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Whip It, a review by Dragonfire

Whip It

(From Whip It on October 20th, 2009)

Captain Blood, a review by Rogmeister

Captain Blood (1935)  Black & White   119 minutes
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill, Basil Rathbone, Ross Alexander, Guy Kibbee
Music: Erich Wolfgang Korngold

After watching "The Black Swan", I was in the mood for even more swashbuckling so I decided to pop in Errol Flynn's first starring role in a swasbuckler, "Captain Blood".  Ironically, both films were based on novels by the same writer, Rafael Sabatini.  Captain Blood came out 7 years earlier and was shot in black & white so you don't get the lush color photography of The Black Swan but it looks very good for a 74 year old black & white film.  You get more big ships, armies of men swordfighting all at once, both on land and at sea.  Unfortunately, you don't get Maureen O'Hara this time, having to settle instead for Olivia de Havilland but you do get Errol Flynn so perhaps that's a fair trade off.  Unlike the other film where the lead character starts off being a pirate, this time you get the long story of how he became one...being arrested and sold off into slavery and finally escaping with fellow slaves and taking over a ship.  Basil Rathbone is in this film, too...but not for a long amount of screen time but he does have one excellent sword fight sequence with Flynn which is definitely one of the highlights of the movie.

The DVD has a lot of extras including a featurette on the movie, audio-only bonus radio program, and the original trailer.  They also have a presentation of Warner Night at the Movies where they try to show you what it was like seeing a movie back then...besides the movies, you get some shorts also from 1935 including a newsreel, movie trailer of another film, musical and comedy shorts and a cartoon.  There's a lot of entertainment for your buck here, especially considering that, as I write this, you can pick this up in the U.S. currently for about $6.

(From DCO third annual November Alphabet Marathon - discussion/review/banter thread on November 6th, 2009)

The Flash Marathon, a review by addicted2dvd

Guest Stars:
Vito D'Ambrosio as Bellows
Biff Manard as Murphy
George Dickerson as Quinn
Mike Genovese as Lt. Warren Garfield
Deborah May as Ruth Werneke

My Thoughts:
A good episode. I did enjoy it... but I have to say I thought the antidote for the toxin that was released in Star Labs was a bit on the convenient side.

My Rating:

(From The Flash Marathon on April 13th, 2010)