Director James B. Clark's western, set in 1848 California, is about a brother and sister battling a crooked businessman over property rights.

After having been recently shipwrecked, a group of survivors begin dealing with both the reality of being stranded on a remote island as well as with feelings of alienation and isolation. Adapted from the novel by Johann Wyss, this was the pilot episode for a proposed television series co-produced by Edgar G. Ulmer and Louis Hayward. Filmed in Mexico in 1957 and bearing a 1958 copyright, Swiss Family Robinson: Lost in the Jungle was not "released" until 2000, when it was included as an extra feature on the DVD version of Ulmer's The Pirates of Capri.