What a hoot!
The plot is simple: Douglas Fairbanks, the sole survivor of a pirate raid, undertakes a mysteriously over-complicated scheme for revenge. (He is avenging his father's death, although his father did not in fact die at the pirates' hands; rather he weakened and died after the pair swam off to safety on a nearby island.) Our hero wins over the fickle pirate crowd for the nonce by killing their captain in a duel and then taking a merchant ship single-handedly. Hijinks ensue. There is, naturally, a damsel in distress, who at the end is eventually thrilled and relieved to learn that her rescuer is a Duke.
There is a great sequence at the end where Douglas Fairbanks and a team of good guys deliberately scuttle their boat and swim underwater to take the pirates by surprise and totally unawares. They look like a team of Navy SEALs ... although this was long before the SEALs were a twinkle in any U.S. President's eye. (The Amphibious Scout and Raider School was not established until a good 15 years after the film, and the SEALs as we know them today were formally created in 1962.) It also feels like an early ancestor of the typical James Bond underwater sequence (you know how every James Bond movie features a scuba scene), albeit with the proportions slightly off since they're all good guys.
The on-board fight choreography between the proto-SEALs and the pirates is hilarious - gangs of good guys literally jumping on top of gangs of bad guys.
Of course, throughout the film, there was plenty of over-the-top acting, but also surprisingly good special effects -- although these particular pirates, though brutal, were apparently not prone to blood-letting. All good fun, and great to watch with friends. I might try watching with a modern movie soundtrack playing in the background. Maybe one of the Lord of the Rings movie soundtracks? Or Stealing Beauty, perhaps - that would be truly surreal.
The plot is simple: Douglas Fairbanks, the sole survivor of a pirate raid, undertakes a mysteriously over-complicated scheme for revenge. (He is avenging his father's death, although his father did not in fact die at the pirates' hands; rather he weakened and died after the pair swam off to safety on a nearby island.) Our hero wins over the fickle pirate crowd for the nonce by killing their captain in a duel and then taking a merchant ship single-handedly. Hijinks ensue. There is, naturally, a damsel in distress, who at the end is eventually thrilled and relieved to learn that her rescuer is a Duke.
There is a great sequence at the end where Douglas Fairbanks and a team of good guys deliberately scuttle their boat and swim underwater to take the pirates by surprise and totally unawares. They look like a team of Navy SEALs ... although this was long before the SEALs were a twinkle in any U.S. President's eye. (The Amphibious Scout and Raider School was not established until a good 15 years after the film, and the SEALs as we know them today were formally created in 1962.) It also feels like an early ancestor of the typical James Bond underwater sequence (you know how every James Bond movie features a scuba scene), albeit with the proportions slightly off since they're all good guys.
The on-board fight choreography between the proto-SEALs and the pirates is hilarious - gangs of good guys literally jumping on top of gangs of bad guys.
Of course, throughout the film, there was plenty of over-the-top acting, but also surprisingly good special effects -- although these particular pirates, though brutal, were apparently not prone to blood-letting. All good fun, and great to watch with friends. I might try watching with a modern movie soundtrack playing in the background. Maybe one of the Lord of the Rings movie soundtracks? Or Stealing Beauty, perhaps - that would be truly surreal.
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