Flynn plays Geoffrey Thorpe, an adventurous and dashing pirate, who terrorises the Spanish fleet for the good of England. In one battle, he takes over a Spanish ship and soon falls for a beautiful Spanish royal, Dona Maria, though she initially will have nothing to do with him because of his pirating ways. When he returns to England, Queen Elizabeth sends Thorpe on a mission and in the process he becomes a prisoner of the Spaniards. Thorpe escapes and goes on to uncover a deadly secret plot, leading to further adventure as he attempts to expose the evil and win Dona Maria’s heart.

The movie is directed by Michael Curtiz, who would later go on to direct Casablanca. In his memoirs, Flynn revealed he disliked Curtiz in that he put his players in some dangerous situations without regard for safety. After this movie Flynn refused to work with him again.

The Sea Hawk was the last and most mature of Errol Flynn’s swashbuckling adventure films, played with brilliant stylistic flourishes by the star at his most charismatic. Boasting the grandest production values of a Warner Brothers period film up to that time, it was made possible in part by filming on a huge, custom-made floodable soundstage that housed two ships sitting in water 12 feet deep.

As with the Captain Blood remake, the studio re-used some key battle scenes from the silent 1924 film, thinking they could not have been done better. It was a film where all its separate elements came together to create a real milestone movie in the pirate genre – a rousing adventure and a true classic – and is often cited as Flynn’s finest movie (over the Technicolor Adventures of Robin Hood).

The film is a light-hearted adventure involving prison breaks, an oddball scientist, sailing ships, naval fights, and plenty of swordplay. Actor Nick Cravat played the character Ojo, Lancaster’s companion in the movie. They ended up making nine films together, the most popular being this one. Because Cravat’s character in the film is mute, the belief persisted that he actually was mute, when in fact, he was given no dialogue because he spoke in a thick Brooklyn accent!

Lancaster kept Cravat on his payroll for life, as both a personal trainer as well as co-star. It is impossible not to be charmed by the Crimson Pirate’s gloriously silly adventure with a capital ‘A’. With its comic-strip style and exhaustive acrobatic action sequences (in which the two leads performed all their own stunts), it’s a fine example of the classic, if playful, swashbuckler film genre.