The way to do a pirate movie when you can't afford a ship!

Pirates of Blood River (1962)
Starring: Kerwin Mathews, Christopher Lee, Glenn Corbitt, Peter Arne, Michael Ripper, Andrew Keir, Marla Landi, and Oliver Reid
Director: John Gilling
Stars: Seven of Ten Stars

An outcast from an isolated religious settlement in the Caribbean (Mathews) is tricked by pirates into leading them to the community. While Captain LaRouche (Lee) and his chief henchmen (Arne and Ripper) lead a campaign of terror against the settlers, and the outcast tries to convince his father (Keir) to reveal where the secret treasure the pirates are after is hidden, his best friend (Corbitt) and sister (Landi) are planning a guerilla war against the invaders.

"Pirates of Blood River" is a unique film first and foremost because the budget was so small that there are no exterior scenes on board sailing ships, no ship-to-ship combat... none of the overt Age of Sail action that we expect from a movie with the word "Pirates" in the title. That's not to say that there isn't a pirate movie made where a significant portion doesn't take place on land, it's just that the lack of ocean is conspicuous in its absence here.

Instead, we have a film that has the feels like a precursor of the Spaghetti Western, with evil banditos laying siege to and menacing innocent farmers. The settlement is even protected by a palisade that looks a little bit like an old west fort.

These similarities, however, are overwhelmed by the iconic performances given by Christopher Lee, as the hardbitten pirate captain driven by a mysterious obsession that makes him want this particular treasure, no matter what the cost; fading matinee idol Kerwin Mathews, and up-and-coming leading man Glenn Corbitt as the square-jawed, purehearted thorns in his side; and Peter Arne and Michael Ripper as two of the vilest, villainous sidekicks you'll ever want to see get their just desserts.

In fact, Lee and Ripper both give exception performances in this film, with each given far more to do than they are usually called upon. Lee presents a character that keeps everyone and everything at arms length, a secretive man with the tales of what cost him his eye and his arm, and why he is fixated on the treasure possessed by the settlers, remaining secrets known only to him. Lee's every word, gesture, and action are but a hint at the depths within this character and this makes for fascinating viewing.

While not as fascinating and nowhere near as deep, Ripper provides a great and boisterous show as an obnoxious pirate, one of the few times where he got to do something other than a bit-part. This character is so much a love-to-hate figure that I wish even more strongly now that Ripper had received a greater selection of larger, meatier roles during his career; he was a great character actor who probably never got to show everything he was capable of.

In addition to some great performances, "Pirates of Blood River" features a fast-moving story that features so much shooting, fighting, and swashbuckling that you ultimately won't care that the closet thing we get to a ship in the film is a makeshift raft the pirates make to float down said Blood River. A trek through the swamp--where the beleaguered villagers turn the pirates from predators into prey--and the final showdown between heroes and villains are among some of the most satisfying sequences in any movie released by Hammer Films... and even any pirate movie you might see.

Take shore-leave with 'The Devil-Ship Pirates'

The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964)
Starring: Christopher Lee, John Cairney, Barry Warren, Andrew Keir, and Natasha Pyne
Director: Don Sharp
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

After his ship is heavily damaged during a failed invasion of England by the Spain in 1588, privateer captain Robeles (Lee) docks on the British coast and tricks the citizens of an isolated village into thinking England is now under Spanish domination. He races to complete repairs on his ship and plunder the village before the villagers discover the truth and send for outside help, but a Spanish military officer assigned to the ship disturbed by the captain's dishonorable conduct (Warren) and villagers intent on resisting their occupiers, soon find common ground in their desire to see the privateers defeated.

"The Devil-Ship Pirates" is the final of four swashbuckling, pirate-themed movies that Hammer Films produced in the 1960s, and the second one to star Christopher Lee as a brutal pirate captain oppressing peaceful villagers. The best of them is "Captain Cleeg", but this one has much to recommend it for fans of the pirate genre as well.

First of all, it spends more focused on matters of sailing than the other two films, even if much of that business revolves around getting a ship sea-worthy again. Second, it's centered around an utterly despicable villain that's given depth by the script and Lee's performance to make him unpredictable and heighten the suspense of the script, and a pair of unusual heroes for this sort of film--an honor-driven Spanish soldier and a crippled war veteran, played by Barry Warren and John Cairney respectively--which further lends unpredictability to the story as it unfolds. Warren's character must tread a very fine line as he turns against the pirate crew and starts to aid the villagers in rebellion, and the crippled Cairney has to battle fully healthy pirates in some of the film's more suspenseful moments. Finally, the film features great-looking costumes and sets, and is further elevated by one of the better scores of any Hammer Film I've watched.

