Best Adventure Movies of 1953

Howard Kemp has been tracking killer Ben Vandergroat for a long time. In the Colorado Rockies, he teams up with prospector Jesse Tate and former Union soldier Roy Anderson. Thinking Kemp is a sheriff, they agree to help for a small fee. When they catch Vandergroat, he tells them Kemp is pursuing a $5,000 bounty. After demanding equal shares, the uneasy alliance heads for Kansas as Vandergroat tries to turn them against each other.

The controlled explosion of an atomic bomb in the Arctic Circle awakens a frozen dinosaur that will wreak havoc in New York City.

Victor Marswell runs a big game trapping company in Kenya. Eloise Kelly is ditched there, and an immediate attraction happens between them. Then Mr. and Mrs. Nordley show up for their gorilla documenting safari. Mrs. Nordley is not infatuated with her husband any more, and takes a liking to Marswell. The two men and two women have some difficulty arranging these emotions to their mutual satisfaction, but eventually succeed.

A C-47 transport plane, named the Corsair, makes a forced landing in the frozen wastes of Labrador, and the plane's pilot, Captain Dooley, must keep his men alive in deadly conditions while waiting for rescue.

Richard Burton plays a Scottish Army officer put in charge of a disparate band of ANZAC troops on the perimeter of Tobruk with the German Army doing their best to dislodge them

The script, which was written on a day-to-day basis as the film was being shot, concerns the adventures of a motley crew of swindlers and ne'er-do-wells trying to lay claim to land rich in uranium deposits in Kenya as they wait in a small Italian port to travel aboard an ill-fated tramp steamer en route to Mombasa.

Scottish highlander Jamie Durie falls into a life of piracy after joining the failed rebellion of Bonnie Prince Charlie against the British crown.

Shrimpers and oilmen clash when an ambitious wildcatter begins constructing an off-shore oilrig.

In Camelot, kingdom of Arthur and Merlin, Lancelot is well known for his courage and honor. But one day he must quit Camelot and the Queen Guinevere's love, leaving the Round Table without protection.

Wildcatter Jeff Dawson does his best to bring in a gusher in Mexico despite continual bandit raids. He asks for help from his ex-employer Ward Conway, but Conway, now married to Dawson's ex-lover Marina refuses, fearing that his wife will want to renew her romance with the other man.

After a stagecoach holdup, Frank Slayton's notorious gang leave Ben Warren for dead and head off with his fiancée. Warren follows, and although none of the townspeople he comes across are prepared to help, he recruits two others who have sworn revenge on the ruthless Slayton.

Mike and Tony Petrakis are a Greek father and son team who dive for sponges off the coast of Florida. After they are robbed by crooks, Arnold and the Rhys brothers, Mike decides to take his men to the dangerous 12-mile reef to dive for more sponges. Mike suffers a fatal accident when he falls from the reef leaving Tony to carry on the business. But now he has a companion, Gwyneth Rhys.

A Polish boy runs away from his unkind foster mother in Edinburgh and finds a new home in a lakeside village for orphans of all nations, after encountering trouble through his innocent implication in a robbery.

A vixen mother invades a chicken coop to provide food for her cubs. She continues to raid the coop until she is shot by a farmer. The cubs are attacked by the farmer and only one survives. An otter trapped in a burrow is rescued by 10-year-old Anders and his six-year-old brother, Kjell. In secret, the boys cage the animal and finally domesticate it. They obtain food for the Otter by fishing through the ice on a frozen lake. The boys manage to keep their secret from their family. On the eve of the May Day festival, Kjell reveals to family and friends the otter's presence. Anders is so distressed that he runs into the woods with the otter. The otter breaks away and returns to its life of natural freedom. The film was a prize winner at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival.

Mark Fallon, with partner Kansas John Polly, tries to introduce honest gambling on the riverboats. His first success makes enemies of the crooked gamblers and of fair Angelique Dureau, whose necklace he won. Later in New Orleans, Mark befriends Angelique's father, but she still affects to despise him as his gambling career brings him wealth. Duelling, tragedy, and romantic complications follow.

