My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn (1985)

Duncan Regehr deserves a lot of credit in this role. He has a lot of the same gifts as Errol Flynn - the intelligence, artistic flair, athletic ability, grace, height, charm, convincing romantic heroism and handsome good looks. He did an excellent job. I believe Flynn's daughter actually chose him for this role. He went on to become Zorro in the New World Zorro series on the Family Channel for 4 seasons, and did a superb job. Very few actors have the physical grace, perception and personality to effectively and compellingly portray heroes such as Robin Hood, Zorro, and so forth. Both Flynn and Regehr do. Very few actors could assay the role of Flynn himself. Actually, no one else even comes to mind. Regehr should have gotten an award, at least I can give him 5 stars in this review.

After watching this film, I thought to myself, they really glossed up Errol Flynn's life! The movie is really nice eye candy. They really got the 1930s and 1940s atmosphere of Hollywood just right. The costumes were great. All the women looked glamorous and all the men looked handsome and debonair.Is this a serious film about Errol Flynn's life? Nah! It's a fun movie based on all the scandalous stuff he did in his life.Why am I critiquing this film? This is a film that had a lot of promise but failed to deliver. Duncan Reagher was really good as Errol Flynn. He was not as good looking as the original, but he made you believe that Flynn was not just a handsome playboy who did not take himself seriously, but as a man who, although gifted with great talent, was kind of disturbed and unhappy inside. Flynn's love life was a disaster considering he had so many failed marriages. He also lost a lot of good friends during his life. He also suffered from unrequited love for the elegant Olivia DeHavilland. The last scene of the film showed Errol kind of begging for Olivia to stay with him and instead she walks away. He is shown in his tux, looking really empty and slowly walking around the pool as he pours his drink into the pool. It was a sad way to end the film but kind of fitting because everyone knows by now how he eventually fell apart from his alcoholism and his dissipated lifestyle.This film could've had much more depth, could've been better well-written. Sure they showed all the scandals but they never showed Errol Flynn's human center. Surprisingly, Duncan Reagher was able to put some emotional depth into the character of Errol Flynn even though the film writing didn't put any depth there.I'll probably never see this film again but I can still remember after viewing this film, "Gosh, this could've been so much more.....!" I give this film a D+.

If you read Errol Flynn's autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, you will see that this film is full of poetic licence. Not that that makes much of a difference, because Errol Flynn was pretty generous with poetic licence in the autobiography anyway. No need to worry about spoilers, since there is nothing there to spoil.To me it would seem more sensible to use the story about a fictitious Hollywood actor; then you could go out and find a better actor than Duncan Regehr to play him, and you wouldn't have to worry about the audience saying things like: "But he didn't have a moustache in Captain Blood." Another failing of this film is that it shows Flynn as a two-dimensional character. Flynn was an intelligent man, well educated, well read. This film only concentrates on his funster image.Regehr is a disaster. The rest of the cast struggle with their scripts. Hal Linden is OK as Warner, and Barbara Hershey makes a believable Damita, although Lili Damita herself did not think so.The best thing to do with this film is to forget about it and let it gently slip away to oblivion. So what I am writing this for, I can't imagine.

The recent documentary "The Adventures of Errol Flynn" is an in-depth look at the Ultimate Hollywood Hero. Bogart,Cagney, Wayne and the like were basically blue collar types in their screen images but Flynn was an aristocrat in his style and manner, the younger son out to carve out his own fiefdom for a sword,thunder and romance analogy that ironically he found himself trapped in. If he hadn't been under contract to Warner Bros. he would've of been perfect in the Cary Grant role in Suspicion: the good looking charmer whose 1000 watt smile blinds one to the fact that he's a predator. And he could've starred with his best leading ladies sister Joan Fontaine. That was Flynn's trouble he was the Ultimate Screen Hero until his own habits and bad timing caught up with him. Grant and Flynn in a way are similar but Flynn was the more macho of the two;it is possible to see Grant as Captain Blood but Flynn in The Philadelphia Story Mr. Blanding Builds his Dream House,or Monkey Business,or Operation Petticoat would've turned those roles on their collective ears because he's too damn sure on his feet and the sexual tension he would've brought naturally would've made the story lines wobbly. But this wobbly biography is just a plasticized view of Flynn and his era. There are times when I half expected a laugh track or an audience to go "Ahhh" at some point. It doesn't go deeply into Flynn's life just the screen magazine view. It also doesn't delve into his struggle to be considered more than a derring-doer. Like the cleaned up biographies of Lon Chaney( the father,not the Wolfman,or Lenny"Of Mice and Men) and Buster Keaton done in the '50's this is just a time killing piece of fluff