Top notch comedy/adventure film with a very solid cast....you gotta wonder why Disney did not make this film...it had three of Disney's top performers at the time, Hayley Mills (Pollyanna) and James McArthur and John Mills from - Swiss Family Robinson, both huge grossing films for the Disney vault.....story is about a young, growing of age lady Hayley Mills who wanders around the Bahamas with her landlubber father, a sea captain who wanders aimlessly about and supposedly has a map for buried treasure hidden on his boat...Mills and her father John Mills are a team so to speak - they are waiting for the correct time to find treasure but some of Mills adversaries on the treasure hunt force their way into the action too. In other words some other adventurers want in on finding the treasure....after all getting together through a compromise of sorts a load of dynamite is set off on a beach and lo and behold they find no buried treasure - just a bunch of skeletons.....back to square one!!! Through some shifty juggling Mill's father has managed to con their rivals out of a $1000 advance to find the treasure....ha-ha-...it backfires on the other looters. Secondary in the film is a blossoming relationship between Mcarthur and Hayley....they are slowly falling in love, much to the delight of Mills father who realizes that wandering about aimlessly at sea for years and years is no life for his daughter. In the end McArthur departs Mills boat and returns to his uncle's yacht minus Hayley....then McArthuer quickly realizes he cannot leave the best thing ever in his life on that dumpy fishing boat of her fathers....quickly McArthur and Hayley get together and a marriage is on the way...This is a lighthearted film with lots of laughs and a decent story to tell......made especially for the teenage set of the mid 60s with a cast to attract them in McArther and Hayley Mills. Very hard to understand why this film has never been put on DVD, considering the top notch cast.....one of Hayley Mills best films. A real treat for the teenage audience.

I was teenager when I saw that movie. Actually I was always dreaming this movies and I still remember some parts. Now I am 54 and unfortunately nowadays teenagers do not have possibilities to watch this kind of bright pictures. All new pictures are having violence, blood,terror, fear.....and all similar. The children grow anti - social and are trained only for harming the others. I would like to know if I can find the DVD of this picture? I really want to watch it again and want to show all teenagers and ever younger ones. Can anyone inform me about the availability of it's DVD. I will be thanking for those who informs me.

I, like most others in this forum, happen to love this little movie. There's something about its good-naturedness that is captivating, and its open-air-and-sea setting that gives it a timeless quality. The idea of being a capable young woman who travels around the Caribbean on a boat with a genial parent, leading an unstructured life with plenty of little adventures, must be quite attractive to young female viewers. And then there is Hayley Mills, the effortlessly charming English actress who forever inspires crushes. And why? Perhaps because she's pretty but not too pretty, English but not too English, quite lively but not brassy, and quite natural without the child actor show-offiness or affectations. Truly the girl you want to have next door. For fans of Hayley (note "HAYLEY": for some reason many in this forum can't spell her name correctly) this film has an air of poignancy about it because this is the last of her teen parts. After this she moved on to young adult parts ('That Darn Cat,' her next film, dolled her up and gave her a boyfriend right from the start --- and it was also her last Disney film). Here she'd just turned eighteen and co-star James MacArthur (son of Helen Hayes and famed screen & stage writer Charles MacArthur) was about 27. There had been a contest held by Hayley fans at the time as to who should co-star with her in this film and MacArthur (a Disney alumni) was given the top vote. He was married at the time so no off-screen romance developed. But they are cute together. In my opinion the scene where a trapped Hayley is teased with a rope that MacArthur drops down to her is a small showcase of Hayley's natural and economic comic timing: a kind of ability that Disney could never find again. And one of the pluses of this film is that it is NOT a Disney production, meaning that it has more of a laconic, low-key English flavor to it. It certainly could be mistaken for Disney, and might have made a bigger splash at the box office (it was a dud) and be easily available today on DVD or VHS if it had been, but as a trade-off, it has an easygoing charm without the Disney tendency to offer explosive, slapsticky finishes, or cartoony musical flourishes (e.g. 'In Search of the Castaways' or 'That Darn Cat'). There's also the pleasure of watching outstanding English character actors like Lionel Jeffries and Harry Andrews clearly enjoying themselves. And there's the obvious pleasure of watching the real father-daughter team of John and Hayley playing off each other. John Mills recounted how enjoyable it was making this movie because it was like one long holiday. And note that although the film's story takes place in the Caribbean, in fact, the movie itself was filmed along the southern coast of Spain. In addition, it was released in the UK as 'The Pirates of Spring Cove' and is available on video from England under that title (unfortunately, England uses the PAL video format, thus you have to have a video player that can play that format to view it). I agree that Universal Home Video has foolishly let this movie slip through the cracks, but sometimes movies have copyright problems, so it's possible that Universal would like to release this film but some rights issue is snagging things. Certainly this is not a lost masterpiece worthy of mass petitions or Congressional action, but I think it should be brought to Universal's attention that there ARE buyers out there waiting for a chance to own this little gem.

This is a family oriented movie with romance, coming of age, adventure, pirates and comedy all rolled into one. My wife, 2 teenage daughters and my first grade son all enjoy this one as much as I do.