Watch Botany Bay For Free

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

In the late 18th and early 19th century Great Britain used to get rid of her low lifes and petty felons by transporting them off to Botany Bay (Australia) in prison ships.A motley bunch who undoubtedly needed a firm hand and strong discipline.In James Mason's captain they certainly got that.On the surface he has a degree of charm and compassion but underneath he is a sadistic psychopath with possible suppressed gay feelings,this 1952 Hollywood could only hint at such things.By comparison he makes Captain Bligh seem like a lovable old softie.James Mason gives an absolutely brilliant performance.He was excellent in these sort of roles.It doesn't take long for him and the hero played by Alan Ladd to fall out.Ladd who has suffered a miscarriage of justice has a large chip on his shoulder.Also on board is a young female convict played by the lovely Patricia Medina whose cleavage must have given the censors a few headaches and a good eyeful.She is also big trouble.Mason certainly has it in for Ladd sentencing him to fifty lashes then threatening to keelhaul him.When told that nobody has been keelhauled for fifty years Mason in his best sneering voice says "I don't think its been quite that long".Ladd much to Mason's annoyance survives.John Farrow,the director,doesn't pull his punches depicting the horror,unpleasantness and cruelty suffered by the convicts.It may have seemed necessary at the time but to modern sensibilities it was not Britain's finest hour,it is the most realistic part of the film.Of course this was an American film financed by American money so lets have a little dig at Britain's colonial past.I'm surprised that the anti British Mel Gibson hasn't remade it.Be that as it may when they land Australia looks like the Paramount back lot.The good news is that Mason gets his comeuppance thanks to a well directed Aborigine spear.Then HOORAY Alan Ladd's pardon arrives and the benevolent governor allows Patricia Medina to become his bride (no doubt their descendants delight in thrashing England at cricket)Not a classic but a fine salty saga all in glorious Technicolor.Ladd is excellent in this type of role.Apart perhaps from "Shane" he is undeservedly a forgotten name now.This must be one of the few Australian based films made in the fifties that didn't feature that wonderful character actor Chips Rafferty.Patricia Medina's cleavage is worth a star on its own so I'll give it seven which I think is a fair mark.

Ship Captain James Mason smartly makes beautiful prisoner Patricia Medina his lady while the rest of the cargo of convicts shivers in damp cells.Alan Ladd is a doctor who supposedly has a pardon from this wretched existence, but Mason will have none of that as he gets his vessel under-way while concomitantly questioning the verisimilitude of the various scumbags on board who claim to be "innocent". Fun escapist film with the fine acting of James Mason and pretty Patricia Medina keeping this viewer from dozing off on the couch... at least during the first time I saw it. Now, I use the movie as a sleep aid, though it's still one of my favorite adventure films. I'd be just like Captain Mason.... Captain Capitano (me) would let gorgeous Patricia move into my cabin.... including my sleeping quarters. Excellent actor Skelton Knaggs makes an uncredited appearance during the first few minutes of the film as a convict reading a posting that lists the names of fellow convicts scheduled to be shipped to Botany Bay.

This is a rather ordinary and amazingly listless film considering the subject matter. You'd think that a movie about prisoners being transported to the British colony in New South Wales (Australia) would be pretty gritty and exciting. Well, despite the topic, the film just seemed very low-key and low-energy---with little to distinguish it from any other film. Ironically, this film came out the same year as "Shane"--a much better film that also starred Alan Ladd.Ladd stars as an American who gets into trouble in England and is being transported to the penal colony. However, he gets word that he's received a pardon and things look wonderful. The problem, however, is that the ship's Captain (James Mason) is a real wiener and won't hear of waiting or getting verification of the pardon and simply sails with Ladd and the rest of them! Nice guy, huh? Throughout the cruise, Mason is a real taskmaster and jerk--though this sort of rigidity was not that unusual for a British naval officer of this period. Lots of things happen aboard, including an attempted escape, but I won't go into the details in case you wish to see the film. However, by the time they arrive in the colony, Mason is determined to take Ladd back to Old Blighty for a trial...and hanging. What is Ladd to do?! Will our stalwart hero manage to somehow survive his wretched ordeal? As I said, this was very low energy. Ladd was capable of some nice performances and I like him as an actor, but he was also capable of listless performances as well. This one was one of his less distinguished and less interesting ones--and would have benefited from him injecting a bit more machismo and energy into this acting. A bit predictable, as well, by the way.

A good premise: a gaggle of British convicts, male and female, are shipped to the new penal colony in Australia, circa 1780s. But while this story calls for great seascapes, Paramount gives us ship-in-a-soundstage scenes which are cramped and unconvincing. Even the later sequences in Australia have a "backlot" quality to them. Note the dark, sexually-ambiguous undertones in the performance of ship's captain, James Mason. Alan Ladd, who, like Burt Lancaster and Mel Gibson, liked to suffer in his movies, here gets to be flogged and later keelhauled. His flogging in "Two Years Before the Mast" is much more vivid but his keelhauling in "Botany Bay" marks the only time a Hollywood leading man has suffered this particular kind of punishment. Curiously, despite his penchant for "beefcake" scenes, Ladd remains fully clothed for this sequence. Perhaps the fear was that audiences would understandably expect a shirtless Ladd to suffer many cuts and abrasions on his bare torso while being scraped under the ship's keel, and Paramount didn't want to see its handsome leading man forced to look, even temporarily, disfigured or damaged.