Blackie the Pirate

One hesitates to pass judgment on a movie which, in the English-language videotape, has obviously gone through a lot of clumsy re-editing and re-dubbing. Still, it's all we have to judge it by and so the truth must be told: this movie makes virtually no sense at all. The plot has something to do with a shipment of gold which the Viceroy at Guayaquil wants to send back to Spain. A loose confederation of pirate captains has other ideas, as does the Viceroy's beautiful and ambitious wife. Any attempt to clarify the plot beyond these elements will be met with frustration.

That said, the movie retains an amiable quality, is never out and out dull, and has an attractive cast. It's best viewed as an "In-Flight" feature -- one of those things you don't expect much of and which you halfway watch out of the corner of your eye while you're doing something else.

The highlight, (such as it is), may come when Edmund Purdom walks into a room and finds a shirtless Terence Hill tied to a wall, several bloody whip marks on his back. One can't help recalling at this moment that Purdom himself felt the sting of a whip back in MGM's 1954 spectacle, "The Prodigal"

There's the makings of something here: a pirate comedy or a swashbuckling drama, but, ultimately it's neither one or the other enough to make it a good movie, which is rather a shame. Had it actually been a "Trinity Boys Do Pirating" sort of movie, it would have worked. It such a case, it needn't have had a compelling plot: just let Terence Hill and Bud Spencer humorously beat up other pirates and corrupt sailors while having their own dumb misfortunes and bad luck. The movie already had the two comedians and plenty of other very capable actors and actresses, including the beautiful Silvia Monti, Monica Randall, and Diana Lorys.

Alas... Bud Spencer is barely even in this movie and Terence Hill ("Blackie the Pirate") is rarely funny cast as a more traditional leading man type. In fact, the sort of stuff you expect of a "Trinity" movie, Bud's impossible strength and toughness, Terence's agile and offbeat fighting style are farmed out more to the supporting actors, which is actually one of the better parts of the film: Blackie's crew al seem to have their own special talents: one, for example, has excellent aim with a canon or pistols, other is very strong, etc. A crew of pirates, each with their own specialties but only in certain situations starts to almost write itself.

Well... whatever. It's not that movie. Watch it if you'll watch anything By Hill or Spencer or watch it if you'll watch any kind of pirate movie, just don't watch it if you're expecting Terence and Bud to be doing a buddy-buddy pirate comedy.

Living on an island situated so close to the Italian peninsula, it is small wonder that celebrities emanating from those parts would be a household word in Malta as well and, during my childhood days, no Italian film stars were as popular as Mario Girotti and Carlo Pedersoli…er…Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. These two actors – who could roughly be described as the "Laurel & Hardy" of Italian genre movies – have made 17 pictures together between 1968 and 1994 and the film under review is one of their earliest and least-known. They had just hit the big time with the Spaghetti Western spoof THEY CALL ME TRINITY (1970) and it was natural that, after three successive Westerns, producers wanted to try out something else so, here, they decided to not only change genre (to the swashbuckler) but also to have them as rivals instead of partners. Ironically, the new recipe failed to nourish the hungry masses and a sequel to TRINITY was hastily cooked up…

Apart from the incongruity of seeing the two stars swapping their by-now familiar cowboy garb for the pirate's feathered-hat and sword, the film itself comes off as a plodding and uninvolving adventure without even the benefit of their usual, protracted cazzotti (fistfights) sequences – save a few tired rehashes of people flying on top of cabinets with a single punch to the jaw! Terence Hill has the title role but is more morose than his usual self here and Bud Spencer is an opposing pirate leader who, true to the seaman's code, goes down with his ship in the end. Also in the cast are a trio of good-looking dames – Silvia Monti (as the vengeful wife of the Viceroy whom Hill abducts and even gets to bed), Monica Randall (as her companion who eventually joins the pirates' cause) and Jess Franco regular Diana Lorys (who is criminally wasted as a sympathetic innkeeper); the film's screenwriter George Martin(!) as Hill's aristocratic partner; Pasquale Basile as the annoying dumb brute typical of such fare; Luciano Pigozzi (hamming it up as another antagonistic pirate leader); and the customary Hollywood has-been generally roped in for such productions for their dubious marquee value: in this case, Edmund Purdom (as the Viceroy). Unfortunately, contrary to all convention, instead of relishing the role of an eye-rolling villain, Purdom underplays the part almost to the point of absentia!

In spite of the film's title, it doesn't seem to have been inspired by the Emilio Salgari (creator of popular heroic figure Sandokan) novel "The Black Pirate" – which, apart from two earlier European film versions, would again be brought to the screen (far more effectively) a mere five years after this one (with TV's Sandokan himself, Kabir Bedi, in the lead).

No pun intended - Terence Hill and Bud Spencer ... two people that shaped my childhood. Even though they had done movies together way before I was born. But I liked watching their movies - dubbed in German, but they had a great industry back then. Probably still have - for the bigger productions.

This one I probably never saw before. This is not like any other movie they did that I really liked. Their relationship is different in this one, the focus is on other characters .. and you have boats and pirates and sword fighting and other stuff like that. While I reckon it is nice to try something different, maybe this is why it just doesn't feel like ... home (well you know what I mean) ... anyway, nice movie overall but nothing special ... if you are a fan of those two actors you won't mind flaws or other things anyway ...

When I first watched this one in 1987, I of course expected a comedy with both Hill and Spencer as the main characters, getting up to their usual hyjinx. I was to be bitterly disappointed. Instead I got a serious drama/action movie, which was more of a Terence Hill on his own type of movie. Bud had a much smaller role and for large parts was absent. This is probably why many lists do not include Blackie on them when it comes to listing Spencer/Hill movies.

Viewing this for a second time 30 years later, my expectations were nowhere near as high and I actually found out it wasn't as bad as I remembered. It was well filmed and although a little formulaic, had some entertaining stuff.

Hill plays a gentlemanly honourable pirate, while Bud plays a rival one. It seemed Bud's voiceover was his usual, but for Terence it was someone new.