Spirited, brisk and sprightly are good words to define the first moments of "El hijo del capitán Blood", or any time Sean Flynn has the opportunity to move, be it in a sword fight or sliding through ropes among masts and sails aboard a ship. My opinion is based on the original Spanish version of this sort of sequel to his father Errol's own "Captain Blood" (1935), one of the best American paradigms of adventure film, that tells the story of doctor Peter Blood, who became a pirate after being submitted to slavery. His son Robert has minor problems: he wants to follow his father's steps, but mother Arabella (Ann Todd) wants him to study. She rapidly concedes and grants him a trip to London, so the movie can take off (or sail off). The film slows down a bit when the ship in which he is travelling is captured by one of his father's enemies, the mean Captain de Malagón (José Nieto), and we have to wait until the pirate friends of Robert's father come to the rescue, to regain the lively atmosphere of the beginning. By now Robert's juvenile adventure turns more dramatic, following the struggle of his mother against racism in the Caribbean, and it is crowned with an earthquake and flood, with typical 1960s visual effects, in the line of George Pal's "Atlantis, the Lost Continent", released a year before. In all, we cannot appreciate Sean in full, due to dubbing (he must have been around 20 years old when he made the film), but whenever he has the opportunity to perform action scenes, what is on the screen is more than enough. There are also Italian and US versions of this film, with different editing, score, dialogues, and running times.
