Black Gate

Blackbeard the Pirate (1952)

The role of Long John Silver in Disney’s 1950 Treasure Island finally launched the talented English actor Robert Newton into international stardom. As Silver, Newton popularized the broad West-Country accent that’s become the default talk-like-a-pirate voice of buccaneering rogues ever since. (You can blame—or acclaim— Newton for the ubiquitous piratical “Ahr!”) But fame ruined the actor, enabling endless rounds of drink, gambling, and the kind of wild behavior that made him a role model for Oliver Reed and Keith Moon. And Newton was never able to escape the shadow of the one-legged pirate with the parrot on his shoulder—but typecast though he was, you can still see that he enjoyed the role even while repeating it. Newton died from alcohol-related heart failure in 1956, and his ashes were buried at sea in the English Channel off Cornwall: “Ahr-men.”

Blackbeard, the Pirate

Rating: **
Origin: USA, 1952
Director: Raoul Walsh
Source: Amazon streaming video

On November 22, 1718, Edward Teach, the notorious pirate known as Blackbeard, was killed on his ship the Adventure during a fierce boarding action led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard. By the time he was brought down, Blackbeard had been shot five times and suffered twenty wounds from edged weapons. For the most famous image depicting this event, look no further than the painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris on the cover of your editor’s Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure anthology.

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Captain From Castile 

In the Thirties, young Tyrone Power made an impression as a leading man in various cinematic genres, so Twentieth Century Fox gave him a contract. Power really wanted to play serious dramatic roles, but after his runaway success with The Mark of Zorro (1940) and The Black Swan (1942), the latter directed by Henry King, Fox decided Power was their Errol Flynn and slated him for more swashbucklers, which wasn’t what Power had in mind.

But then World War II got in the way, like it did for a lot of people; when Power returned from his tour as a decorated pilot for the Marines, he found that Fox hadn’t changed their plans for him, and he was cast in Captain from Castile, with Henry King once again directing. Power kept pushing for other roles, getting in a taut film noir and a couple of comedy parts, but Fox continued putting a sword into his hand for a couple more years before Power sheathed that sword for good. Fortunately, we got the classic Prince of Foxes before he did.

Captain from Castile

Rating: ***
Origin: USA, 1947
Director: Henry King
Source: 20th Century Fox Classics DVD

This is a magnificent failure, a classic case of Hollywood buying a novel for its strengths and then lacking the guts to put those strengths on the screen. And it’s a damn shame, because it could have been great. Samuel Shellabarger’s best-selling 1945 novel tells the story of a naïve young Spanish nobleman who runs afoul of the Inquisition; to escape persecution and certain death, he joins Hernán Cortez’s expedition to Mexico, becoming one of the conquistador’s trusted officers.

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When the two first episodes of Marvel TV’s new WandaVision dropped six weeks ago, I blogged about my reaction to something that was at tonal right angles to everything else I’d seen from the MCU. I just finished watching the penultimate episode and now I think that the show is actually not even in the same ballpark as anything else produced by Kevin Feige.

It feels like the MCU and Vertigo Comics snuck off to have a weird love child. This series owes a lot more thematically and tonally to Tom King’s 12-issue Vision series (my blog thoughts here) than any of the regular Avengers comics. I’m going to go into why I would put this show in the same category as Westworld, but I might have to spoil one or two things. If that’s within your spoil tolerance, come onboard. If not, don’t hit the read more yet. I’ll wait.

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In 1991, Peter Jackson was a wee New Zealand lad of thirty-three who was embarking on what would become a very lucrative film career. He was still seven years away from becoming a near household name with the release of Lord or the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and was on the hunt for film project that would get him recognized.

Having grown up in country with roughly the same population as the state of Alabama, he was well aware of the nation’s most infamous murder. Earlier that year fellow New Zealander Fran Walsh, with whom Jackson had worked on Meet the Freebles, suggested they tackle the tale in the form of a movie drama. The Parker-Hulme murder took place in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 22 June 1954, when Honorah Parker was killed by her teenage daughter, Pauline Parker, and Pauline’s close friend, Juliet Hulme. Parker was 16 at the time, while Hulme was 15. On that June afternoon, Honorah took Pauline and Juliet for tea and then for a walk in Victoria Park. In a wooded area about 400ft from the tea shop, Pauline and Juliet bludgeoned Pauline’s mother to death with half of a brick enclosed in an old stocking.

