Sadly Over-hyped

Purely Joyful Movie!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

You know you're in trouble from the moment you spot Barton MacLane in the title role, sporting a dueling scar and a Dollar Store Prussian accent. The arrival on the scene of John Mylong (Kroll) -- fresh from his major role in the same year's epically awful Phil Tucker extravaganza, "Robot Monster" -- hardly bodes well for the viewer, either.On the other hand, Leif Erickson is serviceable enough as a wise-cracking adventurer who needs to get out of the country fast, no questions asked, and assumes Kroll's identity. (Strangely, the country they're in is never identified, not even with a fictional appellation; the locals seem to have some sort of taboo against naming their own country, always referring instead to "South America". As in, "Goodbye! We hope you enjoyed your stay in South America." Now who the heck says that?) Virginia Grey is undeniably winsome and appealing as the romantic interest. Erickson and Grey aren't exactly Bogie and Bacall, but their presence helps elevate this cheapie at least one point above merely awful.I also give the film another point for an interesting premise: Fanatical Soviets (were there any other kind, in the 1950s?) plan to destroy the Panama Canal, by using a kamikaze freighter with a nuclear weapon hidden on board. (Although they must have known this would kick off WWIII, because after all, this is 1953, and only the U.S., Britain, and the Soviets have the bomb, so it's not as if there would be a bewildering array of suspects.) Regardless, the Poverty Row production values, constricted running time, pedestrian script, and uninspired direction make this movie much less interesting than it could have been. Plus, there are plot holes you could ... well, steer a freighter through.Like when Clegg -- the radio operator on the original Banos, who betrayed every one of his shipmates to a certain death -- kills Kroll in a dispute over his payoff, but then neglects to murder the hotel manager who witnesses the shooting. You'd think such a cold-blooded character would have plugged the manager, too, since he was unarmed and standing close by. (Judging from the obvious budget constraints, my theory is they couldn't afford the extra blanks.) Also, you'd think that fully four years after the Russkis detonated their first nuke, the bad guys could have come up with a simpler and more reliable way to set the thing off than some hare-brained rigmarole involving springing a scientist from the gulag, and threatening his daughter.And I did mention Barton MacLane's game-but-lame attempt at a menacing accent, right? He should have stuck with the "tough guy with a major character flaw" roles he did so well, epitomized by his corrupt ex-cop in "High Sierra".This one might hold some academic interest for you, if you're a student of early Cold War Era propaganda. But the slightly similar Sam Fuller film "Hell and High Water" -- which debuted a year later -- is in every way more watchable.

The film gets credit for it's slow and deliberate pacing in the early going, as it builds suspense toward the revelation of the plot to destroy the Panama Canal. You had to wonder what all the intrigue and mystery was about regarding Clegg (Paul Brinegar), Kroll (John Mylong), Sam Wilton (Leif Erickson) and the film's title character Captain Trednor/Scarface (Barton MacLane). It's not often you catch MacLane at the top of the credits, though he might have been upstaged in this one by Erickson as the hero of the piece. Still, he does a pretty good job when he's on screen, even if that German accent was somewhat distracting.The movie also did a nice job of explaining two key elements that might not have been offered in another film of the era where these kind of details weren't as important. For one, I was thinking about how the original Banos could have been blown up and disappeared without the authorities knowing, and that was handled competently by the Captain's explanation of Clegg's role to Wilton. Speaking of which, having Wilton's character portrayed as a former plantation foreman allowed for his proficiency with a machete. Too bad though about Mrs. Dilts, she seemed like a nice lady.That's not to say the picture didn't have it's share of outlandish elements. An atomic bomb on board a banana freighter? - I don't think so. And how did Scarface manage to secure all the right scientific looking equipment on board the fake Banos without some knowledge of atomic bomb technology? No need to get into that.Say, keep an eye on the handful of scenes starting with Wilton taking out the Captain, up to breaking into the radio room with Crofton; the sweat stains on his shirt and the bruise on his face change size and shape a number of times. Makes one wonder why those scenes weren't filmed one right after another.On balance though, I have no problem recommending this film for devotees of mystery and espionage, especially as a throwback to a time when Communist ideology threatened the very existence of the Western world - remember all those duck and cover drills in elementary school? Ah yes, the 1950's, you had to be there.

This is a good B-grade action feature that makes good use of an involved story of intrigue. It's an example of how low-budget, shabby looking sets can actually help the atmosphere if they go with the right story, and meanwhile the story itself moves at a decent pace as things gradually unfold.Barton MacLane and Leif Erickson are the stars and antagonists. MacLane is "Captain Scarface", who is masterminding an evil and destructive scheme, while Erickson is a character designed as a Bogart-type antihero who finds himself in the right place and time to try to stop it. Erickson is solid in his role, while MacLane seems to relish his slightly outlandish character, making him interesting and menacing, if not always fully believable.All of the action takes place either at a shabby-looking port-side hotel or on the captain's equally rundown-looking freighter. The no-frills look of both sets makes them believable and helps the atmosphere, since putting the characters in such settings implicitly makes them too seem rather small and tattered.The story itself is easily interesting enough to hold your attention for the running time of slightly more than an hour. The actual plot of the bad guys comes across as somewhat far-fetched, but it is mostly a device to drive the intrigue. The story telling has a few rough edges, as can sometimes be the case with movies of this kind, but it has more than enough pluses to cancel these out. It's definitely worth seeing if you like movies of the genre.

This is the kind of movie Humphrey Bogart could have starred in. You just have to think Leif Erickson (the Sam Wilton Character) = Humphrey. Here you have it all... exotic locale, beautiful damsel, Communist secret agents, the mystery ship.Captain Scarface is really fun if you watch it while imagining what it would have been like with Bogie in it.There are only so many movies that we, today, can hold up as the icons of the era of the 1940's to 1950's. You can't idolize them all, and for some reason, just about any movie with Bogie in it seems to suit peoples' subjective criterion of greatness. The golden age of black and white movies yielded a ton of dramas that kept people heading for the local movie theater. No, they weren't all classics, but who cares? I'd much rather watch Captain Scarface for the first time than Casablanca one more time again.