John Mills and Dorothy McGuire leading their family in a chorus of Oh, Christmas Tree (in an impossibly luxurious desert-island tree house) is, for many, an abiding memory of childhood cinema-going. Viewed many moons later, this lavish (if overlong) Disney version of Johann Wyss's novel has lost little of its appeal. British director Ken Annakin shot the film on the Caribbean island of Tobago and keeps the action brisk and breezy. Compared to state-of-the-art sequences in modern action adventures, though, the shipwreck, the raft rescue and the pirate raid are perhaps not as thrilling as they once seemed.

After being shipwrecked, the Robinson family is marooned on an island inhabited only by an impressive array of wildlife. In true pioneer spirit, they quickly make themselves at home but soon face a danger even greater than nature: dastardly pirates.