Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

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.

MARIO GAUCI The best, if not exactly satisfying, of the three seemingly randomly-chosen swashbucklers by Universal to accompany the above-average Errol Flynn vehicle AGAINST ALL FLAGS (1952) is this unusual entry in the genre.As the title has it, lead Jeff Chandler is a U.S. naval officer who's ordered to carry out acts of piracy in order to ferret out the real culprits behind the sinking of American ships. These prove to be an amalgamation of Brazilian, Portuguese and Spanish villains (led by our own Joseph Calleia hiding under the respectable guise of the Spanish governor – whose appearance is delayed until the last half-hour, but he's as reliable as ever…and like the Robert Douglas of BUCCANEER'S GIRL [1950], from the same director, is allowed to go free after being made to walk the plank).Chandler himself – who would later star in the similarly-titled genre outing YANKEE PASHA (1954) – is a bit of a martinet, with rebellious first-mate and ex-student Scott Brady usually at the receiving end of his ire; when he tries to make up for his errors behind the captain's back, by fixing the ship's rudder at night, Brady's attacked by and kills a shark! This animosity eventually intensifies when the latter comes back from a scouting expedition to the Indies with a Portuguese countess (luscious Suzan Ball, whose debut this was: she had a brief and tragic career, dying in 1955 at the tender age of 21!).Though the film is far from a classic, slightly marred by the resistible comic antics of George Mathews and featuring little traditional action before the last reel, it's a reasonably enjoyable romp nonetheless – with a rousing score by an uncredited(!) Milton Rosen and shot in glorious Technicolor by the distinguished Russell Metty.

frankfob "Yankee Buccaneer" is a variation on the demented Arabian Nights fetish that Universal Pictures seemed to have in the late '40s and early '50s, the difference being that this one doesn't take place in the days of Ali Baba. It's the 1840s, and a U.S. Navy ship is ordered to disguise itself as a merchant vessel and sail to the waters off North Africa to put a stop to pirates preying on American ships. The action scenes are handled well, Jeff Chandler fits the part of the dashing American naval officer, the women are fetching, the cast is full of familiar faces (including Jay Silverheels, who played Tonto in the "Lone Ranger" series), the story doesn't venture past the realm of possibility and it moves along at a good clip. All in all, a neat little B picture--not the best of the lot, but far from the worst.