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Reviews
Pirates (1986)
Not the best Pirates movie ever, but far from the worst!
In Pirates of the Caribbean, the franchise that is for me the best series of pirate movies ever, there is a running joke about Captain Jack Sparrow that he is either the worst pirate ever... or the greatest. And we get to see the full spectrum of both points of view as the series progresses. Sadly, in this movie, Captain Red is literally the worst pirate ever and we never do get to see him at his best. I first saw this movie when I was in my teens, and like so many of the films I saw during that formative time in my life it left an impression. I shall attempt to relate, in this review, that impression it left upon me. Prior to seeing this... this was the 80's mind... the only pirate movies I had seen were the old classics like Captain Blood, Treasure Island and the like. Movies I love to this day! I was expecting a modern take on those types of movies. That is NOT what Roman Polanski's Pirates is! What this movie is, is a deconstruction of those movies. It is the opposite of everything those movies were, and everything that today the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is. Forget about swashbuckling adventure on the high seas! In this movie, we begin with Captain Red and his fellow partner in crime Frog being apparently stuck at sea on a raft and on the verge of starvation. Thus begins my review, in earnest...
They've lost their ship and crew... and are in a dire situation. They get picked up by the Spanish, which is a bad thing for them given they are English pirates and as everyone who has ever studied pirate history knows... back in those days England and Spain were NOT exactly the best of buddies. To put it mildly! They get tossed into the brig, where they learn that there is an Aztec treasure on board the ship, a golden throne. It may as well have been a golden toilet, because right there... at that point... the good captain just becomes crazy obsessed with stealing it and his and Frog's lives are pretty much down the drain from there. It is not as if they were exactly starting things off on a high note here or anything, but this not so dynamic duo did themselves no favors by plotting to take that throne from the Spanish. The prisoners on that ship are put to work rather than kept in chains in perpetuity and the parallels between their situation with what happens next... and a genuine communist worker's revolution... were not lost on me given I got straight A grades in history class in school, and that my Global Perspectives class teacher throughout my high school years was a Marxist with a bit of a soft spot for showing us Russian propaganda movies and documentaries. He was also fond of quoting Karl Marx a lot IN CLASS and complaining about class systems in society and the like. But anyhow back to the Pirates review! The pirates stage a successful communist revolution... I mean, they took over the ship, yeah that's what I meant, honest... and like in most revolutions it gets pretty nasty at one point. How nasty? Like, kill the men and ravish the women kind of nasty. Except, we never see an epic fight for the ship... just a brief struggle and soon it's all over. Frog saves a hot Spanish girl (like, oh my goodness she was CRAZY HOT!!!) from being forced upon by his fellow pirates, but because he is stuck in the service of Captain Red... he never gets the girl and ends of just as much of a loser as his boss. But I am getting ahead of the story!
Before the end of the movie comes, things go downhill for the two pirates and Frog's smoking hot love interest. Captain Red gets the old double cross during a pirate party (as in, they literally throw a party at one point after the mutiny is over), and so the Spanish escape with the Aztec Throne. The movie follows the three main characters from there... Captain Red, Frog, and the lovely María-Dolores de la Jenya de la Calde who looks every bit as beautiful and fantastic and her name sounds. Seriously! She's played by the same actress who starred in The Golden Child opposite Eddie Murphy and yes, I thought she was hot in that too. The trio pursue the Spanish ship... Captain Red still obsessively after that throne... and they end up in Maracaibo which just happens to be the place where Dolores' father is in charge as the local governor. Most of the plot of the move takes place in Maracaibo. The pirates decide to torture the governor to get him to give up the throne, which he now apparently has. And how does Captain Red decide to torture the man? He tosses Dolores unto him and threatens to defile her if he doesn't give up the goods. He tells Frog to do the awful deed, which Frog does NOT do, and another pirate that is with them all too eagerly sets about to do it instead. It never happens though, because the governor agrees to the pirates' demands and they try to get away with the throne. They fail, epically, and get arrested by the Spanish AGAIN! At this point, you'd honestly think they'd start re-evaluating their life choices but