The BQ can't fault their daydreams.....we love pirate movies for the same reasons as the moguls.....pirate capers offer everything that makes people fall in love with movies.....action, spectacle, romance, and joyfully impossible derring-do....(and to quote a Danny Kaye song, ..villains who end up at the angle herring do...)
Here's the problem: Pirate movies, by their very nature, are not cheap to make. Costumes. Big ass 18th century boats. Ocean battles. Ocean stuff altogether.....(think that's easy? Ask Steven Speilberg and any other director who filmed movies on the water...) Stunts, dozens of sword-swinging extras, cannon blasts, yada , yada......
A huge risk.....and the potential for a massive belly flop. Ten years after this film, Roman Polanski, of all people, tried one;;;;"Pirates" with Walter Matthau. Glub glub to the bottom of the sea. Nine years after that one, director Renny Harlin and then wife Geena David set sail with "Cutthroat Island"......sinking so deep that they'd need the submersibles that cruised around the Titanic to find it....not until 2003 did the unlikely combination of the Disney studios and Johnny Depp finally hit the audience sweet spot with 'Pirates Of The Carribbean".
Back in the mid 70's, yo ho hope sprung eternal for Universal as they launched "Swashbuckler"....a practically encyclopedic compendium of every known pirate movie trope in cinema history.......a dashing pirate (Robert Shaw, fresh from his 'Jaws' triumph), a feisty heroine (Geniveve Bujold, glumly fulfilling her last contractual obligation to Universal) and a sneering, sadistic tyrant (the strangely miscast comic actor Peter Boyle, hamming it up like he's in a 'Saturday Night Live' skit )
Also along the ride: Beau Bridges, almost bursting a blood vessel overplaying the bumbling military foil named, we kid you not, Major Folly......James Earl Jones having a fine old time as Shaw's second in command, and the late great Geoffrey Holder, mainly there to break into his trademark, booming laughter, which was all about the bass, no treble.....
Entertaining? With this cast, backed up with Universal's big bucks and its army of technicians, how could it not be. Swordfights, chases, romantic sparks.....and one truly eye popping stunt in which three daring stunt performers and a wagon full of bananas go flying off a cliff into the sea....
Best of all, the film featured a richly conceived, rousing music score by John Addison, brimming with multiple, memorable themes for all of film's duels and chases. More than any contributor to this film, Addison struggled to lift the movie over and above its generic, corporate atmosphere.
And there's where the movie fell down...(for us, anyway).....despite all its strenuous attempts to entertain, "Swashbuckler" remains an artless, company product, completely devoid of any creative vision or movie-making finesse. It has the look and feel of a studio guided tour of an ambitious theme park....Pirate-Land. Bloodless, juiceless, lacking any genuine filmmaking passion.
You finally get a climactic, lengthy fencing duel between Shaw and Boyle.....but it's routinely filmed and staged with all the 'let's-get-over-with' style of an old made-for-TV film. Directed by Universal company journeyman, James Goldstone, the movie hits all its required points.....but with the exception of Addison's score, with no real enthusiasm.....
Having gotten all that off our chest, we still like to revisit "Swashbuckler" from time to time....sure, it's a Universal theme park movie.......but who doesn't love a theme park visit every so often? So we'll yell "Arrrrgggh" and swashbuckle 3 stars (***)......a nice pirate ride we don't have to wait in line for.....and we could listen to that Addison music forever.....
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