Captain Calamity

Technicolor wasn't the only color format in Hollywood in the mid-1930s. Cheaper, less vibrant systems were being used, mostly in lower budgeted 'Poverty Row' movies. April 1936 "Captain Calamity," a Grand National Film production, jumped on the pirate theme filming with the Hirlicolor process. Named after its inventor, George Hirliman, the system was part of the Cinecolor's early subtractive two color movie process developed in 1932. Animated cartoon studios, barred by Technicolor's vibrant three-strip process because of its exclusive contract with Walt Disney, were looking to splash some color in their cartoons besides the older Technicolor technology. Fleischer Studios, Ub Iwerks, and Warner Brothers in its Looney Tunes series all used Cinecolor with some reasonable results despite its limitations to only red and green dyes. As the years progressed, Cinecolor was able to achieve a look some some say nearly equaled Technicolor's red, green and blue separate film strips in the camera.

George Houston is a rough and tough skipper of a South Seas schooner, who likes to sing songs like "Riders of the Rolling Seas" and "Drop Your Anchor," backed by a chorus as he stands at the wheel bare-chested. He's a friendly blowhard, and may have a shot at a buried treasure. The trouble is he needs money to outfit an expedition, and he's broke. But he has lots of friends, like Doctor Crane Wilbur, and Marian Nixon (in her last film), one of many people he personally rescued from a sinking ship in return for a certificate. So he's a genuine hero, a man's man, and he has his ship tattooed on his back to prove it. And after he lets it be known about the treasure, there are plenty of people who are willing to buy in for a share. Or even slug him so they can seize the treasure they think is on the ship.

Did I mention this movie is in color? It's in Hirlacolor, a subtractive two-color process. There's also Movita to add that Polynesian aspect, Vince Barnett to make it even more ridiculous, and Lloyd Ingraham as a beach comber. It's a Grand National picture, and it's clear they had great ambitions for this movie, since they were spending money on songs and color. But it's mostly a paint-by-the-number effort under the direction of John Reinhardt.

This film was made by Grand National Films, a company with a brief existence from 1936 to 1939. They were trying to become a major player by signing up James Cagney, but his second film for the firm, Something To Sing About cost a fortune for the company and laid an egg at the box office, effectively bankrupting the fledgling firm. Captain Calamity sounds like it would be a comedy film, but it is not. There are some attractive players here, like George Houston, who goes through much of the film with no shirt on, and Movita, a player whose character suffers a surprising fate. The color is a version of Cinecolor which favors blue and red and really looks quite lovely on the unrestored but very watchable print I viewed. Most prints have the first section of credits missing, and cuts in for the shots of the cast poking their heads through a life preserver, with their names printed on the preserver. A good example of early, good-looking color from a company other than Technicolor.

In the 1930s and 40s, there were a bunch of ultra-low budget filmmaking outfits which were collectively referred to as 'Poverty Row'...mostly because of the cheapness of the films. Of all of them, perhaps the most consistently poor was the output of Grand National...though like all the Poverty Row studios, they occasionally came out with a winner. Unfortunately, "Captain Calamity" isn't a particularly good film...though for Grand National, it's actually pretty good.

Bill (also known as 'Captain Calamity' because of his propensity to fight) has a boat and he agrees to take an Australian back home. The passenger pays him with his good luck piece...a gold doubloon. When Bill returns home himself, the story about this one lone doubloon soon morphs into stories about Bill returning with cases full of gold! As a result, all the scum of the earth living there want to beat the supposed secret about the treasure from him or his crew...but again, there is no treasure! So what's next? Well, you can assume from his nickname there will be a lot of fighting!

The main problem with this movie is that instead of character development, there's a lot of action and fighting. This means the characters have about as much depth as movie serial characters...which means, not much. The acting is also only okay at best...and having Vince Barnett in the film didn't help. How Barnett got to appear in so many movies is perplexing to me. He was a mostly one-note comic relief sort of guy.

So is the film terrible? No. The location shooting on Catalina Island (on the California coast) isn't bad and although the story isn't great, it's an acceptable time-passer....not that this is a glowing endorsement.

Captain Calamity is an early pirate film about Captain Bill Jones, a sailor who accepts a gold coin for transporting a man. When he pays off with the gold coin, speculation spreads that he has a treasure. Soon after, a band of pirates are after him and the gold. The plot was really strange and convoluted, so the details were lost to me. This is partly because because the technical mistakes were so distracting that it was hard to care about anything. When watching the film, I quickly realized that it was a complete mess. I was foolish and had vowed to watch through the whole thing, resulting in one of my worst movie experiences.

The acting is downright horrible. Captain Bill Jones could have been quite a charismatic character, but he ends up being a complete clown. The other acting was just as terrible, and the characters themselves were bland and forgettable. I could not bring myself to care about any single character. The dialog was also terrible.

The camera-work is some of the sloppiest I have ever seen. There is no sense of orientation because nearly all the scenes focus directly on the characters or their faces, so the surrounding environment is a complete mystery. This leads to immense continuity confusion. It does not help that the editing is also bad; the scene changes seem very jerky and unnatural.

Captain Calamity fails on every level that I judge movies on. I had no fun at all; I was hoping that the (potentially) exciting seafaring theme might overshadow the problems, but it was nowhere near the case. I do not even want to think about watching the movie again, ever. It looks like Captain Calamity is largely forgotten or ignored by today's viewers, which I think is a worthy fate.