Sun 22 Jun 2025
A Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: BOTANY BAY (1952).
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Reviews[7] Comments
BOTANY BAY. Paramount Pictures, 1952. Alan Ladd, James Mason, Patricia Medina. Cedric Hardwicke. Screenplau by Jonathan Latimer, based on the novel by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall. Director: John Farrow.
Alan Ladd and James Mason face off in this 1950s swashbuckler/adventure film about the founding of Australia as a penal colony for English convicts. Ladd portrays American medical student Hugh Tallant, who has been unjustly imprisoned in Newgate Jail for theft.
He, along with others, soon learns that he will be shipped to a penal colony in New South Wales. Mason, for his part, takes the role of Paul Gilbert, the sadistic captain of the Charlotte, the boat that is to take Tallant and others to their final destination in backwater Australia. Patricia Medina rounds out the cast as a female prisoner caught between her affection for Tallant and the predations of Captain Gilbert.
Both Ladd and Mason do their best with the source material, even when it runs a little dry. Botany Bay may not be the most exciting feature film of its kind, but it has a lot going for it. The set design and costume design, along with the bright color scheme are all very impressive. In many ways, this John Farrow-directed feature reminded me of a Hammer Production. That’s high praise coming from me. Plus, there are even koalas and a kangaroo at the end!
June 22nd, 2025 at 11:01 pm
Jon, you have written an excellent review and covered all or most of the bases, but I have seen Botany Bay on the big screen upon its initial release, and everything about it is highly polished; it is also a bore. Not a single element works, although Ladd is memorable.
June 23rd, 2025 at 3:29 am
James Mason always made a good bad Guy, but on occasion (Here and in PRINCE VALIANT, for instance, he seems to be doing it strictly by the numbers.
June 23rd, 2025 at 12:06 pm
Probably just me, and how I remember it, but I thought Mason was a stronger force on the screen in this one than even Alan Ladd, whose performance (surprisingly!) I found both tame and bland. The film itself? Quite adequate but fairly ordinary.
June 23rd, 2025 at 2:41 pm
Jonathan Latimer?! I read the novel in high school, when you could still find Nordhoff & Hall, Van Wyck Mason, Edison Marshall, Frank Slaughter, and others of that ilk in the public library. Never saw the movie and remember nothing of the book.
June 23rd, 2025 at 9:36 pm
Yes, that’s “our” Jonathan Latimer, all right. I wish he’d written more hardboiled PI tales than he did, but you can only imagine how much more money he made doing Hollywood screenplays, even for historical adventure movies such as this one.
https://mysteryfile.com/Latimer/Latimer.html
July 2nd, 2025 at 10:21 pm
Loosely suggested by the career of 18th Century actor and king of the London underworld George Barrington (among other crimes he defrauded Count Cagliostro of the proceeds from the Queen’s Necklace that helped start the French Revolution) who started a mutiny on the ship he was transported to Australia on then put it down singlehandedly and ended up a noted Magistrate in the Colony, his adventures recounted in his memoir of the voyage (NARRATIVE OF A VOYAGE TO NEW SOUTH WALES) and the Ernest Dudley historical novel THE PICAROON.
July 3rd, 2025 at 1:19 pm
All new information to me. Thanks, David!