i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Difficult to know what to say, really, apart from "hmmm." I have a real weakness for classic films and have guzzled them with glee over the course of my life. I've also seen "Plan 9 from Outer Space." Now the following is of course, just my opinion. But in a nutshell, "Moonfleet" delivers swashbuckling adventure about as well as "Plan 9 from Outer Space" delivers cutting-edge science fiction. About five minutes into the film I began to assume it was a pantomime-style comedy and started looking out for the ugly sisters. I then wondered if someone from the National Lampoon world would suddenly make an entrance. I think I would have been a lot less confused if Chevy Chase had walked into that early scene instead of Stewart Granger. "National Lampoon's Moonfleet."Incidentally, Stewart Granger's arms spend most of the movie bent at right angles. It's enough to make a person want to rush back in time and onto the MGM set: chiropractor under one arm and elbow brace under the other.Spoiler alert (well, maybe....):There's a gunfight scene in the movie. Stewart Granger and his unconcerned female companion (dressed in purple) on the beach; he has a gun and his opposition — about 30 soldiers wearing ceremonial bearskins (in the middle of the day, versus one man, in Dorset, apparently) have, well, more firepower than he does. I think it takes them about ten minutes to dispatch "the misses." Granger on the other hand simply has to turn around with a resolute look, fire off a shot with a barrel-loaded flintlock pistol and *bam* — he's right on the money. That's not luck: he's either protected by God or deeply gifted. Go Granger. Added bonus: check out the "authentic" British vegetation. And keep your eye on what some of the extras get up to when they're in shot (rhubarb, rhubarb — stroke the horse, talk about gardening, rhubarb, rhubarb....).Anyway, I had to give the film three stars because, to be fair, I did laugh at it quite a bit.

Of course Fritz Lang was one of the greatest directors in the '20's and '30's, with movie classics such as "Metropolis", "M" and "Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler - Ein Bild der Zeit" but the movies he made later in his career, from let's say the '40's on are hardly on par with his work from his glory days. You see a lot of directors that were great and brilliant in the earliest days of cinema ('10's/'20's/'30's) take a deep nose dive with their later movies. So far the only director that I know of that has remained consistent throughout the decades, from the '10's till the '50's has been King Vidor. Seems like Fritz Lang was stuck somewhere in the '20's or '30's with his directing. The directing and compositions for this movie are very old fashioned, which makes the movie now days feel quite outdated. It's quite static all but perhaps this was also due to the obviously restrained and limited budget of the movie.Still good to see that the sort of signature dark, uneasy atmosphere by Fritz Lang also is present in this movie. However you can wonder if this type of atmosphere is really suited for a movie like this. At times I even expected the movie to turn into an horror movie, which was purely due to its atmosphere!Lets face it, the swashbuckling genre was quite death and dried up already in the '50's. There were some attempts to revive the genre at that particular decade but all failed. This movie is no exception, although you can debate about it if this truly is a swashbuckler. It just lacks the much required action, even though by the ending the movie finally starts to take pace and takes some adventurous forms but by that time it's already quite to late to still make this movie an highly entertaining or exciting one. There just isn't enough happening in the movie!The movie could had gone into some interesting directions (such as with the 'Redbeard'-plotline) but it just doesn't ever does so.It's always risqué to tell a story almost completely from the view point of a child. It's an approach that rarely ever works out in a movie. Frtiz Lang, perhaps over confident with the success by him from the past, makes an attempt to pull it off with this movie. At first the movie still concentrates on the child but soon he makes room for the Stewart Granger character, who also soon but slowly starts to turn in the true main character of the movie. Good move, since this movie is too dark and fun enough to watch for children and adults won't find it interesting to watch a movie such as this one completely from the view point of a naive young boy.The movie features some good and fairly well known actors in it but they fail to give the movie a real heart and make the characters come to life, at least not to a point that they're interesting, entertaining or good enough to care about. It doesn't help that the main character played by George Sanders is character that starts off as a bad guy and just nothing becomes really a good guy throughout the movie. He always remains a sort of a betraying and heartless scoundrel. You just never really start to care about him.Perhaps the only thing that surprised and impressed in this movie was the musical score by Miklós Rózsa. It was really beautiful and perfectly adventurous. The sort of score that really suits the swashbuckling genre. The score only deserved a better movie! It's a soundtrack worth searching out!In the end its a fairly enjoyable movie, that's however too old fashioned and not exciting enough to consider this a real good- or true adventurous movie.6/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Young John Mohune comes to Dorset to meet a man called Jeremy Fox who he believes was a friend of his late mother and will help look after him. Expecting a friend in Fox, John is upset to find an uncaring man who has no interest in John. He persists though in trying to gain the friendship and attention of Fox even in the face of great dissuasion. All Fox's acquaintances are rather desperate men, which fly in the face of his rather "proper" appearance. John doesn't suspect anything, being a child, but the area is famous for smugglers and Fox may be connected and perhaps be more dangerous than anyone realises – not least the innocent John Mohune.I watched this film simply because I was a bit taken aback by the fact that it was a Fritz Lang film. Not being a name I would have associated with a period film I decided to take a look and see what he did with it. In fairness Falkner's source material does give him something to work with and there are interesting themes and ideas running through it. It takes a little bit to get going but after a while the smuggling story and the relationships make for a good adventure that is brisk enough for children while also having a bit of meat for the adults. I quite enjoyed the sweeping adventure feel it had but I was more interested in the character of Fox, who is never a "good man" and is all the better for it (in terms of the narrative). Lang appears to be interested in this as well, and he does make Fox the biggest part of the film.Granger rises to this by turning in a solid performance where he is a rough character but not to the point where he loses the audience. The problem with the film is not with him – unfortunately it is with Jon Whiteley. He is too cute and very much a child actor – and I don't mean that in a good way. He isn't really able to emote and, apologies for the lack of intelligent criticism, but he just got on my nerves. I'm sure this film didn't want to go too deep but I would be happy to see a remake of this with a stronger and more natural child actor in the role, that may allow the relationship to be developed a bit further. Sanders is always a welcome presence but he is given very little to do. The rest of the support cast are all solid enough but the film is pretty much Granger's and he works it well even if Whiteley isn't up to much.Overall though this is a solid little adventure tale that makes for solid family viewing. It is brisk and swashbuckling enough to entertain children while the solid yarn will engage adults. The cast mostly give a good account of themselves and, while I didn't hate him, I must admit that Whiteley was annoying to me personally and his performance here suggested a good education but a limited ability.

This movie is very interesting. Although it is totally different from the novel, the story holds up to its promise. The cast is great, especially S.Granger. He is really a great actor.G.Sanders is very good as the corrupt nobleman. He is really a wonderful actor.The boy, whose name completely escapes me, was quite good. I usually hates kids in movies, especially American ones as they always seem to know better than grown-ups or they just won't listen to them ... how can a 8 year-old boy "explain" something to his father... I mean come on. In this movie there is no such a thing, it is quite realistic.The music and site views are really grand. I believe that Fritz Lang is really a great Director and he has proved it once again with this movie.I highly recommend this movie.