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her own niece. They say love is blind and well, this was another era, so one can I suppose ignore that part of the story not being credible. Maureen O'Hara, as Mary, goes through the film getting from one scrape into another and spends much of her time in less than full attire but still managing to be clothed from neck to toe albeit in soaking wet underclothes which made me chuckle. O'Hara looked stunning throughout the film but her acting was not really something to write home about. I found her scenes to be rather wooden although it felt as if this was a direction fault and not a fault of the actress herself. Honestly, I cringed at pretty much all of the acting skills of the main characters as well as of the supporting actors.

Charles Laughton was one of the producers of the film and apparently he demanded a bigger part than was originally planned which as far as I'm concerned was of detriment to the film as I felt his acting was the worst of them all. He initially plays the local squire who is also the law of the area somewhat pompously but we see his true colors very soon afterwards when he starts acting the villain none of this acting was convincing though and I just found him thoroughly irritating in every scene he appeared in which ended up being far too many. When he goes into villain mode you just have to laugh at him. He comes across as a stark raving lunatic and although it wasn't supposed to be comical (or at least I seriously doubt it was supposed to be), I found myself roaring with laughter at his escapades in the latter part of the film. I have to add that the image of Charles Laughton on my DVD cover with his big apple like cheeks is almost cartoon character-life this is exactly how he seems in the film.

Newton looked pleasant enough as the hero but he didn't really have much screen time to prove his worth. His character comes across as charming and cheeky but as I said earlier I found myself also cringing at his acting and dialogue delivery from start to finish. Leslie Banks and Marie Ney were just not convincing as a married couple and Ney's devotion to her smuggler husband is just ridiculous as she comes across as more of a religious nun type than a devoted wife who'll stop at nothing to let her husband get away with murder. Some of the smugglers were slightly more convincing in their roles than the main characters, especially in a scene where they complain about their ill gotten gains not being enough to feed their families and

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