Director: LEW LANDERS. Original screenplay: Robert E. Kent. Photographed in Technicolor by Vincent Farrar. Film editor: Henry Batiste. Art director: Paul Palmentola. Set decorator: Sidney Clifford. Music director: Mischa Bakaleinikoff. Technicolor color consultant: Francis Cugat. Unit manager: Herbert Leonard. RCA Sound System. Producer: Sam Katzman.
Songs: "A Pirate from Kentucky" (Oakie); "I Wish I Were Single Again" (guard); "Annie Laurie" (orchestral).
Copyright 1 October 1950 by Columbia Pictures Corp. New York opening at the Palace: 14 December 1950. U.S. release: October 1950. U.K. release: 5 February 1951. Australian release: 26 October 1951. 79 minutes. U.K. length: 7,081 feet.
SYNOPSIS: New Orleans, 1812. Pirate Jean Lafitte attacks Spanish ships from a stronghold on the island of Galveston.
COMMENT: John Dehner (straight man): "Someone tell me you play ziss piano by ear." Jack Oakie (comic sidekick): "Yeah." John Dehner: "How can you get boss ears on zee piano at zee same time?"
A tedious amalgam of patriotic jingo ("Oh, say can you see ... We'll see to it that Spain is defeated.") and Boys' Own juvenilia. Henreid makes a glumly uninteresting hero, while Oakie swaggers around like a wet pillow.
However, the picture does have a certain perverse B-picture charm for those of us nostalgic for the Saturday matinee. Whatever else, there's plenty of valiant attempts at action, what with Indians attacking on the studio stage, lots of fights and special effects explosions. The producer has done marvels on an obviously limited budget.
And it must be admitted that our thespic interest perks up considerably when the effervescent Mary Anderson comes on as the acrobatic Swallow. Hard to recognize the same girl who played the deranged survivor in Lifeboat and the equally possessive foster mother in To Each His Own! But it's Mary all right, looking most attractive in Technicolor, dazzling us with her energy and using her husky voice to invest even the most clichéd and humdrum of her lines with such a convincing veneer of histrionic gold as to easily outshine the rest of the cast: John Dehner stumbling over a drongo accent, Eugene Borden blustering with eye-rolling ham as a put-upon captain, Pierre Watkin trilling his lines measuredly as a penny-ante governor, Edgar Barrier as the blandest of cut-price villains ("A man who sells guns to Indians!"), and Karin Booth as the doll-like pretty but dull-like heroine. Among this assembly, Miss Anderson glows like a cough-drop in a bag of licorice. Single-handed, she makes The Last of the Buccaneers worth seeing.
Landers has directed with pace but little style. Still, there's more than enough action to compensate for the ploddingly pedestrian stretches of dialogue. And by B-picture budgets even the most pneumatic proceedings are colorfully mounted and set.
Songs: "A Pirate from Kentucky" (Oakie); "I Wish I Were Single Again" (guard); "Annie Laurie" (orchestral).
Copyright 1 October 1950 by Columbia Pictures Corp. New York opening at the Palace: 14 December 1950. U.S. release: October 1950. U.K. release: 5 February 1951. Australian release: 26 October 1951. 79 minutes. U.K. length: 7,081 feet.
SYNOPSIS: New Orleans, 1812. Pirate Jean Lafitte attacks Spanish ships from a stronghold on the island of Galveston.
COMMENT: John Dehner (straight man): "Someone tell me you play ziss piano by ear." Jack Oakie (comic sidekick): "Yeah." John Dehner: "How can you get boss ears on zee piano at zee same time?"
A tedious amalgam of patriotic jingo ("Oh, say can you see ... We'll see to it that Spain is defeated.") and Boys' Own juvenilia. Henreid makes a glumly uninteresting hero, while Oakie swaggers around like a wet pillow.
However, the picture does have a certain perverse B-picture charm for those of us nostalgic for the Saturday matinee. Whatever else, there's plenty of valiant attempts at action, what with Indians attacking on the studio stage, lots of fights and special effects explosions. The producer has done marvels on an obviously limited budget.
And it must be admitted that our thespic interest perks up considerably when the effervescent Mary Anderson comes on as the acrobatic Swallow. Hard to recognize the same girl who played the deranged survivor in Lifeboat and the equally possessive foster mother in To Each His Own! But it's Mary all right, looking most attractive in Technicolor, dazzling us with her energy and using her husky voice to invest even the most clichéd and humdrum of her lines with such a convincing veneer of histrionic gold as to easily outshine the rest of the cast: John Dehner stumbling over a drongo accent, Eugene Borden blustering with eye-rolling ham as a put-upon captain, Pierre Watkin trilling his lines measuredly as a penny-ante governor, Edgar Barrier as the blandest of cut-price villains ("A man who sells guns to Indians!"), and Karin Booth as the doll-like pretty but dull-like heroine. Among this assembly, Miss Anderson glows like a cough-drop in a bag of licorice. Single-handed, she makes The Last of the Buccaneers worth seeing.
Landers has directed with pace but little style. Still, there's more than enough action to compensate for the ploddingly pedestrian stretches of dialogue. And by B-picture budgets even the most pneumatic proceedings are colorfully mounted and set.