Aka\u00a0Il corsaro nero nell’isola del tesoro
\n1965
\nSeven Film, S.P.A
\nDirector: Dean Vert [Vertunnio De Angelis]
\nStory: Dino Sant\u2019Ambrogio
\nScreenplay: Aldo Barni [Aldo Barui]
\nCinematography: Antonio Belviso {Eastmancolor}
\nMusic: Felice Di Stefano
\nEditor: Mariano Arditi
\nSet designer: Demofilo Fidani
\nCameraman: Gino Santini
\nFilmed: Incir – De Paolis & Titanus [Rome, Italy]
\nRelease information: Italy (31.12.72)
\nCast: George Hilton (Suarez, aka Don Francisco Ramirez Del Puente), Claude Dantes (Princess Anne), John Warren [John Vari] (Garcia, a pirate), Jose Torres (\u2018The Raven\u2019, a pirate), Angelo Santamartini, Emmanuele Valtan, Antonio Bullo c.s.c, Luigi Antonio Guerra c.s.c, Stefano Oppedisano c.s.c, Capitan Zicavo, Lucien Benetti, Lucio De Sanctis, Giorgio Constantini, Monica De Sanctis, and with Tony Kendall [Luciano Stella] (Cpt. Ruiz)
\nUncredited: Amerigo Leoni (one of Garcia\u2019s pirates)<\/p>\n
Note: Luigi Antonio Guerra\u00a0and Stefano Oppedisano\u00a0are not visible, and were unlikely to have appeared in a film made at the time.\u00a0 It is likely that their names were added for the 1970s re-release<\/p>\n
The Black Pirate<\/strong> was made back-to-back with its partner piece, The Masked Man against the Pirates<\/strong>, with the intention that both should be sold to a pre-arranged international distribution company.\u00a0 Unlike Masked Man<\/strong>, however, it appears to have remained unreleased either domestically or internationally, and was long assumed to be a lost film. \u00a0According to Tony Kendall: “I believe [it]\u00a0remained unedited because the film wasn’t finished. The producer didn’t have enough money, and one of the last things he did was go into a music shop and buy thirty guitars, then resell them in order to pay for our packed lunches.” [Cine 70 #7]. The two share many of the same crewmembers and cast, most of whom play the same characters in both films.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a sequel, though, more of a remake; no acknowledgement is made of the events of the other production whatsoever.<\/p>\n After a fierce contretemps, a Spanish naval frigate under the command of Captain Boltan scores a big victory in the battle against the assorted brigands who are terrorizing the American coast: the capture of the pirate Garcia and his entire crew. Unfortunately, before they can make it back to port the ship runs aground on the Island of Esmerelda; home to a notorious cutthroat called \u2018The Raven\u2019 (Jose Torres).<\/p>\n The Raven promptly orders his men to both steal everything and to track down and kill any of the soldiers who have survived.\u00a0 Garcia receives a slightly warmer welcome: invited to the blackguard\u2019s camp he is horrified to find that they have a total ban on rum, roast meat and women.\u00a0 What\u2019s your honest pirate supposed to do?\u00a0 Well, even the threat of the noose is preferable to a bunch of vegetarians, so he joins forces with the remaining Spaniards.<\/p>\n They soon come up with a clever plan to oust the villains: plying them with strong liquor in the hope that, unused to alcohol as they are, they can be easily vanquished.\u00a0 Unfortunately, The Raven isn\u2019t that stupid, and it is Garcia\u2019s own men who become intoxicated.\u00a0 It seems that escaping – not to mention finding the sizable treasure that\u2019s hidden on the island – could prove more difficult than they had thought.<\/p>\n The main change from The Masked Man against the Pirates<\/strong>\u00a0is that this is much more involved with the pirate Captain Garcia, who is escalated from the position of being a (somehow likable) villain to practically\u00a0the central character.\u00a0 Decked out once more in his big jolly-roger hat, he is pitted against the sly \u2018Raven\u2019 (Jose Torres), who has something of the Bond villain about him; not least with his underground \/ island hideout and army of disposable henchmen in silly costumes.\u00a0 He ends up being literally slapped to death at the climax, which seems somehow appropriate.<\/p>\n Ostensible hero George Hilton is little more than his lieutenant for the first half of the running time, before his hidden depths (and hidden agenda) start to become clear.\u00a0 Poor old Tony Kendall\u00a0fares even worse, being a rather peripheral twit who disappears three quarters of the way through (presumably moving on to a far better paid job as Joe Walker in the Kommissar X\u00a0series).<\/p>\n Despite being dropped from the title, the previous film\u2019s \u2018Masked Man\u2019 does feature here – although making no mention of it whatsoever seems a funny way of trying to kick off a marketable franchise.\u00a0 In fact, he doesn\u2019t really appear\u00a0much, simply popping up every half-hour to show off his green tights and Santo-mask. Things get really silly when a masked woman pops up (the high voice and pointy breasts are a clue as to her gender, but nobody at all seems to pick up on this).<\/p>\n It must have been made on a small budget, with plenty of \u2018shaking the camera in order to emulate a storm\u2019 fun and outtakes from more expensive productions.\u00a0 There\u2019s also a hell of a lot of chaotic running around and yelling.\u00a0 Some mention must also be made of the appalling dubbing (with Tony Kendall\u00a0being served particularly badly and sounding like the geeky comic store owner from The Simpsons).\u00a0 Beyond that, it all plays rather like a Spaghetti Western, with its Almeria-like scenery, minor intimations of sadism, extravagant costumes (by cult icon Demofilo Fidani) and assorted hopeless authority figures.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that it has eye-patches and rapiers rather than cigarillos and six-guns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aka\u00a0Il corsaro nero nell’isola del tesoro 1965 Seven Film, S.P.A Director: Dean Vert [Vertunnio De Angelis] Story: Dino Sant\u2019Ambrogio Screenplay: Aldo Barni [Aldo Barui]…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1212,8],"tags":[407,832,661,1316],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4391"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4393,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4391\/revisions\/4393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}