Les corsaires de Tortuga

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.

I saw this film quite a few times growing up on independent TV stations. I didn't think it was anything too spectacular then, but hey, it was a pirate flick, and you can't go too wrong... right? Well, before the days of corporate run focus groups and test market screenings for films, the studio moguls, banking on what they believed would sell, would ride movie trends like the corporates do today. Back then Westerns and Pirate flicks were all the rage, and in 1961, hoping to revitalize a waning market, 20th Century Fox invested in this thing.

They must've done it on the cheap. Recycleing old studio props and sets, it looks like they cast bit part players in supporting roles. That and the cinematography is pretty bland, though not too far from b-movie standards at the time.

It's a market driven film. No standards or rules are being bent or pushed. There's a few social messages snuck in here and there, but nothing too shocking by contemporary American social standards.

There's nothing really innovative or impressive about this film, but it does offer two hours of pirate escapism. Take it for what it is.

It has been a long time since I've seen this film, over 20 yrs in fact, but there were bits of detail that made it stick in my mind this long. For instance, the character named PeeWee had a distinctive style of sword fighting: he had the rapier or saber in the right hand but he wore a black glove on his left. After some research, I found the glove was used to bat away the blade and acted as a main gouche. Those types of details kept me watching the screen and firmly seated it in my memory. It was a typical pirate movie with the usual stereotypical roles, but it was fun to watch and little bits of the unusual peeked out here and there. I wish I had a chance to watch it again.

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.

Pirates Of Tortuga has Captain Ken Scott who is a privateer on a special mission from the Admiralty. He's been told that Henry Morgan the pirate king with whom they had a deal with when Great Britain was at war with Spain has gone rogue again and set himself in grand style living on Tortuga Island as a pirate king. His living of course is the commerce of the merchant fleet of the West Indies. He's been so good at it that Jamaica is close to starvation.

Scott's mission is relieve Jamaica first then get Morgan. Not so easy, but with his picked crew of buccaneers he's confident that they'll get the job done.

Going along for the ride is stowaway Leticia Roman, a cut purse from London who Scott feels sorry for. She's trouble at first, but proves her worth.

Olympic track star Rafer Johnson has a small part in Pirates Of Tortuga and Robert Stephens plays a dastardly Morgan.

Pirates Of Tortuga was done on the cheap with ample stock footage from such 20th Century Fox classics as the Black Swan and Anne Of The Indies.

Pleasant afternoon viewing for action/adventure fans.