Un magnifico ceffo di galera

An amusing and engaging adventure film from 1973 also known as ''Bar Silver''. This was Kirk Douglas's second adventure film from the early-'70s and is a stablemate to the Jules Verne adaptation ''The Light at the Edge of the World'' (1971). It combines Robert Louis Stevenson's novel ''Treasure Island'' with the western. Produced by Douglas's own Bryna company and Italian backers the film features impressive stunt-work and action shots, evocative sea and landscapes: it was filmed in the Balkans between June and September 1972, a talking parrot, the Douglas family's pet black labrador ''Shaft'', hidden treasure, English youngsters Lesley-Anne Down and Mark Lester ("Oliver" (1968)) plus the chubby diminutive Italian-American actor Danny De Vito (''Flyspeck'') while Douglas sports a striped dark blue-and-white t-shirt and leather jerkin and salt-and-pepper beard and hair. He later remarked that the most effective thing in the film was his pirate character's wooden-leg! The early-'70s were pioneering years.