Land-bound pirate movie is one of Hammer's best

Night Creatures(aka Captain Clegg)(1964)
Starring: Peter Cushing, Patrick Allen, Michael Ripper, Oliver Reed, and Yvonne Romain
Director: Peter Graham Scott
Rating: Ten of Ten Stars

Captain Collier (Allen) of the King's Navy marches into a small swamp-bound coastal village that is a suspected hub of smuggling, not to mention the center of activity by ghostly nightriders on skeletal horses. He is soon matching wits with the masterminds behind the smuggling operations--the kindly Reverend Blyss (Cushing) and coffin maker Jeremiah Mipps (Ripper), both of whom hide secrets deeper and darker than a mere smuggling ring.

I love this movie.

"Captain Clegg" ("Night Creatures" in the U.S. market, so retitled by Universal Pictures when they picked it and seven other Hammer productions up for distribution) is perhaps one of the finest movies ever be produced by Hammer Films.

Set in the 18th century against a backdrop of smuggling and piracy, "Captain Clegg" is an excellent melodrama that's got a thrilling, well-paced story, with compelling, likable, and complex characters, and a near-perfect ending.

High points of the film include the opening scenes with an old man running from spectral riders in the marshes, only to be finished off by a nightmarish scarecrow with human eyes; the sequence where Mipps and his fellow smugglers set out in the hopes of making their scheduled delivery of fine French wines right under the nose of Captain Collier and his men; the breakfast scene where Collier thinks he finally has the goods on Blyss, and the build-up to the film's climax as Blyss's past comes back to haunt him and the smuggling operation starts to come unglued.


"Captian Clegg" is also beautifully filmed and expertly directed--on par with some of Terence Fisher's Hammer work, I think--with Cushing and Ripper giving excellent performances. In fact, Cushing may well give the finest on-screen performance of his career as the enigmatic country vicar with a rebellious streak. Cushing's range as an actor is shown more clearly in this film as in no other I've seen (and I've seen most of them).

I can't recommend this film highly enough. If you order the Hammer Horror Series pack from Amazon.com I think "Captain Clegg" alone is woth the purchase price for Cushing fans. (The inclusion of another of his greatest films--"The Brides of Dracula"--is icing on the cake. Click here to read my review of it and two other of the films in the set.)

'Blackbeard' is an okay pirate yarn

Blackbeard (2006)
Starring: Angus McFadyen, Marc Umbers, Jessica Chastain, Anthony Green, Richard Chamberlain, and Rachel Ward
Director: Kevin Connor
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Lt. Robert Maynard of British Royal Naval (Umbers) is dispatched to the Caribbean on a secret mission to hunt the feared and murderous pirate Blackbeard (McFadyen). His mission and burgeoning romance with the lovely Charlotte Ormand (Chastain) is disrupted when the corrupt colonial governor and ally of Blackbeard (Chamberlain) attempts to assassinate Maynard. Through a chain of misunderstandings, the officer finds himself accepted into Blackbeard's crew and ends up helping the pirate with his obsessive search for the legendary lost treasure of Captain Kidd.

If you're looking for a fun traditional pirate adventure tale that you can watch with the whole family, "Blackbeard" is a good choice. Originally made for the Hallmark Channel as a two-part miniseries, it has a well-paced script with just the right mix of action, romance, intrigue, cannon-fire, and swashbuckling pirate antics to please just about any viewer. The cast is also excellent, with Angus McFadyen in particular excelling as the ruthless title character. The even mix of fictional events and historical facts might make it dangerous if you're trying to use it as a shortcut for a school paper, but as a piece of entertainment is pretty good.

Although a good deal of money and effort went into the sets and costuming, this is one area where the film slips a little. Everything and everyone is just a little too clean and fresh. A little more time should have been spent on "aging" costumes and sets, and the actors should have been a little grimier and sweatier than any of them are. The lower-budgeted pirate films from Hammer Studios forty years earlier and even Alfred Hitchcock's "Jamaica Inn" from more than sixty years earlier did a better job at creating a believable 18th century environment than the production designers, costumers, and set-dressers on "Blackbeard" managed to do.

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.