Tetrady not as good as all the hype

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

mark.waltz While the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series got boring later in their entries due to a lack of new ideas or repetitive ones, this 1950's one never rises past predictability and yawn inducing ghastliness. Other than the opportunity to see how tight Jeff Chandler's pants can get, there is never anything to rise this past the mediocrity state in its telling of the saga of an American naval ship's secret mission, posing as pirates, and exposing an enemy's ship as secret pirates rather than the noble naval ship it disguises itself to be. Not only is the story filled with a ton of plot holes deeper than the Atlantic itself, it never gets past old pirate movie clichés and a sense of confusion that even with a few tense moments only makes me say, Huh?". It has an opportunity to take off a bit when they land on a Caribbean island filled with deadly natives, but it's only a brief plot twist to bring on the unnecessary character played by Susan Bal. The characterizations played by the leads never quite ring true, and as handsome as Chandler is, he's never allowed to express any real emotion or have any humor. It's too bad that the photography is so colorful, because it really just ends up being so much the opposite when all is over.

Armand history and romance. atmosphere of a lot of other adventure films from the period. and something different. maybe the humor or the different manner to use ingredients of original recipes. in fact, a film who has the charm of the heroic stories and something more. maybe the acting or the American implication in a different European problem. maybe the absence of Errol Flynn and the inspired measure in definition of character by Jeff Chandler. or the performance of Joseph Calleia who explores the each side of his character. a film of great images and full of air from childhood books. an oasis for different viewers. and, sure, a certainly delight.

bkoganbing The real David Dixon Porter and the real David Glasgow Farragut are portrayed in Yankee Buccaneer by Jeff Chandler and Scott Brady. The film is concerned with a wholly fictitious incident involving about a US Naval vessel going undercover as a pirate ship to find out where these seemingly organized pirates are headquartered. In real life Porter and Farragut were more than teacher and pupil, in fact they were step-brothers.Yankee Buccaneer also has them involved in a way that the film does not make clear with the Portugese dynastic situation in the 19th century in the person of Suzan Ball. The Braganza family was exiled to Brazil during the Napoleonic Wars which is a whole film in itself, but not terribly germane to the plot here. Anyway Joseph Calleia is a Spanish governor of one of the few islands in the Caribbean left to Spain. But that's his day job, by night he's the ringleader of the pirate activity and he's a slick article.This naval film plays like one of those old B westerns where real historic people are involved in fictitious situations. Yankee Buccaneer doesn't play fast and loose with history, it just rewrites it to suit the fans of Chandler and Brady. George Matthews has a nice part in this film as the CPO of the ship.A few others might like it as well as the fans of the leads.

msinabottle It's a lot of fun to watch a movie that just entertains, with plenty of swashbuckling, a stunningly beautiful heroine, manly male leads, and a fairly ghastly, but amusing story. One can't help being struck by the simple beauty of the leads--Brady & Chandler had 'A' movie looks, and there is really nothing to fault on their performances. The doomed and stunning Suzan Ball parades the deck in a series of stunning dresses, and shows the looks and talents behind the little legend.It is fun to think of David Porter and David Glasgow Farragut fighting the last gasp of piracy in the Caribbean. Joseph Calleia makes a magnificent and cheerfully evil Spanish governor, the kind of villain who puts you on the rack and offers you sherry. George Mathews makes a wise-cracking and dipsomaniacal CPO who would have been broken below Seaman 2nd in any serious navy, but still has fun and lets us have it, too.The story is utterly nonsensical, historically ridiculous, and the props and costumes have nothing do to with the supposed time period, with the exception of the U.S. navy uniforms shown early and never afterwards. It is only two to three times more plausible and accurate than the recent Disney abominations.