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Ahoy, matey: Check out these pirate movies... or prepare to walk the plank!
By Kathleen Murphy
Special to MSN Movies
What makes pirate yarns so seductive is the lure of escaping all the rules and scruples that tie us land-lubbers down. Run away to sea and -- unfettered by family, law, country, even the strictures of gender and color -- the possibilities, like the oceans, are boundless.
Sure, a real pirate's life was short and brutal, far from Technicolor romance and adventure. But movies deliver dreams, not facts. What could be more glamorous than sea-dogging around Caribbean dives and sailing the Spanish Main until a fat galleon full of King Philip's treasure hove into view, just begging for broadsides and grappling hooks? What high could compare to the adrenalin buzz of hand-to-hand battle with cutlass and flintlock, while leaping effortlessly from poop deck to mizzenmast!
And once the galleon's scuttled and the blood's swabbed off the deck, it's "Party, me hearties," with proud captains to prod into plank-walking, lovely ladies to ravish, lace and velvet and fine linen for buccaneer dandies to don, and flasks of rum-fustian to swig in mass quantities. Later, there'll be time to deposit booty in the Pirates' Savings and Loan -- a chest festooned with dead men, buried and sometimes forgotten, on some remote tropic isle.
More often than not, some lady fair, generally a spitfire and a princess, will shiver the pirate captain's timbers and he'll give up his wicked, wicked ways to drop anchor in safe harbor, putting his wild days as Terror of the Caribbean behind him.
Happily, no lady fair is likely to put an end to the wicked ways of Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, hippie-mutant spawn of Keith Richards and Pepe le Pew. As "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men's Chest" sails our way, we've shanghaied some of Sparrow's blood-kin, a crew of flamboyant seadogs variously destined for hempen halter or hero's welcome in homeport.
10. "The Black Swan" (1942)
Tyrone Power aims to out-swashbuckle Errol Flynn, but, lacking the latter's wit, grace and
charm, he compensates by dressing up in costumes so campy they might earn
membership in the Village People: "Jamie Boy" goes a-wooing in a black
caballero's hat, with red knit balls dangling around its rim; gold chains; silky
black shirt and tight pants, scarlet sash and red-lined cape. Not surprisingly,
a fellow pirate, learning of Jamie's crush, wonders, "Can that be the reason
you've been so gay lately?" The usually feisty Maureen O'Hara looks as though she's lapsed into a
coma when Powers' buccaneer flirts with such faux-macho lines as "In Tortuga,
when a woman slaps a man's face, it means she wants him to grab her, overpower
her and smother her with kisses. I understand a gentleman must refuse such
overtures in Jamaica." Powers' arch-enemy is the usually civilized George
Sanders, here playing barbarian Billy Leech, unrecognizable under a huge thicket
of red hair and beard.
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