THE PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER, a 1962 swashbuckler from Hammer Studios, is one of their lesser outings. You can put this down to Jimmy Sangster's lacklustre story and the lack of a decent budget, which substitutes British locations for the tropics and doesn't even include a pirate ship (apart from in an opening stock shot).
Of course, those of us who enjoy B-movie fare will no doubt enjoy the spectacle of some nondescript British woodland standing in for a more exotic locale - adding a single fern leaf into the shot and a couple of pot plants isn't doing much to fool the viewer! At least it helps take the viewer's mind off the plot, which after a decent first half hour soon descends into repetitive inanity.
Kerwin Matthews (THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD) stars as the youthful, romantic hero figure who's sent to a penal colony after falling foul of his puritan elders. He escapes just in time to help his villagers defend themselves from the clutches of a group of dastardly pirates looking for treasure.
One of the problems with the production is the lack of a sense of menace. The pirates just don't seem to be particularly villainous and the script resorts to them fighting between themselves to supply the action. It doesn't help any when all the best actors play the pirates either: Christopher Lee, Michael Ripper, Peter Arne and Oliver Reed are all having a ball, supplying endless energy, while the villagers (including Dennis Waterman as a kid and an extra-dour Andrew Keir) are a bore.
Still, it's as colourful as ever for a Hammer romp, and I'm predisposed towards this genre so that it held my attention from beginning to end. But with a little more imagination, it could have been a whole lot better and more like the above-average DEVIL-SHIP PIRATES that Hammer made a couple of years later.