While it may occasionally lapse into melodrama--it is a pirate movie after all--"The Devil-Ship Pirates" is a fun, fast-moving and suspenseful adventure film that's one of many of the nearly forgotten treasures to be created by Hammer Films during its heydays in the 1950s and 1960s.

'Terror of the Tongs': Yellow Peril ala Hammer

The Terror of the Tongs (aka "Terror of the Hatchet Men") (1961)
Starring: Geoffrey Toone, Christopher Lee, Roger Delgado, and Yvonne Monlaur
Director: Anthony Bushell
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

After his daughter is killed by vicious members of Hong Kong's Red Dragon Tong, Captain Sale (Toone) goes on a rampage intent on destroying his daughter's killer and entirety of the secretive crime syndicate.

"The Terror of the Tong" is a well-made example of an adventure fiction sub-genre that has fallen completely out of favor due to changing climates in geo-politics and cultural attitudes in the West: Yellow Peril Tales. In these stories, mysterious Asian crime figures held entire populations in their power through fear and supposedly mystical abilities... until some two-fisted, stiff-necked Anglo-American hero came along and put a stop to his nefarious ways. The genre was dying its last gasp when I was a kid--relegated mostly to awful Kung Fu movies and comic books where Nick Fury battled the Yellow Claw, Iron Man squared off against The Mandarin, and Shang Chi fought a dogged battle to bring down the criminal empire of his father, Fu Manchu, the most famous and respectable of all Yellow Peril villains.

The Yellow Peril tales grew out of the same impulses that gave birth to the gothic fiction genre--a British discomfort and perhaps even fear of outsiders and their alien culture, and was further fueled by straight-forward racism among Americans--although, frankly, aside from the WW2 years, many Yellow Peril tales actually put Westerners in as bad a light as their Oriental foes. This is especially true of the Fu Manchu tales.

That, however, is not the case with "The Terror of the Tongs". The Chinese gangsters in this picture are vicious psychopaths through-and-through, with no motivations beyond feeding their own sadism and hunger for loot and power. Although evil, Fu Manchu at least believed he was fighting the good fight to restore his people's honor and save them from the corrupting influences of the West.

A curious artifact of film industry standards long gone is the fact that most of the Asian characters in the film are played by Caucasian actors in heavy make-up. It was a long-standing tradition to have whites play these roles in Yellow Peril movies, something which seems a bit odd to many viewers today, and which has been mocked in more recent times with Peter Sellars and Nicolas Cage both taking comedic turns as Fu Manchu.

In this film, Christopher Lee plays Chung King, the head of the Red Dragon Tong. He does a great job sitting around looking sinister and spouting weird sayings and sending out opium- and sex-crazed killers to slay his enemies and terrorize city neighborhoods. Roger Delgado is similarly excellent as a Eurasian who serves as Lee's top lieutenant. Wisely, the director has neither of these actors put on fake accents, instead allowing them to speak the Queen's English perfectly and thus taking advantage of the full capacity of both actors to bombastically sinister.

Meanwhile, on the good side of the equation, we have are treated to some fine performances by Geoffrey Toone, the bullish sea captain who prove that the British stiff upper-lip can be backed up with a strong right hook, and Yvonne Monlaur, another Eurasian character for whom the brave captain opens horizons free from the servitude to the Tong her mixed blood had forced upon her.

None of these characters are exactly complex, but the actors give each of them their all and infuse them with the larger-than-life quality that this sort of story needs to work.

Director Anthony Bushell also tries his best to bring that sense of grandness to the film's sound-stage bound environment, with the Hong Kong docks and neighborhoods being represented by re-dressed standing sets left over from other Hammer productions. While he mostly fails at this, he does manage to draw some very sharp lines between the villains and heroes, and he also manages to work in some of the horror qualities that we've come to know and love from movies like "Curse of Frankenstein".

Unfortunately, that horror was blunted, and remains so to this very day; the DVD edition appears to have been made from a print of the film that has been butchered by censors. There are numerous time when fight scenes or other scenes of violence have been sloppily edited, to the point where even the music soundtrack seems to jerk. The worst example of this is the scene where Tong thugs invade the bedroom of Captain Sales' daughter; there seem to be at least two instances where the scene was too intense for censors, and their cuts have left the scene disjointed and a little confused. (The implication is that the Tong cut off three of the girl's fingers, as is their habit, but as it plays out, she is struggling one moment and completely unconscious a split-second later, with no apparent cause. And yet somehow her ring is dropped on the floor and stained with blood...)

