What makes pirate yarns so seductive is the lure of escaping all the rules and scruples that tie us land-lubbers down. Run away to sea and -- unfettered by family, law, country, even the strictures of gender and color -- the possibilities, like the oceans, are boundless.
Sure, a real pirate's life was short and brutal, far from Technicolor romance and adventure. But movies deliver dreams, not facts. What could be more glamorous than sea-dogging around Caribbean dives and sailing the Spanish Main until a fat galleon full of King Philip's treasure hove into view, just begging for broadsides and grappling hooks? What high could compare to the adrenalin buzz of hand-to-hand battle with cutlass and flintlock, while leaping effortlessly from poop deck to mizzenmast!
And once the galleon's scuttled and the blood's swabbed off the deck, it's "Party, me hearties," with proud captains to prod into plank-walking, lovely ladies to ravish, lace and velvet and fine linen for buccaneer dandies to don, and flasks of rum-fustian to swig in mass quantities. Later, there'll be time to deposit booty in the Pirates' Savings and Loan -- a chest festooned with dead men, buried and sometimes forgotten, on some remote tropic isle.
More often than not, some lady fair, generally a spitfire and a princess, will shiver the pirate captain's timbers and he'll give up his wicked, wicked ways to drop anchor in safe harbor, putting his wild days as Terror of the Caribbean behind him.
Happily, no lady fair is likely to put an end to the wicked ways of Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, hippie-mutant spawn of Keith Richards and Pepe le Pew. As "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men's Chest" sails our way, we've shanghaied some of Sparrow's blood-kin, a crew of flamboyant seadogs variously destined for hempen halter or hero's welcome in homeport.
10. "The Black Swan" (1942)
Tyrone Power aims to out-swashbuckle Errol Flynn, but, lacking the latter's wit, grace and charm, he compensates by dressing up in costumes so campy they might earn membership in the Village People: "Jamie Boy" goes a-wooing in a black caballero's hat, with red knit balls dangling around its rim; gold chains; silky black shirt and tight pants, scarlet sash and red-lined cape. Not surprisingly, a fellow pirate, learning of Jamie's crush, wonders, "Can that be the reason you've been so gay lately?" The usually feisty Maureen O'Hara looks as though she's lapsed into a coma when Powers' buccaneer flirts with such faux-macho lines as "In Tortuga, when a woman slaps a man's face, it means she wants him to grab her, overpower her and smother her with kisses. I understand a gentleman must refuse such overtures in Jamaica." Powers' arch-enemy is the usually civilized George Sanders, here playing barbarian Billy Leech, unrecognizable under a huge thicket of red hair and beard. "Swan" climaxes with a respectable sea battle and swordfight over every surface a ship can provide -- Jamie Boy and Captain Leech, naturally -- but critically speaking, I'd have to agree with the fellow in "The Black Swan" who cracks wise: "Your fulminations are full of bilge and blather!"
9. "Cutthroat Island" (1995)
One of the few films big enough to scuttle a marriage and a studio (Guinness Book of Records: "biggest loss of money for a film company ever"), Renny Harlin's pirate romp dared to celebrate the exploits of a lady buccaneer, Morgan Adams -- played by then-wife Geena Davis. Finally, Grace O'Malley, Anne Bonney, Mary Read and all the other real-life female corsairs would get their cinematic due. Davis was more than game: A big, beautiful, athletic girl, she radiated exhilarating physicality as she worked many of her own stunts, doing a credible Errol Flynn in rousing swordfight extravaganzas. As Dawg Brown, Adams' nemesis, Frank Langella chewed scenery and brandished cutlass with his usual demented gusto: In the midst of bloody battle, having skewered some hapless soul, bald, bare-chested Dawg raises his arms to the sky and bellows gleefully, "I love this! I love it!" Yes, the movie's a mess and Matthew Modine's a pale consort for Geena's full-blooded pirate queen, but Davis' pull-out-all-the-stops enthusiasm for swashbuckling is still endearing.
