Captain Scarface (1953) Reviews

• Good B-Grade Action Feature

  Snow Leopard2006-01-23

  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.

• "You do not distrust men who volunteer for certain death Mr. Kroll."

  classicsoncall2007-07-18

  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.

• Great Plot, North to Panama

  yonhope2005-06-05

  Hi, Everyone, Barton MacLane is always a good bad guy. He has adopted an interesting accent for this ocean journey black and white adventure. All the cast does well even though the fight scenes are somewhat slow. The plot is probably more believable today than it was 50 years ago. Some of the stock footage of the ships is very nice. If this were remade today with Steven Segal this would be a great action flick. I don't think it would be any better as far as the storytelling, but the special effects would be majestic. I like this version enough to watch it once a year without getting tired of it. Tom Willett

• Panama Intrigue

  sol-kay2007-06-11

  (Some Spoilers) One of many likewise movies released during the Cold War about the Commies, at home as well as in the USSR, trying to do their utmost to not only destroy our way of life. In this case destroy our, the Free Worlds, transportation centers and cause world wide panic and economic chaos by blowing up the vital Panama Canal. This will cause US shipping to travel almost 8,000 miles around South America, from San Fancisco to New York City, to get where it has to go without the use of the short-cut canal. Having blown up the banana boat "Banos" and replaced it with a ringer, another boat that looks just like it, the Communist operative Captain "Scarface" Trednor, Barton MacLane, is planning to use it as a guided missile, with him doing the guiding, by plowing it into the locks of the Panama Canal. Setting off an atomic device that he has hidden on the ship Capt. Scarface plans to blow himself his crew and the canal to smithereens. The captain just has one little problem he needs someone who knows just what button, the red or the blue, to push to both activate and set the bomb off! Having gotten German nuclear physicist Dr. Yager, Raldolph Anders, out of a Soviet Gulag the Commies want to dupe him into pushing the button by threatening to murder his daughter Isa, Virginia Grey, if he doesn't. Things would have gone all down hill for the good guys, the Free and Democratic World, if it wasn't for this scuzzy looking ship-hand Clegg, Paul Brineger. Scarface wanted to screw Clegg out of his pay in doing the Captains dirty work, sinking and killing everyone on the "Banos". It's that capitalistic disease, wanting to get paid for working, that in the end did the Scarface crew in by bringing the hero of the movie All-American, blond and blue eyed, Sam Wilton (Leif Erickson) on board. Sam had his own troubles and they didn't have to do with him having the burden on his head of saving the free world. With Clegg confronting this Soviet Agent Kroll, John Mylong, in his hotel room whom Scarface told him to contact, in getting his pay, he ended up killing Kroll. Clegg is then shot and killed himself, by the hotel manager, where Sam is staying and looking to check out of the country, San Brejo. Sam finds a golden opportunity in getting his hands on the dead Krolls passport and using it to get on the banana boat "Banos" to take him back to the states; not realizing that it's set to go off in a nuclear explosion at the entrance of the Panama Canal Zone. The rest of the movie has Sam impersonating Kroll and then finding out that he's, Kroll, not only a commie. The ships Captain Scarface is using Kroll to talk the very reluctant Dr. Yarger, who the real Kroll supposedly helped escaped from a Soviet Gulag, to push the magic button. With Isa on board we also have the handsome and clean cut looking Sam get to win her over, after she at first thought that he was that rotten Commie swine Kroll, and together with her and a number of other passenger Sam gets the drop on Scarface and his Commie. In the end has his entire mad and grandiose plan ends up at the bottom the Bermuda Triangle. Sam & Co. finally puts an end to this whole master plan on the part of Scarface and his Commie leaders in Moscow. Scarface and his commie cohorts who for all their smarts just couldn't find anyone, this in 1953 when the Soviet Union had both the Atomic and Hydrogen bomb, who knows where to push the right button in order to blow up the Panama Canal.

• More fun to watch this for the first time than Casablanca yet again.

  ronvieth2005-02-03

  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.