Movie review - Errol #40 - "The Adventures of Captain Fabian" (1951) **

Errol Flynn wrote throughout his career - he was good enough before finding fame as an actor to have pieces published in The Bulletin, and later published some novels, as well as writing this screenplay (he also provided the story for Assault of the Cuban Rebel Girls). This isn't that bad, better than I remembered, though it has flaws and probably would have been better off being an episode of a 50s anthology show.

It's a melodrama which feels a bit film noir at times, with black and white photography, night scenes and everyone betraying everyone else and a femme fetale. Errol plays the title role but he's actually not in the film that much (he doesn't appear until about 20 minutes in), though his part is crucial: he's the captain of a boat in 1860 New Orleans who wants to get revenge on the rich family who destroyed his father - so he comes to the rescue of a woman (Michele Presle) on trial for murder, who was the lover of one of the family (Vincent Price). He gets her off, buys her a tavern and... that's his revenge? She prompts Price to kill his uncle then blackmails Price into marrying her, which would have been good revenge from Errol - but when he finds out about it he goes tsk tsk. It would have been a better film had Errol plotted some decent revenge - then had a bit more screen time for Errol so he could fall in love with Presle more believably, so it's more of a shock when he's arrested for murder).

Presle is Ok ; Price and Agnes Moorehead are dab hands at this sort of scenery chewing antics. Errol is so-so - he's a bit old but still charismatic (could have done without seeing him in a bath tub in an early scene, he's a bit pudgy) but he doesn't do enough (even at the end, the only decent action scene - it's a perfectly decent one with a bit of spectacle, rescuing Errol from a lynch mob - his crew are coming to rescue him not the other way round). When someone talks of Errol having a crew of cut-throats you get a bit excited but his crew don't do that much. A curio and only really for Errol completists but I didn't mind it - maybe I was reluctant to criticise it too much because he wrote it (and directed some of it, too).