Anne of the Indies (1951)

Anne of the Indies is a 1951 Twentieth Century Fox pirate adventure movie directed by Jacques Tourneur. It belongs to the small sub-genre of movies about lady pirates. It may have been inspired by the adventures of the real-life woman pirate Anne Bonny (the time period is exactly right) but in fact the story has little connection with that lady’s career. The main similarity is that the pirate in the film is, like Anne Bonny, Irish.

The pirate Captain Providence has been preying, very successfully, on English shipping. He’s a mystery man. No-one has set eyes on him and lived to tell the tale. When he captures a merchant ship he has the whole crew put to death. As a result no-one knows that Captain Providence is a woman. She is Captain Anne Providence (Jean Peters).

Captain Providence has captured another merchantman. As her men are feeding the luckless merchantman’s crew to the sharks she notices a man in irons. This interests her. He is a Frenchman who claims to be a prisoner of the English. Anne hates the English but her attitude is that this Frenchman is an enemy of the English and that makes him an OK guy. No member of her crew would dare to suggest that she may have spared his life because he’s young and very handsome.

The Frenchman (played by Louis Jourdan who was a major heart-throb at the time) calls himself Pierre François. Anne isn’t a total fool. She has his cabin searched. A map is found. Or at least it’s half a map, a map showing the location of fabulous treasure buried by the famous buccaneer Henry Morgan. Anne is extremely interested when Pierre reveals that he knows how to find the other half of the map.

The lust for gold is not the only lust consuming Captain Anne Providence. This Frenchman excites her in a strange and unfamiliar way. The way a woman can be excited by a very good-looking very masculine man who knows how to romance women.

This causes a falling out with Anne’s mentor, the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

Blackbeard is fond of Anne but he’s not a forgiving man.

Whether you’re seeking treasure or love you always have to look out for hidden reefs and other hazards of the sea and that’s the case here. In fact seeking for love is a lot more dangerous than seeking for gold.

Of course there are many complications and twists to come. There is only one member of her crew whom Anne might be able to consider a friend and confidant, the drunken cynical ship’s doctor, Jameson (Herbert Marshall). He is worried about the situation. Her boisterous Scottish first mate Red Dougal (James Robertson Justice) doesn’t trust Pierre. But Anne can’t keep her hands off the handsome Frenchman.

Betrayal could come from any number of sources. It’s doubtful whether any of the characters in this tale could be described as honest upstanding citizens.

Of course there’s another woman, Molly (Debra Paget). I won’t spoil things by revealing where she fits into the plot but you’re probably going to guess that she and Anne are not going to get along.

There’s an extraordinary anti-English bias to this movie. Anne considers the English to be treacherous, cruel and wholly untrustworthy and she turns out to be right.

Anne Providence makes an interesting heroine. She’s brave, sexy, daring and quite sympathetic but there is the minor point that we have already seen her commit mass murder. I like the spirited performance of Jean Peters and she’s able to make Anne both wicked and sympathetic. Anne is a ruthless pirate but she’s a woman and Pierre has made her very much aware of that. Peters makes Anne a real woman who reacts in a believable way to emotional betrayal. Peters also makes us aware that Anne is a woman with sexual feelings.

Louis Jourdan, James Robertson Justice and Debra Paget are fine in their roles but Herbert Marshall is the standout among the supporting players, giving a subtle performance as a man with divided loyalties and a conflicted sense of duty.

There are plenty of nicely executed action scenes and the movie (shot in Technicolor) looks great. I believe some of the sea battle scenes were lifted from earlier Twentieth Century Fox pirate movies.

Anne of the Indies is a surprisingly nuanced pirate adventure with a complex protagonist who doesn’t always do what we expect her to do. The movie as a whole doesn’t adhere rigidly to the conventions of the pirate movie. It’s much more interesting than one expects it to be. In fact this is a terrific pirate movie and certainly the best lady pirate movie ever made. Very highly recommended.

The French Blu-Ray from BQHL offers a lovely transfer and includes the film in English with removable French subtitles, and it includes the movie on DVD as well. A very worthwhile buy.

If you’re interested in lady pirates you might also want to check out the rather entertaining Buccaneer’s Girl (1950).

The Black Pirate (1926)

The Black Pirate is a 1926 Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler so I was always going to enjoy this one.

