Le avventure di capitan Blood

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.