no... they want that throne and by fair deeds or foul they aim to have it. Maria, who naturally was not arrested since to be fair she WAS technically only helping them unwillingly... and was twice almost violated by the pirates due to having the worst luck ever... she visits Frog in his cell, and we are made to believe that these two are going to end up together at the end. Flash forward... they don't end up together AT ALL! So, long story short (too late, I know) Captain Red's crew rescues him and Frog, and they head off in pursuit of the Aztec throne which is once more on board the same Spanish ship from the beginning of the movie whilst Dolores goes aboard said Spanish ship with the... I hate to call him villainous because he really is just doing his duty... Don Alfonso, who is now captain of the ship after the previous captain died. He has a grudge against the pirates, and he has every right to! Dolores was pretty much his intended, and this was his ship after all that the pirates keep on messing over left and right. They attack the ship, and stupidly Captain Red sinks his own ship on purpose as part of some crazy strategy or another that likely only made sense to him... and at the climax of all this excitement Frog duels Don Alfonso over Dolores. What happens next? Disaster. Captain Red is having a devil of a time making off with the golden throne in the midst of all this, so instead of killing his rival and claiming the girl like any other Errol Flynn swashbuckler wannabe would... Frog decides to say the heck with it and goes off to help Captain Red steal that stupid throne. They get it on a small boat and take off, leaving Dolores with her original intended, Don Alfonso, which breaks her heart since she was in love with Frog (Why, Dolores? He is such a loser! Ah well, no accounting for taste.) and all while the other pirates of Captain Red's crew are in the midst of their battle. Nobody wins, either. The Spanish ship is lost and Dolores, Don Alfonso and the others helping them are forced to flee on another small boat whilst Captain Red and Frog take off with the throne on theirs. Frog insults Alfonso as they make their escape, the good Don tries to shoot him, which doesn't work, and the movie ends with Captain Red and Frog being lost at sea once again only this time with that stupid golden throne with them. That is how this movie ends! My biggest memories of it include such gems as Captain Red peeing in some guy's bathtub during one scene (while the guy is IN the tub), Red and Frog being forced to eat a dead rat at one point, and the lurid fact that it seemed to me that Dolores was threatened with sexual violence way too casually in this story, even by pirate story standards. It is not the best movie based on the golden age of piracy, by any stretch, but as bad and awful as it could be at its' worst it was still not the worst I've ever seen. I'd rate it four stars, no more and no less. It's just okay, but the stupidity of the two main characters, the lousy ending, and the overall bizarre tone that flitted from tongue in cheek at one point to grimdark the next with neither being explored properly or well, all of that just really bogged it down and kept it from being a good movie in my opinion. It's only okay, but never good and certainly not great. Pirates of the Caribbean does the comedy better, and the TV series Black Sails was WAY better at the grimdark realism. Watch Roman Polanski's Pirates ONLY if you understand that it is a deconstruction of the Pirate movie genre rather than a serious sort of entry in said genre, and its' shortcomings will not disappoint you nearly as much. Though to be honest, when I first saw it, I felt more than a bit disappointed by it indeed, given what I was expecting.
El tesoro de las cuatro coronas (1983)
We used this movie as a punishment when I was a teenager!
Bet that title caught your eye! So, when I was a teenager, back in the 80's, my mother decided to rent this movie from the video store. She had probably THE worst luck ever when it came to picking out movies! She would read the back of the VHS boxes and if it sounded good then she'd rent it. I sat through more awful movies back then than probably at any other point in my life, but Treasure of the Four Crowns HAS to be the most memorable of all the terrible movies that my mother had the ill fortune of having rented. Needless to say, after a good while my mother started telling ME to pick out the movies instead, since I actually had good luck when it came to that kind of thing. For instance, I picked out Conan the Barbarian, Highlander, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Beastmaster and other awesome movies! And we would have a great time watching those. If Treasure of the Four Crowns is memorable to me today, it is for all the wrong reasons. It was, without a doubt, one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my entire life. Given I will be fifty this coming March, I've seen a LOT of movies in my lifetime too. Here begins my honest review of this movie, if one can all it a movie at all. At any rate...
