MartinHafer 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.

MARIO GAUCI I recall catching this as a kid on local TV, a screening which, most probably, came about via the personal print of the film-buff sexton who calls over a number of friends, me included, from time to time to his private home theater in order to share in his vast movie collection on 16 and 35mm. Based on a book by the authors behind "Mutiny On The Bounty", this follows a very similar path – with a ship's crew at the mercy of a martinet captain (James Mason basically returning to the kind of role which had made him a star in his homeland); his opposition is led by medical student(!) Alan Ladd (typically dour) who's actually one of the many prisoners bound for exile in far-away Australia, among whom is also leading lady Patricia Medina (predictably, over the course of the film, she also becomes a personal object of contention between the two male stars).Despite such imposing credentials as scriptwriter Jonathan Latimer and director Farrow, the film perhaps fails to rise consistently above the routine – not even with such unusual plot points as Mason's adoption of a banned form of punishment (keel-hauling); during the latter stages, then – as the company sets ashore, and we also get to meet Governor Sir Cedric Hardwicke – the film tends to lose the initial momentum of the ship-board brutality. Suffice it to say that the film I watched just prior to it, CARTOUCHE (1962; with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Claudia Cardinale) was over 20 minutes longer but seemed to me to have moved at a much quicker pace! Even so, BOTANY BAY remains a good example of the colorful entertainment they used to churn out in the old days, given an extra edge by Mason's compelling portrayal (which, if anything, suggests that he'd have made a marvelous Captain Bligh).For the record, John Farrow directed Alan Ladd for the fifth and last time here after what looks like a run of mostly unassuming action potboilers: CHINA (1943), the equally seafaring TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST (1946), CALCUTTA (1947) and BEYOND GLORY (1948). It must be said here that, locally, Alan Ladd was a very popular film star with my father's generation and, apart from the immortal Western SHANE (1953), it's a pity that he seems to have been undeservedly forgotten with the passage of time.P.S. Useless bit of trivia: I have just come across an allegedly uncut copy of the controversial WAKE IN FRIGHT aka OUTBACK (1971; with Donald Pleasence) taken from an Australian TV screening and, as the credits rolled, an announcer informs the audience to tune in at the same time tomorrow for a screening of…BOTANY BAY!!

bkoganbing Other reviewers of Botany Bay have complained about the lack of location shooting in this film. Two very good reasons for Paramount's decision to opt for the back lot. First it was expensive to go to Australia for an American company. I'm sure that there are Aussie films that deal with this particular portion of their history far better than Botany Bay.But secondly this was the last picture on Alan Ladd's Paramount contract. He and his agent/wife Sue Carol made a decision to move to Warner Brothers so Paramount was getting rid of the last film on his contract. They were not about to spend big bucks promoting a star who wasn't going to be bringing in more box office for them.Having said that Botany Bay is not a bad film and it certainly did give American audiences some idea about the founding of Australia as a haven for convict prisoners. One of our original 13 colonies, Georgia, was founded for just that reason also, but here a whole continent was devoted to same.Ladd plays an American accused of being a highwayman in Great Britain. The fact he was an American probably played some role in his conviction so shortly after the American Revolution in the 1780s. He's saved from the hangman by this offer of pardon to go to Australia and he travels on a crowded ship, skippered by a sadistic captain.Who is played by James Mason who basically steals the film. The novel on which this is based is by Nordhoff and Hall who wrote Mutiny on the Bounty and there's a whole lot of Captain Bligh in Mason. We've also got Patricia Medina, a saucy wench who likes Ladd, but flirts with Mason for her survival on the ship in some comfort.Not a bad film, but not the greatest of send offs for one of Paramount's biggest stars.

dinky-4 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.