Fantastic!

Excellent but underrated film

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

My title quote is from one of the crew of Captain Porter's US Naval vessel, disguised as the pirate ship/privateer Balboa. He has just put a blindfold on Count Del Prado, the Spanish Governor of the West Indies(a dubious title), before he is made to walk the plank, unless he tells Porter where a large pirate fleet is located! At the last second, Del Prado indirectly complies by providing a map of where this fleet plus a Portuguese man o'war plan to attack a Brazilian treasure fleet sailing from Rio to London! Del Prado then requests that he be taken ashore and released. Porter says, OK, but not until they reach Chalreston, S.C.! This is a sampling of the outrageous historical and political license assumed in screen writing this hurriedly concocted yarn, while waiting for Flynn's broken ankle to heal, so that another pirate yarn could be finished. As others have pointed out, David Porter and David Farragut, two very famous 19th century US naval officers, were very connected personally, but not in the manner dramatized in this film.A Portuguese man o' war in the Caribbean, which lacked any Portuguese colonies, allied with the Spanish governor and Spanish pirates?? I don't think so! True, Portugal had been in a state of political turmoil since the French invasion, and had moved it's empire capital from Lisbon to Rio during and after the Napoleonic Wars. Brazil had recently declared its independence, just after the royal family moved back to Lisbon, but they were not at war with each other. A beautiful young Brazilian countess(Suzan Ball) marooned by the Spanish governor on a small island, well occupied by Native Americans, off the Mosquitoe coast of Central America?? I don't think so! She should have been dead of malaria or yellow fever, etc,, by then!This is one of those films where the dramatic leading man and the romantic leading man are not the same. In this case, the exceptionally tall Jeff Chandler, as the older Captain Porter, is the dramatic lead, while the younger Scott Brady, as the recent midshipman graduate, Lt. David Farragut, is the romantic lead. The prematurely graying Chandler gave it a shot, but evidently was considered too old, by Margarita. Ball and Brady had a previous romantic relationship, resulting from being cast in another film. Neither Chandler nor Brady come across to me as being especially charismatic action actors. Of the 4 Universal pirate films included in their current DVD offering, this is certainly my least favorite(and the only loser), for several reasons, this being one. Suzan Ball, cousin of Lucille Ball, whose new TV sitcom was a big hit when this film was being made, certainly came across as a believable beautiful Portuguese princess. As in "War Arrow", her character was quite adamant in demanding respect from the men. However, she wasn't as much fun as Yvonne de Carlo in "Buccaneer's Girl", nor Maureen O'Hara , in "Against all Flags". Unfortunately, she would succumb to cancer at age 21, but not before playing Chief Crazy Horse's wife(She mostly played ethnics) Although she was married at the time, her real love seems to have been the married Anthony Quinn, with whom she had a previous affair.This is a pirate yarn in which we never encounter a real classic pirate or pirate ship! Such are only talked about. The only near naval battle is between Captain Porter's ship and the Portugues Man o' War. All the other several skirmishes take place on land. This includes the capture of Farragut by the Native American friends of Countess Margarita, the capture of Farragut's landing party by Del Prado's soldiers, near the governor's palace/fort in Havanna, and the subsequent sword fight between the Porter-led rescue party and Del Prado's soldiers. In this last action, we have US navy personnel, impersonating pirates, capture a bunch of Del Predo's sentries, then don their uniforms and impersonate them at the changing of the guard, in order to gain easy entry through the gates into the governor's palace.Like Suzan Ball, Joseph Calleia, who plays Del Prado, started his entertainment career as a singer, but was transformed by Hollywood into a typecast heavy, often a mobster. He was a native of Malta, a small island near Sicily.George Mathews plays chief Petty Officer Link, whose role is rather similar to that of the first mate in many pirate films. Link usually accompanied Farragut in his several landing parties. A running gag is his, often frustrated, fondness for alcoholic drinks. At one point,it's reported that scurvy is breaking out among the crew. Lacking any vegetable sources of vitamin C, Porter orders the crew to imbibe some rum as a 'tonic'. This was a popular, but quite ineffective, remedy for centuries. The Chinese typically took green tea on their long voyages, which was effective and also had a good shelf life. The limes that the British eventually adopted were effective, but the acidity was hard on the sailor's teeth, which they needed to chew the hardtack given them.

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.

It's a lot of fun to watch a movie that just entertains, with plenty of swashbuckling, a stunningly beautiful heroine, manly male leads, and a fairly ghastly, but amusing story. One can't help being struck by the simple beauty of the leads--Brady & Chandler had 'A' movie looks, and there is really nothing to fault on their performances. The doomed and stunning Suzan Ball parades the deck in a series of stunning dresses, and shows the looks and talents behind the little legend.It is fun to think of David Porter and David Glasgow Farragut fighting the last gasp of piracy in the Caribbean. Joseph Calleia makes a magnificent and cheerfully evil Spanish governor, the kind of villain who puts you on the rack and offers you sherry. George Mathews makes a wise-cracking and dipsomaniacal CPO who would have been broken below Seaman 2nd in any serious navy, but still has fun and lets us have it, too.The story is utterly nonsensical, historically ridiculous, and the props and costumes have nothing do to with the supposed time period, with the exception of the U.S. navy uniforms shown early and never afterwards. It is only two to three times more plausible and accurate than the recent Disney abominations.