Mara Maru

Or maybe it was a crappy Garfield movie.

Point is, it's the typical low-budget B&W Warner Brothers affair where characters sit around in bars or living rooms talking about what they had done or plan to do, but very little action happens on-screen.

I will go to my grave insisting that Flynn was vastly under-estimated, trapped by his semi-literate movie-going fans eager to see him waving his sword around while wearing fancy get-up. Even in mediocre movies like this one, where he was probably forced to do it because the government had succeeded in putting Garfield in his grave and Bogart probably had more trouble than Flynn staying sober, Flynn is invested in his role and fully inhabits his character.

Raymond Burr turns in another stellar performance. He was the pre-eminent bad guy of 50s film, wasn't he? He must have had one h3ck of an agent to spin that resume into nice guy lawyer Perry Mason on TV.

Ruth Roman's bra is the gratuitous love interest. Paul Picerni plays Bela Lugosi's accent. Dan Seymour for some reason is a police lieutenant in The Phillipines. Maybe they don't mind fat ham over there.

I was tired of it by the time everyone set sail for the treasure. But I stuck with it because this is Errol Flynn's turn as the TCM Star of the Month and I am determined to watch all of them - from the classics, through the over-looked gems, to the routine, and all the way to the dogs.