Captain Blood (DVD)

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Everything is here in "Captain Blood" for a rousing adventure--a dauntless hero, dastardly villains, a beautiful damsel in distress, sword fights, and battles at sea, all the while Curtiz pushing the story along with the precision of a Prussian military tactician and the warm incandescence of a French Impressionist painter. The result is a great costume epic and quite a lot of fun.

By the way, what's a buccaneer? A high price for corn. (Just wanted to see if you were still with me.)

Video:
The picture quality is only so-so for an older Warner Bros. film transfer to DVD. The original, black-and-white, fullscreen print was not put through a complete, frame-by-frame restoration because it shows occasional brightness shifts and more than a few lines, flecks, and age spots. They are not severe, but they are enough to remind us that we are watching a good but not perfect copy of the film. Likewise, object delineation is somewhat soft, and B&W contrasts are only average. The transfer itself seems excellent, though, with any possible added grain a matter of little consequence.

Audio:
The soundtrack is a Dolby Digital reproduction of the original 1.0 monaural sonics. It seems a bit crude by today's state-of-the-art standards, but understand the movie was made only a few years after the introduction of sound to motion pictures. Yet it's as good as it got in 1935. The frequency response is understandably limited; the overall tone is a tad harsh, in music especially; and there is a very minor background noise, hardly noticeable.

Extras:
The disc comes decked out with a healthy set of extras. First, Leonard Maltin hosts a "Warner Night at the Movies," a segment that tries to replicate a typical evening's entertainment at the movie house in 1935 by providing a vintage newsreel; a ten-minute musical short, "Johnny Green and His Orchestra"; an eleven-minute comedy short, "All-American Drawback," with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy; an early Merrie Melodies cartoon, "Billboard Frolics," in very early color; and a theatrical trailer for "A Midsummer Night's Dream." After that, there is a twenty-three minute featurette, "Captain Blood: A Swashbuckler Is Born," with commentary on the making of the movie by film historians Rudy Behlmer and Robert Osborne, author Bob Thomas, and others. Then, there is an audio-only bonus, the Lux Radio Theater broadcast of "Captain Blood," with the film's stars. It was produced by Cecil B. De Mille, and it is hosted by Herbert Marshall; it's fifty-eight minutes long and divided into twenty-two chapters. Finally, there are thirty-two scene selections for the movie itself, plus a "Captain Blood" theatrical trailer.

In addition, if you buy "Captain Blood" in the boxed set, the "Errol Flynn Signature Collection," you also get the bonus disc, "The Adventures of Errol Flynn." Made in 2005, this eighty-six minute documentary covers everything about Flynn's life from his first screen test in Australia to his death by heart attack in 1959 at the age of fifty. The documentary is narrated by actor Ian Holm and contains numerous film clips as well as interviews with several of Flynn's ex wives; his daughter Deirdre Flynn; director Vincent Sherman; film historians Rudy Behlmer and Robert Osborne; producer Hal B. Wallis (archival); actors Richard Dreyfuss, Olivia de Havilland, Burt Reynolds, Joanne Woodward, Paul Picerni (archival), and David Niven (archival); writer Delmer Daves (archival); and many others. It hurries past the more lurid aspects of the actor's private life and rightly concentrates on his film legacy.

Parting Thoughts:
You may or may not agree that "Captain Blood" is the greatest pirate adventure of all time, but with Errol Flynn in the title role there's no denying it's one of the greatest. He makes the film work, every bit as much as Johnny Depp made "Pirates of the Caribbean" work. Without Flynn, "Blood" would probably have been just another silly, ho-hum potboiler. With him, it's a remarkable work of high adventure, charm, and romance. And it's got enough action to keep the attention span occupied of even a die-hard MTV watcher.

"Captain Blood" is available individually or in the six-disc boxed set mentioned above that also includes, chronologically, "Dodge City" (1939), "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" (1939), "The Sea Hawk" (1940), "The Died With Their Boots On" (1941), and the documentary "The Adventures of Errol Flynn."

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