Piratas de Tortuga

This is a fairly ordinary boys' pirate adventure memorable only for the over the top performance from Leticia Roman as the reluctant stowaway aboard Ken Scott's galleon embarked for the Caribbean and a battle of wits with Captain Henry Morgan (Robert Stephens) who has returned to his buccaneering ways after briefly working for the King of England.

Roman acts as if she's just downed a pint of strong black coffee, and no doubt most self-respecting sailors would have thrown her overboard after having had their way with her. Somehow, though, not only does she make it intact all the way to Jamaica but she also manages to get Scott's insipid Captain Bart to fall in love with her.

Robert Stephens as a slightly unhinged Morgan given to smacking the rump of his ever so slightly raddled lady companion is the highlight of the film, although he doesn't receive the amount of screen time he deserves. Curious to see British comedian Dave King appearing as one of Scott's swashbuckling sidekicks too. Other than that there really isn't a lot to say about this flick.

Ken Scott and a mass of little-known actors perform in a Sam Katzman sea-faring fest, with never an eyepatch, arrgh or yo-heave-ho among them. They've been ordered to head to the Caribbean Sea, to deal with Henry Morgan, who's exceeding his authority or something. Letícia Román has snuck onboard for reasons that are never clear.

It's actually a visually handsome movie, thanks to cinematographer Ellis Carter, and handsome sets and costumes. It definitely falls into the seen-one-seen-them-all category, and several screenwriters, including Jesse Lasky Jr. never produce anything interesting. However, Hortense Petra is credited down the cast list, and for a name like that, I'll pronounce this a decent time-waster: a triumph for Katzman.

One of the myriad cheapies churned out by independent film producers (here Sam Katzman) under the aegis of a major Hollywood studio (20th Century Fox) and which revolves around the exploits of a notorious pirate figure (Sir Henry Morgan). Despite being fully aware of the film’s non-reputation even among others of its type, I was still taken in by the relatively decent cast (Robert Stephens, Leticia Roman and John Richardson) and the promise of colorful entertainment (brought on by my recent spate of similar superior outings).

Unfortunately, PIRATES OF TORTUGA falls far short of earlier movies about Morgan – THE BLACK SWAN (1942) or even the contemporaneous MORGAN, THE PIRATE (1961) – and proves to be a lackluster affair with a poverty of imagination on display that is quite dispiriting. To start with, Morgan (an over-the-top Stephens) himself only appears half-way through with the result that we are left largely in the company of a truly overbearing gypsy of a leading lady (Roman), a listless hero (Ken Jones) and his puerile cronies (Richardson and Dave King). Add to that the intermittent usage of action stock footage lifted from earlier Fox seafaring productions, the uncharacteristic popping up of modern slang in the dialogue and the sheer predictability of the whole venture and it’s small wonder that very little time has elapsed before the film starts to sink…right out of one’s memory!

For the record, director Robert D. Webb had much earlier won an Oscar as an assistant director (in one of the few times these awards where handed out) on IN OLD CHICAGO (1937) and had also guided Elvis Presley through his first film LOVE ME TENDER (1956); incidentally, I might get to check out six(!) of his other directorial chores in the future: not just two notable Westerns WHITE FEATHER (1955; with Jeffrey Hunter and Robert Wagner, which I have in my DVD collection) and THE PROUD ONES (1956; with Robert Ryan and Jeffrey Hunter again, which I intend to acquire) but also a few more available at local DVD rental outlets: BENEATH THE 12-MILE REEF (1953; which I haven’t watched in ages), the aforementioned LOVE ME TENDER, THE CAPE TOWN AFFAIR (1967; a remake of Samuel Fuller’s PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET [1953]) and THE JACKALS (1967; featuring Vincent Price and a remake of William A. Wellman’s YELLOW SKY [1948], which I own and intend to watch presently as part of my ongoing Richard Widmark tribute).

Sea captain Bart Paxton has a thankless task from the King of England. Henry Morgan, erstwhile ally of the crown, has set up a kingdom on Tortuga, whose buccaneers are robbing English ships at will and strangling the island of Jamaica. The Royal Navy can't attack Tortuga without igniting a new war with Spain, so the King is sending Paxton as a secret privateer to put an end to Morgan's depredations. And Meg, the young hellion who has stowed away on Paxton's ship, isn't making his job any easier.

