THE CRIMSON PIRATE

Convoluted as it is, The Crimson Pirate is so much fun that its few residual moments of drama are either muted or, at least in one instance, out of place. It’s a grand swashbuckler, funny, lively, and with quite a bit of the Looney Tunes spirit.

            The plot is a classical pirate adventure about double-crossings and treacheries on the high seas along with some rattling of British troops on the islands. Indeed, colonial governments, especially the English if only because the British Empire was one of the most expansive, have long been one of Hollywood’s approved targets for ridicule and abuse after Nazis and, in recent years, bankers.

            Seen today, the influence The Crimson Pirate had on Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride is obvious (especially in the caricatured expressions on the buccaneers) and, by extension, on the film franchise based off of the ride. While The Crimson Pirate didn’t quite do for Burt Lancaster what the Pirates movies did for Johnny Depp, Lancaster’s Captain Vallo is one of his funnest performances, making good use of his acrobatic talent.

            Vallo is not one to make apologies for being anything other than a late 18^th century cutthroat; making a living by seizing and raiding navy ships in the Caribbean. Neither is he above double-crossing and he soon makes a deal with the King’s Navy to turn in rebels in the Island of Cobra in exchange for the bounty…after he is allowed to sell the rebels ammunition. Nonetheless, he honors the code of a proper pirate and never betrays his own crew.

            As the movie opens, however, Vallo is out for revenge. The commanders of the English ship he attacks were responsible for the execution of several of Vallo’s men. But, in the end, they do spare Baron Gruda (Leslie Bradley) in order to cut him a deal. Once in the Island of Cobra, he will clue Gruda in on the whereabouts of a wanted rebellion leader, El Libre (Frederick Leister), in exchange for the price on El Libre’s head. But Vallo must make it to the island first to do his own business with the revolutionary.

            And so goes this tale of men with no scruples or principles, back and forth helping first the rebellion’s army and then the king’s soldiers. In turn, Vallo is then betrayed by his own crew, but then get’s a pledge of loyalty form the very scurvy sea dog the led a revolt against him. The ultimate complication is the introduction of Consuelo (Eva Bartok), who turns out to be El Libre’s daughter and the one soft spot in Captain Vallo’s heart.

            Oh, but what joyful hokum lies within this tangled script. The plum in the middle of all this is a chase through a local village, smartly filmed like a live-action cartoon. The guards pursue Vallo and his henchman Ojo (Nick Cravat)  in and out of the markets and bazaars, the agile sea farers bouncing from wall to wall, dangling around poles, and popping up in windows, fruit barrels, and poultry carts, not unlike Screwy Squirrel evading a dimwitted dog. The soundtrack acknowledges this, accenting the action with the “boings” sounds of Warner’s classic cartoons.

            Elsewhere, the action owes more to vintage slapstick, especially so in the instance when guards chase the pirates in circles around a building, the pirates outrunning them by so much that they end up in back of their pursuers.  The gag is as old as Chaplin, who mastered it in The Circus, but remains funny when played with the derision granted in The Crimson Pirate. The confusion of the soldiers during march is also a classic piece from the repertoire of many great comedians. Laurel & Hardy used it first in their silent short With Love and Hisses, repeating it in Pack Up Your Troubles, and then again in Bonnie Scotland. The Three Stooges gave their own take on it in Boobs in Arms and Abbott & Costello took it to Buck Privates.

            Some of the best gags meld the best of both animation and live-action slapstick, a bond that existed from practically the beginning of both realms. This is exemplified in an odd, but strangely endearing gag involving a lookout guard watching over a fort as it is bombarded by battling ships. When the fire ceases and the smoke clears, all that is left is a crumbled stone building and the poor guard, still standing at his post, his uniform torn to shreds, and his face covered in powder. A variation of the gag is used when a scientist friend of the rebel leader (James Hayter) develops a formula for an explosive only to have it explode in his face, charring his features and puffing his hair.

            Lancaster handles the role with great aplomb, flexible and spirited enough to perform his own stunts. But the comic punctuation belongs to Nick Cravat as Ojo, Vallo’s mute sidekick. Cravat had worked with Lancaster since his days under the big-top and followed him to the movies where they appeared in nine titles together. With The Crimson Pirate, their most popular joint venture, they inspired not only Disney’s ride but also Zorro, Disney’s television series, which featured Bernardo, also a mute sidekick, played by Gene Sheldon with the same sense of mischief and loyalty as Cravat’s Ojo.

            Amidst these moments of comic thrills is an unfittingly harrowing scene in which a freedom fighter is flogged and ultimately killed. It feels like a moment from a different movie, arbitrarily intercepted and it sticks out like a sore thumb in the context of the comical sequence that encompasses it (Lancaster, Cravat, and Hayter, dodge the guards by running around town with a rowboat over their heads and then dressing up as damsels). This was likely an overlooked remnant of what was once conceived of as a dramatic adventure at sea, scrapped and reinvented as a thoroughly entertaining comedy.