Captain Scarface

Hi, Everyone, Barton MacLane is always a good bad guy. He has adopted an interesting accent for this ocean journey black and white adventure. All the cast does well even though the fight scenes are somewhat slow.

The plot is probably more believable today than it was 50 years ago. Some of the stock footage of the ships is very nice.

If this were remade today with Steven Segal this would be a great action flick. I don't think it would be any better as far as the storytelling, but the special effects would be majestic. I like this version enough to watch it once a year without getting tired of it.

Tom Willett

Solid anti Red B flick from the early fifties, the decade of the anti Red fashion, where many action and thrillers were made in this direction. I will prefer ten million times this one to BIG JIM MC LAIN for instance, despite John Wayne's character in the good American lead role. The Edward Ludwig's film was lousy, boring, pure lame propaganda stuff, compared to this action packed little film, where the main character is precisely the villain: Barton McLane, in a role that suit him like a glove. And the director worked so little for the film industry - mostly TV one - that explains why - I suppose - not so many folks search for it. Only luck can permit you to watch this hidden gem.

A Communist plot to destroy the Panama canal sees a number of passengers join forces in an attempt to overthrow the crew of a ship carrying an atom bomb en route, while an eminent doctor aboard the ship is blackmailed into activating the missile or risk the murder of his daughter.

The dialogue is a bit juvenile, and MacLane seems to be hamming it up as the crooked captain, nicknamed "Scarface" for obvious reasons, who smokes a durry like the Penguin and will do anything to honour mother Russia. Erickson is the opportunist who stumbles upon the plot while attempting to escape South America for a relatively minor (by comparison) feud with a local kingpin. Grey is simply wasted, with little to do except wallow in her cabin aboard the doomed ship of "Captain Scarface".

The villains are simply described as 'Communists', political jingoism and highly appropriate for 1953, but the film is little more than a B-grade quickie, peddling an array of hokey plot contrivances for a 69 minute back-slapping exercise devoted to subduing a red threat. Hastily resolved, there's very little action of which to speak and despite attempts at intrigue, it's pretty dull an uninspired.

This is a good B-grade action feature that makes good use of an involved story of intrigue. It's an example of how low-budget, shabby looking sets can actually help the atmosphere if they go with the right story, and meanwhile the story itself moves at a decent pace as things gradually unfold.

Barton MacLane and Leif Erickson are the stars and antagonists. MacLane is "Captain Scarface", who is masterminding an evil and destructive scheme, while Erickson is a character designed as a Bogart-type antihero who finds himself in the right place and time to try to stop it. Erickson is solid in his role, while MacLane seems to relish his slightly outlandish character, making him interesting and menacing, if not always fully believable.

All of the action takes place either at a shabby-looking port-side hotel or on the captain's equally rundown-looking freighter. The no-frills look of both sets makes them believable and helps the atmosphere, since putting the characters in such settings implicitly makes them too seem rather small and tattered.

The story itself is easily interesting enough to hold your attention for the running time of slightly more than an hour. The actual plot of the bad guys comes across as somewhat far-fetched, but it is mostly a device to drive the intrigue. The story telling has a few rough edges, as can sometimes be the case with movies of this kind, but it has more than enough pluses to cancel these out. It's definitely worth seeing if you like movies of the genre.

Russian Barton MacLane (as Captain Scarface) is a Communist spy who plans to destroy the Panama Canal. Mr. MacLane enlists the help of German scientist Rudolph Anders (as Yeager) by threatening the life of his daughter, Virginia Grey (as Ilse Yeager). Meanwhile, American Leif Erickson (as Sam Wilton) has switched identities with a sailing associate of MacLane, after his Comrade (John Mylong) finds himself on the receiving end of a lead shower. Mr. Erickson is looking for quick passage to America, for reasons of his own. They are all aboard "Captain Scarface" MacLane's ship, the "Banos", according the dastardly captain, "…to be blown to eternity together!"

Not a bad story; but, it takes far too long to make sense. Howard Wendell and Isabel Randolph are most enjoyable, as passengers Fred and Kate Dilts; among other things, they help explain the opening explosion. "Captain Scarface" was, later, "General Peterson" on "I Dream of Jeannie".