Capitan Kidd

Ahoy, mateys! 1945's Captain Kidd is a small gem of a swashbuckler with Charles Laughton, all menacing pudginess, spastic hair, and bad table manners, as the roguish pirate masquerading as a legitimate British sea captain. He and his dwindling posse of baddies (Guess who's causing them to dwindle!) are aiming to hijack a British freighter out of In-Jah, scoop up some loot already buried, have their way with a proper English lady, and whack Randolph Scott, the only man who can reveal their perfidy.

It's all so much yo-ho-ho and the actors seem to be having one heck of a good time. The only problem with the film is that, for 1945, the production values are so poor and the film is so murky that the whole thing looks like it's ten years older.

Find a copy of it in the dollar DVD dumpster at Wal-Mart and have a great time with Laughton chewing (with his mouth open) the scenery and Randolph Scott looking handsome in a series of sailor suits.

Anyone who's thinking that they will get the story of Captain William Kidd is in for one disappointing viewing. This is not the story of the real William Kidd who in fact some say, may not even have been a pirate, merely a British privateer. There's some controversy raging to this day about whether he left some buried treasure in and around the New York City area. In fact colonial New York is where the captain's base of operations was, though New York gets the barest mention in the beginning of the film.

This version of Kidd has him as a cockney with a burning ambition to rise in class. Actually Kidd was born in Scotland in either Aberdeen or Dundee depending on what source you use. He's a clever rogue, after sinking a king's ship and then accusing that noble captain of piracy.

Giving that story to King William III of Orange, Kidd gets a ship and he picks a crew of cutthroats and sets sail to do more plunder.

Captain Kidd suffers from two faults mainly. It's badly edited, the film clearly begins at a point where some previous action took place explaining some of what we see. Probably something of New York where Kidd began his career. A whole lot of things are left up in the air because of this. Secondly, Randolph Scott is horribly miscast in a part that Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. should have played. My guess is that none of these gentlemen could be secured for a loan out from their studios. Even Cornel Wilde or Louis Hayward would have been better.

But what enjoyment you get in the film comes from Charles Laughton's florid performance as Captain Kidd. Basically what he's done is taken his Horace Prin character from White Woman and set him to sea. Laughton's overacting is nicely counterbalanced by Reginald Owen as a valet he's hired and takes to sea to teach him the fine art of being a gentleman. Laughton overacts outrageously, but I'm sure he realized that without it, the film would have been dull as dishwater.

Gilbert Roland, John Carradine, and Sheldon Leonard are all part of Laughton's gang of thieves. Barbara Britton looks properly demure as a heroine caught up among them. And Henry Daniell, the man with the built in sneer in his voice, for once plays a good guy as King William.

Charles Laughton fans will love Captain Kidd. And Laughton was even more outrageous when he reprised Captain Kidd when he met up with Abbott and Costello. But that's a whole other movie.

In the tradition of Captain Blood and Horatio Hornblower, this movie has an excellent story, interesting characters, and very good actors. Very satisfying to be sure.

CAPTAIN KIDD begins better than it ends but in between it is great fun to watch, with a super cast to boot: John Carradine, Henry Daniels, Randolph Scott, Gilbert Roland, Qualen, and other character actors - but the pick of the bunch is the cabotin, hammish figure of Charles Laughton as Captain Kidd.

Laughton must have laughed at the prospect of playing a pirate, the very opposite of Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty.

The downside is that Scott looks out of his depth in a swashbuckler, the script bears some holes that are tough to swallow, and cinematography is none too remarkable. Stunts could be better, Laughton rolling around on the ground fighting Scott takes a great deal of suspension of disbelief... but then Scott and Laughton were known for their gayty.

On the positive side of things, these 86 minutes fly by quite fast!

Definitely worth watching, if you are fond of swashbucklers!

A classic example of a pirate melodrama, this production purports to be based on the life of the historic Captain Kidd (played with campy, eye-waggling mannerisms by Laughton). There are few pirate cliches that don't find their way into Norman Reilly Raine's overwrought script - buried treasures, kidnapped maidens, English nobles masquerading as buccaneers. Much of it is unintentionally silly: It is, for example, impossible to take the hale, beefy, Virginia-twanged Randolph Scott as either an English nobleman or a pirate. Scott claims two friends aboard Kidd's pirate ship, both strangely effete, deferential characters: Another pirate, who acts as Scott's valet, and Kidd's own valet, who spends most of the movie surreptitiously assisting Scott in his scheming against the pirate captain. Kidd's companions, by comparison, are swaggering caricatures, and Kidd spends most of the movie scheming to dispatch them in one of the film's strangest images: Laughton, huddled over a small book, jotting down names or crossing them out, muttering to himself and cackling.

Much of this is good fun, and some of the cinematography is gorgeous - even by today's standards, the use of miniatures and trick camerawork creates a convincing illusion of ships at battle on roiling seas. But the story is so far from history that there seems to be no good reason to name Laughton after the real Captain Kidd, a bumbler whose short career as a pirate and humiliating death was little but a series of bizarre travesties. But the script is awkward and choppy, and many of the set pieces are strangely cramped and stagey, as though this were a theatrical production rather than a film. Ultimately, the true pleasure in watching the film comes from Laughton's peculiar performance, which is similarly theatrical, as though it were an oversized clown act from a London stage transferred to film. He plays Kidd without nuance, telegraphng the captain's bloated greed and amorality as though these were comical personal eccentricities. The closest the screen has since produced to Laughton's outre characterization is Harvey Fierstein's Pirate King character in 1997's Kull the Conqueror, which is pure camp.

Laughton was, in fact, gay, and though this fact is never made overt in Captain Kidd, there is some surprising subtext. Two scenes in particular strike contemporary eyes as having implicitly camp sensibilities - one in which Laughton sniffingly dismisses any interest in female companionship, and another scene in which Scott, a legitimate beefcake, shares a bath with his valet, both happily scrubbing each other while surrounded by hundreds of semi-clad pirates. Yo ho ho.