Fortunes Of Captain Blood 1950 Based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, screenplay by Michael Hogan, Robert Libott and Frank Burt, direction by Gordon Douglas. Gordon directed nearly 100 films in his career, a good number of shorts and 69 movies. I've seen several of them, including 4 of the Great Gildersleeve films, The Falcon In Hollywood, Rogues Of Sherwood Forest, The Great Missouri Raid, Them!, Up Periscope, In Like Flint, Tony Rome, They Call Me Mister Tibbs and Slaughter's Big Rip-off.
Louis Hayward plays Captain Blood, he's a pirate in the olden days. He was a doctor who was arrested for treating a rebel soldier in the Monmouth Rebellion, he was sentenced to slavery but escaped and became a buccaneer.
When the story starts he's headed for supplies but his supplier betrays him and some of Blood's men get caught and sent to prison. Blood goes to rescue them disguised as a fruit peddler. He gets a bit of help from Dona Drake playing the flirtatious Pepita. She tells him the prisoners die frequently from the poor treatment.
Patricia Medina plays Isabella, she's the niece of the Marquis who runs the island and the prison. That's him on the right and he's a right old prick. Isabella wants to leave is island and she is having a bit of a romance with the local slave trader played by Lowell George. The Marquis finds out and puts an end to that, while telling Lowell he's too scummy to marry his niece.
Blood manages to free his men but there's a good bit of fighting along the way. He manages to slip in some romance with Isabella, offering to take her off the island. The Marquis attacks Blood's ship but fails. Isabella stays on the island promising to run the place without slaves. Blood sails off to get some peace being a buccaneer.
It's a fairly entertaining pirate movie, some fighting, some sailing, some romance, some laughs, some drama, a nice mix. The cast is fine, the sets and locations are good, the script is adequate to carry everyone along. It's the first film in the Midnight Movies double movie set. Both films come on their own DVD and the second film is the sequel to FOCB.
Captain Pirate 1952 Based on the novel Captain Blood Returns by Rafael Sabatini, screenplay by Robert Libott, Frank Burt and John Meredyth Lucas, direction by Ralph Murphy. The sequel is in color with B&W scenes from the first film as flashbacks.
Louis Hayward returns as Captain Blood and Patricia Medina returns as Dona Isabella. Blood's been pardoned, he's returned to the island to practice medicine. Secretly he's also helping the slaves escape. Blood and Isabella are planning to get married when things take a serious turn.
Someone is pirating and using the Captain Blood name. Blood is arrested but Isabella and Angus get the old crew back together. They help Blood escape and they set sail to find the imposter. The mystery of the fake Blood is fairly quickly solved. Now he must capture the man and bring him to justice.
There's plenty of pirate action and running about. The production is fine and the story fairly exciting. I enjoyed it and you can find out if you like it too, there's a link to each film on YouTube in the titles above. I'd watch both of them again someday.
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