8. "Ice Pirates" (1984)
Sometime in the future, space pirate Robert Urich, a hand-me-down Han Solo, and his motley-to-the-max crew (John Matuszak, Ron Perlman, Anjelica Huston, Michael D. Roberts) careen around the universe raiding ships for water, now a scarce and therefore priceless commodity. All low-rent spoofery and vintage Flash Gordon F/X, "Pirates" plays as though a bunch of slightly nutso kids are making up the game as they go along -- so either sign on for the sheer silly fun of it or hit the eject button. Dragged away by his second mate just as he's about to get jiggy with a busty princess (Mary Crosby), Urich complains, "Whatever happened to 'We rape, we pillage'?" When said princess has Jason and his black second mate (apparently) sent through the eunuch factory, they emerge -- hilariously -- as mincing sopranos in white, body-hugging spandex, topped off with white wigs and eyebrows. The pre-Oscar Huston plays a lethal Amazon given to skimpy dominatrix attire and sci-fi hairdos that make Princess Padme's look tame. And during the madcap climactic swordfight (not even light sabers!), a time-storm caroms the gang back to childhood and forward into senility. Full of outrageous sight gags and broad banter, this genial space-pirate romp foreshadows -- in a very dim way -- the late, lamented space-Western "Firefly."
7. "Treasure Island" (1934)
As scheming Long John Silver, pudgy-faced Wallace Beery can wink and grin and cackle buccaneer bon mots -- "Blow me down for an old sea cow ... aarrrggghhhh!"-- all he likes, but he lacks a true pirate's black heart. Sure, he keeps his eye on the prize -- Captain Flint's buried treasure -- but his conflicted "adoption" of the fatherless Jim Hawkins (Jackie Cooper) contains elements of real affection, and in the end he stops short of sacrificing kid for gold. As he sails away from a tearful Jim, Silver assures his unlikely "son" they'll meet again: "For sartin'." This genuinely moving moment's a far cry from "The Champ"'s shameless tear-jerking a few years earlier, when punch-drunk prizefighter Beery bid Dink, his doting kid (Cooper), adieu.
6. "Blackbeard the Pirate" (1952)
In 1950's "Treasure Island," Robert Newton had incarnated a grotesquely unclean Long John Silver, given to inserting a grating "aaaarrrggghh" into every sentence and peg-legging about like a fat, unsteady spider. That story demanded the treasure-hungry pirate betray a soft spot for Jim Hawkins, but between Bobby Driscoll's unappealing Hawkins (too cute by half, his little Pekinese face screwed up to resemble Charo in extremis) and Newton's obvious preference for unmitigated villainy, it was hard to care if Jimbo survived. "Blackbeard the Pirate" doesn't require any redeeming qualities of Newton. He's a brooding sociopath, his great unruly beard plaited in ribbons (the real Blackbeard is said to have gone into battle with smoking fuses strung in his beard, a style featured in the dreadful "Yellowbeard"), and his snarling attempts at polite conversation the equivalent of a shark chatting up its dinner. When voluptuous Linda Darnell lands on his ship, her barely contained décolletage inspires leering Blackbeard to dub her "Robin Red Breast." She ripostes: "You'd make the flesh crawl on a squid!" Fittingly, Blackbeard's own men shoot him, then bury him in sand up to his head, facing the incoming tide.
5. "The Black Pirate" (1926) and "The Crimson Pirate" (1952)
Here is piracy practiced with the muscular grace of gymnasts and trapeze artists, wrapped in blazingly white-toothed CinemaScope grins and bad-boy charm that knocks every lady off her feet (sometimes literally). Both Douglas Fairbanks and Burt Lancaster eschewed stunt doubles, so their heart-stopping feats -- Fairbanks knife-slicing his way down a huge sail to the deck, Lancaster flying from mast to mast with the greatest of ease -- are for real. Filmed in two-strip Technicolor, "Black" has a subtler beauty than "Crimson," saturated in garish primary colors. Subtler too is the silent film's acting: Fairbanks may do a Nureyev all over pirate ships and beaches as he swordfights his way to triumph, but he's capable of conveying real horror at the thought of the woman he loves being raped by one of the filthy, snaggle-toothed Neanderthals who crew his ship. Still, his costume of choice gives one pause: hoop earring, sleeveless black shirt and short shorts. Victorious, he leans against a mast -- think Ralph Lauren ad -- while a horde of bare-chested boys below raise their swords to his prowess.
Pure boy's adventure, "Crimson" is all broad comedy and slapstick, showcasing Lancaster and his former trapeze partner Nick Cravat athletically out-maneuvering Spanish soldiers, mutinous pirates and hostile rebels. Everyone and everything in this meandering tale become props for the duo's delirious circus act. Lancaster's valiant Captain Vallo fairly oozes tongue-in-cheek machismo, with his blond curls, formidable abs and sprayed-on red tights, but his domestication -- achieved by a rebel's beauteous daughter -- has to be taken on faith, since it's certain he'll always be a piratical Peter Pan at heart.