Fairbanks conceived the idea, he wrote the story, he produced the movie and he starred and as in all his 1920s movies he was in every way the creative driving force here. His 1920s movies are totally Douglas Fairbanks movies.

A pirate movie was an obvious choice for Fairbanks. Rafael Sabatini’s classic pirate novel Captain Blood had been published in 1922 so the idea of a pirate who is actually a hero rather than a villain was very much an idea of the moment. It suited Fairbanks perfectly. Fairbanks however wanted a totally original story, so he wrote one.

Fairbanks felt that a pirate movie needed to be shot in colour. Colour had been around for a while. The very early colour technologies had huge problems and had given colour cinematography a bad name. By 1922 Technicolor had come up with a new process that seemed promising, and by 1926 Fairbanks felt that shooting his pirate movie using this process would be viable.

The movie begins with an exceptionally brutal act of piracy, with most of the crew of the captured merchantman being slaughtered. In fact not just slaughtered, but blown to smithereens. There is one survivor. We don’t really know who this guy is but his name is Michel and he’s played by Douglas Fairbanks and he wants revenge.

He figures the best way to achieve that aim is to get himself accepted as a member of this crew of bloodthirsty cutthroats. That proves to be easy. Firstly he demonstrated that he can take on the toughest of the pirates in a sword fight and win. Then he proves that he can capture a ship single-handed. Now he’s not merely a member of the crew, he might soon be in a position to put himself forward as their leader.

Among the booty captured in their latest coup is a woman. She’s a princess and she’s played by Billie Dove. The current captain and his crew draw lots for her. The captain wins. We can imagine what her fate is going to be. Fairbanks persuades the crew that since the woman is a princess it would be smarter to hold her for ransom rather than letting the captain satisfy his lusts on her. So the stage is set for a power struggle between the current captain and Fairbanks. The stage is also set for a romance. We know that Fairbanks and the princess will fall for each other.

Movies shot in early versions of Technicolor have a very distinctive look. It was a rather crude technology that was unable to reproduce all colours successfully. Earth tones and flesh tones look good, sombre reds look good, blue and green tones look somehow wrong and it really couldn’t do yellow at all. To get reasonably good results required enormous skill. Early Technicolor could work very well in horror movies such as Mystery of the Wax Museum. It gave such movies the right kind of weird other-worldly look. The Black Pirate has an interesting look but it is rather artificial. Since the movie is a kind of fantasy it works after a fashion but the effect can be a bit distracting until you get used to it.

Fairbanks ended up being disappointed by the results and decided not to make any more movies in colour.

On the other hand this is a truly spectacular movie. The budget was generous to say the least. The full-size ship sets look great. The miniature ships used for the ocean scenes look impressive. All the sets are great.

The action climax includes underwater scenes and is clever and crazy and great fun.

Fairbanks is of course excellent. When you watch his stunts, which would do credit to an Olympic athlete, bear in mind that he was a 43-year-old chain-smoker. And he really did do the stunts himself. He also has that distinctive Fairbanks mischievous charm.

Billie Dove doesn’t have to do much apart from looking frightened and looking like a princess but she does both those things successfully.

There’s a memorable evil scheming villain.

There are also some quite brutal moments, such as a pirate casually wandering up to a bound prisoner and running him through with a sword just for the the pleasure of killing. This was of course long before such horrors as the Production Code were even thought of. It’s also made crystal clear that, if Michel cannot intervene successfully, the princess is to become a sexual plaything for the pirates.

The Black Pirate is a fine swashbuckler. It’s a genre that Fairbanks largely invented and it suited him perfectly. There were other good silent pirate movies and later sound films such as Captain Blood would surpass The Black Pirate but this was an important pioneering effort that is still hugely entertaining today. Highly recommended.

The Cohen Films Blu-Ray looks terrific. Don’t be put off by the colours - early Technicolor is supposed to look like this. The audio commentary offers some genuinely fascinating details not just about the production but also about cool stuff like the history of colour in early feature films and the evolution of movie sword-fighting. Other extras include outtakes. It’s an excellent Blu-Ray presentation.

The Pirates of Capri (1949)

The Pirates of Capri is an oddity in Edgar G.Ulmer’s career as a director but then when you think about it his entire career was full of oddities. Usually extremely interesting oddities. The Pirates of Capri is a swashbuckling adventure. It’s an Italian-American co-production shot in Italy.

