Kidnapped *** (1960, Peter Finch, James MacArthur, Bernard Lee, John Laurie, Finlay Currie) – Classic Movie Review 10,700

‘SWASHBUCKLING ADVENTURE! FLASHING SWORDS AND RAGING SEAS… as soldiers of fortune fight for their lives!’

Writer-director Robert Stevenson’s 1960 British-made adventure Kidnapped is the Walt Disney version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale. It offers a fine cast and is prettily filmed in Technicolor, partly on location in the Highlands of Scotland, but the blood doesn’t race due to slack handling and a lack of exciting derring-do.

A miscast James MacArthur is wan and tepid as young David Balfour, kidnapped and sold as a slave by his hissably bad uncle Ebenezer Balfour (John Laurie). But Finch brings the required vigour to his role as Jacobite adventurer Alan Breck Stewart, who helps the lad get back home to claim his inheritance.

Walt Disney Productions found that the Scots accents, some of them more convincing than others, hit the box office in America.

Also in the cast are Bernard Lee, John Laurie, Finlay Currie, Niall MacGinnis, Peter O’Toole, Miles Malleson, Oliver Johnston, Duncan Macrae, John Pike, Andrew Cruickshank, Eileen Way, Alex Mackenzie, Norman MacOwan, Jack Stewart and Edie Martin.

Robert Stevenson adapts the novel.

It was previously made as Kidnapped (1938) and Kidnapped (1948). It is remade as Kidnapped (1971).

It is made on location in the Highlands of Scotland, and in the studio at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,700

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