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.

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.