Movies That Time Forgot: The Pirate Movie
1982's The Pirate Movie is a film that others might well describe as a "guilty pleasure," but I will do no such thing. I genuinely enjoy it, and don't feel even a little embarrassed about that.
The film, a send up/total bastardization of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, stars Christopher Atkins (The Blue Lagoon), Kristy McNichol (Family, Empty Nest), and Ted Hamilton (this movie. Seriously he hasn't done much else). It was directed by Ken Annakin, and rushed into production after a proper Pirates of Penzance film, starring Kevin Kline, was announced. (If you have the chance, watch that one as well, it's excellent...) Pirate Movie was filmed in under three months and was met with derision and scorn upon release, including winning a Razzie award for worst song.
Oh, did I mention this was a musical? It's a musical.
The film begins in 1980's Australia, with nerdy girl Mabel (McNichol) attending a pirate themed festival, where she meets a dashing, and sort of dorky, fencing instructor (Atkins) who invites her to party on his boat. Mabel falls overboard, and washes up onshore of a tropical island, and our story begins. The fencing instructor, now called Frederic, is an apprentice to the dread Pirates of Penzance, lead by the egotistical, and horny, Pirate King (Hamilton). On his 21st birthday, Frederic decides that he must leave the pirates life and go ashore to avenge his parents' deaths (at the hands of pirates), and to attend to other, more pressing biological urges. He swears that the next time he meets the Pirate King, they would be enemies. He's tossed overboard, and ends up on the same island as Mabel and her many sisters.
Mabel and Frederic fall in love and wish to be married, but custom states that her sisters, being older, must marry first. Also, the pirates followed Frederic ashore, and want to get down to some serious raping and pillaging. ("I don't want to be pillaged," Mabel says). So our young lovers take their problems to Mabel's father, the Major General (Bill Kerr), a flighty, bumbling old man with an epic mustache, and my favorite character in the movie. After his awesome song about himself (a rewritten version of the Gilbert and Sullivan tune "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" with some ludicrous new lyrics), he tells the young hero that he cannot have his daughter's hand until he raises proper dowry and leads an army to defeat the pirates.
The movie is really very adorable. Kristy McNichol is very cute rather than sexy ("The body is an eight, the mind is a ten."), and Christopher Atkins is like a curly haired puppy, eager to please. The film throws everything it can at the screen, Airplane! style, and most of the jokes stick, at least to me. It revels in glorious 1980's cheese, with synth laden ballads that would have made Gilbert and Sullivan retch, and of course, the aforementioned Worst Song Winner, "Pumpin' and Blowin'," a mildly outrageous single-entendre which will stick in your head for days. Ted Hamilton is no Kevin Kline, it must be said, but his dim-witted Pirate King gets some good laughs, and the film has a shaggy dog charm to it, bad choreography and all.
The Pirate Movie is on DVD, I suppose you could get it from Amazon, most likely.
Oh, did I mention this was a musical? It's a musical.
The film begins in 1980's Australia, with nerdy girl Mabel (McNichol) attending a pirate themed festival, where she meets a dashing, and sort of dorky, fencing instructor (Atkins) who invites her to party on his boat. Mabel falls overboard, and washes up onshore of a tropical island, and our story begins. The fencing instructor, now called Frederic, is an apprentice to the dread Pirates of Penzance, lead by the egotistical, and horny, Pirate King (Hamilton). On his 21st birthday, Frederic decides that he must leave the pirates life and go ashore to avenge his parents' deaths (at the hands of pirates), and to attend to other, more pressing biological urges. He swears that the next time he meets the Pirate King, they would be enemies. He's tossed overboard, and ends up on the same island as Mabel and her many sisters.
Mabel and Frederic fall in love and wish to be married, but custom states that her sisters, being older, must marry first. Also, the pirates followed Frederic ashore, and want to get down to some serious raping and pillaging. ("I don't want to be pillaged," Mabel says). So our young lovers take their problems to Mabel's father, the Major General (Bill Kerr), a flighty, bumbling old man with an epic mustache, and my favorite character in the movie. After his awesome song about himself (a rewritten version of the Gilbert and Sullivan tune "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" with some ludicrous new lyrics), he tells the young hero that he cannot have his daughter's hand until he raises proper dowry and leads an army to defeat the pirates.
The movie is really very adorable. Kristy McNichol is very cute rather than sexy ("The body is an eight, the mind is a ten."), and Christopher Atkins is like a curly haired puppy, eager to please. The film throws everything it can at the screen, Airplane! style, and most of the jokes stick, at least to me. It revels in glorious 1980's cheese, with synth laden ballads that would have made Gilbert and Sullivan retch, and of course, the aforementioned Worst Song Winner, "Pumpin' and Blowin'," a mildly outrageous single-entendre which will stick in your head for days. Ted Hamilton is no Kevin Kline, it must be said, but his dim-witted Pirate King gets some good laughs, and the film has a shaggy dog charm to it, bad choreography and all.
The Pirate Movie is on DVD, I suppose you could get it from Amazon, most likely.
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