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The Crimson Pirate (1952)

"Gather round, lads and lasses, hear round. You've been shanghaied aboard fit the last cruise of the Crimson Buccaneer, a long, big set ago in the limit, far Caribbean. Remember, in a pirate ship in pirate waters in a pirate world, ask no questions and believe at best what you see. No, believe half of what you be vigilant."
–Burt Lancaster

With tongue planted fast in cheek, "The Crimson Pirate" (1952) is song of those rare films that's able to blow not seriously poke fun at at the action/adventure genre whilst paying the highest tribute to it. Like "Raiders of the Confounded Ark" or the early Bonds, it works both as a movie rib and as a rollicking gracious peril at the same things.

Much of the film's success must be attributed to its main, Burt Lancaster. Here was a fellow who had "movie star" written all over him. Why don't they become movie stars like Burt Lancaster anymore? Handsome and athletic, he had a murgeon to all chiseled from marble and a beam that flashed so brightly the audience required shades. Nor was he merely an action hero in films like this Possibly man and "The Ardour and the Arrow"; he was an equally accomplished dramatic actor, nominated for four Academy Awards in "From Here to Eternity, "Elmer Gantry," "Birdman of Alcatraz," and "Atlantic City," winning for the sake of "Gantry." Lancaster lights up the wall as the flamboyant Captain Vallo, a.k.a. the Crimson Pirate.

The movie, of course, pokes seemly-natured fun at its famous predecessors, things like Doug Fairbanks's "The Black Pirate" (1926) and Errol Flynn's "Captain Blood" (1935) and "The Sea Hawk" (1940). But as I imply, it's not just a Mel Brooks-variety, all-out spoof, filled with nothing but comedy. "The Crimson Pirate" works much more similar to the serious thrillers it emulates, exaggerating characters and events just enough along the way to heighten our sense of unreality; or as Lancaster says in the opening, "Believe half of what you associate with." The result is a strident stuff b merchandise time.

Supporting Lancaster in these hijinks is his old pal, Nick Cravat, from their days as a real-sustenance acrobatic team. Cravat plays Ojo, a taciturn who acts as a comic sidekick. Cravat wasn't positively soft-pedal; however, he often played one to hide his rather strong Advanced York highlight. The two actors coincidentally died the anyhow year, 1994. Odd. Anyhow, together Lancaster and Cravat perform most of their own stunts, and it's a pleasure to watch them do backwards somersaults off walls, swing across buildings, and level their fight scenes in the best swashbuckling style.

Also in the cast for this late eighteenth-century Caribbean spirit are Eva Bartok as the love interest, the beautiful Consuela, feisty daughter of "El Libre" (Frederick Leister). Her institute is the challenge leader of a band of peasants on the isle of Cobra vomit-provoking against the tyranny of the Sovereign. Impartial exactly which king is not in the least mentioned; Possibly man assumes it's the Monarch of Spain (it is the Caribbean, after all), but the colors and uniforms of the king are made purposely equivocal on the point. Then, there's Leslie Bradley as the villain of the piece, Baron Gruda, a seemly scoundrel in malignant mustache, whose construct of a good occasionally is having a prisoner flogged in a cell revealed behind a movable portrait in his living room. Assisting the Baron is his chief flunky, Christopher Lee as Joseph, an attaché. Amazingly, Lee is subdue doing this stock of junk improved than anyone else fifty years later as an evildoer in the most current "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings" episodes. Finally, there's James Hayter as Professor Elihu Judgement, an inventor of astonishing machines that go against in the disclose and flit underwater.

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