After making a mockery of the head judge, he and the other less financially-able men are sentenced to a lifetime of slavery in Barbados.ĭespite the moral overtones and the overenthusiastic philosophical speeches that Blood delivers as a matter of habit, the film possesses every hallmark that has come to mark the best swashbuckling movies. He is put on trial alongside the other members of the rebellion, and though the leaders all manage to buy their way out, the good doctor proves to be too adept a speaker. Peter Blood (Flynn) is introduced as an Irishman, a doctor, graduated from the Trinity College in Dublin (as he takes great pleasure in reminding us), until he has the misfortune to get caught by the King’s guard while aiding a wounded soldier who had been injured during the Monmouth Rebellion.īlood, who enjoys quoting Latin and would like nothing better than to return home to tend his geraniums, hardly seems the type to become a pirate. Released in 1935 and based on a Rafael Sabatini novel published in 1922, “Captain Blood” spends a good deal of time justifying the title character’s turn to buccaneering. It stars an extraordinarily young Olivia de Havilland and an amazingly blond Errol Flynn, whose perfect hair and shining teeth never seem to get in the way of swinging on ropes or dueling dastardly Frenchmen to the death. “Captain Blood,” one of the earliest excursions into the genre, is one of the best. (“Pirates of the Caribbean” was the first of the genre to break even at the box office since the 1960s, but that might just be because the last pirate film before that was Geena Davis’ supremely hideous “Cutthroat Island.”) Nevertheless, old swashbuckling classics still provide hours of lighthearted entertainment from an era when men were men and women were tavern wenches or the Governor’s closest relations.

Long before there were apocalyptic blockbusters dependent on bank-breaking budgets or murderous rampage flicks with death tolls higher than your average action film fan can count, pirate movies ruled the seas.

This is the last in a bi-weekly feature on movies: “In Case You Missed It the First Time.” This week, it’s 1935’s pirate-caper “Captain Blood.”

Captain blood 1922