Pirate films of the ’80s and ’90s
The runaway success of Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) put to bed a long-standing Hollywood belief that pirate movies were box-office poison. Of course the ’80s and ’90s had a lot of failed pirate movies to back that belief up. Here’s a quick rundown of what pirate cinema looked like from 1982-1996:
• Yellowbeard (1983) — this much-hated comedy is notable for its once-in-a-lifetime cast (John Cleese Peter Cook Cheech and Chong Madeline Kahn James Mason and so on forever) and for featuring the final film roles of both Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman. Unfortunately with so much talent on camera the film quickly becomes a patchwork of sometimes-conflicting comic styles and the quality of the gags can be quite inconsistent. There are too many rape jokes. Martin Hewitt comes off as a trifle bland as the young lead (especially compared to Chapman’s grotesque performance as the lad’s anti-hero pirate father) and the third act loses momentum fast. Still there are some funny gags here and the awkwardly inconsistent tone keeps things unpredictable.
• The Pirates of Penzance (1983) — this marvelous adaptation of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera bombed at the box office despite the fact that almost everybody who saw it liked it. One problem was timing; another version of the story ( The Pirate Movie ; see below) had just hit theatres the year before drawing decent-sized audiences but sucking enough to keep people from wanting to see something similar. A bigger problem was that the film was simultaneously released to theatres and to Pay TV leading to a crippling cinema boycott.
All of the cast (apart from Angela Lansbury as Ruth) had just come off a successful and long-running Broadway production of the show and their comfort with the material (and one another) makes things work nicely. Kevin Kline makes a particularly strong impression as the roguish Pirate King.
• The Pirate Movie (1982) — an oddball hybrid of a movie that’s half Pirates of Penzance and half idiocy. The idiocy is actually kind of appealing if you’re young enough (as I certainly was when it came out) but when I remember some of this nonsense today I cringe. Songs from the original Gilbert and Sullivan operetta rub shoulders with new pop/disco songs including the embarrassing fellatio-metaphor “Pumpin’ and Blowin’” which won the Razzie award for Worst Original Song of 1982. There’s also a climactic battle in which cops and pirates fling pizza at one another.
• Pirates (1986) — Roman Polanski hit several snags while trying to get this project off the ground not least of which was his arrest for statutory rape. The final film wound up costing a record-setting $40 million while earning a meagre (and equally record-setting) $1.65 million. Walter Matthau plays irascible peg-legged pirate “Captain Red” and the film begins and ends with him adrift on a raft in the high seas. One of the weirdest decisions was the construction of “The Neptune” a full-scale galleon built for the film. Yep they actually built a pirate ship. Not that you could tell because Polanski then skimped on showing the entire boat and just filmed scenes on its deck — he could just have easily done a lot of these scenes on a studio set.
• Cutthroat Island (1995) — here it is; the movie that bankrupted Carolco. It isn’t really as bad as you might have heard. The elements of a rollicking pirate yarn are all here: the feisty heroine the heartless villain the swords the cannons the kegs of fizzing gunpowder. It’s just that the end result is kind of forgettable. What isn’t so forgettable is the fact that this baby lost about $82 million. Ouch!
• Hook (1991) — expensive star-studded and dull. Peter Pan (Robin Williams) is grown up Tinkerbell (Julia Roberts) is completely pointless and this movie has about six endings in a row.
• Muppet Treasure Island (1996) — now this is more like it. There’s something about Tim Curry as Long John Silver with a lobster named “Polly” on his shoulder that just gives you hope for the entire pirate genre. Throw in Kermit Miss Piggy and the “Cabin Fever” song and my day is made.
• The Ice Pirates (1984) — reviled when it first came out this sci-fi comedy has built up a cult following of loyal viewers who site it as a guilty pleasure myself included. In the distant future water has become so valuable that interstellar shipments of the stuff invariably get stolen by space pirates. Robert Urich plays one such buccaneer given to lots of cocky banter as his human and robotic crew board space vessels for epic sword fights. (Sure they have lasers but swords don’t pierce spaceship hulls.) The story might hit every single science fiction cliché in existence but it does so on purpose and with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. There’s a robot pimp a petty tyrant who keeps on talking after losing his head a giant skull-adorned dune buggy a slimy monster called a “space herpy” and a climactic sword battle in a “time warp” where everybody ages 60 years while the camera keeps flipping back and forth between normal speed and Benny Hill speed. Don’t miss it.
