The Buccaneers

Here's Robert Shaw, about to give the order to fire cannons in the opening sequence of The Buccaneers.
The series was made by the same studio that made Robin Hood with Richard Greene, and at about the same time. It's maybe not quite as good as Robin Hood, but it's still enormous fun, and it's sad that it wasn't repeated very often. It's terribly dated now, of course, and was made very much with children in mind (the sort of child I was, who also loved Errol Flynn movies, though I suspect the makers were only thinking of boys).
Captain Dan Tempest was a reformed (sort of) pirate, working with Lt. Beamish of New Providence and getting involved with the Spanish, other pirates, searches for treasure, damsels in distress (or damsels perfectly able to hold their own, in the case of guest Joan Sims and her companions). Quite often, the villains of the week were corrupt British officials, so Dan and his crew were fighting redcoats.
There was some attempt to tie the events into real history, so the governor of the island (never seen after the first couple of episodes) was Woodes Rogers, who really was the governor of New Providence.
Dan was assisted by a multi-national crew - Armando the Spaniard (and where the script called for it, half-Indian), Taffy the Welshman and Gaff the Londoner, with Dickon as ship's boy in some episodes (introduced in the episode The Wasp, where he was working for Blackbeard).
There are some interesting guest stars, some of whom worked on Robin Hood as well - Sid James before the Carry On films, for instance (he was also a moneyer - maker of silver coins - in Robin Hood), Roger Delgado as a Spanish captain (who wonderfully at one point has the line "I am the master now" as he takes over the governor's mansion on New Providence briefly).
There are 39 episodes in all, some better than others of course, but the best are well plotted, and full of humour - and there's always a sword fight (and Dan always wins!).
I've just finished the box set, and I recommend it to anyone who likes old pirate films.

"Captain's Share! I Bespeak Her!"

I've been watching The Crimson Pirate over the holidays, and remembering why it is one of my favourite pirate films of all time. Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat swinging on ropes and bouncing around all over the Italian fishing village that was standing in for the Caribbean, daring escapes and double crosses, and even a hot air balloon! It's all great good fun.
But.
Light-hearted or not, from the first moment Eva Bartok as the beautiful Consuela sets foot on the deck of Captain Vallo's ship, she is at risk of rape.
"Why did you bolt your cabin door last night?" Vallo (Burt Lancaster) asks her.
"If you know it was bolted, you must have tried it, and if you tried it, you know why it was bolted," she says, having already pulled a knife on two pirates who were leering at her.
And later, after a couple more twists of the plot, she and her father are the pirates' prisoners - so they put her in a swing, up in the rigging, and set up a greasy pole to it. Whoever climbs the greasy pole, gets the girl - whether she wants it or not.
Captain Vallo stops that, but it's all presented as "a bit of fun".

The Crimson Pirate isn't the only film with this attitude. Okay, it was made in 1951, and The Black Swan (one of my other most favourite pirate films of all time) was made in 1943. That's where the title for this blog post comes from. In the first scene where Tyrone Power meets Maureen O'Hara, he sees her only as part of the plunder from the castle his men have stormed to rescue him. He claims her for himself, knocks her out cold, and then dumps her on the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Later in the film, he attempts to woo her in a more gentlemanly way - but that doesn't stop him from kidnapping her when it appears she's about to marry the wrong man! The boyfriend turns out to be one of the villains of the piece, though, so that's all right!

Kirk Douglas was doing the same sort of thing in 1959, when he made The Vikings. Again, it's one of my favourite films of all time - Vikings storming a medieval castle by throwing axes at the gates and climbing up them! Wonderful stuff! Tony Curtis almost getting eaten by crabs while tied to a stake in a rock pool! And Einar (Kirk) capturing Janet Leigh, who he keeps aboard his ship while the Vikings party - and gets drunk, and rows over to the ship to have his evil way with her. It's fortunate that Tony Curtis is a gentleman, and manages to rescue her.

So, three films that I grew up with, and love dearly, despite their flaws when it comes to women. It would be nice to think that film makers have become more enlightened since the 1950s - but I'm not sure there's been all that much improvement, or we wouldn't have something like the Beschdel Test to see how fairly women are portrayed now.