Still, this is a fairly minor blemish, and it's more than made up for with the climax where the down-trodden citizens rise up against the Tong. And, as mentioned, Christopher Lee is quite good in the film. He would later go onto play the grandest of Oriental villains--Fu Manchu--but he is actually better here than he was in the Fu Manchu movies I've seen. (Of course, I've only seen a couple craptacular Harry Towers/Jess Franco ones, so maybe I'm not judging him fairly.)

For more examples of the Yellow Peril genre, click here to read film reviews at Shades of Grey.

Bond targeted for death by world's top assassin

The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)
Starring: Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, Herve Villechaize, Maud Adams, and Clifton James
Director: Guy Hamilton
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When British spy James Bond (Moore) learns someone has hired the world's most expensive assassin to kill him, he decides to take the fight to the shadowy killer. However, Bond soon discovers that Francisco Scaramanga (Lee), his midget partner in murder (Villechaize) and his exotic girlfriend Andrea Anders (Adams) actually have their sights set on a target more lucrative than even Britain's top Code-00 agent.


"The Man With the Golden Gun" is a beautfilly shot film that takes full advantage of the exotic China Sea islands, and in which Christopher Lee gives one of his career's best performances as the megalomaniacal assassin with a game room that matches both his ego and occupation. It's also got a pair of very beautiful women on prominant display in the film (Adams and Ekland), and it's got a story that's closer to being real-world in nature than any Bond since "From Russia With Love" (with the exception of certain elements). It's also got another fabulous score by John Barry.

However, the film is also strangely slow-moving and lethargic-feeling. I can't quite put my finger on why, but "Golden Gun" never seems to quite build up the steam that just about all the other James Bond films do. Even the awful Timothy Dalton entries had more fire in them. And with a great cast like this, and with the director that helmed "Live and Let Die", "Diamonds Are Forever" and the very best Bond movie "Goldfinger", this should have been a great entry in the series.

I suspect it might be a problem with the script. The sense of urgency and danger surrounding Bond's mission seems downplayed throughout the film, not really manifesting itself until the last 45 minutes or so, where in other Bond movies there interlocking mission arcs where each new one is more deadly and expansive than the one that went before.

Whatever the flaw here--and I really can't quite put my finger on it--this is a decent entry in the series, and it's worth seeing if you enjoyed "From Russia With Love". I think this is probably the other Bond movie in the series to which this "Golden Gun" can most closely be compared.

Sherlock Sunday: 'The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes'is the most overrated Holmes film?

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)
Starring: Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely, Geneviève Page and Christopher Lee
Director: Billy Wilder
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Holmes and Watson (Stephens and Blakely) endeavor to learn the identity of a woman suffering from amnesia (Page) after she is dropped off at their apartments at 221B Baker Street. They soon find themselves drawn into a mystery involving a missing Belgian engineer, Holmes' politically powerful brother Mycroft (Lee) and the Loch Ness Monster.


"The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" features an ill-implemented attempt at presenting a more vulnerable and human Holmes. During the film's first half hour, Holmes expresses discomfort at the way Watson's writings have turned him into a star and laments that he feels obligated to run around in a deer stalker hat and tweed cloak because that is how artists protrayed him in Strand magazine. Comments made by Watson in this early part of the film also seems to imply that he as exaggerated some of Holmes' exploits and characteristics.

However, as the film unfolds, this approach is dropped and it slips into a story-telling mold that was established with the Basil Rathbone-starring series from Universal Pictures during the 1940s, with Holmes abusing Watson at almost every turn yet still insisting that he's his friend. It's not the clever and unique approach that some reviewers paint it as.

Perhaps this is because they don't get past that first half hour. It was a description of that half hour from a friend whose taste I trust that made me move this film up in my review stack, because her description of Holmes starting a rumor that he and Watson were a committed gay couple sounded intriguing.

Sadly, like the idea of presenting a more human Holmes, the gay rumor angle ends up going nowhere in the picture as a whole. It's little more than an extended bit of sketch comedy within the picture, and as a story element perhaps one of the most aggregious examples of Holmes behaving like a jerk toward Watson for no reason whatsoever other than to let the viewer develope an intense dislike for Holmes and cause one to wonder why on earth Watson continues to consider him a friend.