It is 1798 and a warship is on its way to Naples carrying a shipment of arms, the fiancée of the Count of Amalfi and a troupe of acrobats. The acrobats are actually pirates and they seize the ship. The pirates are led by the notorious masked Captain Sirocco.

Captain Sirocco (Louis Hayward) is in fact the Count of Amalfi. In his Sirocco guise he is a handsome dashing very masculine pirate. In his Count of Amalfi guise he is a fop and a fool.

Of course this is hardly an original idea. It’s the same idea behind the Zorro books and movies. And Zorro was just a riff on Baroness Orczy’s the Scarlet Pimpernel. What matters with such dual rôles is finding an actor who can be equally convincing as both fop and hero. Is Louis Hayward up to the job? The answer is a resounding yes.

The pirates are not regular pirates. They’re revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the government of the Queen of Naples. There’s an interesting split in the ranks of the revolutionaries. Sirocco is a moderate. He wants to keep the queen on her throne. He just wants to get rid of her government, and mostly he wants to get rid of the vicious sadistic chief of police, Baron Holstein (Massimo Serato). He wants to avoid a bloodbath. The extreme revolutionaries want a bloodbath and they model themselves on the French revolutionaries so they’d be quite happy to lop off the queen’s head.

There’s a romantic complication. The Count of Amalfi’s intended bride is Countess Mercedes Villalta de Lopez (Mariella Lotti). She’s not keen on marrying the foolish count of Amalfi. Although initially horrified by Sirocco she has started to lose her heart to him. He’s the kind of action hero that any girl would fall for. Of course she has no idea that the Count of Amalfi and Sirocco are the same man.

There are plenty of fairly full-blooded action scenes. There’s a cruel villain who likes to torture young women. There’s the whole fighting for freedom thing (with a few twists). And there’s a suitably heroic hero. It’s a formula that should work, and it does.

On this occasion Ulmer has a reasonable budget to work with and it shows. The movie is visually reasonably impressive.

Louis Hayward is in splendid form. The other cast members are all quite competent.

The movie is fairly sympathetic to the revolutionaries, or at least to moderate revolutionaries such as Sirocco. Politically Sirocco falls halfway between being a reformist and a true revolutionary. You don’t really have to worry too much about the politics. The movie is perhaps a little naïve in that department anyway. This film can be enjoyed as a straightforward romantic swashbuckler.

The Pirates of Capri is energetic fun. It’s Ulmer’s only swashbuckler although a few years later he did attempt an historical epic with Hannibal, an unjustly neglected movie.

Louis Hayward’s performance and Ulmer’s lively direction make The Pirates of Capri an enjoyable experience. Highly recommended.

This is a hard-to-find movie. I came across a French DVD from Artus Films which includes the English version (with removable subtitles) and it offers an acceptable transfer. There are no extras. That DVD is still in print and it’s your best chance of seeing this movie.

The Master of Ballantrae (1953)

The Master of Ballantrae is a late Errol Flynn swashbuckler (released in 1953) but it’s worth a look.

Flynn plays Jamie Durie, the Master of Ballantrae. In the 45 Rebellion the Durie family comes up with a clever plan to preserve the title and their estates. Jamie, the elder brother, will join Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender (popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie) in his rebellion. His younger brother Henry (Anthony Steel) will remain at home and will remain loyal to King George II. Whether the rebellion succeeds or fails one of the Duries will be on the winning side and the family’s fortune should be secure.

It’s a good deal for Henry. If the rebellion fails he will get to be Master of Ballantrae, which is what he always wanted. He will also get to marry Lady Alison (Beatrice Campbell). He always thought he would be a more suitable husband for her than Jamie.

Jamie Durie is the elder but wilder brother, a man who likes wine, women and gambling. Henry is the dull sensible one. Not surprisingly they’re not overly fond of one another.

The rebellion ends in disaster at Culloden and the English take their revenge on the Scottish rebels. The rebels are now being hunted down. Jamie hopes to escape to France on a smuggling ship along with an equally wild Irishman with whom he has hooked up, Colonel Francis Burke (Roger Livesy). They are betrayed to the English, Jamie blames Henry, there is a fight and somehow Jamie makes it to the ship. But his adventures and his troubles have only just begun.

