Having already played Blackbeard in Hollywood a couple of years earlier, Robert Newton travelled Down Under with director Byron Haskin to reprise his earlier star turn as Long John Silver, still searching for hidden treasure in an elaborate production in colour & 'scope that paved the way for a TV series.
Jim Hawkins seems scarcely a day older, courtesy of being played by a new young actor, Kit Taylor (son of Grant Taylor, who plays 'Patch'), while a hirsute Rod Taylor as mad, blind Israel Hands - a role previously played by Geoffrey Keen in the Disney version - makes Newton look restrained by comparison. (The scene with him and Master Jim shot on a piece of spectacular coastline near Sydney possibly confirms that the generally studio-bound look of the rest of the film probably owed more to Newton's inability by then to go out on location than budgetary constraints.)
Jim Hawkins seems scarcely a day older, courtesy of being played by a new young actor, Kit Taylor (son of Grant Taylor, who plays 'Patch'), while a hirsute Rod Taylor as mad, blind Israel Hands - a role previously played by Geoffrey Keen in the Disney version - makes Newton look restrained by comparison. (The scene with him and Master Jim shot on a piece of spectacular coastline near Sydney possibly confirms that the generally studio-bound look of the rest of the film probably owed more to Newton's inability by then to go out on location than budgetary constraints.)