Adventure And Romance On The High Seas

The last two nights have been Errol Flynn nights, first with Captain Blood, then The Sea Hawk. I initially thought they were part of a series, as the latter could have been a follow-up to the former (if we assume Blood decided being governor wasn't for him), but no. They're just two different nautical films starring Errol Flynn.

Neither movie entirely held my interest, but of the two, Captain Blood had more success. I liked that Blood was a doctor with no alliegance except to those in need of his services, a stance unacceptable to King James. Which is how he winds up a slave in Jamaica. Once there, the amusement came from his consistent ability to put his foot in his mouth. Olivia de Havilland keeps getting him out of trouble, and he keeps being rude to her. To be fair, he's a slave, and she hasn't actually done anything about that, so I can't fault him for being bitter about his circumstances. Still, if not for her, he'd be in truly awful conditions in the mines, or she could easily have told her uncle that he was down at the docks, when he had no suitable alibi. Instead, she covered for him. He does eventually admit his rudeness, although by that time he's a pirate and she's being rather judgmental towards him, in spite of her attraction to him, so maybe it all evens out. They love each other, they each get to be snippy, it's all good.

After he escaped from slavery and became a pirate, I found myself less interested in the movie. Except for Basil Rathbone as the French pirate captain. He was highly entertaining, and I was pretty disappointed at how things turned out for him. If he had remained a pirate, spurning the offers of the new monarch at the removal of his criminal record, I might have been more interested, but it felt a little cliche, and frankly I didn't understand why he did it. He admitted early in the movie he'd fought for the French against the Spanish, and vice versa, but had no interest in getting involved in the current struggle in England. Which doesn't necessarily suggest a deep loyalty to England. So why care enough to help?

The Sea Hawk, didn't interest me nearly as much. The intrigue in the English court caught my attention, but that wasn't a huge part of the movie. I did like the bit about the Spanish using a glimpse of the partially completed map Thorpe's men would use for their mission to figure out where he was going, so they could trap him. I know it wouldn't have made for much of a movie, but I was disappointed Thorpe, when reaching his ship and finding the Spanish in force on it, didn't draw his sword and make a go of it. His other option was capture and being brought to Spain, and does he really want to face an Inquisition? Besides, I don't care what the Spanish captain said, I don't think "accurate" is a word one can use in conjuction with "muskets". Especially when the Spanish captain is down on the same part of the deck with Thorpe and his men, while all the soldiers are on the higher decks. They'll have to be very careful not to hit their captain while they try to shoot Thorpe.

But if he'd gone for the blaze of glory, he couldn't have escaped from the belly of a Spanish galleon, and I wouldn't have wondered about bathroom facilities for the slave rowers in the galleon, so there's that at least.