ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR CAPTAIN BLOOD!...........
ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL!..............
THE MULTI-CONTINENTAL SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF PANGEA!..........
AND AN END TO NATIONALISM, RELIGION, AND PIGS, FOXES, SHRUBS, AND ASSHOLE ASHCROFTS!..........
A WORLD 10,000 TIMES BETTER!.............
PANGEA, ALL THE CONTINENTS AS ONE!.........
AND NO GODS, NO MASTERS, NO KINGS!.........
JUST OUR WOMAN PANGEA.........WHO SHARES ALL EQUALLY!.........
AND CAPTAIN BLOOD...........WHO WILL MAKE THE BLOOD OF THE RICH FLOW!...
We first meet Captain Blood (Errol Flynn) as a doctor in England in 1685. There is open rebellion against the villainous King James II (rebellion that is somewhat exaggerated for the film), but Blood wants nothing to do with politics. He is arrested as a traitor after treating an injured rebel. The corrupt court refuses to listen to his arguments that his duties to medicine trump any political affiliations, but he is saved from the hangman's noose by the court's decision to transport the lot of rebels off to Barbados for use as slaves.
In Jamaica, Blood's willful nature and back-talking to Colonel Bishop (Lionel Atwill) makes him a prime candidate for work in the mines, but he is saved when the Colonel's impetuous niece Arabella (Olivia de Havilland) purchases him. Blood starts off doing backbreaking work on the plantations as little more than a human pack animal, but his medical expertise saves him when he successfully treats the humorous Governor Willoughby (Henry Stephenson) for his gout. Blood is not satisfied being a high-ranking slave, though, and he plots with his comrades Pitt (Ross Alexander) and Hagthorpe (Guy Kibbee) to escape. The timely intervention of a Spanish pirate ship that nearly destroys the town provides Blood and his unlikely group of pirates with their freedom. From then on, they are virtuous rogues, who apparently get into the looting and pillaging but are restricted in the amount of rapine they can perform (this was 1935, after all). After years of pillaging fun, Blood makes the ill-advised decision to team up with a French pirate Levasseur (Basil Rathbone), which indirectly leads to his inevitable showdown with the evil Bishop.
A short trip to Google tells me that the film's history is pretty accurate. The rebellion Blood is accused of supporting was led by the Duke of Monmouth, who was an illegitimate son of James II's brother, the recently deceased King Charles II. Monmouth thought he had more claim to the throne than the Catholic James II did, but Parliament didn't agree with him. Monmouth brought together an army that grew to 3000 people, until desertions and skirmishes reduced their number to hundreds of peasants; they were then massacred by James II's armies at Sedgmoor, the last battle in history fought on English soil. The entire rebellion lasted only five weeks. The survivors were rounded up, 200 of them were executed, and another 800 were sent off to Barbados as slaves. Rafael Sabatini, who also wrote novels about fictional pirates like Scaramouche and real pirates like Christopher Columbus (ouch! had to work that in), based his novel on these real events.
© 1997 villista@iname.com
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