Les boucaniers de la Jamaïque

After an extended tour of duty on the high seas the captain of an American warship receives orders to investigate pirate activity and report back to Charleston afterwards. In order to accomplish this mission "Captain David Porter" (Jeff Chandler) is also ordered to masquerade as a pirate ship in the process. Along with that a young navy officer named "Lieutenant David Farragut" (Scott Brady) is sent to assist him. Unfortunately, what the Navy Department doesn't know is that there is a history between the two and things only gets worse when a young woman by the name of "Countess Margarita La Raguna" (Susan Ball) is granted political asylum aboard the ship. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that, although a little old, this was a fairly good pirate film which pretty much covers all of the bases one would expect in a movie of this sort. Because of that I have rated this movie accordingly. Slightly above average.

The best, if not exactly satisfying, of the three seemingly randomly-chosen swashbucklers by Universal to accompany the above-average Errol Flynn vehicle AGAINST ALL FLAGS (1952) is this unusual entry in the genre.

As the title has it, lead Jeff Chandler is a U.S. naval officer who's ordered to carry out acts of piracy in order to ferret out the real culprits behind the sinking of American ships. These prove to be an amalgamation of Brazilian, Portuguese and Spanish villains (led by our own Joseph Calleia hiding under the respectable guise of the Spanish governor – whose appearance is delayed until the last half-hour, but he's as reliable as ever…and like the Robert Douglas of BUCCANEER'S GIRL [1950], from the same director, is allowed to go free after being made to walk the plank).

Chandler himself – who would later star in the similarly-titled genre outing YANKEE PASHA (1954) – is a bit of a martinet, with rebellious first-mate and ex-student Scott Brady usually at the receiving end of his ire; when he tries to make up for his errors behind the captain's back, by fixing the ship's rudder at night, Brady's attacked by and kills a shark! This animosity eventually intensifies when the latter comes back from a scouting expedition to the Indies with a Portuguese countess (luscious Suzan Ball, whose debut this was: she had a brief and tragic career, dying in 1955 at the tender age of 21!).

Though the film is far from a classic, slightly marred by the resistible comic antics of George Mathews and featuring little traditional action before the last reel, it's a reasonably enjoyable romp nonetheless – with a rousing score by an uncredited(!) Milton Rosen and shot in glorious Technicolor by the distinguished Russell Metty.

Ridiculous "historical" swashbuckler with zero historical credibility.

A US Navy ship masquerades as a pirate ship to expose a conspiracy on the high seas. And somehow, they wedge in a silly girl.

The sailors are dressed in bright colors or bright whites--one wonders if they have an electric washer and color-safe bleach available to them. Don't get me started on the shipwrecked-on-an-island chick's hair and makeup. The men's hair is the wrong length for the era. The speech is wrong. There's no Flynn or other charismatic actor making you forgive the stupidity. There are nationalistic lines of dialog that aren't just anachronistic, they gave me the McCarthyism shudders.

They didn't even try on any of this to make it credible. I could not suspend my disbelief for one second, therefore the film failed miserably.

The real David Dixon Porter and the real David Glasgow Farragut are portrayed in Yankee Buccaneer by Jeff Chandler and Scott Brady. The film is concerned with a wholly fictitious incident involving about a US Naval vessel going undercover as a pirate ship to find out where these seemingly organized pirates are headquartered. In real life Porter and Farragut were more than teacher and pupil, in fact they were step-brothers.

Yankee Buccaneer also has them involved in a way that the film does not make clear with the Portugese dynastic situation in the 19th century in the person of Suzan Ball. The Braganza family was exiled to Brazil during the Napoleonic Wars which is a whole film in itself, but not terribly germane to the plot here.

Anyway Joseph Calleia is a Spanish governor of one of the few islands in the Caribbean left to Spain. But that's his day job, by night he's the ringleader of the pirate activity and he's a slick article.

This naval film plays like one of those old B westerns where real historic people are involved in fictitious situations. Yankee Buccaneer doesn't play fast and loose with history, it just rewrites it to suit the fans of Chandler and Brady. George Matthews has a nice part in this film as the CPO of the ship.

A few others might like it as well as the fans of the leads.

history and romance. atmosphere of a lot of other adventure films from the period. and something different. maybe the humor or the different manner to use ingredients of original recipes. in fact, a film who has the charm of the heroic stories and something more. maybe the acting or the American implication in a different European problem. maybe the absence of Errol Flynn and the inspired measure in definition of character by Jeff Chandler. or the performance of Joseph Calleia who explores the each side of his character. a film of great images and full of air from childhood books. an oasis for different viewers. and, sure, a certainly delight.