Unlike its predecessor The Black Swan or its contemporary Morgan the Pirate, Pirates of Tortuga casts Henry Morgan as a villain, the correct and natural role for that treacherous, rapacious, and brilliant man. The one difficulty is that the historical Captain Morgan died rich, contented, and even respectable, a most unsatisfying end for a movie villain. The movie deals with this problem straightforwardly, by constructing a sort of alternate history that shows what might have happened if Morgan had not chosen to answer King Charles's summons to England after his raid on Panama in 1671, with its very real attendant risk of imprisonment and execution, but instead had followed the course many of his fellow buccaneers did by raiding and looting indiscriminately. It would have been well within Morgan's power to set up the "buccaneer kingdom" on Tortuga that the movie shows.

The plot is bare-bones, but serviceable: Paxton finds Morgan, Paxton poses as partner of Morgan to spy out Morgan's fortress, Meg flirts with the governor of Jamaica, but ultimately decides her heart truly lies with Paxton, Paxton defeats Morgan. But the denouement is a major disappointment: unimaginative, perfunctory, and implausible at once, and moreover, it fails to tie up Morgan's end of the story.

Bart Paxton's part is well-written, a potentially dashing commander with real brains and imagination, but Ken Scott is unable to bring anything to the role but heroic blandness. Letitia Roman is certainly fetching as Meg, especially in her sailor's togs, and her bare-legged wriggling in Paxton's bed is a clear sign of the sexual revolution's tsunami roaring toward the beach of the Hayes Code. But looking beyond her physical charms, Meg's personality really has nothing to recommend her: she's not smart, brave, loyal, honest, or even charming.

Robert Stephens' Henry Morgan is interesting, but ultimately ineffective. Stephens plays Morgan as a full-blown alcoholic, complete with the shakes. His Morgan is greedy (his eyes almost bug out when Paxton presents him with a chest full of guineas) and cruel, but credulous and unintelligent. He is fun to hate, as a good villain should be, but he lacks the frisson of menace that emanated from Rathbone's Levasseur or Newton's and Heston's Long John Silver.

The supporting cast comes to the rescue, particularly Dave King as PeeWee and Stanley Adams as Montbars. King is appealing, dashing, and sometimes very funny, while Adams' Montbars is pure, unbridled appetite, fat and greedy and bullying, a perfect pirate.

Visually, the movie is outstanding. The shots of the sailing ships are sublime, the colors are sumptuous, and the islands and cliffs are magnificent. The movie is fun to watch, and while it won't stay with you long, it avoids the gratuitous absurdity of many pirate movies.

Rating: ** ½ out of ****.

Recommendation: Worth a rental after it leaves the new release shelves.

A contemporary review by the Los Angeles Times seems to have remarked that the production was "pure costume." I wonder if that sentiment wasn't a bit generous. The first act is almost entirely a sea-faring variation on 'My fair lady,' and that slant continues to be a dominant thrust for the remainder of the runtime, to the point that the narrative we're initially led to believe is the primary thrust of the picture (set-up as such from the start) actually becomes the B-plot. Meg's tale could be a worthy one to explore in and of itself, but when a feature is called 'Pirates of Tortuga' and bills itself as a swashbuckler, one rather expects more swashbuckling. In fairness, we do get fights and action, cheeky humor, and ale-swilling "yo ho!"-ing, and it's not like this isn't entertaining. Yet it's only mildly entertaining, and is this the movie one anticipates from the outside looking in? Not so much.

More to the point, I don't think the screenwriters truly had a clear focus. There were two concurrent stories they wanted to tell, converging in time - but they are both poorly imbalanced, and hasty at the tail end, and the portion chronicling the strife with the titular renegades was not developed well. It also is mostly relegated to the last act, and very weakly resolved for that matter, and Meg's journey takes precedence. For what it's worth, Letícia Román surely gives the best performance of the film; her co-stars are mostly just kind of lingering there, adrift in the same way the storytelling is. Robert D. Webb's direction is fine, I suppose, and it's suitably well made from a technical standpoint. Still, the title is so light on substance, and so indifferent to it, that if not for the contributions of those behind the scenes, this would be pure flotsam on the ocean of cinema.

The costume design really is splendid, and both the production design and art direction are eye-catching. The hair and makeup work is quite well done, and any effects that are employed look pretty swell. Action sequences are a bit of a loose grab bag, but they serve their purpose. All this is well and good. A film cannot be sold on visuals alone, however, and there's no real anchor for 'Pirates of Tortuga.' Without compelling acting, and especially without solid plot, the feature is doomed to just meekly coast along wherever the winds take it. There were good ideas in the writing, but the fact remains that it's so thin and flimsy that the end result doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. It's still passably amusing for a lazy day if you happen to come across it, but even if you're a huge fan of swashbucklers or someone involved, this is a cruise that is not essential by any means.