Sea Devils

Sea Devils is a relative clunker from Raoul Walsh. The film is based on a minor Victor Hugo novel, but Borden Chase's screenplay takes many liberties with Hugo, history, and geography. The film is set around 1800 as a state of war exists between the British empire and Napoleonic France. Napoleon and his chief cop, Fouché, figure in the threadbare espionage plot which binds together smuggler Rock Hudson and British agent Yvonne De Carlo. They are chiefly responsible for the void at the center of this picture. Hudson is terrible, but Yvonne De Carlo is really terrible. I was a fan of The Munsters when I was a tot, so I won't belabor the point, but it is puzzling since she is quite good later on in Walsh's Band of Angels. Anyway, Hudson has more chemistry with Bryan Forbes, playing Rock's wingman, than he does with Ms. De Carlo.

Hudson functions best when he gets to display courtly gentility towards his leading lady. In Sea Devils, Rock kidnaps and gags his leading lady. This is a role for Errol Flynn not Hudson. Hudson never seems at ease in action films, even as late as 1969's The Undefeated he looks uncomfortable in the out of doors. Rock was more adept, both vocally and physically, indoors, as in the tavern brawls in Sea Devils, urbane flirting with Doris Day and with the late, lamented Susan Saint James on McMillan and Wife. On balance, he was also not a good fit for period roles. Despite the film's title, the picture spends little time at sea. Most of the picture is salon intrigue with gorgeous sets by Wilfred Shingleton (Great Expectations) shot in sublime Technicolor by Wilkie Cooper (Seven Men From Now). A good drinking game for this flick would be to have a shot every time Rock takes off his shirt.

Rock Hudson and Yvonne De Carlo

The exteriors for Sea Devils were shot in the Channel islands and France. That coupled with the all UK supporting cast lends one to think that this was a case of the fading RKO channelling European profits into a European production. The supporting players are certainly better than the leads, especially Jacques Brunius as Fouché, Maxwell Reed, and Denis O' Dea. Bryan Forbes said he was "ludicrous in a ludicrous movie", but he was only half right. Perhaps producer David E. Rose wanted to recapture elements of such recent Walsh triumphs as Captain Horatio Hornblower and The World in his Arms, but this is a pale facsimile. One interesting echo is a carrier pigeon sequence lifted straight out of Walsh's Desperate Journey. I find it more of an example of Hollywood as an echo chamber than as proof of the auteur theory.