Pirates of the Golden Age

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Pirates of the Golden Age Movie Collection

Against All Flags (1952) Buccaneer's Girl (1950)
Yankee Buccaneer (1952) Double Crossbones (1951)

Buccaneer's Girl on DVD is compared to the Blu-ray HERE

Get ready for the adventure of a lifetime with four swashbuckling films in the Pirates of the Golden Age Movie Collection! Join unforgettable shipmates Errol Flynn, Maureen O'Hara, Anthony Quinn, Yvonne DeCarlo and Donald O'Connor as they take to the high seas in search of boundless excitement and glorious treasure. Including the classic favorites Against All Flags, Buccaneer's Girl, Yankee Buccaneer and Double Crossbones, this is one must-own collection that will have you wanting to set sail again and again! AGAINST ALL FLAGS A British naval officer (Errol Flynn) is unjustly condemned for desertion and finds redemption with a rascally pirate captain (Anthony Quinn) and a beautiful buccaneer (Maureen O'Hara). BUCCANEER'S GIRL Love walks the plank when an ambitious New Orleans entertainer (Yvonne DeCarlo) discovers that the aristocratic playboy she's fallen for has a secret identity as a legendary pirate. YANKEE BUCCANEER "X" marks the spot where a U.S. commander (Jeff Chandler) must secretly infiltrate and stop a Caribbean colony of pirates and privateers before they send him plummeting to the depths of Davy Jones's locker. DOUBLE CROSSBONES When a bumbling shopkeeper's apprentice (Donald O'Connor) finds himself unfairly accused of a crime, he joins a motley crew of pirates and finds his true calling on the South Seas.

Titles

Against All Flags
Stars Errol Flynn, Maureen O'Hara, Anthony Quinn, Alice Kelley, Mildred Natwick
Directors: George Sherman

Theatrical Release Date: December 24th, 1952
Synopsis - In 1700, the pirates of Madagascar menace the India trade; British officer Brian Hawke has himself cashiered, flogged, and set adrift to infiltrate the pirate "republic." There, Hawke meets lovely Spitfire Stevens, a pirate captain in her own right, and the sparks begin to fly; but wooing a pirate poses unique problems. Especially after he rescues adoring young Princess Patma from a captured ship. Meanwhile, Hawke's secret mission proceeds to an action-packed climax.

Buccaneer's Girl
Stars Yvonne De Carlo, Philip Friend, Robert Douglas, Elsa Lanchester, Andrea King
Directors: Frederick De Cordova
Theatrical Release Date: March 1, 1950
Synopsis - Robin Hood-like pirate Baste takes only the ships of rich but wicked trader Narbonne. Fun loving Debbie, a passenger from his latest prize, stows away on the pirate ship and falls for the pirate; later, having become a New Orleans entertainer, she meets his alter ego, who's engaged to the governor's daughter. Sea battles and land rescues follow in lighthearted style.

Yankee Buccaneer
Stars Jeff Chandler, Scott Brady, Suzan Ball, Joseph Calleia, George Mathews
Directors: Frederick De Cordova

Theatrical Release Date: April 17th, 1953
Synopsis - A United States Navy ship in the first half of the 19th century, under the command of Captain David Porter, is expecting to put ashore after a year on the seas; but the arrival of one of Porter's ex-students, the willful and independent Lieutenant David Farragut, brings a new mission: to disguise the ship and crew as a pirate ship and help the Navy locate the criminals who have been robbing America's merchant fleet. But as Farragut's disobedience threatens the safety of the crew, they stumble upon an international conspiracy.

Double Crossbones
Stars Donald O'Connor, Helena Carter, Will Geer, John Emery, Stanley Logan
Directors: Charles Barton

Theatrical Release Date: January 22nd, 1951
Plot Outline - Donald O'Connor, a poor but honest shopkeeper's apprentice, unwittingly becomes a sort of poor man's Captain Kidd, who fouls up the Governor's neat game of supplying quarries for the pirates and then bilking the hard-working pirates of their plunder. There's a romantic involvement, naturally, between O'Connor and Helena Carter, the governor's beauteous ward. But, despite Donald O'Connor's mugging and the broad histrionics of John Emery as the scheming governor, and such nefarious captains as Hope Emerson, Charles McGraw and Robert Barrat.

Excerpt from NY Times located HERE

Posters

Theatrical Releases: 1950 - 1953

DVD Reviews

DVD Review: Universal Studios (2-disc) - Region 1 - NTSC

DVD Box Cover		CLICK to order from:
Distribution	Universal Studios - Region 1 - NTSC
Time:	Respectively 1:23:24, 1:16:45, 1:25:48 + 1:15:33
Bitrate: Disc 1
Bitrate: Disc 2
Audio	English (2.0 stereo)
Subtitles	English, French, None
Features	Release Information: Studio: Universal Studios Home Video Aspect Ratio: All Original Aspect Ratios - 1.33 Edition Details: • Unrestored trailers for Against All Flags and Buccaneer's Girl DVD Release Date: May 8th, 2007 Standard 2 tiered Keep Cases inside a cardboard box Chapters: various

Comments:

Buccaneer's Girl on DVD is compared to the Blu-ray HERE

Perhaps I wasn't in the mood, or I've just been watching far too much these days, but I didn't particularly enjoy any of these films to a strong degree. Buccaneer's Girl had me ogling the gorgeous Yvonne DeCarlo (and ditto Against All Flags with Maureen O'Hara) but three of the films were fairly mediocre and Double Crossbones was just horrible.

The 4 features of the Pirates of the Golden Age Movie Collection boxset are spread over 2 dual-layered DVDs (2 films on each disc). They are all 1.33 aspect ratio and all 4 films are in color. There are optional English or French subtitles and the discs are specifically divided as follows:

Disc 1: Against All Flags (1952) and Buccaneer's Girl (1950) - both with trailers
Disc 2: Yankee Buccaneer (1952) and Double Crossbones (1951)

Like Classic Western Round-Up, Vol. 1 there are no real extras and the pragmatic packaging is reflected in the reasonable purchase price. Image quality looks fairly consistent with possibly Double Crossbones looking the best. Once again I'll give the caveat that I have never seen any of these films theatrically and cannot be a good judge of how the colors are suppose to look. To me they all looked quite good - very bright but again all had moments where they were saturated and looked quite erratic - but it didn't impinge upon my viewing experience. You come to accept the color swings in films of this age. The screen captures below are a pretty good representation of how the DVD appearance is - and detail is better than average. The discs are housed in one standard dual 'keep case' and are not sold separately at this time. Both DVDs are coded for Region 1 in the NTSC standard. I would say image quality was adequate and better than I anticipated.

I was expecting to enjoy these much more than I did so the boxset was a bit of a disappointment, but lovers of classic Hollywood may get more out of it than I did. The price is more than fair and the DVD production quite adept.

Gary W. Tooze

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