Jamie has a future as a pirate but Scotland is always in his thoughts. He dreams of returning to reclaim his inheritance, and to reclaim Lady Alison. But first he must make his fortune, and piracy is a competitive business.

Returning to Scotland would be a dangerous thing to do. Which of course is unlikely to stop Jamie.

The years (or rather his debauched lifestyle) were starting to take their toll on Errol Flynn but he still has star quality and he can still play the swashbuckling hero. And he’s obviously well suited to playing an irresponsible but loveable rogue (being an irresponsible but loveable rogue himself). He looks dissipated but Jamie is a character who should look dissipated.

Roger Livesy gives a lively performance. Anthony Steel is suitably dour as the respectable responsible Henry.

There’s no question that the English are the bad guys in this movie. The movie expects the audience to unhesitatingly take the side of the rebels.

This Warner Brothers release was an Anglo-American production, shot in Scotland, England and Italy with a mostly British cast (and some great British character actors like Felix Aylmer). Having Jack Cardiff as the cinematographer certainly helped. Director William Keighley does a fine job as well.

This story of revenge, betrayal and adventure is based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, a man who knew a thing or two about writing tales of adventure. Stevenson is a very underrated writer and The Master of Ballantrae is one of his most celebrated novels. The movie lacks some of the complexity that Stevenson could bring to such a tale and the focus is on the straightforward revenge plot.

The film was shot in Technicolor. The Warner Archive release offers a reasonable transfer.

The Master of Ballantrae isn’t one of the great swashbucklers but like another late Flynn swashbuckler, Adventures of Don Juan, it’s better than you might expect. Flynn isn’t as energetic as he was in his heyday but he has lost none of his charisma and this movie still provides plenty of action and romance. And it looks great with some fine location shooting.

The Master of Ballantrae is an enjoyable ride and it’s recommended.

Captain Kidd (1945)

Any movie with Charles Laughton as a pirate has to be worth a look, and Captain Kidd (released in 1945) turns out to be pretty good.

William Kidd was one of the most famous of all pirates, and one of the most controversial, the controversy stemming from the fact that there is considerable doubt as to whether Kidd really was technically a pirate at all.

In the movie we’re left in no doubt that Kidd (played of course by Laughton) is a cut-throat and a remarkably devious rogue. He is also ambitious. He wants to buy his way into the aristocracy and that’s going to require a great deal of money. It’s also obviously going to require him to appear to have obtained the money by legal means. So when he sets out on   his latest voyage, armed with a letter of marque (authorising him to attack ships of enemy states) signed by the King, his intention is to engage in piracy whilst appearing to be acting within the letter of the law.

For this voyage he selects his crew with great care. They are all prisoners from Newgate Prison, all awaiting execution for piracy, and all of them guaranteed to be loyal since they’ve been promised a royal pardon if they survive the voyage.

His officers are even bigger rogues than the crew. They are pirates who have served with Kidd before. They have no scruples whatsoever.

Kidd is a man who always has some dishonest but profitable scheme in mind. He is not the only one making schemes. Orange Povy (John Carradine) has plans of his own and he knows Kidd extremely well. He believes he can match wits with him.

Jose Lorenzo (Gilbert Roland) is another of the officers with his own agenda. And then there’s Adam Mercy (Randolph Scott), something of a mystery man and the object of much suspicion on the part of his fellow officers, and especially on the part of the Captain. Lorenzo and Mercy will also try to mach wits with Kidd.

Things get more complicated after Kidd’s rendezvous with the Quedagh Merchant, a ship he is supposed to escort through the pirate-infested waters near Madagascar. The Quedagh Merchant is carrying treasure of immense value, and it is also carrying the beautiful young Lady Anne Dunstan (Barbara Britton). The challenge for Kidd is to get his hands on the treasure without appearing to have committed an act of piracy. He also has plans for Lady Anne, and he’s not the only one.

Captain Kidd keeps a list of names hidden in a secret drawer in his cabin. It’s a list of people who are or have been accomplices in his schemes, and who feel themselves entitled to a share of the loot. The list is distressingly long. It seems a great pity to have to divide the loot so many ways. It would be much safer, more convenient and more profitable if that list of names could be reduced to a more manageable level. Kidd has plans to do just this.

