This seemingly routine Hammer swashbuckler set against the backdrop of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in July 1588 with familiar British actors like Michael Ripper and Duncan Lamont playing characters with names like Pepe, Pedro and Pablo deserves to be better known simply because Jimmy Sangster came up with such a terrific idea for it; although it becomes more and more ordinary as it progresses.
A dashing young Christopher Lee as Spanish pirate Captain Robeles, limping home after being trounced by the British fleet in the Channel, has to slink into a remote Cornish village for repairs and supplies, realises that news of the Armada's defeat hasn't reached this neck of the woods yet and bluffs the locals that the Armada won and he's the first of a new occupying force.
The plot has a ticking clock to keep the tension going, since the reality of Spain's defeat will eventually reach even this backwater. In the meantime the Establishment (like Leslie Banks in 'Went the Day Well?') are shown to be slippery and available to the highest bidder, since it is Ernest Clark as Sir Basil Smeaton (along with Peter Howell as the vicar) who is quickest to extend the hand of friendship to the representatives of the New Order; with whom he is soon discussing trading opportunities.
Instead of just rehashing what made money before, today's producers if they had any enterprise could do far worse than resurrecting obscurities like this...
A dashing young Christopher Lee as Spanish pirate Captain Robeles, limping home after being trounced by the British fleet in the Channel, has to slink into a remote Cornish village for repairs and supplies, realises that news of the Armada's defeat hasn't reached this neck of the woods yet and bluffs the locals that the Armada won and he's the first of a new occupying force.
The plot has a ticking clock to keep the tension going, since the reality of Spain's defeat will eventually reach even this backwater. In the meantime the Establishment (like Leslie Banks in 'Went the Day Well?') are shown to be slippery and available to the highest bidder, since it is Ernest Clark as Sir Basil Smeaton (along with Peter Howell as the vicar) who is quickest to extend the hand of friendship to the representatives of the New Order; with whom he is soon discussing trading opportunities.
Instead of just rehashing what made money before, today's producers if they had any enterprise could do far worse than resurrecting obscurities like this...