Three escaped convicts arrive in a French colonial town on Devil's Island shortly before Christmas and take refuge in a small general store run by the Ducotel family. Joseph, Albert and Jules originally plan to rob the shop to obtain supplies and clothing while they wait for a ship, but the family's financial troubles and the arrival of the store's overbearing owner, Andre Trochard, push the men to act on the family's behalf instead of their own. The comedy follows their stay among people whose problems prove more pressing than their own escape.
Michael Curtiz directed the film, the twenty-second of twenty-five features he made in chronological order, between The Egyptian and The Proud Rebel. Ranald MacDougall wrote the screenplay, and Pat Duggan produced it for Paramount. Humphrey Bogart plays Joseph, Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov play Albert and Jules, and Joan Bennett, Basil Rathbone and Leo G. Carroll appear as the Ducotels and Trochard. The production had a budget of about two million dollars and returned roughly three million worldwide.
On IMDb, the film holds a rating of 7.4 from around twelve thousand votes, while on TMDB it rates 7.2 from a smaller voter base of about two hundred. Both figures point to a generally favorable response that has remained stable across the decades.
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