It stars a man named Tony Anthony and boy did we have fun making fun of THAT back in the day given it's just basically the same name twice. It's like someone being named Steve Stephens, it just begs to be made fun of! Tony plays what can be best summed up as a sort of poor man's Indiana Jones. Pretty much everything that is cool about Indy... this guy is lacking ALL of that. He looks like someone's dad... if their dad was a deadbeat who skipped out in order to search for treasure in weird places. Which is where this movie begins! He is in what I swear must have been someone's basement made to appear like a castle dungeon or something, looking for treasure. He ends up encountering "walking" skeletons who are just being pulled about on strings, like pretty much anything else animate in this movie except for the people. Now THAT would have made things better! Pulling Tony's character about on strings for our entertainment. Sadly, this movie never gets that fun. He ends up diving out of the place, and the next thing we know we're in some guy's office who is telling him the legend of the Four Crowns and why they must never fall into the hands of evildoers. Sounds cool, doesn't it? Not the boring way this guy explains it! Also... the fourth crown was destroyed when some morons tried to open it way, way back in history. But we are meant to assume even three crowns are dangerous! So, our heroes, such as they are, have one of them... they open it, and all is cool. Stuff gets thrown around, on strings of course, and it's supposed to be creepy but totally isn't. The last two crowns are being held by a religious cult leader who is into the occult, and Tony is called upon to steal them back from him. He assembles a team of incompetent fools that are like the idiot's version of the Suicide Squad. Which includes, of all things, a retired clown with a heart condition and his hot daughter who (of course!) is an acrobat. What else would a movie circus do with a hot looking woman? Never mind what I would do with her! But I digress... the Circus Squad decides to infiltrate the bad guy's castle and there we learn he is actually a charlatan faith healer who seems to have zero interest in actually using the crowns for anything. I kid you not! They could have left him with the crowns and the world would be safe... he rants like a madman, but Brother Evil really just likes to put on silly faith healing routines for kicks. One can only assume, he only founded a cult to get chicks, and the exchange between him and a phony "possessed" woman shows he's a total con artist. The clown has a heart attack, as anyone with a brain could see coming, and the rest of the Circus Squad bites the dust pretty hard and pretty fast. I cheered at their deaths! Am I evil? Yes, but that is totally beside the point. Tony and the hot babe survive, of course, and Tony gets the last two crowns and decides to go nuts with them and kill every living thing in sight. He turns into what I can only describe as low budget Two Face from Batman crossed with Linda Blair's character from the Exorcist when get got possessed. Somehow, this sounds cooler than it actually looks! It's dorky, just like Tony's entire performance in this movie. I blame the writers, if they even had writers as such! I swear, this movie's script had to have been written by political prisoners held at gunpoint and told to come up with something on the fly... it's that insane and wacky. Like someone was just making all this up as they went along. So, Two Face demonic Tony suddenly has flamethrowers up his sleeves, and he uses them to blast the cultists into running away because they were too cheap to film their gruesome deaths... but they DID film the cult leader's death and it is silly. They appear to have just taken a max mockup of his face with a fake looking skull under it and melted it with ketchup squirting out of it here and there. With fire behind it, to make us think that his face is being melted by the flames Tony is shooting like some crazy arsonist from heck. The cult leader's bones fall to the floor, and Tony has to stop himself from killing the hot babe because yeah... he's possessed... and the cavalry comes to save the day and presumably arrest the remaining cultists whose only crime as far as I can see is that they were running a fake faith healing act. Good one Tony! All for two crowns that the bad guys had no use for. Tony gets the girl, and we hear the cult leader's voice as we get a dumb closeup on his skeleton. Next thing we know, we see a swamp and a... thing... rises up out of it, and out of the thing pops a snake head. Weirdest sequel tease ever! Zero context, zero explanation, and zero point. In my head canon I like to think the snake was the Devil who was just mad because he couldn't possess Tony and drive him to become the world's ugliest arsonist. And... that's the movie!
One of my cousins did not believe us when my mother and I told her how bad this movie was... so my grandmother had her watch it. After that, my grandmother said that if any of the kids in the family did not behave... they'd be forced to watch Treasure of the Four Crowns as punishment. Forget about spankings or being sent to your room... or being grounded for a week... THIS is truly an inhuman punishment! They could easily use this movie as a form of torture in Gitmo, that is how bad it truly, and most definitely, is. Well, that and the theme from Barney the purple dinosaur. If that combination doesn't get someone to crack, then nothing will! Wanna know the sad part? I HAVE seen worse movies than Treasure of the Four Crowns... but for the sake of human sanity, I will refrain from mentioning them here. Ta for now!