Hurricane Smith (1952)

You won't be disappointed!

Expected more

A Masterpiece!

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Dull, meandering adventure that plods along, never reaching high winds, and provides a drizzle, rather than a storm of excitement. It's all about a search for gold and a phony pirate (John Ireland) leading the film on a course to nowhere. Stunning color photography is wasted in this adventureless period action drama where Yvonne de Carlo is simple window dressing involved in the gold search who almost becomes lunch to a rubber shark. This is one of those pointless and virtually plot less matinée style time fillers that was rushed together with virtually no script and certainly only a teeny bit of a story, even with some tense moments here and there. The men aboard this vessel are brutes and mutinous but when you have the script which ultimately is difficult to find any value. Familiar actors like Forrest Tucker and Lyle Betteger are lost inside the mass mediocrity that tries to fool the audience that they are going down the path of other pirate movies, but the emptiness of the plot is no treasure considering the 90 minutes wasted on it.

"Hurricane Smith" is a typical sort of pirates adventure with the classic group against group fight for a buried treasure in an island. Director Jerry Hopper can't count in his credits a good or memorable film and shorlty after this one he turned to television where he seemed to find his right place (he directed episodes of the most remarkable series of the 60's). But big screen adventures where perhaps too much for him."Hurricane Smith" is colourful and fast moving -which is good- but such a standard plot needed a more intense and daring direction (the final confrontation between the good and the bad guys in the island is definitely common and lacks strength and impact.The cast fills the level of the film in general. Ivonne de Carlo is acceptable as Luana and she had an interesting screen presence. It is also amusing to have in the supporting cast such mean regulars as Lyle Bettger and Henry Brandon. On the other hand, John Ireland in the title role doesn't seem a good choice and he hurts the product. Ireland didn't quite make it to stardom because of a sort of common and not too charismatic personality; in fact, he will probably be remembered mostly for his supporting performances in some big budgets as "Spartacus" or "55 Days in Peking" or second villains such as the hoodlum in "Party Girl" or the gunfighter in John Sturges western "Gunfight at OK Corral". But my feeling is that he could not sustain a film as a the lead performer; a more vivacious and sympathetic actor as Hurricane Smith would probably have raised this film a bit (Stewart Granger, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis or some other back then). "Hurricane Smith" stands as a just average product in its genre; no more than a 5 out of 10 to me.

Fans of buried-treasure stories and those who have a fondness for 19th-century ships in full-sail will find ample diversion in this modest but entertaining movie from 1952. While too much effort is devoted to shipboard rivalries, (obviously staged on studio sets), there are points of interest en route such as John Ireland battling a shark, Yvonne de Carlo doing a hootchy-kootchy dance, and Lyle Bettger getting ten lashes across his bare back. (This flogging ranks 54th in the book, "Lash! The Hundred Great Scenes of Men Being Whipped in the Movies.") While Ireland spends much of his time bare-chested, he simply lacks "hunk" status and one can't help but wonder how much better "Hurricane Smith" might have been with Jeff Chandler or Fernando Lamas as its leading man. Even a bit-past-his-prime John Payne would have been an improvement since his shaved-and-oiled chest always looked great in Technicolor.