Director Richard Quine's 1953 adventure comedy about a magician's efforts to rescue a dancing princess stars Patricia Medina, Paul Henreid, Hans Conried, Laurette Luez and Michael Fox.

Frustrated with the lack of opportunities in his hometown, young Jess Harker plans to leave, but sympathetic stagecoach armed guard Race Crim persuades his boss to give Jess the stage driver job.

It's 1876 and all the Indians are at peace except the Comanches lead by Black Cloud. When Black Cloud wipes out a town, only six soldiers are left and they head for the nearest fort. In the desert they are reinforced by members of a stagecoach and find some water at a deserted mission. Pinned down by Black Cloud they send an Indian boy who was Black Cloud's prisoner on to the fort while they try to bargain with Black Cloud whom they learn is without water.

An American military officer (Joel McCrea) and his wife (Evelyn Keyes) move to a cottage in what they think is the peaceful English countryside, only to discover the area is a hotbed of spies and secret agents. Director Robert Parrish's 1952 British espionage thriller--with a climax set at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London--also stars Herbert Lom, Marius Goring, Roland Culver, Frank Lawton and Megs Jenkins.

An American insurance adjuster, stranded in Havana, becomes involved with an archaeologist and a collector of antiquities in a hunt for treasure in the Mexican ruins of Zapoteca.

Cleopatra (Rhonda Fleming) toys with Mark Antony (Raymond Burr), who wants to merge his Rome with her Egypt.

A nobleman searches for a hidden treasure in Guatemala.

Based on the story of Australia's colonization, this atmospheric drama stars Alan Ladd as Hugh Tallant, an American medical student falsely convicted of robbery and sent on a torturous voyage with other prisoners to the penal colony at Botany Bay. Because of his attempt to escape, evil Captain Gilbert decides to return him to England on charges of mutiny.

Harum is a fearless man of the people who comes to Bagdad to avenge the murder of his father and meets Krairuzan, a princess disguised as a commoner, working against a plot by a band of evil schemers trying to do away with her father, the Caliph. She gives Harum a golden sword which, in his hands, makes him invincible. Harum uses the sword in the name of justice and is doing quite well until a duplicate sword is placed in his scabbard during one of his off-guard moments, and he winds up in chains.

A ship of women embarks on a voyage to California. Director R. G. Springsteen's 1953 adventure drama stars Vera Ralston, David Brian, Virginia Grey, Charles Winninger, Veda Ann Borg and Hope Emerson.

In Africa, a deceased medical missionary's daughter in Africa carries on her father's work. Before long, she finds herself in danger from crooks and a local witch doctor.

In the South Pacific islands, two brothers, one good and one bad, fight over the same girl and over a bag of pearls.

Freshly arrived Sandhurst-trained Captain Alan King, better versed in Pashtun then any of the veterans and born locally as army brat, survives an attack on his escort to his Northwest Frontier province garrison near the Khyber pass because of Ahmed, a native Afridi deserter from the Muslim fanatic rebel Karram Khan's forces. As soon as his fellow officers learn his mother was a native Muslim which got his parents disowned even by their own families, he falls prey to stubborn prejudiced discrimination, Lieutenant Geoffrey Heath even moves out of their quarters, except from half-Irish Lt. Ben Baird.

Ellen Burton arrives in Africa to join Dr. Mary as her nurse, bringing modern medicine to the native peoples. Lonni Douglas, an animal wrangler and fortune hunter, agrees to take her upriver, despite his misgivings about her suitability for Africa. They battle escaped gorillas, hostile natives, infected lion wounds, and hostile witch doctors to reach their destination and on the way, they fall in love. Will their contrasting interests doom their romance?

A group of US Navy weathermen taking measurements in the Gobi desert in World War II are forced to seek the help of Mongol nomads to regain their ship while under attack from the Japanese.

The Bowery Boys take on British crooks when one of them thinks he's inherited a title.

