Captain Calamity - Adventures of Ship Captain Bill Jones

Captain Calamity is a 1936 American film that managed to take the core concept of romanticized piracy showcased in many pieces of media over the last two centuries, and turn in upside down by inserting a lot of realism into it. By playing with such theme, director John Reinhardt managed to create a one hour long tale that serve as a reminder how ordinary people can change in several ways when confronted with wealth.

The story of the film follows the life of a very poor ship captain Bill Jones (played by George Huston) that has managed to find work by transporting tourists ashore after their voyages on the sea. On one of such trips, one of the passengers dropped the golden coin at the shore of the island. Wanting to get the coin back, captain sends one diver to retrieve it and finds out that this coin was an ancient Spanish doubloon. This prompts him to start bragging to the villagers of the island that he in the managed to find in the past two full chests of such coins from the sunken Spanish pirate ship. In the ensuing hours, news of this discovery prompted several shady individuals to gather local thugs and cutthroats to gather up and attack captain captain Bill Jones in search for his treasure. By the end of the film, several terrifying acts of violence were aimed toward the captain and crew of his ship, including kidnapping, torture, physic al assaults and even murder.

Today, Captain Calamity remains remembered not for his pirate themed story, but as one of the notable examples of the Hollywood films recorded in color that were not produced using the technology from Technicolor.