Product Details

• Actors: Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith, S. Z. Sakall, John Litel
• Directors: David Butler
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Subtitles: English, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• Run Time: 109 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001EW8LDQ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #105,616 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Rustlers have taken Clay Hardin's (Errol Flynn) cattle and holed up in San Antonio. So Clay does what any cowboy worth his salt has got to do: strap on his sidearm, ride into town and settle the score. Despite his Tasmanian roots and elegant British diction, Flynn made an ideal all-American cowboy. With his steely gaze, lean frame and understated humor, he tamed the West in eight thrilling sagebrush sagas. San Antonio features blazing action, suspense and a beautiful girl (Alexis Smith) to romantic luster to the heroics. Welcome to San Antonio, where excitement is as big as Texas!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith and "Cuddles" Sakall...two out of three's not bad, March 6, 2009

By 

C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: San Antonio (DVD)

"You mean to tell me this little mud Indian village is San Antonio?" says the singer, Jeanne Starr (Alexis Smith), as her stagecoach swings into the plaza. "Oh, it's nice! You will like it!" bubbles her manager, Sacha Bozic (S. Z. Sakall). "As far as I'm concerned it's just another place full of wild savages." She's already met Clay Hardin (Errol Flynn), so we know the town can't be that bad. On the other hand, she has yet to encounter the movie's two murderous villains, Roy Stuart (Paul Kelly) and the smooth Legare (Victor Francen).

San Antonio is better than a routine western, but still not much more than a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half. It's the story of Clay Hardin and his determination to bring to justice the king pin of a ruthless rustling operation. Cattle are stolen, run across the Rio Grande to Mexico, resold in a sham scheme to obtain false documents, then brought back across and resold for big profits. Hardin, beaten and run off once, is determined to come back to San Antonio with the evidence he now has...a tally book of the cattle sales in Mexico, with names, dates, brands and prices. On his way back he has to deal with killers sent to stop him, a stage coach that carries Jeanne Starr on her way to an engagement at the Bella Union Music Hall in San Antonio, and, when the stage arrives, a face-to-face encounter with the tough Roy Stuart himself, the man behind it all. And not just Stuart. His partner is the smiling and unscrupulous Legare. We're in for shoot outs, back shots, bad odds and Alexis Smith singing a couple of songs.

The movie has solid production values, a creepy night-time shoot out in the ruins of the Alamo and one of the most entertaining, over-the-top shoot `em ups, set in the Bella Union, I've ever seen. Men take bullets too fast to count, then bounce off the bar or grab their chests and fall to the floor. Mirrors shatter, a large, full bar quickly and loudly explodes into glass shards and, in a rococo moment, one villain in a balcony next to the stage is shot, tips over, gets his legs twisted in the curtain ropes and swings and twitches back and forth for a while. Eventually, justice is done in a workmanlike way. We hear the praises of Texas and, in a nice echo of Hardin's and Jeanne's first meeting in a stagecoach, another stagecoach turns around to head back to San Antonio.

For me, the real pleasure was watching two notable actors, Victor Francen and Paul Kelly. Francen was a Belgian who came to America in 1939. He played men who were suave to their fingertips, worldly in outlook and perfectly at home at the roulette table. He always had a gracious smile while he said the most threatening things and did the most deadly deeds. You'll recognize him when you see him. Paul Kelly, on the other hand, was made of rougher material. He once served time for beating a man to death. Kelly also was a fine actor when given a chance. On Broadway, he won the Tony for lead actor when he starred in Command Decision. Naturally enough, when Hollywood made Command Decision into a movie Kelly's role was given to Clark Gable. If you want a sample of outstanding acting so bizarre it's memorable, just watch the scenes Kelly shares with Gloria Grahame in Crossfire.

As for Errol Flynn, he does the kind of job only a charismatic movie star can deliver. Few were better when it came to smiling at danger or laughing at death. Flynn seemed at his best in costumes in his youth, uniforms during WWII and, in my opinion, in well-cut business suits afterwards. After the mid-Forties, costumes, whether cowboy outfits or tight breeches, just didn't seem to do much for the increasingly tired visage or for the notoriety he created. (Kim is the exception.) A suit and a tie, however, were another matter. The movies he made in civilian gear often weren't very good, but he seemed to keep some of his old charisma as well as to be challenged to actually act. That Forsyte Woman is as careful and respectful as an arthritic butler but Flynn as Soames Forsyte does a fine job. In Cry Wolf opposite Barbara Stanwyck, I think he does a superior job in this under-rated old-dark-house movie. (You can watch both occasionally on cable.)

2.0 out of 5 stars Flynn miscast in a western, June 10, 2011

By 

Dr. James Gardner (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: San Antonio (DVD)

In 1945 Errol Flynn was in trouble. His best days were behind him - Captain Blood (1935), Major Vickers (1936), Robin Hood (1938), the Earl of Essex (1939), George Armstrong Custer (1941), and Gentleman Jim Corbett (1942) - and apart from "Objective Burma" (1945), he had been making one undistinguished film after another (and would be until 1957 when he made "The Sun Also Rises" and "Too Much Too Soon").

