Captain Blood

Captain Blood is a 1935 American swashbuckler film directed by Michael Curtiz for First National Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures, and starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Ross Alexander. With a screenplay by Casey Robinson, the film is based on the 1922 novel by Rafael Sabatini and concerns an imprisoned doctor and his fellow prisoners who escape their cruel island captivity to become West Indies pirates.

Warner Bros. risked pairing two relatively unknown performers in the lead roles. Flynn's performance made him a major Hollywood star and established him as the natural successor to Douglas Fairbanks and a "symbol of an unvanquished man" during the Great Depression. Captain Blood also established de Havilland, in just her fourth screen appearance, as a major star and was the first of eight films costarring Flynn and de Havilland. The Oscar-nominated score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold started a trend for full-length symphonic scores.