The pirate of color

My latest DVR watch is the swashbuckling movie The Crimson Pirate.

Burt Lancaster plays the titular pirate, an 18th century man named Vallo who captains a crew together with first-mate Humble Bellows (Torin Thatcher) and best friend Ojo (Nick Cravat) in the Caribbean. The come across a British ship, and capture it, finding out that it carries the Baron Gruda (Leslie Bradley). Gruda is one his way to the islands because one of them, Cobra, has a rebellious uprising.

With this in mind, Vallo comes up with a brilliant scheme. He'll take the guns off the British ship and sell them to the leader of those rebels on Cobra. But then the plan is to double-cross the rebels on top of that, revealing their location to Gruda. Audacious, and unsurprisingly, Humble isn't so sanguine about it.

He's right, at least to a point. Vallo and Ojo go ashore on Cobra, looking for the rebel leader El Libre. They find some rebels, led more or less by Consuelo (Eva Bartok), but they don't find El Libre. That's because he's already imprisoned on another island. Meanwhile, Vallo finds himself falling in love with Consuelo, which is going to be a problem, and why Humble was partly right not to trust Vallo completely.

However, what Humble should have taken into consideration is thta Gruda and the colonial governor weren't about to let Vallo get away with his original plan; Gruda's idea was to capture the rebels, get the guns back, and arrest all the pirates. Further complicating matters is that Vallo learns Consuelo is El Libre's daughter, drawing him closer to the rebels and to a showdown with his fellow pirates who didn't necessarily want him undertaking this plan in the first place.

The Crimson Pirate is one of those movies that you probably shouldn't watch too seriously paying attention to the plot. The movie is a romp that has the plot secondary, starting with Lancaster's ridiculous blond hairdo. He and Cravat, who in real life had been a partner in Lancaster's trapeze act in Lancaster's pre-Hollywood days, do some highly acrobatic stunts. Too acrobatic, in my opinion, as the choreography comes across as too sterile. Other people will probably highly enjoy the set pieces, however.

So while I found there certainly to be some flaws with The Crimson Pirate, for the most part it works as energetic entertainment for young and old alike. You can watch whenever you want as the movie is on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive.