Buccaneer's Girl (1950)

the audience applauded

Good movie but grossly overrated

best movie i've ever seen.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Sultry Yvonne De Carlo is the entire show in this colorful adventure that shows that women could be as tough as men when they needed to be, yet soft and feminine when it was time to return to being a woman. She stows away on a passenger ship, is taken to New Orleans by pirates, goes to work for a bordello madam, slaps a few society dames silly, ends up back on a pirate ship and ultimately gets a sword in her hand. It's all pretty silly stuff, and Yvonne, a more talented rival to Maria Montez, saves the day. Only rivaled perhaps by Maureen O'Hara when it comes to sultry female masculinity, is not going to be treated with disrespect. She stands up to madam Elsa Lanchaster, beats the crap out of disrespectful snob Andrea King, and wins the love of a handsome hero, Philip Friendly. A ton of familiar character actors make nice additions, including Douglas Dumbrille, Henry Daniell, Connie Gilchrist, Verna Felton and lesser known black character actress Hattie Noel, briefly singing a song about pralines. Ms. Noel had me in stitches as Joan Blondell's companion in the camp classic "Lady For a Night", and did a neat little shimmy to "Alice Blue Gown" in a film version of "Irene". De Carlo sings a few songs here, although I didn't recognize her voice as being the same as she did when she sang "I'm Still Here!" in "Follies". The film succeeds mainly on her personality, a delightfully manipulative ploy to make it appear better than it is.

Lavish wardrobes, stunning Technicolor and cinematography, and two handsome/beautiful charismatic leads. Nothing is said about the time period involved, but I would guess the late French/Spanish period in Louisiana.The hero, debonair Englishman Captain Kingston(also in the guise of pirate Captain Baptiste), has as his nemesis, the Frenchman Narbonne(Robert Douglass), merchant kingpin of the New Orleans(NO) region, and his henchman: Patout(Norman LLoyd). Although not mentioned, Kingston seems to be the only Englishman, among otherwise Frenchmen, in the high society of New Olreans.Yvonne De Carlo, as Debbie McCoy, is a mysterious sassy stowaway on board a Narbonne ship from Boston. Apparently, she is a runaway from her family, used to singing and dancing for the high society of Boston. Captured by Batiste, he plans to take her to the pirate stronghold of Tortuga, where she might be employed as a singer/dancer. But, somehow Debbie stows away on the landing craft for NO, and shows up curled inside a grocer's cabinet, determined to land a rich NO society man. Madame Brizar, who runs a finishing school for fashionable young ladies, likes Debbie's looks and takes her home for a further evaluation. After working out their personality conflicts, She passes and sings and dances a bit at a Kingston party. There, she meets Captain Baptiste, now in the guise of Captain Kingston, commissioned to capture Baptiste!Later, we learn that Kingston is not the real Baptiste. Apparently, he killed Baptiste, who was allied with Narbonne against other NO shippers, and took over Baptiste's identity when at sea, switching from a Narbonne ally to attacking only Narbonne's ships! He sells the captured goods in Martinique to support the 'seaman's fund', established by his late father, to outfit more merchant ships, including his own, to compete with Narbonne. He is also popular with with non-Narbornne NO sailors, because he hires local seamen, whereas Narbonne does not(why?). Despite Kingston's leisurely engagement to Arlene: the governor's daughter, he grudgingly accepts Debbie as a stowaway on his next pirating expedition, which she much aids with her overheard info from Narbonne. When they return to NO, Kingston is shocked to learn that his fiancé has married Narbonne.. This leaves him open to marry Debbie. However, he is found guilty of piracy and to be hanged in the morning. Debbie and a rowdy tavern crowd of anti-Narbonne sailors, taken to jail, take over the jail instead, freeing Kingston and his crew, to sail away(to where? continue sacking Narbonne's ships?)There are actually many more twists and turns to the story, I have not included. I don't understand why the screen writers had Kingston still plan to marry Arlene after his adventures with Debbie, then have Debbie reject his offer when he finds Arlene has married Narbonne, then have Debbie spring him from jail. Would have been much more plausible if he had displaced Arlene with Debbie in his marriage plans before he found out Arlene had married.In the first scene when we transfer from Baptiste's ship to NO, the face and song of an African American lady, hawking her pralines, fills the screen.I didn't know it , but these are a French sweet pastry, with some sort of nut(typically almond or pecan) included.Philip Friend, who plays Kingston/Baptiste, was a little known film actor, seldom given the lead role. Yet, I found him quite engaging as the leading man, reminding me of young Vincent Price, in his bearing and eloquent speech, and having great chemistry with Yvonne in their give and take.Yvonne was a superb choice for the leading lady, being beautiful, bringing her singing and light dancing talents, and flaunting her sassy sarcastic wit and tomboyish personality. She played a basically similar character in a western setting in her previous Technicolor film "Frontier Gal", for instance.Elsa Lanchester, who played Madame Brizar, long married to gay Charles Laughton, had a long and varied entertainment career, preferring live audiences.Robert Douglas, as Narbonne, also had a long and varied theatrical career, including much later TV producing. He usually played aristocrats, either good or villainous, and made an impressive nemesis for Friend.Jay Flippen, as Baptiste's first mate,Jared, had a long career in films and TV, as a distinctive craggy, usually gruff, character actor. Peggy Castle, in a minor role as Cleo, remained a pretty, but minor, actress, and eventually developed an alcohol problem that lead to her early death.This film is currently included in a DVD package of 4 pirate films made by Universal in the early '50s. Recommended, if you like this type of film.

