Wow! Such a good movie.

Dreadfully Boring

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

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 )

Another low budget presentation from 'The Germ of the Ocean', Columbia. What can be deduced is that these were the adventures of Peter Blood somewhere between the time he escaped slavery and before he became Governor. Any resemblance to the WB CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935) is purely coincidental in that they both featured Peter Blood.Louis Hayward as Peter Blood seems to want to get this over with and collect his check. His all to quick winning smile seems drawn and tired. His performance has none of the verve that he showed in THE SAINT IN NEW YORK, THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK or SON OF MONTE CRISTO. Patricia Medina also is just putting in time, with a look at me I'm pretty attitude. Only George MacCready really delivers the goods. Of course being the villain does give him extra latitude. There is something about the 'B' films of Columbia from the mid 1930's to 1950's that is really noticeable, the flat lighting. There does not appear to be any shadows and little shading. Its like they just turned all the lights on and started filming. This does not help either the actors the sets or special visual effects. It sends this picture below 'C' level.Addendum; Louis Hayward and Patricia Medina made CAPTAIN PIRATE (1952). Columbia added color but little else rating the same IMDb****FOUR (4).

The dashing Louis Hayward, who was once married to Ida Lupino, was no Errol Flynn and that's one of the many problems in this very disappointing 1950 film.Even the so called swashbuckling scenes lack luster. Part of the problem may be attributed to the fact that this film was in black and white.Patricia Medina's role as a selfish niece, who changes course real fast after falling for Peter Blood, comes on too quickly. In many of the scenes, Miss Medina, an excellent actress, looks like she is in pain or in deep depression. I would probably join her if I had been in this production as well.As always, George MacReady plays a sinister character quite well.The slaves in this film don't exactly look like they have suffered under slavery for too long.

I'm writing this in response to the plea for a review; if anyone has seen it more recently, please chime in. I saw this a decade or two ago on TV, and remember rather liking it, but being disappointed that it didn't follow Sabatini's book more closely. It wasn't quite as weak as I'd expected from a sequel, and Louis Hayward wasn't as weak as I'd expect from a replacement for Errol Flynn. All in all, a reasonably good standard-issue pirate movie; sorry I can't be more definite than that. There was also a sequel to the sequel, based on Sabatini's _Captain Blood Returns_, entitled for some reason _Captain Pirate_, which I remember as being, surprisingly, somewhat better than this one.