Director John Farrow's remake of his well-regarded 1939 adventure "Five Came Back" is generally considered by many film buffs to be not quite as effective the second time around. A small passenger plane bound for South America makes an emergency landing in the jungles of Central America--but, with only one working engine, can only hold five of its passengers for the voyage home. This is the kind of overheated, overexcited actors' piece in which the encroaching head hunters are secondary to the character conflicts happening among the flight crew and guest list; it's also the type of movie where the natives are never seen but we hear their drums getting closer...closer. As a political assassin who holds a gun on the terrified group, Rod Steiger overrides the scenario with his Method acting; snarling and sweating and twisting his mouth, Steiger turns this piece into a one-man showcase, as if he were heading up an acting seminar. Steiger works out not only his demons, but maybe Farrow's as well (the director gives the actor ample room to go into his lunatic arias). None of the other cast members stands a chance against Steiger's scenery-chewing, though Beulah Bondi nearly gives him competition (she's still doing her humble act on a grandiose scale to tug at our heartstrings). There's a child wrapped around Anita Ekberg's neck who doesn't have much to offer (he's used as a prop, much like oldsters Bondi and Cameron Prud'Homme, who seem to have been beamed in from "Playhouse 90"). Even the production is disappointing, with Farrow trying for claustrophobic hysteria but instead getting melodrama in theatrically-cramped quarters. *1/2 from ****