Captain Kidd (1945)

Director: Rowland V. Lee

Starring: Charles Laughton, Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, John Carradine

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Adventure on the high seas!

Plot: In this unhistorical account, Capt. William Kidd is already a clever, ruthless pirate when, in 1699, he tricks the king into commissioning him as escort for a treasure ship from India. He enlists a crew of pardoned cutthroats...and Orange Povey, whom Kidd once abandoned on a reef and hoped never to see again. Of course, Kidd's intentions are treacherous. But there's more to gunner Adam Mercy than meets the eye.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? YES. Yarrrrrrrrr!

As I was watching this last night it suddenly dawned on me what my next big movie project is going to be...The Summer of Swashbucklers! I love pirate movies (except for the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN sequels) and it's damn time I caught up on the backlog of titles I own.

CAPTAIN KIDD was a blast and in no small part to the deliciously fun performance by Laughton. He's a hoot.

See what I mean? "Poo". Classic. He doesn't play Kidd as a ruthless pirate like you might think he should. It seems to me that, while Laughton is going a more lighthearted way, the real Kidd was probably somewhere in between. Read about Kidd at Wikipedia. If the accounts there are true, the film makers of this picture incorporated a few historic bits that make this even more fun and interesting.


There's a little bit of swordplay with a reasonable fight between Randolph Scott and Duncan Renaldo but there is a good deal of ship scenes and the well done sequence where Kidd takes another ship and her cargo without firing but one shot. Very clever. CAPTAIN KIDD is in the public domain which means you can see it anywhere on the cheap including YouTube.