The poor, elderly—and the wily, when it comes to parting those who can afford it from their money—Scottish skipper of a broken-down old 'puffer' boat tricks an American tycoon into paying him to transport his personal cargo. When the tycoon learns of the trick, he attempts to track down the boat and remove his possessions.

In 1870, a Jamaican colonial family sends its children to Britain for proper schooling, but their ship is taken over by pirates, who become fond of the kids.

An affectionate homage to Los Angeles, Mackendrick's last film offers a sunny dream of mid-1960s Malibu as a small town of surfers, bodybuilders, real estate agents and movie stars. Tony Curtis returns, in a softer version of Sweet Smell's desperate huckster, as a transplanted New York salesman who lands in the romantic comedy landscape of speculative real estate and romance, caught between a radiant Claudia Cardinale as a giddy Italian actress and a tragically beautiful Sharon Tate as a beach blanket beatnik. Mackendrick’s underappreciated satire of California hedonism and the war between the sexes remains one of his broadest and most accessible comedies.

The unassuming, nebbishy inventor Sidney Stratton creates a miraculous fabric that will never be dirty or worn out. Clearly he can make a fortune selling clothes made of the material, but may cause a crisis in the process. After all, once someone buys one of his suits they won't ever have to fix them or buy another one, and the clothing industry will collapse overnight. Nevertheless, Sidney is determined to put his invention on the market, forcing the clothing factory bigwigs to resort to more desperate measures...

Based on a true story. The name of the real ship, that sunk Feb 5 1941 - during WWII - was S/S Politician. Having left Liverpool two days earlier, heading for Jamaica, it sank outside Eriskay, The Outer Hebrides, Scotland, in bad weather, containing 250,000 bottles of whisky. The locals gathered as many bottles as they could, before the proper authorities arrived, and even today, bottles are found in the sand or in the sea every other year.

1957 film by Alexander Mackendrick

1955 crime comedy film directed by Alexander Mackendrick