Movie review - "Long John Silver" (1954) **

A fair children’s film, which has a strong story with plenty of twists and turns, but lacks a little polish and suffers from stilted scenes. Robert Newton chews the scenery in the best Newton style, but the best performance comes from George Simpson-Lytton as a religious captain. Rod Taylor really had no business playing a crazy old man, but he does his best; he later described the experience affectionately as “scrambling around the rocks giving the worst performance you’ve ever seen in your life.” He does, however get one of the film’s best scenes – stalking Jim Hawkins in a cave (although for a blind man Israel Hands is awfully successful at chasing a child around an island).