Le avventure di capitan Blood

Gordon Douglas at the time was redoing Erroll Flynn's adventures movies :for instance "rogues of Sherwood" showed Robin Hood's son (!)battling against his wicked uncle ;Hayward was sluggish but Mc Ready was delightful as the villain.

Another character portrayed by Flynn (gloriously) :another Hayward /McReady pairing and another battle.Six men from captain Blood's crew have been sold as slaves and they have got to dive for pearls in waters infested with sharks (too bad,those scenes are not shown;it would have added some suspense to a story which is terribly in need of it) The story is barely entertaining ,compared to the great Blood of Flynn and De Havilland (replaced by Patricia Medina who tries her best but who is not Olivia )

A Columbia swashbuckler starring Louis Hayward from the forties without George McReady as the villain is like a hamburger without the meat: I mean absolutely impossible to imagine. So this early fifties - late forties aadventures flick has nothing to envy from Warner Bros productions for which Gordon Douglas also worked in the same period, or maybe after this period. He then missed the awful Sam Katzman producer if he had stayed in Columbia Pictures. Lucky guy. This movvie is a very good entertaining yarn, full of action but bringing nothing exceptional either. Everything is predictable; after all it was the Hollywood system. Gordon Douglas's directing is, as usual, flawless, no matter the plot itself.

I think it's fair to say that Louis Hayward was just a little bit past his best when he made this rather dry pirate adventure. He picks up the character from Errol Flynn (which maybe doesn't help either) as "Capt. Blood" and works on a complicated plan to go into the town incognito, and rescue some of his crew captured by the wicked "Marquis" (George Macready) now used to fish for pearls - quite a dangerous activity in the shark-infested waters. Along the way, he falls for the slightly aloof "Isabelita" (Patricia Medina) who is the daughter of his antagonist and the apple of the eye of the ambitious "Fairfax" (Lowell Gilmore). What's really missing here - save for, maybe the last ten minutes, is action. For an action film it's positively stolid. Hayward tries hard to hold it together and Macready was ever a good baddie but nobody is firing at all well here as they have to plod through the interminable dialogue with just nowhere near enough swash, buckle or swinging from the yardarm. This is one of my favourite genres and though it's not the best, it's still watchable enough. You'll never remember it, though.

I was in love with Louis Hayward and there is no more ardent love than a seven year old for a Pirate. I saw every film with Louis Hayward that came to the local cinema and I imagined I was the heroine of course! We had American friends and they had a home cinema and I saw this film and thought it was wonderful.

53 years later, what would I think - I hope it would transport me back over the years when the handsome Louis Hayward would be as dashing and romantic as he was when I first saw him. Good swashbuckling adventure. Must have made an impression when I remember it after 53 years.

I know Errol Flynn was the original "Peter Blood" in talking movies but Louis Hayward was the actor whom I saw in the 1950's in glorious colour. Yes, the colours in those movies in the 1950's were wonderful breathtaking after so many black and white movies.

As everyone remembers in the classic Errol Flynn version of Captain Blood, he whipped his fellow pirate Basil Rathbone in a dual on the dunes, he took Lionel Atwill's place as royal governor of Jamaica after the House of Orange threw out the House of Stuart in The Glorious Revolution and married Atwill's niece Olivia DeHavilland to live happily ever after. I think it was understood there'd be no more pirating under William and Mary.

Yet here we have Captain Blood, this time played by Louis Hayward, back at his old trade again. I guess politics must have bored him, but what happened to Olivia because Hayward's got a couple of girls panting after him in this story.

The women are the Spanish viceroy's niece Patricia Medina and an innkeeper's niece, Dona Drake. It seems as though several of Blood's crew were betrayed on a shopping trip for supplies and sold into slavery. Doing the selling was George MacReady who's been charged by the King of Spain to bring in Captain Blood dead or alive. He's also got a lustful gleam in his eye for Patrica Medina and who could blame the old reprobate.

Hayward's mission is to free his captive crew members and he has to involve himself with a whole lot of intrigue, political and romantic. In a way he really acts like a heel towards Drake and it does kind of lessen audience sympathy for him.

Harry Cohn at Columbia did not want to spend as much money as Jack Warner did on his version and it shows. Hayward is capable enough as Peter Blood, but I kind of like MacReady in this film, he really does dominate it whenever he's on screen. Alfonso Bedoya is also good as the slave overseer.

When all's said and done Fortunes of Captain Blood just doesn't measure up to what made Errol Flynn a star.