Adventure Ahoy!

Yvonne de Carlo and Philip Friend on the high seas.

BUCCANEER'S GIRL (1950, Kino Lorber): Frankly, I wasn't expecting much more than a nice dose of classic Technicolor, but this candy-colored Universal International item turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Yvonne de Carlo stars as Deborah McCoy, a street-smart Boston girl who stows away on a ship that is unexpectedly overtaken by the hordes of notorious pirate Frederick Baptiste - initially believed to be the scraggly, eye-patched, old salt Jay C. Flippen. However, once she's discovered on-ship (disguised as a boy), she is taken to the real Baptiste, a handsome and intelligent military strategist played with elegance by Philip Friend. He puts her ashore in New Orleans, where she is recruited into a charm school run by a delightfully zaftig Elsa Lanchester, who sees her potential. (The Bride of Frankenstein and Lily Munster! What more could you want?) As the wily Debbie begins her groomed ascent in Louisiana society, she soon learns that the much-coveted millionaire bachelor Capt. Kingston and Baptiste are one and the same. He's engaged to another woman but she alone has the secret of knowing his double identity. 

 Jay C. Flippen and Friend.

Love ensues, naturally, along with a few terrific songs by Walter Scharf (WILLIE WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY), and there's also a wealth of dramatic special effects shots of ships at full sail that would later be cannibalized as stock footage in the "Video Pirates" segment of AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON. Directed by Frederick de Cordova (BEDTIME FOR BONZO), the film never quite settles on whether it wants to be a romance, a comedy, or a musical, but manages to entertain on all these fronts, helped along by the sumptuous three-strip Technicolor photography of Russell Metty (TOUCH OF EVIL, SPARTACUS) and a stellar supporting cast that boasts Norman Lloyd ("Sinister Master of Intrigue!" as the trailer hails him), Henry Daniell, John Qualen, Connie Gilchrist, Douglas Dumbrille, and Ben Weldon. There's also a dandy (if somewhat dodgily recorded) audio commentary by Lee Gambin, who addresses the facts of production and promotion, the careers of the key players, and goes into some detail about the film from the angle of gender studies. With everything else it offers, the film is proven surprisingly available to such a reading and Gambin ensures that we'll see even more in this entertainment the second time around.

VISA TO CANTON (aka PASSPORT TO CHINA, 1960) / THE SCARLET BLADE (aka THE CRIMSON BLADE, 1963; both included in the box set HAMMER VOLUME V: DEATH AND DECEIT (Indicator UK): I don't know why - perhaps it was the bland colorlessness of the outer packaging, the genre and period, or perhaps even the fact that Michael Carreras directed - but I loaded this first disc from Indicator's latest Hammer box set expecting it to be in black-and-white. When it opened with a full color Columbia logo and fanfare, I was genuinely startled and - contrary to what the IMDb reviewers say - the feeling of surprise and discovery continued, for me, for the fairly brief duration of the picture. Neither of the film's titles is all that enticing, however this film - shot back-to-back with TERROR OF THE TONGS - is as clear-cut a diagram for what would soon become the James Bond series as I have seen. Eddie Constantine's first Lemmy Caution adventure POISON IVY (La môme vert-de-gris, 1954) would be another, but this film - despite being shot entirely at Bray Studios, with some documentary rear projection - conjures up an acceptable illusion of international glamour and sexual intrigue. 

Richard Basehart gambles with Milton Reid looking over his shoulder in VISA TO CANTON.

As was Hammer's habit at the time, American actor Richard Basehart (despite his smoldering voice, an Ohio boy) was imported to play the lead, a travel agent based in Hong Kong who is recruited to undertake an espionage mission behind enemy lines in communist China to rescue a member of his adopted family. There are some preposterous Chinese makeups applied to the likes of Athene Seyler, Marne Maitland, and Eric Pohlmann, but Bert Kwouk and Bernard Cribbins pop up in welcome roles and Lisa Gastoni is outstanding as the prototypical Bond girl - and not with subservience either, as she's the most experienced and capable spy of the lot. For all this, the film's most striking ingredient is the score of ITV's Edwin Astley, whose original spy music not only anticipates his later work on DANGER MAN and THE SAINT, but - as musicologist David Huckvale very entertainingly points out in his supplement, the work later done by John Barry on the Bond series. (I would add that its use of flute also prefigures a good deal of Jerry Goldsmith's work on THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E..) This was Carreras' second feature as a director, following THE STEEL BAYONET (1957), and I found it capably done, and a good deal more than merely capable when Gastoni was involved.

