A Dutch ship is wrecked in the Spanish Main, and its captain (Paul Henreid) is condemned to death and his land grant stolen by Don Juan Alvarado (Walter Slezak). But he escapes, and becomes the pirate The Barracuda. Primarily out for revenge, he captures the ship carrying the red-headed Irish, but supposedly Spanish bride-to-be of Alvarado, Contessa Francesca (Maureen O’Hara).
Mixing Captain Blood with a cheap paperback romance novel, The Spanish Main is a standard good-guy pirate Swashbuckler. With all the expected plot twists, several ship battles, an arrogant maiden who sees the error of her way, a pair of sword duels, and a couple of mass melees, it’s a likeable family picture.
Paul Henreid (Casablanca), in an attempt to change his image from drab lover in dramas to something with box office appeal, suggested the pirate epic, but was turned down by Warner Bros who had better stars for the genre. A fluke in his contract allowed him to take the idea to RKO, who made it into their first, full Technicolor movie.
While Henreid was no competition for Errol Flynn, he makes a surprisingly viable pirate. He displays too much honor, and not enough rogue, but cuts a dashing figure and looks good with a sword in his hand. Maureen O’Hara is beautiful and not to be forgotten, doing the same fiery red-head that she would use in all her sword adventures. Most of the rest of the cast perform their parts adequately, although lacking the panache of Basil Rathbone, Patric Knowles, Eugene Pallette, Alan Hale, or Montagu Love, who filled similar supporting roles in the better Swashbucklers. Walter Slezak is the standout, as a slimy, fat (as the Contessa points out), megalomaniac who steals all his scenes. He reenacts the part he played a year earlier in the comedy The Princess and the Pirate, and so seems to be in a different kind of movie than everyone else.
With the exception of a few sexual innuendos that will be transparent to anyone not searching for them, The Spanish Main offers not only nothing new, but nothing that hasn’t been done better. However, for lighthearted froth, it is entertaining.
Slezak’s other Swashbucklers are the Bob Hope vehicle The Princess and the Pirate (1944), Sinbad the Sailor (1947), and the musical The Pirate (1948).
O’Hara’s other Swashbucklers are The Black Swan (1942) with Tyrone Power, Sinbad the Sailor (1947) with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., At Sword’s Point (1952), where she got a chance to swing a sword as the daughter of a musketeer, and Against All Flags (1952) with Errol Flynn.