| Actors:
| Maximilian Schell, Diane Baker, Brian Keith, Barbara Werle, Sal Mineo | | Director:
| Bernard L. Kowalski | | Format:
| Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC | | Language:
| English | | Subtitle:
| English, French, Spanish | | Number of Discs:
| 1 | | Studio:
| Cinerama Releasing Corporation | | Run Time:
| 131 minutes | | DVD Release Date:
| March 22, 2005 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 39 reviews |
|
Average Customer Review:
 ( 39 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 found the following review helpful:
 Krakatoa ruined by DVD releaseMay 02, 1999
By G. Curtis
For some reason I've always enjoyed Krakatoa having originally seen it in Cinerama.This DVD is frankly a disaster; many years ago Benny Hill did a sketch of a movie set on a boat that kept jumping. This is what the print on this DVD does all the time. Whereas Benny Hill was funny, this is not. The picture is weird to say the least; it is billed as Widescreen on the box but even when playing it in Widescreen on a Widescreen TV the picture is too squashed. The sound is not AC3 stereo although I thought it was clear. The film has been cut terribly and runs far short of the time billed on the DVD case. Don't bother with this awful print; let's hope the movie gets restored properly.
21 of 23 found the following review helpful:
Guilty pleasure, great spectacle, lousy DVD transferApr 24, 1999
By Joe NY
This movie is a guilty pleasure, best enjoyed in its original uncut, big screen Cinerama format.The story is corny, but the special effects make up for any deficencies. The Simitar DVD release is taken from a cut TV print running 102 min. The original theatrical roadshow Cinerama release ran aprox 136 min including intermission. The Simitar DVD is widescreen and muted stereo, but it is worn and terribly cut. Wait for a new transfer of the complete film from better source materials. Don't waste your money on Simitar junk.
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
The volcano blows, and so does this transferMay 20, 1999
Okay, so it's not a work of art. But "Krakatoa" is very much a guilty pleasure. Max Schell and Sal Mineo pretty much phone in their performances. Diane Baker is trying so hard she seems like she's in a different movie. But where else are you going to see Brian Keith trying to rape a Polynesian pearl diver? The effects are clearly the star, with the tsunami tidal wave being fairly impressive, even by today's standards. It's a shame that we cannot get a better transfer of the complete 136 minute film. There are way too many obvious splices in this transfer to be acceptable. Also, this was released originally with a flaw that prevented it from being viewed unsqueezed. The flaw is corrected on the new pressing, but it has the same catalog number as the old pressing! The only way to tell them apart is that the new pressing has a white circle in the center, and the old one is clear.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 High, Wide and Handsome Hokum - if you get the MGM/UA or Anchor Bay issuesJan 22, 2009
By Trevor Willsmer
With lines like "Don't explode, Chris!" and that famously geographically mistaken title, it's clear that no-one on the set was taking Krakatoa, East of Java too seriously. Rather than a historically accurate account of the biggest volcanic eruption in recorded history (for that you need to see the BBC's Krakatoa: The Last Day), it's pure hokum that knows it's hokum and shows you where all the money's been spent. High, wide and handsome hokum at that, designed to fill the wide Cinerama screen
The disaster movie formula was already well enough established for the stock characters to be present: Brian Keith's diver with a busted lung and a bottle of laudanum, Rossano Brazzi and Sal Mineo as father and son balloonists, John Leyton's claustrophobic diving bell designer, Barbara Werle's photographer and `soprano', Diane Baker as treasure hunting skipper Maximilian Schell's just-out-of-the-asylum lover, Jacqui Chan's pearl diver... Throw in a cargo of convicts (replaced by orphans and singing nuns for the return voyage) and you can pretty much fill in the blanks in the plot yourself. Subtle it ain't - after Barbara Werle does a striptease for Brian Keith while singing An Old-Fashioned Girl Like Me, the camera cuts to engine pistons hammering away - and Schell might just be Dr Who in an earlier regeneration - his ship's interior is so much larger than its exterior it might as well be called the TARDIS instead of the Batavia Queen - but it's a lot more entertaining than something this silly and clichéd should be.
True, it's a long voyage as it sets the scene for the big eruption with mysterious fogs and fireballs, with some of Eugene Lourie's special effects reminiscent of the early scenes of his monster movie Gorgo. They only arrive at Krakatoa just in time for the intermission (or what used to be the intermission), the island volcano revealed through the mist in a scene Ridley Scott would borrow for 1492. Once there, there's only time for one big setpiece - Cinerama films always had a `rollercoaster' scene putting the audience in the driving seat of some runaway vehicle, be it a wagon careering down a mountain track in Custer of the West or on a runaway train in How the West Was Won, and here it's a runaway balloon drawn through narrow canyons into the crater - and a quick mutiny of their convict cargo before the volcano blows and the resulting tidal wave threatens to drown the ship as well as the surrounding ports. It may not be exactly photo-realistic or bear much resemblance to what actually happened, but for lovers of classic special effects and pyromaniacs alike the model explosions at least provide plenty of colourful fun that even John Leyton's Charlie Chaplin impersonation or the singing nuns can't dampen. It's the kind of film that can be easily filed under `guilty pleasure,' but it's certainly a lot more spectacular and entertaining than When Time Ran Out in the volcanic eruption stakes.
MGM/UA's DVD is a fine 2.35:1 transfer with rich colour and good detail. Sadly there are no extras and the overture and intermission are missing, but other than that it is the full-length roadshow version rather than the 105-minute reissue version available on extremely poor quality public domain DVDs. The Anchor Bay DVD also offers a fullscreen version. The other current Region 1 transfers should be avoided at all costs.
8 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 Where's the plot?May 09, 2000
I had high expectations during the first 20 minutes or so of this movie, but the were all dashed. It starts out okay and it is interesting but as it goes on, you may find yourself wondering when the story is going to start. Unfortunatly it never does. I describe this movie as a mix of alot of people's stories all mixed up and unconnected. The volcanic explosions were great visually, but the wern't lead up to very well at all. It was kind of like, "Okay, let's have an explosion." with no suspence or anything. ALSO, the quality of the DVD is HORIBLE it jerks and the sound is off about a second at some times and it stoped for about 5 seconds at a time about every ten minutes. Very Annoying. Don't waste your money on this DVD.
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