The Dark Avenger

Once you survive the numbing and typical pageantry which marks the beginning of the picture, the intrigue gets rather interesting. The lousy dub on this commercially purchased VHS tape is another obstacle. Alas, no DVD is available (though there are some crumby DVD dubs out there, too!).

However, once I adjusted the contrast, brightness and beefed up the color level (a lot), it was a viewable tale the got very slowly more interesting as time went slowly on. This picture marks Finch's rise and Flynn's decline (no more to swash and buckle after this). Compare his "Captain Blood" twenty years previous and you can see what time and booze did to poor Errol.

Joanne Dru certainly DID look bored throughout, as was mentioned earlier. Perhaps the whole thing was just a costume romp for her.

It's such a shame when a decent copy of the film is apparently unavailable from which to make copies. I find the same problem with the 1940 version of "Our Town."