Charles Laughton is in magnificent form. This is overacting taken to the most delightfully extreme levels. He manages to be both horrifyingly amoral and oddly likeable, and also very very amusing. Kidd’s attempts to turn himself into a gentleman provide a good deal of fun. He has hired a valet, Shadwell (Reginald Owen) to teach him the finer points of gentlemanly behaviour. This proves to be quite a challenge for Shadwell.

The supporting cast is very strong, with John Carradine being wonderfully sinister.

Rowland V. Lee was a competent director and does a solid job despite having to work with a somewhat limited budget. With Charles Laughton in full flight there’s never the slightest danger of things becoming boring. The screenplay plays fast and loose with history but it gives Laughton the kind of dialogue he can sink his teeth into. There’s not a huge amount of action but there’s enough to keep the viewer’s interest.

Captain Kidd is in the public domain and there are therefore a number of DVD releases of varying quality. I can’t comment on these discs since I caught this movie on broadcast television (with the print being in reasonable condition).

This would have been a pretty enjoyable pirate adventure anyway, with plenty of nasty plot twists and a gallery of colourful rogues. It’s Charles Laughton’s performance that lifts it to a higher level. For Laughton fans, or for pirate movie fans, it’s pretty much a must-see movie. Highly recommended.

The Spanish Main (1945)

I’m quite a fan of pirate movies but RKO’s 1945 The Spanish Main, directed by Frank Borzage, is not exactly one of the classics of the genre.

Pious Dutchman Captain Laurent Van Horn (Paul Henreid) is sailing to the New World to start a new life but he falls into the hands of the wicked Spanish when his ship runs aground near Cartagena. The wicked Spanish viceroy Don Juan Alvarado (Walter Slezak) throws him into prison. Vam Horm escapes and becomes the dreaded pirate known as the Barracuda.

A beautiful Spanish contessa (played by Maureen O’Hara) is one her way to Cartagena to become the Alvarado’s bride. Her ship is captured by the Barracuda and she is forced to marry the pirate. She has already been acquainted with him and is oddly attracted to him. Whether she has really married him against her will is a moot point.

Of course the Contessa Francesca and the Barracuda hate each other at first before realising that they’re actually madly in love.

Van Horn’s motives for marrying the Contessa soon become clear. He wants revenge against Don Alvarado and plans to use her as bait in his plan to destroy the wicked Spanish tyrant. Of course he eventually realises that he truly loves her.

There are complicated and tedious plots and counter-plots by Van Horn and Alvarado as they seek to destroy each other, while Van Horn’s schemes cause much dissension among the Brethren of the Coast (a sort of pirates’ trade-union). It all ends with the expected showdown between the Barracuda and Don Alvarado.

This movie starts with some pretty decent action scenes including a full-scale sea battle. There are some lesser but still reasonably good action moments later on. This was RKO’s first Technicolor production, the cinematography is excellent and by RKO standards it’s quite lavish.

The Spanish are always cast as the villains in pirate movies set in this era but this has to be just about the most hysterically anti-Spanish movie I’ve ever seen. The Spanish are depicted as cruel, treacherous, bloodthirsty monsters but they’re also depicted as incompetent buffoons. The pirates on the other hand appear to be a mixture of courageous freedom fighters and priggish social workers. OK, it’s just a pirate movie, but even by pirate movie standards this is juvenile and unconvincing nonsense and it makes the movie tiresome.

The big problem is the casting. The movie was apparently Paul Henreid’s pet project and he was the one who sold RKO on the project. Unfortunately he just doesn’t have the charisma or the personality to be swashbuckling hero. He seems more like a country parson than a pirate. He may be the dullest swashbuckling hero in cinematic history and he pretty much sinks the whole film.

Maureen O’Hara made quite a few swashbucklers and her performance is as spirited as usual although the plodding and rather feeble script by Herman Mankiewicz and George Worthing Yates doesn’t give her much to work with.

The supporting cast is mostly dull.

The one bright spot is Walter Slezak as Don Alvarado. He’s a cartoon villain but Slezak’s performance is sparkling and witty and immensely entertaining. He’s the bad guy but I was rooting for him to win and hoping that at the end he’d get to hang those sanctimonious pirates.

The whole movie is the usual collection of clichés, executed with a noticeable lack of energy and style. With a decent swashbuckling hero, an Errol Flynn or a Tyrone Power, it might still have worked. With Paul Henreid as the hero it all falls terribly flat. The Spanish Main looks good but even Walter Slezak’s wonderful performance can’t keep this one afloat. Not recommended.

