El pirata de su majestad

I downloaded this movie to watch for free, mainly because of the main actor Rod Taylor. Beside the actor Terence Hill I really did not know of any of the other actors. If you are expecting a "Troy" like movie with 1,000's of CGI warships and 10's of 1,000's of soldiers/sailor you will be disappointed. This is made in the early 1960's! They did rather well with the actors they had, some real ships that they could use & decent use of model ships in the final battle.

Rod Taylor was clearly selected for the lead part because he was well known to most movie goers at this time. I have a number of his movies in my collection and he does not disappoint in any of them. This movie covered lightly the history of Sir Francis Drake. Played by Mr. Taylor. The supporting actors/actresses are mainly European and likely not as well known, but they provide a good enjoyable supporting cast. I really liked the role of Keith Michell, whom I did not know of as an actor. His role as 2nd in command to Drake had humor and action that was enjoyable. As a younger officer under Drake he found himself in a somewhat embarrassing position on one of their cruises. He also has a number of other scenes of action that are enjoyable.

I suggest you sit back and enjoy a movie made almost 60 years ago and that it is better than much of what is produced today.

Geez, I read the review by emuir-1 and almost passed on this movie.

That would have been a bad mistake.

All the points made, that illustrated flaws in the movie, were based on ignorance.

First, there is a word 'demure' that apparently isn't in that reviewer's vocabulary along with a historical understanding of its meaning.

Ladies of that time period did not look directly at a gentleman's face for very long.

Politically correct? Nope. Reality? Yes.

And the joke about bad breath shows extreme ignorance. The tooth brush had yet to be invented. Shakespeare wrote of the 'sweet breath of youth' which refers to the fact that people who didn't have ANY oral hygiene regime had rotting teeth and EVERY adult had a mouth that smelled like a sewer. So she wouldn't have been faking - not wanting to be so close as to breathe in his breath. Lastly, I saw NO scenes where she is playing to the camera instead of acting her part – she just doesn't stare lovingly into his eyes while looking him square in the face.

While this might not go down in history as the best movie ever made I found all of the criticisms to be unjustified.

They appear to have shot two movies: One about Rod Taylor dashingly taking on Spaniards in the New World. The swordplay is passable, I suppose. But there's something about the way people perform their ''stunts'' or move about that is so laughably inept you wander whether a 94-year-old Douglas Fairbanks or recently deceased Errol Flynn couldn't have been remummified to do some scenes. Drake's sidekick has less athletic agility than Zero Mostel. And then there is the other movie they glued on to the adventure. One about palace intrigue and a love interest left behind. Who cares. And who cares. The producers, to their credit, spent enough money that we get scenes of real men on real ships on real water, on what I assume is the European coastline somewhere. So it has a visual appeal. On paper it probably seemed to Rod Taylor like it would be a fun way to spend the summer of '62. If they'd only concentrated on his adventures and hired a better choreographer, they might have had something here.

Sorry, I couldn't help but go right to the most painful scenes to watch in this non-epic 'swashbukler' with my review title.

Sir Francis (ably portrayed by Rod Taylor) and his band of Merry Men land in the Americas and encounter an equally merry tribe of Native Americans. Twittering, lighthearted music plays in the background as Sir Francis and his aides flirt and smoke the peace pipe with Caucasian actresses made up like Native American women. Yuck! How far removed was this scene from so many low-grade cardboard Westerns that Hollywood churned out in the 1950's and early 60's?

To be fair, the costumes are true to the period, and there is a fair amount of action throughout the movie. The court intrigue, however, gets old fast.

Rod Taylor was a terrific actor, and deserved better than this dribble. And he DID do much better one year later in 'The Birds', the apex (outside of 'The Time Machine'), imho, of his career. Still, I think of his decision around this time to turn down the role of James Bond, 007. "I wanted to tear my hair out every time a new Bond film was released", he was quoted as saying. Sigh. "Coulda shoulda woulda".

Rod Taylor essays the role of Sir Francis Drake in Seven Seas To Calais, a tale of piracy and politics in the Elizabethan Age. Sometimes those two professions were blended quite a bit.

A good deal of this has been gone over in the two films that Flora Robson did playing Queen Elizabeth I, Fire Over England and The Sea Hawk. In this film we get Sir Francis Drake's round the world voyage picking up all kinds of loot for the British crown, stolen from the Spanish who would be using it to finance their great Armada to crush those Protestant upstarts over on that island kingdom. We also have the plot to assassinate Elizabeth and put her Catholic kinsmen Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne. That's woven into the film where Drake's aid Keith Michell woos lady in waiting Edy Vessel. But she doesn't like the fact that he's off having all kinds of adventures. While Michell's away, Vessel is courted by Sir Thomas Babington played by Terence Hill before he went into spaghetti westerns who gets her involved in the plot against Elizabeth. Babington was a real life figure whose capture and confession by that other real life figure Francis Walsingham turned up the whole plot that led to Mary Stuart's execution.

Action and intrigue are the hallmarks of Seven Seas To Calais. But I fear a lot of it is rehashed from those old classics which were done a lot better.