Sea Devils

This film needed to be somewhat longer and more scenes needed to be with the Napoleon character, as Yvonne De Carlo, a British spy desperately tries to learn military secrets from the French. Rock Hudson is a smuggler who falls in with DeCarlo and then thinking that she is against England, kidnaps her. The film could have used much more swashbuckling. There is intrigue and treachery, buy it is under stated tremendously. Nice to see the carrier pigeon at work delivering messages to the British. The butler is an interesting character in the film, but too bad his character wasn't developed more.

More a bodice-ripper than a swashbuckler, with handsome smuggler Rock Hudson baring his chest on behalf of glamorous double agent Yvonne De Carlo (ironically released the same year Ethel Rosenberg went to the electric chair on charges of spying for Stalin). The title is misleading, as there's only one Sea Devil, and that's the name of Hudson's boat; and despite Wilkie Cooper's lush Technicolor photography of the Channel Islands it's little different from the usual nonsense shot in Cinecolor on a soundstage back at Burbank.

According to Bryan Forbes in his autobiography Notes For A Life, Raoul Walsh considered the original script to be a load of horse droppings, and engaged him to do a rewrite, not least for his own part which had originally been intended for, of all people, Barry Fitzgerald. Even so I guess he would have been rather embarrassed at his own performance had he caught it at a later date on TV. No doubt Rock Hudson pleased his fans, though saddled with playing a bit of a dimwit whose misunderstandings soon become tedious. Maxwell Reed is more convincing than usual as a villain and should have become more central to the action. There's glamorous Yvonne de Carlo, some glorious colour photography from Wilkie Cooper and Walsh keeps it all moving, but the story, despite the rewrites, remains too thin.

SEA DEVILS is a British-made swashbuckling adventure yarn from experienced Hollywood helmer Raoul Walsh that's set in Napoleonic times and stars Rock Hudson as a loutish smuggler who gets caught up in a spy plot. Although Hudson's tough guy is the nominal hero, all eyes are on Yvonne De Carlo as the voluptuous and fiery femme fatale of the piece, although her role is underwritten. The film offers plentiful action and incident but nonetheless feels like a lesser work, a throwback to the pictures from the 1920s and 1930s rather than anything fresh or now. British film regulars Bryan Forbes, Michael Goodliffe and the grinning, gloating Maxwell Reed play in support.