Yankee Buccaneer (1952)

In 1952 during the filming of the pirate adventure Against All Flags Errol Flynn broke his ankle. This obviously meant that shooting of the film had to be put on hold. Universal decided to turn an inconvenience into an opportunity by making use of the sets built for Against All Flags to shoot a second pirate movie (this time a B-picture) whilst Flynn recovered. A script was hastily cobbled together and the result was Yankee Buccaneer. And it’s not a  bad little programmer.

This is a slightly unusual pirate movie in that the heroes are two distinguished real-life US Navy officers, Captain (Later Commodore) David Porter and Lieutenant (later Admiral David Farragut. They are sent on a secret mission by the US Navy to discover the whereabouts of a pirate flotilla infesting the Caribbean. Captain Porter’s frigate, the USS Essex, is to fly the Jolly Roger while his crew disguise themselves as a crew of cut-throat buccaneers.

Davy Farragut has served under Porter before and it was not a particularly pleasant experience. The young Lieutenant acknowledges that Porter is a fine officer and a good captain but it’s Porter’s uncompromising adherence to regulations and strict discipline that he regards with distaste. A series of mishaps, for which Farragut appears to be responsible, adds to the tension between the two men and it start to look Farragut’s future in the Navy may be bleak.

The secret mission takes a surprising turn when the Essex encounters a Portuguese ship-of-the-line. The counterfeit pirates assume they’re about to be attacked and, given that they are badly outgunned, probably sunk. When they hoist the Jolly Roger a strange thing happens. The Portuguese warship leaves them alone. Something odd is definitely going on. In fact Captain Porter and his crew are about to sail into a very tangled web of international intrigue and double-dealing.

Of course at this point you might be thinking that what’s missing in this movie is a beautiful woman to add some romance and glamour. You need not worry. Countess Margarita La Raguna is about to make her appearance, and the plot starts to get really complicated.

The main weakness of Yankee Buccaneer is that being a B-movie it doesn’t have the spectacular action scenes that a pirate movie needs to have. On the other hand quite a bit of imagination is shown in providing the kind of adventure that can be managed on a low budget and it’s enough to maintain the viewer’s interest (although the shark scene is a major disappointment since the shark is much too obviously a rubber shark). There’s a reasonable fight scene towards the end with some swordplay but sadly there are no sea battles.

The lack of major action set-pieces is counter-balanced to some extent by the impressive sets built for Against All Flags so Yankee Buccaneer is a reasonably good-looking film (and was also shot in Technicolor).

Having a competent cast helps things along. Jeff Chandler does a fine job as Captain Porter, making the character a stickler for discipline and a rather hard and inflexible man but still making him fairly sympathetic. Porter might be a martinet but he knows his job and he cares for the safety of his crew. Scott Brady is pretty good as Farragut and like Chandler is able to give his character at least a small amount of depth. Suzan Ball is convincing enough as the proud and headstrong countess. Suzan Ball was one of Hollywood’s most tragic starlets. She was just eighteen when she made this picture and sadly had just three years of life left to her.

There’s a bit of comic relief but it’s bearable and not too intrusive.

This movie is included in Universal’s four-movie Pirates of the Golden Age boxed set. There are no extras but the transfer is excellent. The set is definitely worth getting if you’re a pirate fan. So far I’ve seen three of the four films and Against All Flags, Buccaneer’s Girl and Yankee Buccaneer are all worth a watch. Strangely enough my favourite of the three is Buccaneer’s Girl, although that could have some connection with my Yvonne de Carlo infatuation.

Yankee Buccaneer is decent solid and completely harmless B-movie entertainment. Recommended.

Buccaneer’s Girl (1950)

Buccaneer’s Girl is a bright and breezy comedy romance pirate romp from Universal with Yvonne de Carlo as a lady pirate (well, sort of a lady pirate). It's very much a B-picture and it could have used just a little more action but de Carlo is in sparkling form and there's plenty of enjoyment to be had here.

Here's the link to my full review at my Cult Movie reviews blog.

Sea Devils (1953)

Sea Devils is a swashbuckling Technicolor adventure romp with Rock Hudson as a smuggler and Yvonne de Carlo as a glamorous spy.

