CUBAN REBEL GIRLS: an abysmal swansong for a Hollywood legend

CUBAN REBEL GIRLS is literally the wretched final nail in the coffin of Errol Flynn's once glittering career.

This dramatised documentary about Castro's Cuban revolution, shot while the fighting was still in progress, is barely half a notch above the best that legendary bad film director Ed Wood could manage at the height of his powers.
By all accounts Flynn was a bloated, drunken wreck, an oversize shadow of his former matinee idol self, by the time he commenced production on this ultra-low budget project in 1959. The expanded waistline is clearly visible beneath the loose shirt as are his swollen, alcohol ravaged features, despite the abysmal lighting which condemns many of his scenes to semi-darkness. He plays himself as a war correspondent for Hearst newspapers, risking his life to cross the battle lines and trek into the mountains of Cuba's hinterland to interview Fidel Castro himself. Flynn appears only at the beginning and end of the film but narrates much of the story in a voice that betrays a lifetime addiction to booze and cigarettes. It's practically unrecognisable as Flynn's voice, sounding flat, tired and lacking in intonation. Given his condition it's a miracle he lasted long enough to succumb to a heart attack after the end of filming, rather than during it.
The bulk of the story is carried by a group of men and women one might loosely describe as actors if one were feeling particularly charitable. Most give the mountainside trees a run for

their money when it comes to woodenness, but the mightiest Oak of them all is Flynn's 17 year old girlfriend Beverly Aadland. In the lead role of an American teenager who joins Castro's rebel army to be close to her boyfriend, she displays not the tiniest measure of acting ability, delivering her lines with all the vocal range and conviction of a Speak Your Weight machine. It's a clear indicator of just how badly the booze had addled Flynn's brain that he agreed to cast his platinum blonde lover in such a central role when it was apparent to anyone older than three that she had zero talent and could not possibly be anything but a major embarrassment to the project.
Aadland's atrocious acting is neatly complemented by Barry Mahon's witless direction and Flynn's threadbare script, creating an axis of awfulness that makes the 68 minute running time feel like a lifetime and half lived at half speed. And the film's not even bad enough to have kitsch appeal. It's just bad. Really bad.