Watch Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd For Free

So much average

One of my all time favorites.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Murky, bad color and in really bad shape. Scratches and splices abound, "matey"! Argh! A throwback to "Africa Screams" which is also public domain and a far funnier movie. Like "Jack and the Beanstalk" you wish a better copy existed. The routines seem tired; you've seen them all before. Instead of buckshot in the eggs, there's soap bubbles in the soup! Here's the plot in one sentence: Lou has the treasure map and they all sail off to Skull Island to dig up the bounty. Too much bad stock footage and poor "color-timing" (matching) in the ship-to-ship battles. Clumsily staged action scenes and the worst songs ever. Charles Laughton has a great time. He outshines "the boys" in an otherwise predictable movie with the old "it's the wrong box" gimmick. (The treasure map and love note are in identical wooden tubes.) The tall, blonde, tomboyish pirate falls in love with Lou. Costello plays Capt. Kidd surprisingly well; he strips poor Kidd down to his underwear and impersonates him, in full uniform. Lou becomes the new pirate captain, and poor Capt. Kidd gets hung upside down from the yard-arm. They all sail away, happily singing, into the sunset. This is one of those "it should have been better" movies. WB distributed both "Capt. Kidd" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" at the theaters. Too bad they can't find better copies and re-release them on Blu-Ray. The public domain copies are "junk."

An underwhelming later entry for the comedy team, this is of interest only because it's a color film which provides a chance to see Charles Laughton yucking it up as the title baddie. But there's very little meat to chew on while watching Bud and Lou act as hapless waiters sailing aboard the ship of the mean old Captain Kidd (Laughton). Of course there are many recycled older gags ... two of them include: Lou accidentally dropping a bar of soap into Kidd's soup and producing bubbles from everyone's mouthes (just how exhausted was that routine by this time?), and also Lou having a chance to rough Kidd up a bit while the pirate's hands are chained behind his back. (This latter bit was so much better performed when it was William Bendix as the recipient back in 1943's WHO DONE IT?). Hillary Brooke is on hand as a tough-acting blonde, easier on the eyes than a crew full of obnoxious men. ** out of ****

I taped this off UK TV in 1988 – the washed out condition of the print even then made it look as if it could be from 300 years ago, but recently seeing the even more degraded copy TCM US is showing made me think it really was! How did this get into such a state – the wobbly cheap colour and choppy copies from multiple TV dupes haven't helped to be sure, but it all makes it a bit of an ordeal to sit through without rose-tinted glasses on.At the cutely named Death's Head Tavern Bud & Lou unwittingly join forces with Charles Laughton playing Captain Kidd on the track of a treasure island – much fun is made of the map of Skull Island continually getting mixed up with Lou's supposed My Darling Darling Darling love letter. Add a deliberately devilish Leif Erickson as a sidekick for Laughton and elegant Hilary Brook as a pantomime Captain Bonney for something good to look at and you have the main crew. There's plenty of lusty non-pc songs, maybe too many but some not too bad and all well sung, my favourite being the romantic Speak To Me sung by the corny romantic leads on the pirate ship. It was the 2nd of the two films A&C did for Warners in 1952 (this was Bud's choice, Jack was Lou's), and was amazingly successful noisy slapstick at the time; the reason given by Laughton as to why he accepted the role was to learn how to do double takes from Costello. He generally hammed it up nicely and he and the boys in particular seemed to enjoy themselves, but it all seemed a bit too laboured at times.For anyone new who might be interested in A&C this is not the film to start with, unless you're under 10 years old. And yet … I still end up watching this jolly nonsense every five years or so, never mind the grotty condition.

Considering that Abbott and Costello had done "Meet The Invisible Man" the previous year, this film was a big comedown for them. But then again, considering that around the same period they also did "Comin' Round The Mountain" and "Lost In Alaska", maybe "Meet Captain Kidd" was par for the course. The saddest part here (apart maybe from all the singing that at times makes you feel as if you're watching a second-rate musical) is to observe how few verbal elements have remained in A&C's comedy; instead, their humor has been reduced to the lowbrow, unsophisticated slapstick of mugging, dumb misunderstandings, and people falling down or getting hit with shovels. But sometimes A&C's talent still comes through and the film can make you laugh in spite of yourself. Charles Laughton is loud, bombastic and takes a lot of bumps, to generally unfunny effect; Hillary Brooke is downright sexy as a female captain, and is without a doubt the brightest spot of this movie. (**)