This would have been a stronger film if that first half hour had been strongly edited, with the entire business involving a Russian ballerina and Holmes pretending that he and Watson were gay lovers had been dropped. It's material that has nothing to do with the rest of the story and it adds nothing positive to the overall portrayal of Holmes or Watson.

This would also have been a stronger film if a more suitable actor had been cast to play Holmes. I never thought I would see a more effeminate version of the character than the one portrayed by Christopher Plummer in "Murder by Degree", but Robert Stephens has proven me wrong. Plummer's Holmes comes across like more macho-than-macho when viewed in light of what Stephens did.

The rest of the cast, however, does a good job--and Stephens isn't bad once one gets used to the simpering, limp-wristeed interpretation of Holmes--although there does seem to be a tendency to overact. Both Page (and the mystery woman) and Blakely ham it up just a bit too much in some scenes. It's expected from Blakely, as his Watson is pure comic relief, but Page should have dialed back on the melodramatic stylings once or twice.

If you enjoy the general tone of the Basil Rathbone Holmes, I think you'll like this one, even if you'll often find yourself wondering how much better the film would have been if Holmes had been better cast. You'll like it even more if you enjoyed the humorous approach found in the Ronald Howard-starring television series. What you won't find, however, is the alleged genius of writer/director Billy Wilder. Overall, this is an average presentation of the Doyle's classic characters with some glimmers of what could have been a great film shining through here and there. If only Wilder had been a little more aggressive with his reinterperation instead of falling back onto familiar and safe territory that had been thoroughly explored during the 1940s and 1950s.





Trivia: Christopher Lee is, so far, the only actor to portray both Sherlock Holmes (in "The Deadly Necklace") and Mycroft Holmes (in "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes").

Sherlock Sunday: Peter Cushing takes his place among the great cinematic Holmses

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
Starring: Peter Cushing, Andre Morell, Christopher Lee and Marla Landi
Director: Terence Fisher
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Sherlock Holmes (Cushing) is retained to find the root of and bring to an end the curse that's been haunting the Baskervilles family for centuries before it claims the family's final male member, Sir Henry Baskervilles (Lee). With Dr. Watson (Morell) at this side, Holmes ventures onto the haunted moor to seperate fact from fiction and legend from the all-too-real killer who lurks there.


The Hammer Films adaptation of "The Hounds of the Baskervilles" is one of the best Sherlock Holmes movies ever made. Peter Cushing is excellent as Holmes (in his first of three appearances as the character, including one in another adaptation of "Hound of the Baskervilles" made as part of a BBC series), Morell is a fine Watson (and he is playing the part in a script that doesn't portray Watson as a bumbling idiot whose only reason for being around is for Holmes to made rude comments about) and the rest of the cast is likewise perfect in their various parts. Christopher Lee even takes a turn as a slightly heroic figure, playing a Henry Baskerville that is nothing like the character in the original novel but interesting and well played nonetheless.

This version may take some rather extreme liberties with the novel here and there--it is a Hammer Film from the late 1950s, so there MUST be a peasant girl with heaving busoms in a lowcut blouse--but Cushing and Morell should definately be near the top of any list of "Great Homes & Watsons of the Movies." It's a must-see for fans of any of the stars or anyone who loves a well-done Sherlock Holmes adaptation. Lovers of director Terence Fisher's other films for Hammer (such as the Frankenstein series) will also definately want to check this one out.

Sherlock Sunday: The Deadly Necklace

Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962)
Starring: Christopher Lee, Thorley Walters and Hans Söhnker
Director: Terence Fisher
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Sherlock Holmes (Lee) and his arch-nemisis Professor Moriarity (Söhnker) matching wits over an Egyptian necklace owned by Cleopatra, as it is stolen, recovered, and restolen.



This 1962 German film, with its two British stars and a British director, has surprisingly little to recommend it. The script is like a reject from the Universal Pictures series starring Basil Rathbone (with everything I don't like about the weaker efforts among those amplified ten-fold here, most notably Watson being portrayed as a bumbling, retarded simpleton), with an unbearably bad score.

It's amazing that a film with so much potential--Christopher Lee as Holmes and Terence Fisher directing... should be a sure winner!--could go so wrong. While Christopher Lee is absolutely right in his opinion that he and Thorley Walters more closely resemble the literary Holmes and Watson than any other on-screen pair, and there's no question that Lee gives a good performance as Holmes, there is very little else that works in this movie.

There are a couple of interesting moments between Holmes and Moriarity (who is played by the appropriately sinister German actor Hans Söhnker), but the downside is that they feel like they belong more in a hard-boiled, pulp fiction detective novel than a Holmes adventure.