This is the sort of thing that the studios were experts in grinding out in the 40s and 50s. The opening credits are flung across the screen in huge crimson letters. The musical score, by Franz Waxman, resembles on a lower plane the exquisite bombast of Eric Wolfgang Korngold, who was referred to by one of his detractors as Wolfgang von Korngold.
That fact is only worth mentioning in passing but so is this entire movie. I liked it, especially when I saw it as a child in the Mayfair Theater in Hillside, New Jersey. I thrilled at the boom of the cannon, shivered when a protagonist was threatened with death by cutlass, chuckled when Thomas Gomez as Blackbeard swilled wine and overturned wooden tables, and stirred in my seat when the pale, prim, innocent Debra Paget was thrown into Captain Paradise's cabin with her dress half torn off.
That particular incident went nowhere because the captain was Anne of the Indies, Jean Peters. As the stern, scowling pirate captain, Peters, I think all of us must admit, was a little butch but she was heterosexual. She proved that when she made chaste love to her prisoner, played by the handsome, suave, organically grown Frenchman, Louis Jourdan. That lovemaking wouldn't be so pure in one of today's movies. And I'm not so sure that Debra Paget would have remained unscathed.
The plot. Some nonsense about rivalries and possessions and revenge involving Peters, Gomez, and Jourdan. Peters, having discovered that Jourdan and Paget are married, is convulsed with rage and jealousy. She maroons the two of them on one of those desert islands with nothing but sand and she sneers as she describes the horrible deaths they will suffer because they have no food or water. Actually, I think if they dug deep enough they'd find a fresh water lens. I don't know about the food situation. The best they could hope for would be crude versions of moules mariniere or zarzuela de mariscos.
Jean Peters plays the role of the unlettered Pirate Queen in a blunt and one-dimensional fashion. She was really good in Sam Fuller's "Pickup On South Street." Louis Jourdan is too debonair for me. I suspect he wins a lot of good-looking women just because of his French accent. Fine for him, but what about the rest of us? Thomas Gomez is fine as the blustering, uninhibited, proudful Blackbeard. He looks as if he's wearing a fat suit. I met him in a now defunct San Francisco night club called Finnochio's. Debra Paget has very little to do except look distressed.
That fact is only worth mentioning in passing but so is this entire movie. I liked it, especially when I saw it as a child in the Mayfair Theater in Hillside, New Jersey. I thrilled at the boom of the cannon, shivered when a protagonist was threatened with death by cutlass, chuckled when Thomas Gomez as Blackbeard swilled wine and overturned wooden tables, and stirred in my seat when the pale, prim, innocent Debra Paget was thrown into Captain Paradise's cabin with her dress half torn off.
That particular incident went nowhere because the captain was Anne of the Indies, Jean Peters. As the stern, scowling pirate captain, Peters, I think all of us must admit, was a little butch but she was heterosexual. She proved that when she made chaste love to her prisoner, played by the handsome, suave, organically grown Frenchman, Louis Jourdan. That lovemaking wouldn't be so pure in one of today's movies. And I'm not so sure that Debra Paget would have remained unscathed.
The plot. Some nonsense about rivalries and possessions and revenge involving Peters, Gomez, and Jourdan. Peters, having discovered that Jourdan and Paget are married, is convulsed with rage and jealousy. She maroons the two of them on one of those desert islands with nothing but sand and she sneers as she describes the horrible deaths they will suffer because they have no food or water. Actually, I think if they dug deep enough they'd find a fresh water lens. I don't know about the food situation. The best they could hope for would be crude versions of moules mariniere or zarzuela de mariscos.
Jean Peters plays the role of the unlettered Pirate Queen in a blunt and one-dimensional fashion. She was really good in Sam Fuller's "Pickup On South Street." Louis Jourdan is too debonair for me. I suspect he wins a lot of good-looking women just because of his French accent. Fine for him, but what about the rest of us? Thomas Gomez is fine as the blustering, uninhibited, proudful Blackbeard. He looks as if he's wearing a fat suit. I met him in a now defunct San Francisco night club called Finnochio's. Debra Paget has very little to do except look distressed.