It's sad that Errol Flynn did not get as a screen farewell with one of his three previous pictures before Cuban Rebel Girls. The Sun Also Rises, Too Much Too Soon, or The Roots Of Heaven were decent films of varying quality, but all showed Flynn as the actor he longed to be acclaimed for. This film which looks like it was shot with a Kodak home movie camera was both a tax write-off for Flynn and a lame attempt at propaganda for Fidel Castro.
Ironically enough in 1957 Flynn had done another Cuban based film, The Big Boodle shot in Havana with the cooperation of the government that Flynn was now saying was corrupt. It was nothing that the Motion Picture Academy would have paid any attention to, but next to Cuban Rebel Girls, The Big Boodle looks like Citizen Kane.
Done in a semi-documentary style, Cuban Rebel Girls has Errol playing himself as a war correspondent covering the revolution against Fulgencio Batista led by Fidel Castro. A little more than 20 years earlier Flynn in his salad days did something similar covering the Spanish Civil War from the Loyalist point of view. But Warner Brothers did no documentary about his adventures there, in fact Jack Warner was mighty bent out of shape.
The story of one girl from the USA intrigues Flynn. His teenage mistress at the time, Beverly Aadland played a young woman who goes down to Cuba with a girl friend who is a Cuban national who is bringing laundered cash for the revolution. Her boyfriend John MacKay is a mercenary who is fighting for Castro and Flynn assures us there were many Americans in those ranks.
Poor Aadland, even if Errol had lived I doubt she would have had much of a career. She was one of the worst actresses I've ever seen, reading her lines with no conviction whatever. She came off as a super dumb Valley Girl. But in fairness to her, the only professional in the cast was Errol Flynn, the others were equally as bad. And Flynn hardly summoned any conviction to even playing Errol Flynn.
This is such a sad ending for a screen legend that Flynn's legion of fans should do like Sam Goldwyn said and stay away in droves.
