Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950)

Gordon Douglas at the time was redoing Erroll Flynn's adventures movies :for instance "rogues of Sherwood" showed Robin Hood's son (!)battling against his wicked uncle ;Hayward was sluggish but Mc Ready was delightful as the villain.Another character portrayed by Flynn (gloriously) :another Hayward /McReady pairing and another battle.Six men from captain Blood's crew have been sold as slaves and they have got to dive for pearls in waters infested with sharks (too bad,those scenes are not shown;it would have added some suspense to a story which is terribly in need of it) The story is barely entertaining ,compared to the great Blood of Flynn and De Havilland (replaced by Patricia Medina who tries her best but who is not Olivia )

Louis Hayward stars in this tale of Captain Blood, not a remake of the Errol Flynn movie, but an altogether separate story with the same fictional hero. This involves an episode where Blood has to free six of his men who were captured and enslaved as pearl fishermen -- a lethal line of work considering the sharks. Under the able direction of Gordon Douglas this movie was far better than you'd expect -- actually much better than the cocaine-inspired junk they make in 2008. Now in DVD.In 1950, good adventure movies were commonplace, so this movie was given some extra hype by Columbia Pictures pairing it double feature with "Beauty on Parade" a semi-sexy saga about beauty contests and how the girls get abused. Odd that I'd remember this second feature after 58 years; not on DVD, cable, or anywhere.

The previous poster is mistaken if she remembers seeing Hayward in glorious color--this is a black and white movie---and a less glorious B&W than that supplied Warner Brothers' Captain Blood by Ernest Haller and Hal Mohr. In fact, Fortunes often looks like a TV production--and not just because of the poor model work. What isn't typical of a TV movie is the surprising amount of violence--Blood's crew is bludgeoned mercilessly when they are captured, whipped by the Marquis and his overseers, and forced to listen to Alfonso Bedoya's idiosyncratic line readings.I remember seeing Louis Hayward in The Black Arrow when I was about 10, and thinking that movie a great swashbuckler. Yet when I read the posts about it on IMDb, I wonder if my memory is playing tricks on me as well. Watching a bit of Fortunes on TCM, I rather suspect it is--this movie is pretty tepid, with the chief excellence being Hayward's performance, even though he gets no help from the script or director.

I was in love with Louis Hayward and there is no more ardent love than a seven year old for a Pirate. I saw every film with Louis Hayward that came to the local cinema and I imagined I was the heroine of course! We had American friends and they had a home cinema and I saw this film and thought it was wonderful. 53 years later, what would I think - I hope it would transport me back over the years when the handsome Louis Hayward would be as dashing and romantic as he was when I first saw him. Good swashbuckling adventure. Must have made an impression when I remember it after 53 years. I know Errol Flynn was the original "Peter Blood" in talking movies but Louis Hayward was the actor whom I saw in the 1950's in glorious colour. Yes, the colours in those movies in the 1950's were wonderful breathtaking after so many black and white movies.