Pre-Castro Cuba

I'm sorry I missed TCM's showing of THE BIG BOODLE yesterday (6/3/08), because it's rarely run, and while hardly a great film it's all right, and most interesting today for its having been shot entirely on location -- even the interiors -- in 1957 Cuba. As such it's a fascinating look at the country less than two years before Castro's takeover, with a glimpse of both the high and low life styles on the island. Interesting also to speculate how the country would have evolved had Fidel never come to power and turned it into a tropical concentration camp, given the look and feel of the society of that period in the movie. And I wonder how many of the 50s cars seen in such abundance all through the film are still in use today, kept up by ingenious Cuban mechanics!

I assume this is when Errol Flynn first became enamored of Fidel and his movement, an admiration that eventually led him to write, produce, direct and star in what became his last film, the laughingly execrable CUBAN REBEL GIRLS (1959), which as a tribute to the Revolution is about as effective as Roger Corman's CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA. Poor Errol.