I'm not sure if I can explain the low rating of this film overall on IMDb, because I thought it was a remarkable action/suspense film, full of excellent actors and unforgettable moments. You've got the screen debut of Maureen O'Hara, who's playing a young woman who gets involved with a group of pirates when she travels from Ireland to England to stay with her aunt Patience (Marie Ney) and her abusive husband Joss (Leslie Banks). Very quickly we find out that the local magistrate, Sir Humphrey (Charles Laughton), is the mastermind behind their scheme of tricking ships into wrecking on the shores of Cornwall, murdering the sailors and stealing their cargo. She befriends a young pirate (Robert Newton) who the others want to hang for skimming the take and together they set about trying to prevent another robbery.<br /><br />The story itself is very interesting and takes us to a location and period in English history that we don't hear much about. There's a wonderful seedy quality to the clothing of the pirates and the locations they inhabit. Hitchcock and his writers seem infatuated with the lifestyle of the thugs. The story is from a book by Daphne Du Maurier, who was apparently one of Hitchcock's favorite authors (he also did films of her "Rebecca" and "The Birds", both much more well known than this film). Unfortunately a lot of the story elements are very predictable -- Laughton's behavior from the very beginning is far from the "gentleman" who O'Hara seems to take him for rather naively even though she's seen him toss a bag of coins to his compatriots after losing a bet on her beauty. I suppose on a certain level the film is a warning about the deception of appearances -- Joss starts to seem like a more sympathetic character than Sir Humphrey, especially when he essentially sacrifices himself for Mary (O'Hara) towards the end. This is fairly standard melodrama -- you have an impossible love between the aunt and the uncle; the conventions of melodrama (not to mention the PCA) will not allow him to escape punishment for his crimes, but his love for his wife is true so the writer allows him to make the "sacrifice" so that this conflict will resolve itself in a way that satisfies the audience. All through the film there's a hint that Joss might be sexually interested in Mary. Only in the act of sacrifice does he reveal his real nature.<br /><br />But then the film has yet another surprise for us -- Laughton's character becomes more and more irrational until we reach a point by the end where Mary realizes along with the rest of us that he's actually completely insane. This is revealed largely through the relationship between Sir Humphrey and his manservant Chadwick (Horace Hodges), one that has vague homo-erotic connotations (possibly just a fanciful invention of Laughton, though Hitchcock couldn't have failed to have noticed it). Touchingly, Sir Humphrey bids another servant to watch over Chadwick after he leaves because he's worried about the other man's mental health! That's just one of the examples of offbeat humor that Hitchcock employs in this film, often using the humor to offset and relieve the intensity of the suspense. For example when James (Newton) has gathered the troops and is trying to arrest Sir Humphrey, he stops by Sir Humphrey's estate just long enough for one of his foppish hangers-on to comment "hey, you're wearing my uniform!" I couldn't say I noticed any other typical "director's touches", except the pan that reveals Laughton as the collaborator. I'm not a huge expert on Hitchcock in particular though, but I have noticed the humor involved in his suspense scenes, a device he also used in "The Lady Vanishes" and all the way through "North by Northwest." The performances are all solid. I liked what O'Hara was able to do with her eyes after Laughton tied her mouth up; she was clearly naturally talented as a screen actress. Laughton is always tough to assess because he likes to play around so much and have so much fun inhabiting the role that it sometimes damages his performance, and he was a guy with a world of talent.... so much so that it seems like he gets bored with it and does other things, sometimes things that work and sometimes things that don't. I'd say this film is a 7 or 8 out of 10 on the "Laughton scale." He's sufficiently creepy in the early scenes and his playfulness works nicely with the "madman" angle that the writers wanted to take towards the end. Leslie Banks' work in the film was probably the most impressive in my opinion because he also had the broadest character to work with, and managed to make this character work as a human being.<br /><br />Certainly an exceptional British film from the period, giving us a rather unusual story filmed with great skill and played by a group of talented actors.