March 26 movie: Captain Blood. It's turning into Swashbuckler Weekend for us! This pirate movie was Errol Flynn's breakout hit and has a lot in common with probably his greatest film, The Adventures of Robin Hood: he leads a band of British patriots who are forced into lawlessness by an unworthy king, Olivia de Havilland plays his love interest, and Basil Rathbone plays his swordfighting nemesis. (The only thing missing is Alan Hale as one of the merry men, er, I mean the pirates.)
Basil Rathbone looked so young! He and Flynn both did, but it's most striking on Rathbone who plays Captain Levasseur, a rival pirate captain. After seeing him as the stiff, somewhat prissy nobleman villain in so many movies, it was nice for him to get the chance to loosen up a bit and play a raunchy pirate. He gets to leer a lot and talk with an exaggerated "Pepe le Pew" French accent and then get killed by Flynn when he tries to take advantage of Olivia de Havilland. Flynn, of course, being an upstanding pirate who won't stand for mistreatment of female prisoners.
We had a great time tossing off lines from Pirates of the Caribbean, for example when Flynn accuses Rathbone of violating the articles of their pirate agreement, Georg said "The pirate's code is really more of a guideline."
Post a comment