Unrated, 1 hr. 59 min. Directed By:
Michael Curtiz. Release Date:
Dec 28, 1935. DVD Release
Date: Apr 19, 2005.
I said not that long ago that I absolutely hate
westerns. That I couldn’t identify with
the romance of the cowboy and his plight of getting his little doggies
along. That’s still true, and the reason
for that is that I am completely and totally in love with this era of
swashbuckling. For folks who know that
some of my favorite adventure novels, like The
Three Musketeers and The Count of
Monte Cristo are based in this era, it will probably come as a surprise
that I have never seen an Errol Flynn movie, even though his movies have served
as the personification of the era. It
didn’t come as a surprise to me that I enjoyed this movie. It DID surprise me that I spent the last two
hours smiling so hard that my face hurts.
To put it simply, this movie was a HELL of a lot of
fun, albeit cheesy fun. It starts a little silly, and just
kind of spirals into silliness, embraces it even. Some characters, like Basil Rathbone’s
Captain Le Vasseur, were clearly intended to be ridiculous, and others were
legitimately funny in ways that are remarkably similar to Johnny Depp’s
performances as Captain Jack Sparrow.
They are so similar, in fact, that I’m wondering if Depp watched this
and took some notes while preparing for his role.
If this movie has a fault, it’s that its special
effects don’t translate well to modern audiences, but this is a movie I would
certainly share with the kids in my family.
The violence is limited in that way that you see fighting, but you see
little gore, and I think only one or two people die in the 120-minute run time. There’s a little bit of romance on the high
seas, and the movie rallies against injustice and tyranny in such a way that I
can’t help but cheer on Captain Blood’s crew no matter what they were doing.
Don’t get me wrong, I really dig Disney’s Pirates of the Carribean. I really, really do. Even the bad ones aren’t so terrible I won’t
watch them a second time, well maybe I wouldn't watch the most recent installment a second time. But I love me
some Captain Blood. Basically, Errol Flynn had me when he uttered
the magical words, “vinegary virgin.” I
haven’t laughed that hard in a very, very long time. Actually, the dialogue is ludicrously funny, and it's done consistently, so it isn't just a matter of the changing of the English language of the 80 years since this was originally made.
I'm very excited that I've found a new favorite pirate movie. I'm also no really looking forward to The Adventures of Robin Hood, another Errol Flynn movie that's heading my way in the near future.
