Crimson Pirate, The (DVD)

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The guy with perhaps the best lines, though, is Torin Thatcher as Humble Bellows, Vallo's first mate. He gets to say things like, "We can't leave a pretty woman unmolested aboard ship. T'would give piracy a bad name." And "No man can fly pirate's colors who's not willing to sell his friend, his sweetheart, or his mother." Wonderful stuff, and quite a bit more colorful than Lancaster's "Go get 'em!" and "Do 'em the dirty!"

The rest of the pirate crew are appropriately attired in eye patches, hooks, peg legs, seven-league boots, feathers in caps, and sashes at waists, all the while singing proper old sea chanties like "Yo Ho and Up She Rises." They're a motley, scurvy crew, to be sure.

The plot is irrelevant but has to do with Vallo and his company of rogues helping Consuelo and her father in their mutiny against the Crown; and the story deals in crosses, double crosses, and triple crosses. There are fights galore, some with flame throwers and tanks, of all things, and the scenery, much of it filmed on location on the resort island of Ischia near Naples, is gorgeous. "The Crimson Pirate" is a delight to one's eye as well as to one's sense of romance and adventure.

Video:
The movie was made in 1952, just prior to the popularization of CinemaScope and Cinerama, so the screen size is a standard Academy ratio of 1.37:1, neatly filling a full-frame television. The movie's Technicolor shows up well in most scenes, if a little on the subdued, faded side on occasion. A nice digital touch-up would have done it some favors, but it's still fairly clean and free of transfer grain or other artifacts. In any case, when the colors are good, they are radiant.

Audio:
Not much to report on here. The sound is a straightforward monaural, reproduced through Dolby Digital processing so it's clear and easy to listen to. If played loudly, there is a small degree of background noise discernable, but at normal levels it's unobtrusive. The mono sound does its job rendering dialogue intelligible and reproducing William Alwyn's alternately heroic, mock heroic, and comic musical score. Needless to say, the audio's frequency and dynamic ranges are somewhat limited by today's standards, but they suffice.

Extras:
As one of a series of older catalogue items from Warner Brothers, "The Crimson Pirate" is not decked out with extras. It's a bare-bones affair. The only things we get are a cast and crew listing, a few background notes on the circus act of Lang and Cravat (Lancaster and Cravat in their pre-movie days), and twenty-six scene selections. English is the only spoken language offered, but there are English, French, and Spanish subtitles.

Parting Thoughts:
Pirate movies have not fared well in the past few decades, with Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" one of the few exceptions. Films like "Cutthroat Island," "Treasure Planet," and "Swashbuckler" found little sympathy at the box office. So, it's good to see an old-fashioned pirate movie that succeeds, that did well in its day and that has achieved a place for itself as a minor cult classic. "The Crimson Pirate" is well worth a few pieces o' eight.

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