Filmed at a time when the public’s perception of Errol Flynn had been tainted by author Charles Higham’s allegations that the matinee idol was a Nazi spy, My Wicked, Wicked Ways takes its title from Flynn’s posthumously released autobiography.  In telling his side of the story, the biopic does not shy away from depicting the actor as a reckless, womanising rogue. What it does conceal though, is any semblance of the star’s devil-may-care charm.

It’s not for lack of trying. Duncan Regehr has the looks and pedigree to be a half-decent swashbuckler, having been a figure skater and Olympic boxing contender before training as a Shakespearean actor. Yet the film’s attempts to manufacture a light touch invariably result in a resounding thud. Food fights and bar-room brawls fail to produce a chuckle, while the continual appearance of screaming young girls becomes annoying rather than farcical.

Apart from charting the first seven years of the Aussie actor’s career in Hollywood, the biopic also spends a good deal of time covering his off-screen escapades, including his stormy marriage to actress Lili Damita and his acquittal on the charge of statutory rape. By the time he starts covering the Spanish Civil War for Hearst’s newspapers, studio head Jack Warner sums up his, and unwittingly the audience’s, exasperation when he cries… “This is turning into a lousy B-movie!”