I lucked out in high school. I had a good streak of English teachers. While other classes were reading "The Great Gatsby," "The Pigman," and "Hamlet," I was entrenched in "Frankenstein," "In Cold Blood," and "Macbeth." Another classic I got to avoid...

An engaging effort from Jackie Cooper as the fledgling "Jim Hawkins" works well here with a charismatic one from Wallace Beery as the duplicitous "Long John Silver" as Victor Fleming takes us on an exciting adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's sea...