4. "The Spanish Main" (1945)
The blond, blue-eyed gentleman bowing the Contessa aboard his ship is a Technicolor dreamboat, his white lace-trimmed shirt, scarlet velvet coat with gold brocade and soft-brimmed, yellow-plumed hat the very latest in corsair couture. "Consider yourselves not so much my prisoners, but my honored guests. It would please me if you were to recommend my piracy to your friends when you return home." It's Paul Henreid, "Casablanca"'s Victor Laszlo transformed, and the countess he's welcoming is Maureen O'Hara, red-maned, lush-lipped, hot-tempered queen of '40s swashbuckler movies. Once a well-mannered Dutch pilgrim, Henreid has turned "Terror of the Caribbean" after being cruelly used by the ruthless Spanish governor of Cartagena (Walter Slezak). "Main" sports the obligatorily exciting sea battle and swordfight, but what's all that when Henreid vamps with such virile charm, O'Hara spits fire as only an Irish colleen in love with a buccaneer can, and Slezak makes infantile evil so delectable.
3. "Captain Kidd" (1945)
"Now then, me bullies! Would you rather do the gallows dance, and hang in chains 'til the crows pluck your eyes from your rotten skulls? Or would you feel the roll of a stout ship beneath your feet again?" So speaks magnificent ham Charles Laughton as Captain Kidd, inviting a prison full of piratical dregs to join him on a mission for the king of England. Naturally, Kidd means to double-cross the gullible monarch, just as he's happily murdered or marooned almost all his crew -- including colorfully monikered Orange Povey (John Carradine) -- who witnessed the burying of his treasure. An ingratiating devil, Laughton wheezes, twitches and mugs up a storm, working his wicked wiles with Jack Sparrow's brand of gusto and style. Naturally, blandly upright Randolph Scott, playing a British nobleman whose father Kidd killed and branded a traitor, brings the unregenerate wretch to justice. About to dance the hempen jig, Laughton's memorable monster trades barbs with the crowd, cheerfully contemptuous of his fellow man to the end.
2. "A High Wind in Jamaica" (1965)
Having run wild on a Caribbean plantation, a brood of British children are sent home to England to be re-civilized. Pirates led by thuggish Captain Chavez (Anthony Quinn) loot their ship, accidentally carrying off the kids. In the hot days that follow, the pirates ignore the feral children, lolling in longboats, climbing the rigging, sliding over wet decks. Their "Lord of the Flies"-tinged play -- turning the head of the ship's female figurehead backwards (aping voodoo zombie lore), miming a burial at sea -- increasingly unsettles the crew, who recognize bad luck when they see it. Comes a terrible, ambiguous moment when Chavez, pinning 12-year-old Emily flat on the deck, freezes -- and falls into fatal, ennobling love. For his oblivious Lolita, the pirate sacrifices everything, even his life. In the end, Emily, now a properly dressed little British doll, faces away from the miniature boat she's sailing in a pond to look, blank-eyed, into the camera -- does she remember her pirate? -- then turns back to her perfectly civilized world.
1. "Captain Blood" (1935)
Best of Show when it comes to on- or offshore swashbuckling, Errol Flynn was 26 when he played Dr. Peter Blood, an innocent physician sentenced to slavery in the West Indies, where he's purchased for 10 pounds by sweetly luminous Olivia de Havilland (soon Maid Marian to Flynn's Robin Hood). So flawlessly beautiful and chivalrous is Flynn, he hardly seems human -- but his wry sense of humor and "Irish" twinkle give him "real guy" power. As reluctant pirate, Flynn runs his ship like a democracy, valuing to the penny every man's contribution -- a leg or an arm, say -- to the common good. Then he partners up with buccaneer Levasseur (a deliciously louche Basil Rathbone), who tries to steal the lovely Olivia. The ensuing swordfight plays out all over a beach, amid complicating driftwood -- a mild rehearsal for the athletic Flynn's choreographed death duels with Rathbone again ("The Adventures of Robin Hood," 1938) and Henry Daniell ("The Sea Hawk," 1940, another dandy pirate flick).
Very Special Mention: "The Crimson Permanent Assurance" prelude to "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life": "Full speed ahead, Mr. Cohen!"
What is your favorite pirate flick? Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com
Kathleen Murphy currently reviews films for Seattle's Queen Anne News. A frequent speaker on film, Murphy has contributed numerous essays to magazines (Film Comment, the Village Voice, Film West, Newsweek-Japan), books ("Best American Movie Writing of 1998," "Women and Cinema," "The Myth of the West") and Web sites (Amazon.com, Cinemania.com, Reel.com). Once upon a time, in another life, she wrote speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon, Harrison Ford, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel and Diana Ross.