It’s supposed to be set in 1800, although characters keep referring to Napoleon as the Emperor (he did not assume that title until 1805). The internal evidence of the movie suggests that the setting is in fact around 1805.

The wars between England and France have made it difficult for the fishermen of the island of Guernsey (in the Channel Islands) to earn their normal livelihood, but every cloud has a silver lining and they have discovered that smuggling is easier, plays better and is more fun. The most notorious and most skillful of the Guernsey smugglers is Gilliat (Rock Hudson), captain of the Sea Devil. The Sea Devil is a small fast two-masted ship that the Customs men have tried to catch on many occasions, without success.

Gilliatt’s arch rival is Rantaine (Maxwell Reed), another smuggler although a very untrustworthy one even by smuggler standards. Rantaine lands a lucrative job, transporting a woman to France. Before he can make his departure he has an unfortunate encounter with Gilliatt in the local pub and as a result it’s Gilliatt who ends up with the job. The woman, Droucette (Yvonne de Carlo), spins a sob story about trying to rescue her brother, the only other surviving member of her family, her parents having been guillotined during the Terror.

Gilliat soon discovers that Droucette is a spy, but he thinks she is a French spy when in fact she is an English spy. This misunderstanding will cause Droucette a great deal of trouble and danger. Had she told Gilliatt the truth in the first place this could all have been avoided, but in that case we wouldn’t have had a movie.

Droucette’s mission is to discover the details of the French plan for the invasion of England. She intends to get these details from the man most likely to know them, Napoleon himself. She is posing as a French countess who is a real French spy, currently under lock and key in the Tower of London.

She has to work quickly. It is only a matter of time before the cunning French counter-espionage chief, Fouche (Jacques B. Brunius) discovers her real identity.

Gilliatt very nearly manages to sabotage Droucette’s mission, acting under the impression that he is trying to foil the dastardly plans of a French secret agent. He will get his chance to redeem himself however, being the one man capable of carrying out a daring plan to rescue Droucette and thus save England.

I don’t think anyone involved in this movie was taking it too seriously. It’s essentially a light-hearted adventure romp combined with romance, and on its own terms it works quite satisfactorily. Hudson gets to be brave and dashing and take off his shirt a lot and de Carlo gets to be brave and resourceful and beautiful. The movie makes no great demands on the acting abilities of either lead. Their most important tasks are to look good and to avoid being dull and they both achieve these ends without too much trouble. OK, maybe Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power and Stewart Granger were better at doing this sort of thing but Hudson gives it his best shot and he does fairly well. Gilliatt may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but he’s well-meaning and he’s impossible to dislike, and most crucially Hudson makes sure we’re never tempted to despise Gilliatt even when he gets things hopelessly muddled.

The movie’s biggest asset is its director, Raoul Walsh. Walsh knew how to do action movies and Sea Devils is in very capable hands.

This movie was made by Coronado Productions and released by RKO. It seems to have been fairly modestly budgeted by the standards of 1950s swashbucklers. There are no large-scale action set-pieces but while the action is mostly on a small scale it’s adroitly executed.

Optimum’s Region 2 release is barebones but it’s a decent transfer and it’s absurdly cheap.

Sea Devils is just good old-fashioned fun. It’s not a great movie by any means and it’s not one of the best of the swashbucklers but it’s decent enough entertainment.

The Sea Hawk (1940)

The Sea Hawk is deservedly one of Errol Flynn’s most famous swashbucklers. Made by Warner Brothers in 1940 it should be noted that it is not a remake of the 1924 silent film of the same name, although both deal with pirates and the 1924 movie is a classic swashbuckler in its own right. But it’s the much better-known 1940 version we’re concerned with.

Flynn was already a huge star and putting him in another pirate adventure movie was always going to be a smart move. And getting Michael Curtiz on board, Curtiz having directed Flynn in his 1935 smash hit Captain Blood and in several other action adventure films, was another shrewd move. Curtiz certainly knew how to do this kind of movie supremely well.

This movie hits the ground running and the pace never slackens. It opens with a superb extended sea fight in which a Spanish galleass is caught and boarded by the English ship The Albatross. All we know about Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn) at this stage is that he is obviously the captain of The Albatross. And this extended action sequence tells us all we need to know about him without the necessity for any tedious introductory scenes. Thorpe is clearly a brilliant seaman and a born leader, he has the unquestioned respect of his crew, and while he can be ruthless he can be chivalrous as well. And when he encounters the beautiful Spanish lady Doña Maria (Brenda Marshall), who had been travelling to England on the galleass Thorpe has just captured, we learn that while Thorpe is fearless in the face of danger he is somewhat helpless when faced by a pretty woman.

