A High Wind in Jamaica (1965)

Anthony Quinn is the captain of a pirate ship in the middle 1600s. The ship and its crew loot a British passenger ship. Half a dozen young kids, mostly British, board the victim ship accidentally sail away aboard the pirate ship. Quinn, a drunken and pediculous lout, comes eventually to care about the children in his own crude way, before a British Naval steamship capture him and his superstitious crew and rescue the kids, who are by this time wearing tattered clothing and are filthy.The two central roles are those of Anthony Quinn and Deborah Baxter as one of the children. Quinn does his usual reliable number -- Zorba the Greek with edginess. He's dashing around the deck in his bare feet shouting orders in Spanish, slapping impertinent seamen about the head.But Deborah Baxter's role is important. And she's magnetic. It's worth speculating why this should be so, but the answer isn't too flattering to the gentlemen in the audience. She was nine years old when this film was released. She's not striking beautiful -- no porcelain doll like Brooke Shields in "Pretty Baby." There is nevertheless something extremely appealing about her appearance and demeanor. Please, I'm no pedophile. I find older women more likable, for all the reasons given by Benjamin Franklin.But Deborah Baxter, prepubescent though she may be, combines her juvenile vulnerability with a clearly seductive quality, which Quinn's character, the writers, and director Alexander MacKendrick all recognize and put to use in the story. It mocks our sensibilities to deny it. Jenny Agutter was about fourteen when she made "Walkabout" and Sue Lyon fourteen when she was Kubrick's "Lolita." Not that Quinn's pirate captain necessarily realizes what's up. He's clearly embarrassed at one point, at which he finds himself having to pin Baxter down to the deck, hovering above her, the crew chuckling because the position is suggestive. It's also clear that by the end, Quinn's desire to help and protect her has eclipsed any sexual feelings he might have felt.She's a decent actress too, for a young girl. Her confusion at the climactic trial puts a definite period at the end of Quinn's career. And she turned quite beautiful in the next few years. That's why she was cast as Teddy Roosevelt's daughter in "The Wind and the Lion." Her character in that film, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, was a no-nonsense woman who lived into a candid late old age and died just one or two decades ago. You know the song, "Alice Blue Gown"? She's the "Alice." I loved Quinn. People accuse him of overacting, yet it fits the part of a self-indulgent, not-too-bright pirate captain, huffing and puffing, always on the edge of hysteria. It's not really Zorba we see on the screen. It's Zampano from Fellini's "La Strada." A brute, but one who comes to have civilized feelings after all.

The film may seem uneven and confusing to the first-time viewer, "moving from inappropriate comedy to tragedy to whatever is in between", as Mr.Chabot puts it, but contrary to that reviewer's opinion I think that having adapted Richard Hughes' novel (which itself is a superb achievement, something special in the world literature canon) Mackendrick succeeded in preserving at least some of its key qualities and creating a highly satisfactory piece of cinematic life. The story is funny when funny things happen in it, and it's tragic when it comes to tragedy. What's in between is both psychologically compelling/interesting and cinematographically attractive. As for me, with every new viewing I like the film a bit more : a light, colourful adventure pic with strongly subversive undertones echoing Freud, Piaget, Frazer etc., climaxing in an unforgettable ending where even the otherwise tasteless song has its appropriate place. Well-known British writer Martin Amis in the role of little John.Compared to British edition (Eureka) the German one(Carol Media - a Fox port?)with both English and German subtitles has a brighter image, more into red (Eureka is rather greenish), slightly cut on both sides (and minutely horizontally stretched ?).

Superb adaptation of Richard Hughes' novel about a group of British children being sent home to England from Jamaica, and inadvertently ending up as uninvited guests aboard a pirate ship. Set in the period of about 1880, much humor arises from the proper Victorian English children's fascination with their reluctant babysitters. The crew of scalawags is made up of various Latin American and African men, with most of their conversation in untranslated Spanish. The irony of the unexpected situation is due to two factors: the kids' parents had sent them home because their mother was appalled at the way they were growing up wild and uncivilized, absorbing the voodoo superstitions and folk tales of the islanders, instead of being raised as proper English children. The other factor was that the inept pirates had not realized that the children had snuck on board the pirate ship, seeing it as a great adventure, and the buccaneers had sailed away, with no idea that the kids were shut in the ship's hold, having totally forgotten about them.Anthony Quinn is marvelous in a great comic role, as the unwilling father figure to the curious and innocent bunch of kids he's been stuck with. The sight of Quinn chasing some young English children around the ship, hollering " Hey, give me back my hat!", while his crew laughs uproariously, is truly funny. James Coburn is the voice of reason as a sly ,articulate pirate, who stands between the bumbling captain and his restless crew. The presence of the children on the ship becomes more and more problematic, as they inadvertently cause all kinds of problems just by being around, and the men begin to see them as bad luck.SPOILERS AHEAD: A little girl puts a man's coat on backwards, and covers her face with her hair, and stalks toward the terrified sailors, declaring in a spooky voice that she's a Duppy, an evil spirit with its head on backwards. The grown men look scared, and try to hide from this small child, who is fully aware of what she's doing, until Quinn orders her to stop fooling around, because it's bad luck for the ship. An already complicated situation turns deadly ,when the pirates think they will be able to finally safely rid themselves of the kids, by leaving them with a friendly brothel madam in Tampico. One of the older boys sneaks ashore,and is enjoying the sight of rowdy behavior in the street from the vantage point of a high window, but he suddenly falls, and is killed. The tragic situation is made worse by the news that English patrol vessels are looking for them, because it is mistakenly believed that they murdered the children, after the kids didn't return to their outward bound ship, and the English captain and crew assumed the worst.No more of the plot will be revealed here, except to say that an unpredictable series of events causes disaster for all involved. The very ending is one of the most poignant scenes I've ever seen in any film.Direction, acting, shipboard scenes, period detail, script,cinematography ,are all excellent. The children are totally believable, with a standout performance by Deborah Baxter as Emily. This is a wonderful film that should be watched over and over again. Heartbreak and hilarity have seldom been better matched.

I first saw this film as a child, and was surprised that I remembered so much of it over 30 years later. It is an unusual story of children who end up on a pirate ship by a quirk, and their relationship with the pirates, who regard them as unlucky. Which turns out to be true, in an unforeseen way. Anthony Quinn, as pirate captain, is superb, as are all the cast, especially the actress playing Emily, the oldest child.Forget any preconceived ideas you might have about the plot. This is a haunting, unforgettable story.