Oliver Reed and Lionel Jeffries in THE SCARLET BLADE.

The other films in this DEATH AND DECEIT set are THE PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER (1962), THE SCARLET BLADE (1963), and THE BRIGAND OF KANDAHAR (1965), all swashbucklers of a sort directed by John Gilling, best known for THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS, THE REPTILE, and PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES - and each of them also a nice showcase for Hammer's new discovery, Oliver Reed. I had seen PIRATES before, which pits Kerwin Mathews (7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD, JACK THE GIANT KILLER) against a formidable Christopher Lee, and also BRIGAND, a sand-and-scimitar item that I recall as much weaker, but THE SCARLET BLADE was new to me and quite possibly the best of the lot. Set during the English Civil War, it's the story of the eponymous character (Jack Hedley) and his grass roots rebellion against the usurping Roundhead forces of Cromwell, personified by Colonel Judd (an uncommonly evil Lionel Jeffries) and intermediary replacement Major Bell (Duncan Lamont). Unknown to Judd, his own daughter (June Thorburn, previously in Gilling's FURY AT SMUGGLER'S BAY) is sympathetic to the rebels and assisting their cause, helped by the romantically ambitious Capt. Sylvester (Reed) whose betrayal she risks when she loses her heart to the Scarlet Blade. Also written by Gilling, the script is a nicely, teasingly balanced situation and the action pieces, stunt work, and so forth are all of exceptional caliber, with Hedley throwing himself headlong into much of the excitingly and dangerously choreographed action. The film's only fault is one of simple chemistry; as good as he is, Hedley doesn't have a leading man's face or aura and, even though Reed sometimes goes out of his way to look smarmy, he's ultimately on the sympathetic side and it's hard to believe there could ever be a contest between their crossed swords of charisma. Adding to the film's pleasures is Jack Asher's often extraordinary color cinematography, which encompasses a number of Bernard Robinson's set dressings from HORROR OF DRACULA and other Hammer favorites. Also, the uniforms worn here by the Roundheads surely did double duty later in the decade when Michael Reeves shot WITCHFINDER GENERAL and, though comparatively mild, this film occasionally raises memories of that later classic in other ways. You can count THE SCARLET BLADE among the company's very best ventures outside the realms of horror and fantasy.

Reed informs the rebel army of Jack Hedley (right) as gypsy Michael Ripper eyes him suspiciously.

Indicator have started including audio commentaries with this latest set, discontinuing their former talking head featurette approach. The talks for both of the films I've highlighted are by Kevin Lyons, author of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASTIC FILMS AND TELEVISION. From what I sampled of both, I found these a bit dry, being largely non-scene-specific and composed mostly of career details and trivia. This kind of material really lends itself better to the printed page, unless some measure of personal interpretation or insight is also brought to bear on the career arcs under discussion. Much more juicy are the lengthy off-the-cuff discussions of Gilling and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster that are offered respectively by Kim Newman and Jonathan Rigby. The PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER commentary is ported over from a 2008 DVD release and features screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, art director Don Mingaye, and moderator Marcus Hearne. THE BRIGAND OF KANDAHAR features a Vic Pratt commentary. The set also contains numerous other extras on each disc, and perpetuates the nice idea of having female film historians (Virginie Sélavy, Kat Ellinger, Josephine Botting, and Melanie Williams) profile the leading lady of each film, and musicologist and author David Huckvale's winning post-mortems of the various scores and their composers, which always enriches my appreciation of an oft-overlooked aspect of the filmmaking art.

At a glance, some might overlook this set or disregard it entirely because it collects work that's outside Hammer's foremost genre, but it embodies a generous helping of the work of two of the company's most interesting auteurs as well as some of their most celebrated associates. It's rewarding in unexpected ways. The set, which includes a 36-page color booklet of new essays and press kit reproductions, is Region B and strictly limited to 6,000 copies.

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved. (c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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