Captain Kidd and the Slave Girl

Caught this movie one late night. I watched it just for fun. It stars Eva Gabor as a spoiled girl who has to pretend to be a slave, Anthony Dexter as Captain Kidd and Alan Hale Jr as the Captain's best friend. Gabor becomes a slave to Dexter and the two fight, with pampered Gabor made to do duties which are beneath her but expected for a slave girl. The two lock horns and a sort of Taming of the Shrew kind of treatment to the story occurs, with Gabor fighting the Captain's every demand, who tries to tame the spirited 'slave' girl. They talk, and talk and talk. And, of course, they fall in love.

The whole film is OK and sorta fun in a quaint "they don't make movies like this anymore" way but nothing about it really stands out aside from the fact that Dexter is often shirtless and showing off his physique. There's also a pretty good cat-fight between Gabor and Sonia Sorrell, a female pirate (who looked really cool and sorta out of place in such an studio film). What's painfully obvious about CAPTAIN KIDD are the studio bound sets, which really looked like they're in a studio (we see shadows of actors appearing against the background 'sky'). There are some scenes shot outside but most of this seafaring adventure is filmed indoors. In fact the movie reminds me of a TV movie. A typically forgotten/overlooked United Artist movie.

Done on a budget as thin as dental floss Captain Kidd And The Slave Girl will never go down as a great pirate adventure. It certainly is nowhere near the story of Captain William Kidd.

Kidd as played by Anthony Dexteris scheduled to be hanged.. But the greedy Earl of Bellomont played by James Seay wants to get his hands on Kidd's hidden treasure. So clever as well as greedy Seay arranges for the jangman to be cheated. Dexter sails incognito with only Alan Hale, Jr. with him whom he can really trust.

Things move kind of fast here and we can barely follow the story with all the double dealing and double crossing going on. Eva Gabor is along for th ride and she looked more at home in Hooterville.

The cheapness of production and thinness of story will never make this one rank with the great pirate flickd. Christopher Atkin's film was better.

Lew Landers already gave us LAST OF THE BUCCANEERS, so he was not a beginner in that domain of pirates and sea adventures. He as a adventures and exotic movies specialist. It is not a masterpiece, not at the scale of Sidney Salkow's PRINCE OF PIRATES for instance, nor even Jacques Tourneur's ANNE OF THE INDIES, nor a Warner Bros stuff directed by Raoul Walsh, but it is a pretty good entertainment to enjoy, an interesting time waster. I only was unlucky to see it in black and white instead of color. Alan Hale Jr is the Tony Dexter's sidekick, as his father was Errol Flynnn's one on ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. I highly advise this one to moviegoers in love with such rare gems.

I'm surprised by another review that characterizes this film as briskly paced and Eva Gabor as providing "sterling" support. Even at 82 minutes the film simply crawls -- I had to speed up the DVD playback just to get through it, and I'm a collector of swashbuckler films! Anthony Dexter and Alan Hale, Jr. are fine, as far as they go, but Eva Gabor is simply terrible: wooden and unconvincing. Yet even if she'd had the skills of a Patricia Medina, the atrocious screenplay would still have thwarted her efforts -- it's really that bad. Swashbucklers are, by nature, stylized, so I wasn't expecting cinéma vérité, but this movie is so stilted it's simply unwatchable without a peanut gallery a la "Mystery Science Theater 3000". I have more than 90 swashbuckler films on DVD and this one is so unenjoyable that it won't go on the shelf with the others. For far better pirate fare try "Captain Blood", "Fortunes of Captain Blood", "Captain Blood Returns", "Anne of the Indies", "The Black Swan", "The Sea Hawk", "The Spanish Main", "Seven Seas to Calais", "Duel on the Mississippi", "The Buccaneer", "The Black Pirate", "Raiders of the Seven Seas", or even "Last of the Buccaneers" and "Pirates of Tripoli". All of these are available on DVD and even the latter two rather-mediocre swashbucklers are far superior to "Captain Kidd...". The other films listed are delightful alternatives.

Okay, let's not pretend, this is not a classic by any means, but actually turns out to be an enjoyable and undemanding little movie, with a lively and engaging lead performance by the much-underrated Anthony Dexter, as Captain William Kidd. In the co-starring roles, Alan Hale Jnr and Eva Gabor provide sterling support, and there's a pretty wild cameo from Sonia Sorrell as a female pirate, of all things!! The storyline is basic and straightforward, but rattles along at a fairly brisk pace. In fact, as the previous reviewer has pointed out, the film is only really let down by the stagy backdrops. If there had been more outdoor shots, the film would have benefited greatly via the authenticity of the so-called the exterior scenes. As long as any potential viewer doesn't expect too much, this is a more than satisfactory, neat little movie.