Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Ian Hunter, and Peter Lorre star in the controversial, provocative drama of a group of prison-island fugitives who are changed forever by a prisoner who thinks he is Jesus. When eight prisoners escape from a New Guinea penal colony, they are picked up by a sloop commandeered by another escapee named Verne (Gable) and his loose-moraled girlfriend, Julie (Crawford). Among the fugitives is Cambreau (Hunter), a soft-spoken, messianic person who has a profound effect on his comrades. One by one, the escapees abandon their evil purposes and find God--and a peaceful death--through the auspices of the Christlike Cambreau. The last to succumb to Cambreau's ministrations is Verne, who agrees to return to the prison colony and serve out his sentence if Julie will wait for him. A superb Franz Waxman score provides a touch of showbiz grandeur to this haunting fable.