While not as gaga about this Fritz Lang film as the French...Cahiers Du Cinema absurdly calls it the 32nd best film of all time... I am willing to accord it poor man's "Treasure Island" status with beautiful cinematography from Robert Planck that render many scenes like Howard Pyle paintings, and nice female cleavage for some of us grownups. Where it stumbles, in my opinion, is in the casting of the too cute, Roddy MacDowell wannabe, John Whiteley. Think I read in Wikipedia that Lang lost it with the adorable little tyke and, while you never want to be abusing a kid actor, after witnessing Whiteley's Shirley Templesque delivery of his lines I can see how the ol Teutonic curmudgeon might have gotten a trifle irked. At the very least Whiteley's cloying performance negatively impacts the crucial scenes between him and Stu Granger's gentleman smuggler, Jeremy Fox, that explain Fox's one eighty from morally challenged to somewhat noble. So, let's give this one a B minus for an interesting attempt at Swashbuckler Noir (i.e. Most of it is shot at night, in the shadows). PS...The ending, featuring a dying Granger sailing in a skiff with a blood red sail and a shadowy steersman, is bone chilling. Would that Lang had lingered on it a bit longer instead of cutting away to Whiteley. But, then again, that kind of connects with what is most wrong with this film.