Dagger Island
Reviewed by Bruce Dettman

The closest I ever came to being shipwrecked was in my senior year in high school.

A small group of my motley cronies -- lacking anything to do during spring break beyond smoking cigarettes, finding someone of legal age willing to buy us beer and daydreaming of all the desirable girls in school who unfortunately seemed united in viewing our ranks as smallpox carriers -- had been invited to join another friend named Scott who had access to the family boat for the entire weekend.

The aquatic destination was the Sacramento Delta. This is a vast body of water consisting of hundreds of miles of tentacle-like tributaries which over the years has attracted weekend and summer recreational boaters as well as permanent residents of a decidedly less hospitable bent when it came to invading teenagers.

Scott was the only one of our group who knew the lay of the land -- or water, in this case -- and explained that when not out racing about or skiing we’d tie up near one of the delta’s many small islands, this one in fact boasting a deserted hunting lodge where, rumor had it, Clark Gable had once stayed. However, the one-time game had long before been played out. The island, save for an occasional weekend visitor, was unoccupied.

Everything settled, we headed out on an early Saturday morning, reached the delta by eight and were on the water by nine. We navigated our way to the island a couple of hours after that, made camp and explored the terrain, finding the locked and somewhat worse-for-wear two-story lodge where Gable had fled to get away from the prying eyes of Hollywood. There wasn’t much left to see.

The rest of the day we raced up and down the tributaries, stupidly drinking too much beer and partaking of some devil weed along the way. We swam a bit and a few of the guys tested their water skiing talents but for the most part we were just boat potatoes.

At some point, later in the afternoon, we began to experience motor troubles. The engine kept stalling and although we were able to crawl back to the island subsequent attempts to restart her brought no positive results. None of us were exactly mechanics but Scott knew enough after tinkering with the motor to realize that a certain part had burned out and we wouldn’t be going anywhere until it was replaced. This meant that one or two of us would have to get back to the dock somehow and purchase a new one. Scott was joined by Ray in this endeavor -- he was the best swimmer of the bunch -- and their plan was to reach one of the more populated islands and get someone to take them to the boat store. We figured it shouldn’t be hard.

We really had no idea how long we’d be stranded on the island but didn’t figure the wait would be too much. We made hot dogs for dinner and turned in early without any sight of Scott and Ray. Nor did they show up the next morning. That was when we learned that a member of our party named Bill, whose sole assignment had been to bring the extra fresh water, screwed up and brought three six packs of beer instead. So we had a pound of instant coffee but no water to mix with it. The solution? No problem, some genius decided. Just make the instant coffee with the beer. So we tried it. To this day, some forty-five years later I still can recall the indescribable taste.

As it eventually turned out we didn’t get off the island for another full day. Our earlier concern that Scott and Ray might have run into trouble or even drowned was instantly nixed when next morning they showed up in a spiffy new motor boat with two great looking bikini-clad girls who they had met up with as they made their way back to the launching dock and decided to party with, our dilemma of being stranded on the island no longer central to their concerns. We weren’t really angry, only extremely jealous.

Our worry about water, though not life-threatening, reminds me of the plight of the Daily Planet crew when they find themselves on a small and largely unknown atoll in the Cariberean called Dagger Island in a 1955 episode of the same name.

As the years went by fans of the series would learn that Perry White was a man of many talents not just limited to journalistic accomplishments. He was also a gifted amateur scientist who dabbled in important scientific experiments, a former mayor of Metropolis and in Dagger Island we also are informed, via the man himself, that he once earned a law degree. This fact provides the impetus for White being named the executor of the estate of a mysterious character named James Craymore whose death and stipulations of his will sets in motion a contest between his only existing heirs, three nephews Mickey, Jeff and Paul (Dean Cromer, Ray Montgomery and Myron Healey).The document in question states that a cache of diamonds has been secretly buried on the remote Dagger Island and that the first one of the three to locate the gems will be entitled to the entire estate.

To make certain all goes according to the late uncle’s instructions Clark, Lois and Jimmy are sent along with the three potential heirs to oversee and act as referees. But even before they get on their way someone tries to murder Lois – who they incorrectly believe has the written whereabouts of the buried treasure in her purse – with cyanide gas, but Superman arrives in the nick of time. So undeterred by what seems to be treated as minor annoyance, -- they don’t so much as contact the police to report the attempt on her life -- the assorted group all decked out in safari garb, including the usually sartorially intractable Clark, sets out for its Caribbean destination.

It doesn’t take long for suspicious things to begin to happen. Someone sabotages the water supply, a hermit named Jonathan Skagg (Raymond Hutton) appears on the scene, and a masked man -- whose identity couldn’t be more obvious -- shows up and attacks Mickey and later Jimmy, the latter ending up at the bottom of a well with the assailant attempting to toss old cannonballs on top of him. Superman puts an end to this business with his heat vision which turns the orbs red hot and the masked man vamooses only to be exposed a few moments later.

The plot of a bunch of duplicitous heirs -- one of whom is a criminal -- brought together to find treasure is about as old as the movies themselves. There are no surprises here in Robert Leslie Bellem’s script but it’s an enjoyable enough show, directed by Phil Ford, with good support from Myron Healy, the always watchable Raymond Hatton -- whose credits go back to the beginning of silent films and who would later start a second career as cantankerous second sidekicks in many a B western -- and Ray Montgomery, an actor already well accustomed to jungle surroundings given his stint as John Hall’s partner on Ramar of the Jungle.

Dagger Island is an ok episode and has one particularly nifty moment when Superman is seen plowing furiously into the Earth, a scene later re-used in the episode Divide and Conquer.

For the record, I never found myself stranded on an island without water again nor have I ever repeated the experience of sampling beer and coffee together. However, the business with the girls and smallpox pretty much continued for a few more years.

Good old high school.

(Jim April, 2013)
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