How bad can a movie get? This misguided swashbuckler was evidently intended as a boost for the legendary Errol Flynn's fading career. The cheesy acting (unbearable love scenes and supporting performances), "Brigadoon"-style costumes (what was it with those non-period tartan leggings and sparkling-clean pirate outfits?), and, worst of all, embarrassing script (with scarcely a trace of Robert Louis Stevenson) make one wish that Warner Brothers had junked the screenplay by Herb Meadow and additional dialogue by Harold Medford.
They might have done better instead to have adopted the 1951 Classics Illustrated comic-book adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch (artwork by Lawrence Dresser) as storyboards and script. Seriously. The comic book had the distinct advantage of at least resembling the novel on which it was based, while the Flynn vehicle merely borrowed the title and a few characters' names while otherwise abandoning the source material.
It's unfortunate, because, as many critics and readers are discovering, "The Master of Ballantrae" is one of Stevenson's finest works of fiction -- a tragic psychological study of human duality and fratricidal hatred. This celluloid travesty strips the novel of every vestige of nuance, gets every relationship wrong, makes each character wooden, and turns even the piratical interlude tedious. Robert Louis Stevenson deserved better. So did Errol Flynn.
They might have done better instead to have adopted the 1951 Classics Illustrated comic-book adaptation by Kenneth W. Fitch (artwork by Lawrence Dresser) as storyboards and script. Seriously. The comic book had the distinct advantage of at least resembling the novel on which it was based, while the Flynn vehicle merely borrowed the title and a few characters' names while otherwise abandoning the source material.
It's unfortunate, because, as many critics and readers are discovering, "The Master of Ballantrae" is one of Stevenson's finest works of fiction -- a tragic psychological study of human duality and fratricidal hatred. This celluloid travesty strips the novel of every vestige of nuance, gets every relationship wrong, makes each character wooden, and turns even the piratical interlude tedious. Robert Louis Stevenson deserved better. So did Errol Flynn.