Between 1940 and 1945 Flynn was trying to reinvent himself, as something less than a swashbuckler and more of an actor. In his autobiography Flynn said - "How deep the yearning is of an actor who has been stereotyped, who has that sword and horse wound around him, to prove to himself and to others that he is an actor." He had some success with "Edge of Darkness" (1943) in which he played a Norwegian resistance fighter and "Objective Burma" (1945) showed his heroic side without being in-your-face about it, so he had hopes. But he always hated the westerns - In his autobiography he said "Putting me in cowboy pictures seemed to me the most ridiculous miscasting." This film proves he was right.

Alexis Smith (1921-93) plays a dance hall girl. She appeared in more than 50 films between 1940 and 1993, winning a Tony in 1971 and an Emmy in 1990. She made 4 films with Errol Flynn (e.g., "Gentleman Jim", "Montana") and 2 with Bogart ("Conflict", "The Two Mrs. Carrolls"). I think her best performance was in "The Young Philadelphians" (1959) with Paul Newman.

Ever so cute S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall (1883-1955) appears as Smith's manager. We know him best as the character Carl, who appeared as a head waiter in "Casablanca" (1942) and then made a career reprising the role in films like , "Christmas in Connecticut" (1945) and "Lullaby of Broadway" (1951). He made more than 100 films between 1916 and 1954.

Flynn claimed that Cuddles was one of the two best scene stealers in the business. He called him "a funny old guy" and said "I always liked him for his screwy, mushy personality."

BTW - Flynn, Smith, and Sakall reunited in "Montana" (1950).

John Litel (1892-1972) plays Flynn's fatherly sidekick. Litel was a veteran of more than 200 films whose probably best known for his role as Bob Cumming's boss on "My Hero" (1952).

Grim Paul Kelly (1899-1956) plays the bad guy. He started in the silent film days and made more than 100 films between 1911 and 1957. He's best known for playing Warden Duffy in "Duffy of San Quenton" (1954) which is kind of curious since Kelly served 2 years for manslaughter (1927-9), but I remember him best as the determined man in "The High and the Mighty" (1954). Unfortunately, Kelly does not make a convincing bad guy on screen despite his personal history.

The film is directed by David Butler (1894-1979) but significant portions were directed (uncredited) by Flynn's good drinking buddy Raoul Walsh (1887-1980).

David Butler was an actor turned director who worked on nearly 100 films, mostly for Fox, including "The Littlest Rebel" (1935), "Kentucky" (1938), and "Road to Morocco" (1942) then turned to TV in the 50s where he worked on "Wagon Train" (1958-62) and "Leave it to Beaver" (1959-63). Flynn claims that Butler was disinterested in their 3 films together

Raoul Walsh and Flynn did 7 films together, following Flynn's break-up with Michael Curtiz with whom he made his classic swashbuckler films. Walsh had been an actor appearing as John Wilkes Booth in Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" (1915). He turned to directing in 1930, directing John Wayne in his first film ("The Big Trail"). Walsh directed such notable films as "The Roaring Twenties" (1939), "Dark Command" (1940), "They Drive By Night" (1940), "High Sierra" (1941) and "White Heat" (1949). He started working with Flynn in 1941 ("They Died with their Boots On") and they continued working together through 1945 - this was their last collaboration. Walsh declined notably in the 50s after he left Warner Brothers, but his 50+ year career made him one of Hollywood's most memorable directors. Flynn called him a "great and imaginative" director.

William Riley (W.R.) Burnett (1899-1982) was the co-writer. Burnett has many great films to his credit - "Littler Caesar" (1930), "Scarface" (1931), "High Sierra" (1944), "This Gun for Hire" (1942), "The Asphalt Jungle" (1949), and "The Great Escape" (1963) - but he was nominated only once for an Oscar ("Wake Island", 1942). Burnett's particular skill, regardless of the genre, was creating interesting characters to populate his novels/films, but that isn't true here.
Alan Le May (1899-1964) shared writing credits. As a novelist, Le May's "The Searchers" and "Unforgiven" became major award winning films. As a screen writer his credits included "The Adventures of Mark Twain" (1944) and "I Dream of Jeanie" (1952).

The film was nominated for two Oscars (Best Music, Best Art Direction). The NY Times' Bosley Crowther complained - "When a studio spends a couple of million dollars on a Western, as the Warners spent on "San Antonio," you might expect something more original than the picture now showing..." and called it "a routine beef opera, dressed ostentatiously in Technicolor." He did concede "a couple of gun fights which are fit to make your hair stand on end and some running chases on horseback which are good for a few minutes of sport..."

If you're an Errol Flynn fan you'll want to miss this film. This is one of his worst.

3.0 out of 5 stars The Alexis Smith gowns are fantastic, October 31, 2009

By 

R. Bagula "Roger L. Bagula" (Lakeside, Ca United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: San Antonio (DVD)

Error Flynn as a western hero leaves a lot to be desired.
Here he at the very beginning tries to fake guitar playing and fails.
I have to say that the costume designer is better
than the acting or the plot in this film.
But the color is beautiful in the dvd I have
and the sound quality is better than most.