The murder itself was shocking enough, but as Jackson began his research into the circumstances surrounding it, what emerged read like Hollywood fiction. It was a tale of fantasy, forbidden sexuality and obsessive love which ended in violence and death, all involving two teenaged girls. Over the next year, Jackson dug deep into the story of Pauline and Juliet. In addition to reading Pauline’s diary, Jackson undertook a nationwide search for anyone who had known the girls and interviewed them to get a closer look at their lives.

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Last of the Vikings (1961)

The blockbuster success of 1958’s The Vikings spawned a number of would-be successors that tried to make up for lower budgets by amping up the action. The ever-lurid Italian cinema took the lead with two adventures directed or co-directed by Mario Bava, Last of the Vikings and Erik the Conqueror, but the UK was right behind with their own over-the-top Viking saga, The Long Ships. You can call these guilty pleasures if you like, but that doesn’t stop them from being thoroughly enjoyable. Form shield wall, Vikings, and prepare for attack!

Last of the Vikings

Rating: ***
Origin: Italy/France, 1961
Director: Giacomo Gentilomo
Source: Mill Creek DVD

This is a solid Viking adventure film, a cut above most Italian action movies of its day. It stars Cameron Mitchell and George Ardisson as the male Viking leads in parts similar to their roles later in the year in the even better Erik the Conqueror. The film opens with a sea battle, after which Harald (Mitchell) and his brother Guntar (Ardisson) return to Norway after ten years of sea roving, only to find that all the free Viking chieftains have been crushed under the heel of Bad King Sveno (Edmund Purdom, Sword of Freedom) — who, to add insult to injury, has adopted the effete ways of civilized Europe. Harald vows vengeance, because that’s what Vikings do, and begins gathering the surviving warriors under his banner.

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I picked five random SF movies from the 1950’s across the quality spectrum to review this time around but while doing my due diligence research discovered that actually three of them had been directed by Bert I.. Gordon, so, not exactly random. But it’s too late to changer the line up.

Kronos: 1957 (8)

Interesting alien invasion flick, with some rather original concepts for the time. The aliens are energy creatures, though they do the thing many aliens do in these movies: take over human bodies via mind control. Sometimes the enslaved human manages to warn others, but, of course, no one actually listens until it’s almost too late.

This time around, the aliens want our electricity and atomic energy, so they send down this whopping big robot (although no one ever calls it a robot) from their flying saucer (though everyone, including the scientists who discover it, call it an asteroid for some reason) who then gobbles all the energy it can. The always dependable Jeff Morrow plays the astronomer who also has mad skills in nuclear physics or some damn thing, because he comes up with the plan to stop Kronos, despite all the best efforts of his hot girlfriend to get him to think about her for a change.

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Silvana Mangano and Kirk Douglas in Ulysses (1954)

Ryan Harvey has written extensively here about the peplum movie or Italian sword-and-sandal craze of 1959-65, a phenomenon that had an immediate origin in three films: Ulysses, which showed that there was a postwar Italian market for adventure films from the era of myth; Hercules, which proved you could make such a movie popular on both sides of the Atlantic; and Hercules Unchained, which demonstrated there was a formula for repeated success. These were well-crafted movies that aimed much higher than most of their successors and provided solid, and occasionally even thoughtful entertainment. If you’re unfamiliar with them I’m pleased to introduce you, and if they’re old friends you can join me in appreciation.

Ulysses

Rating: ****
Origin: Italy, 1954
Director: Mario Camerini
Source: Lionsgate DVD

Kirk Douglas made his reputation in Hollywood in the late Forties as a leading man in a series of intense, dramatic roles. By 1954 he was ready for a change of pace: action hero! He signed on with Disney for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and with Dino De Laurentiis in Italy for the epic Ulysses, based, of course, on Homer’s The Odyssey. This was a big-budget production, with lavish sets, exteriors shot on Mediterranean islands, and a lovely full-scale Greek galley. Plus, of course, a cyclops.

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