Mara Maru

Having exploded onto the Hollywood scene in the 1935 epic swashbuckler film Captain Blood, Australian-American Errol Flynn returned to a nautical setting nearly two decades later, albeit without the youthful energy and luster, in Gordon Douglas’ Mara Maru, a regrettably overlooked noir set in and around the Filipino seas. Flynn plays Gregory Mason, a deep-sea salvager who earns a postwar living diving for valuables in sunken ships with his partner, Andy Callahan (Richard Webb), who winds up murdered in the first act with Mason emerging as the primary suspect until private detective Steven Ranier (the fantastic, eternally underrated Paul Picerni) shows up out of nowhere to give him an unexpected alibi. After Mason hires Ranier to help track down his partner’s killer, the private eye introduces him to Brock Benedict (Raymond Burr), a wealthy business owner who offers to hire Mason to captain the Mara Maru with the aim of unearthing millions of dollars of diamonds stuck in a boat on the ocean’s floor, an enterprise that will proceed to engender resentments, betrayals, and murders among the crew. Ruth Roman plays Callahan’s widow Stella, who joins the voyage in part because she’s always carried a flame for Mason. Douglas and crew establish a dreary noir atmosphere from the start with gritty waterfront streets and seedy, smoke-filled bars, drunkenness and fistfights leading to a murder mystery, the gleaming cinematography from Robert Burks, Hitchcock’s frequent collaborator, adding an artistry that befits the Christian themes that emerge in the film’s second half (some may find the Christian messages and symbology a bit overdone). The action moves from dark alleys and shark-infested waters, where Flynn and his body double wear pre-SCUBA gear that must weigh a ton, to underground crypts and tunnels worthy of Indiana Jones.