CAPTAIN SCARFACE-1953-I thought this was going to be a movie about pirates. Barton McLane headlines as the title character, a communist ship’s captain who has a plan to blow up the Panama Canal with an atomic bomb! Peter Coe is his assistant. Leif Erickson is the reluctant hero who came aboard the ship with a dead man’s passport. He tries to help a doctor (Rudolph Anders who was in F. Lee Wilder‘s PHANTOM FROM SPACE the same year) and his daughter (Virginia Grey). It’s mostly talk in this Astor Pictures release. Also with Isabel Randolph and Paul Brinegar. Hal Roach Jr. was a co-producer.
Director Paul Guilfoyle was had been an actor (he’s the guy James Cageny “ventilates” in the car trunk in WHITE HEAT) but in the early ’50’s he ventured into directing. His output was mostly in TV but he died in 1961 at the age of 58. He’s no relation to the more recent TV actor of the same name. Screenwriter Charles Lang had also been an actor.
Villain/star McLane was in movies since 1926! It seems appropriate to this review to mention that his last role was a reoccurring one on TV’s I DREAM OF JEANNIE! Second billed Virginia Grey was in many movies and made her last in 1976. (She died in 2004). Co-star Erickson was the father in INVADERS FROM MARS the same year.
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