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The little coastal village lives (and flourishes) mainly from
smuggling, however, when Captain Collyer (Roy Emerton) from inland revenue
and his soldiers want to gather evidence against the smugglers and arrest
them, they can find nothing, and are welcomed with dismay by the villagers
- all but the local Squire (Athole Stewart) and the local physician,
Doctor Pepper (Wilson Coleman), who both know nothing about the smuggling
going on under their noses, and Doctor Syn (George Arliss), the local
parson ... who is really the once feared and now believed dead pirate
Captain Clegg, and who is now running the whole smuggling operation - to
the benefit of the whole village.
By and by Captain Collyer gathers more and more evidence against the
good people of Dymchurch, but mostly, it is Syn who manages to pull a fast
one after the other on the Captain ... until the local school teacher Rash
(Frederick Burtwell), one of the smugglers, kills Doctor Pepper, who seems
to have learned a little bit too much, but one of Rash's students (Graham
Moffatt) sees the whole thing, plus Captain Clegg's grave proves to be
empty, and the mulatto (Meinhart Maur) who has been left to die on
a dessert island by Clegg 20 years ago but is now in service of the
Revenue recognizes Doctor Syn as Captain Clegg - and from that point on it
doesnt take Captain Collyer too long to put two and two together ... but
when he tries to arrest Doctor Syn, he has to realize that the whole
village of Dymchurch is against their pirate captain turned parson, and
Syn can not only get away, he can also marry his daughter (Margaret
Lockwood) to the Squire's son (John Loder), blow up a warehouse filled
with contraband goods so as to not leave any evidence behind, and leave
Dymchurch behind for good without Captain Collyer and his soldiers are
ever even able to catch up with him ...
Doctor Syn is far from being a good film, its direction is way
too stagey and the actors are far too hammy to really impress. That said
however, the film is also pretty entertaining, the plot moves along at a
reasonably fast pace, there's hardly a dull moment, and the dialogue is
poignant and witty. So if you are able to forgive the film's obvious
shortcomings, you might as well enjoy this one.
In 1962, Hammer
remade this film as Captain Clegg,
a film that greatly improves over this one in terms of direction, acting
and atmosphere, but lacks this one's wit.
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