Buccaneer's Girl is directed by Frederick De Cordova and jointly written by Samuel Golding, Joseph Hoffman, Joe May and Harold Shumate. It stars Yvonne De Carlo, Philip Friend, Robert Douglas, Elsa Lanchester and Henry Daniell. Music is scored by Walter Scharf and Technicolor cinematography is by Russell Metty.Avast yee lubbers on the Universal lot as the radiant De Carlo plays a spitfire gal finding her man amongst much jollification on the piratical high seas.Budget is cut close to the cloth, editing is C grade and the ending is so quick in coming you have to rewind just to check you didn't press the skip function on the remote control by mistake! While it's true, also, to say that the song and dance numbers inserted into the mix are badly choreographed and borderline embarrassing. This is one of those films where the trailer gives no real indication of just how jolly and cheap it is, a film that if I had paid at the cinema to see back on its release I would have been most annoyed. But many years later, with a pristine DVD transfer to sample along with a bottle of ice cold Chardonay? It's a pretty fun way to spend an hour and twenty minutes. On proviso, that is, you happen to be a fan of Technicolor swashbucklers made in knockabout fashion.Russell Metty's colour photography is gorgeous, so much so it deserves a better movie, while costuming (Yvonne Wood) is of a high standard, particularly for the ladies. The cast, a mixed set of performers for sure, make the light weight material work, with the likes of Lanchester, Daniell & Douglas seriously knowing what is required. Friend cuts a handsome figure with his immaculate ruff's and pencil moustache, and in supporting slots Jay C. Flippen and Norman Lloyd leave favourable impressions. Scharf scores it with standard skull and crossbones flavours, which in turn sits easily with the frothy nature of the beast, and the fight sequences, resplendent with cheapo weapon props, are far from the worst in the genre.With interesting twists and a good old sense of fun about it, there's enough here for the undemanding pirate fan to enjoy. Just don't expect the drama suggested by the trailer is all! 6/10

When this swashbuckling DVD set was announced, I was rather annoyed about the inclusion of three obscure efforts with the popular and vintage AGAINST ALL FLAGS (1952) starring Errol Flynn; well, having watched all three now, this proved to be perhaps the most resistible of them. For the record, my copy jumps from the Universal logo (preceding all their DVD releases) to the beginning of the film omitting the credits entirely, then it pixellated terribly around the 64-minute mark, so that I had to skip to the next chapter (thus missing a couple of minutes) in order to keep watching the thing through to its conclusion! The plot has a New Orleans setting with a pirate named Baptiste (Philip Friend, an unknown actor to me but an okay lead under the circumstances) who hides under the guise of an aristocrat in order to keep up the fight with chief villain Robert Douglas (aided in his nefarious deeds by two other notable character actors – Norman Lloyd and Henry Daniell). Guttersnipe Yvonne de Carlo – I recall watching her other swashbuckler with director de Cordova, THE DESERT HAWK (1950), as a child – and upper-class Andrea King vie for the dashing Friend's attentions (at one point, the two let their hair down and engage in a catfight over him during a ball!), while Jay C. Flippen appears as the hero's right-hand man. Incidentally, having seen this immediately after DOUBLE CROSSBONES (1951), it was amusing to realize that some of the sea-battle footage from BUCCANEER'S GIRL was replicated wholesale into the Donald O'Connor vehicle! The film itself would be tolerable enough if it weren't for two huge flaws: for one thing, the action-less climax has to be the lamest ever devised for this type of fare; much more queasy, unfortunately, are de Carlo's trio of songs (under the tutelage of typically eccentric Elsa Lanchester) – with the last of them occurring just minutes before the end titles! – and for which the creator of the embarrassingly corny choreography ought to have been made to walk the plank himself.