The withering Errol Flynn tried desperately to recast himself in the role of a heroic modern-day swashbuckler but only revealed his own dissipation in this sad semidocumentary of the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba by Castro's guerrilla forces. The film boasts "actual footage
shot during the star's real-life adventures with the Castro rebels"; it's actually nothing more than a sorry exit for a once-great film star. Flynn also chose to cast his 16-year-old girl friend, Beverly Aadland, as Beverly, a young American girl who travels to Havana before the fall of Batista's
regime in order to find her boy friend, Johnny (John MacKay). The star plays himself: a war correspondent writing a day-to-day account for the Hearst syndicate (a task Flynn actually was engaged in). Essentially a home movie about a pathetic old reactionary (Flynn's ties to the Nazi party are well
documented; his involvement in Cuba was pro-Batista), ASSAULT OF THE REBEL GIRLS is interesting only as an autobiographical footnote. Flynn reportedly tried to stop its release, but it hit the big screen after his death in 1959.