Promoter William Montague wants to buy the estate owned by the Daceys, Mrs. Dacey and her daughter Ena and son Todd, in order to build a resort hotel. When they turn him down, he produces a couple of distant relatives, Janice and Robert Clayton, and sets about to prove that the estate rightfully belongs to them. The identity of the rightful heirs is thought to be buried in a sunken ship off of the Jamaican shore and the search begins, led by a schooner skipper, Patrick Fairlie, who is in love with Ena.

A man who has a talking mule gets a job on a newspaper, and both get mixed up in a murder trial.

An American reporter falls in love with a Russian ballet dancer.

Italian poet Boccaccio (Louis Jourdan) hides in the court of Fiammetta (Joan Fontaine) and tells three tales of love and lust.

Gilliatt, a fisherman-turned-smuggler on the isle of Guernsey, agrees to transport a beautiful woman to the French coast in the year 1800. She tells him she hopes to rescue her brother from the guillotine. Gilliatt finds himself falling in love and so feels betrayed when he later learns this woman is a countess helping Napoleon plan an invasion of England. In reality, however, the "countess" is an English agent working to thwart this invasion. When Gilliatt finds this out, he returns to France to rescue the woman who's true purpose has been discovered by the French.

Marine Sergeant James O'Hearn is being tried at the San Diego Marine base for desertion, theft, scandalous conduct and destruction of property in time of war. He refuses to testify or plead guilty or not guilty to the charges. Showgirl Ginger Martin takes the stand against his protest. She testifies O'Hearn won't talk because he is protecting the name of his pal, Marine Private Davey White. Ginger tells how she, broke and stranded, met the two marines in Shanghai two weeks before Pearl Harbor.

On a tramp steamer off Central America are Mr. and Mrs. Sheppard, five prisoners en route to a Nicaraguan prison, and Corbett, an American carrying money for a Honduran counter-revolution. Denied permission to land in Honduras, Corbett releases the prisoners and with their aid hijacks the ship. They land, taking the wealthy Sheppards as hostages, and start the arduous trip upriver to Corbett's rendezvous, meeting jungle hazards

A commander in the Foreign Legion romances a mysterious and exotic princess.

Archaeologists Van Heflin and Eric Portman undertake an expedition in Tunisia in search of an ancient mask.

After staging a mutiny and commandeering his own ship, famed pirate Barbarossa (John Payne) takes hostage a spirited Spanish noblewoman named Alida (Donna Reed), intending to trade her to her fiancé, Capt. Jose Salcedo (Gerald Mohr), for a handsome ransom. But Barbarossa falls in love with Alida, who meanwhile discovers that the roguish swashbuckler is more honorable than her erstwhile betrothed.

The eighth entry in the "Bomba The Jungle Boy" series, from 1953, starring Johnny Sheffield, Douglas Kennedy, Barbara Bestar, Leonard Mudie and Emory Parnell. Directed by Ford Beebe.

An Indian and his beautiful sister attempt to destroy a cavalry patrol trying to deliver a peace treaty to their chief.

Yvonne De Carlo is a French agent who is sent to spy on evil Arab potentate Raymond Burr.

Two adventures dive for treasure off the coast of Jamaica.

A low-born thief loves a Moroccan Princess. She must marry to escape death at the hands of her enemies. The groom is able to wed or cast away his bride simply by saying "I Marry You" or "I Divorce You" three times.

This 1954 feminist version of "Robinson Crusoe" stars Amanda Blake as a woman shipwrecked on a jungle island. Also with George Nader and Rosalind Hayes.

The Dutch East Indies, at the end of the nineteenth century. An adventurous captain of an American merchant vessel is looking for a sunken Dutch vessel containing 10,000 precious diamonds. Unfortunately, he's not the only one and then there's also that volcano on the nearby island of Krakatau, waiting to explode in its historical, disastrous eruption...

A divorced socialite decides to join the Army because she hopes it will enable her to see more of her boyfriend, a Colonel. She soon encounters many difficulties with the Army lifestyle. Moreover, her ex-husband is working as a consultant with the Army, and he uses his position to disrupt her romantic plans by making her join a group of WACs who are testing new equipment.