starting points without even considering all the tragedy, deaths and losses that can be originated by a political assassination or a coup d'état (with the assistance of the CIA or any other American "industry"). In days of the real overthrowing of Jacobo Arbenz (president of Guatemala), with the collaboration of highly paid American hired-assassins (1954), Glenn Ford plays Corbett, somebody quite close to those men, who supposedly has to help an overthrown president instead. Guatemala is replaced by Honduras, the president is called Prieto, and he has to receive money "for the cause" from Corbett. To do so Corbett has to take command of a ship, make it stop by the Honduran shore, and then cross the jungle up a river in search of Prieto to fulfill his mission. You can have three guesses to determine why Corbett does all that, but in the end, when he identifies himself as a farmer, no character in the film and nor the audience watching believes him. Before he finds Prieto, of course, Corbett has to make that dangerous jungle trip with four convicts that helped execute the operation, led by wicked Rodolfo Acosta, who took two passengers along as hostages: Ann Sheridan, who has to cross the jungle in her night gown, and her rich, mean and coward husband, played by Zachary Scott, good as usual. In their way they meet soldiers, crocodiles, ants, serpents, jungle cats, tropical storms, swarms, piranhas that swam all the way up from South America to appear in this film, an anopheles mosquito that transmits malaria to Corbett and all the clichés scriptwriter Karen DeWolf imagined or believed you would find in the Central American jungles. They never see an orchid, a high full moon, a bright butterfly or a marijuana plant that would have been so helpful to keep them relaxed. All that is left is bare tension by primitive motives, bad acting and Tourneur's boredom or indifference to the material, all in Technicolor. I don't know you, but I'd rather stick to Tarzan, Charlie Chan and the Costa Rican carnival.

For a Glenn Ford junkie, which is easy for me to be with the films he made in the late Forties and early Fifties, Appointment in Honduras is a temptation hard to resist. Ford hadn't become a superstar yet. Most of his movies during this period had decent budgets and solid co-stars. A lot of them were adventures and westerns. Appointment in Honduras, however, has a lot of clichés to overcome before you can decide if Ford makes it worthwhile. In fact, next to Ford, the best thing about the movie is Rodolfo Acosta who plays Reyes, a murdering bandito who has charm and ruthlessness. Compared to Ford's stalwart integrity and firm- jawed decisiveness, Acosta's cheerful lack of conscience makes the movie interesting. Ford co-stars with Ann Sheridan and Zachary Scott. They re passengers on a tramp freighter carrying five prisoners to Nicaragua. Jim Corbett (Ford), a tough guy with more grease on his hair than your car needs for an oil change, frees the prisoners, takes over the ship and then lands on the coast. They'll head inland. They take fellow passengers Harry and Sylvia Sheppard (Scott and Sheridan) with them as hostages. Corbett is carrying a money belt stuffed with currency. As they start to hack their way through the jungle toward Guatemala, we learn Corbett is bringing the money to help overthrow a ruthless dictator. What he hasn't counted on is Reyes' determination to come out ahead, or that Harry Sheppard, weak, sleazy and sniveling, is rich enough to tempt the criminals. It doesn't help that Sylvia Sheppard didn't have time to pack when they left the ship. For most of the movie Ann Sheridan has only a nightgown, cut low, to wear. Corbett may avert his eyes, but Reyes enjoys the view. The jungle is strictly back-lot make believe. One can almost see the potted banana plants being shifted around for each new scene. Every menace that every jungle movie ever had shows up...piranhas, pumas, crocodiles, an anaconda, biting ants, bats, malaria, and a cloud of what were either locusts or really sturdy mosquitoes. Ford's grim determination and Scott's sneering become tiresome. The emerging romance between Corbett and Sylvia is intriguing but unlikely, since after two days of sweating in the fetid jungle neither probably wants to stand downwind from the other, much less embrace. But the movie has enough of Ford's underplaying to justify staying with it. Ann Sheridan, in my book one of the best of the Forties movie stars, doesn't have much to do except look worried. Sheridan's film career was just about over, but she still was a star who was sexy, good-humored, intelligent and warm-hearted. For those who also like this period in Ford's career, even if the movies weren't always very good, try Lust for Gold (1949), The White Tower (1950), The Secret of Convict Lake (1951), Affair in Trinidad (1952), The Green Glove (1954) and Plunder of the Sun (1953.

It was with some interest that I read that Appointment in Honduras was shot in the Los Angeles Botanical Gardens serving as the Central American jungle. We should probably be grateful that RKO did spring for color and did not use the old King Kong set once again.I can see the minds at RKO now (read Howard Hughes). Rita Hayworth is Harry Cohn's main meal ticket at Columbia, no getting here, but we can probably get Glenn Ford's services. Since they were such a popular screen team, we can team Ford with another redhead and see if the public will buy it. Ann Sheridan was past her best days and she'd work cheap, so the team of Ford and Sheridan was sent to the tropics.Central America was in the news at the time. The Central Intelligence Agency had a big hand in overthrowing the government in Guatemala of Jacobo Arbenz. Ford's role is rather unclear in this film. At the end he identifies himself as a planter, but I suspect he's probably got some CIA involvement. The film opens with Ford on a tramp steamer off Central America. He's got a mission of some kind and HAS to get off there, but the captain won't stop. So Ford's got some bad choices to make. He frees some convicts headed by Rudolfo Acosta to help him get ashore. They in turn take quarreling couple, Zachary Scott and Ann Sheridan along as hostages. Acosta's idea, not Ford's.After that it's a competition between the steamy jungle and the steamier romance heating up between Ford and Sheridan. The two of them do their best, but they're not Ford and Hayworth. It's definitely not Gilda, it's not even Affair in Trinidad.Some nice color cinematography of the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Gardens is the best thing about Appointment in Honduras. Maybe it might stimulate one to go there to see where a Thanksgiving beauty was shot.