This opening sequence also introduces us to Don José Alvarez de Cordoba (Claude Rains), the newly appointed Spanish ambassador to England, who is also now an unwilling passenger on board The Albatross. But Doña Maria and Don José are certainly not prisoners. Thorpe might be a pirate but he’s a gentleman and he intends to convey his Spanish guests safely to England, which is where they were headed anyway.

Technically Thorpe is not actually a pirate. He is a privateer, a privateer being a private citizen licensed by his government to prey on the shipping of that government’s enemies. Although given that England and Spain are not actually at war, not yet anyway, the legal status of the English privateers who plundered Spanish shipping in the late 16th century was somewhat ambiguous. Queen Elizabeth is aware that this is a dangerous game she is playing but she needs the considerable income she derives from the privateers to augment her rather inadequate treasury.

This dangerous game is about to become more dangerous still when the queen, unofficially, authorises Thorpe to conduct a daring raid on a Spanish treasure shipment crossing the isthmus of Panama. This raid will have fateful consequences for Captain Thorpe and his men but will also indirectly put Thorpe in a position to render his Queen his most valuable service yet.

There is enough action in this movie to satisfy anyone but there is also a good deal of intrigue, with nefarious Spanish plots and treason and intricate power struggles within Elizabeth’s court between pro- and anti-Spanish factions. There is also of course a romantic sub-plot, with a love affair between Thorpe and Doña Maria.

This romance is the movie’s one weak link, with Brenda Marshall as Doña Maria being rather too bland to be a completely convincing object of the affections of a sea hawk like Geoffrey Thorpe.

Having said that, Curtiz manages to integrate the romance and the political machinations into the main action plot with considerable skill, and without the pacing of the movie ever threatening to drag. Curtiz really keeps things moving along.

Flynn was at the height of his powers and he’s a superb action hero. Thorpe is a man who leads men through sheer charisma and if there’s one quality Flynn possessed in abundance it was charisma. Flynn radiates vitality. Even when he isn’t doing anything he always seems like he’s just about to spring into action.

Flora Robson’s performance as Queen Elizabeth is one of the more interesting features of this movie. This is a very different interpretation compared to the way other actresses have approached this role. This is a softer, more feminine Elizabeth, at times playful, often coquettish, often humorous. And at times perhaps a little uncertain. England was in a very dangerous situation in the 1580s and on occasion she seems just a little unsure how far she can push her luck. But Robson still convinces us that this is a monarch capable of ruling when necessary, and capable of demanding, and getting, obedience. She simply prefers to lead by persuasion rather than force. Whether it’s a historically accurate performance or not is a moot question but it’s certainly a refreshingly different performance.

Claude Rains was a fine actor but inclined to overact if not kept on a short leash. And Curtiz seems to have realised this, getting a very effective performance from him by restraining the actor’s tendency to overdo things. I’m inclined to give Curtiz the credit for this since he got a similarly restrained, and equally effective, performance from Rains a couple of years later in Casablanca. The supporting cast is excellent with Alan Hale being particularly good (and also more restrained than usual) as Thorpe’s faithful first mate.

Michael Curtiz is often seen as the antithesis of the auteur film-maker, a director who was exceptionally competent but without having any real personal style. Which is more or less true. Curtiz tended to allow the subject matter to dictate the style of his movies rather than trying to impose a personal style. One thing that is not in doubt though is that he was a remarkably effective director. Watching a movie like The Sea Hawk it’s obvious that Curtiz was no mere hack. The movie has too much energy, too much vitality, too much sparkle, to be the work of a hack. The action scenes in particular are magnificent. There’s also one very ambitious shot looking down onto the deck of Thorpe’s ship, just to prove that Curtiz was quite capable of inspiration when needed. The significant thing about this shot is that it serves a purpose, it’s not just done to show us what a clever chap the director is. The use of tinting in the Panama scenes is an unusual feature for a 1940 movie but it works quite well.

The Sea Hawk is sheer unadulterated fun from start to finish, a dazzling example of how to an action adventure movie the right way. Very highly recommended.