Someone should do a piece on Errol Flynn's days in Cuba - it's just so random. Even if he was an over the hill drunk looking for street cred, it's still bizarre he was so enthusiastic about Castro to the point where he didn't just write articles, but made a fictional film and narrated this doco.Well,"narrate" might be putting it on a bit thick - Errol appears at the beginning introducing it, looking wheezy and like someone who's done a lot of living, and re-appears midway. But the actual narration is done by someone else who is trying to sound like Errol.
It's a doco on the fall of Batista and Castro's early days and is surprisingly engrossing - there's vision of Che and Fidel, and footage of Bastisa's goons shooting people in the street, of the celebrations on Castro's arrival, of the trials that followed his coming to power - including a person sentenced to death for pre-revolution atrocities who requests how to die... and we see him die (firing squad after a cigarette). It's pretty full on. There's also great vision of Errol turning up to George Raft’s casino with Beverly Aadland and a middle aged woman (presumably her mother). Raft wasn’t there. Technically the quality is poor.
Try if you can to catch the edition with an introduction by Kyra Pahlen, the daughter of producer Victor Pahlen, who explains how her dad and Flynn were gambling mates in Batista’s Cuba when the revolution hit, and they decide to make a few bucks together.
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