Il pirata dello sparviero nero

This film catches Sergio Grieco in the middle of a number of low-budget adventure films he directed based on Italian history. Filmed originally in color, this appeared a few years later in U.S. drive-ins in a tawdry black-and-white version, which strips the film of any lustre it may have possessed on the big screen. Thus, it is hard to appreciate what the director had in mind when shooting the film, and one must refer to "Lo Spadaccino Misterioso" and others to see what was being done in the genre at that period. There is quite a bit of action in this one, but somehow, the charisma is lacking. After viewing this three or four times, I found that the film doesn't really get much better after the first viewing, and I'll have to hope that a color version (preferably letterboxed) shows up some day, so that I can better evauluate this film. Nevertheless, it features some great faces, and an over-the-top raid by Moorish pirates. The ending revenge scene is also particularly memorable.

Andrea Aureli and his soldiers have captured the castle and killed the old nobleman. Now he wants to be recognized as the rightful duke, so he plans on marrying the old man's daughter, Mijanou Bardot. She has a brother who was out at the time, palling around with his buddy, Gérard Landry, a pirate off the Black Hawk, hence the movie's title.

Although there are a couple of scenes down at the beach, there's never a sight of nor scene set in the pirate ship, which will surely be as much a disappointment for the hopeful viewer as the wrong Bardot sister. Instead it turns out to be one of those movies where the peasants love the old ducal family, who only whipped them on national holidays or some such. There's some moderate cleverness in how the the good guys -- the pirates, that is -- get into the castle, and the usual poorly choreographed big fights at the end. A decent time waster.

In an effort to take over the Duchy of Montefort by force, "Manfred" (Andrea Aureli) has Saracen pirates kill the Duke and attempts to kidnap his young heir. However, a loyal subject named "Richard" (Gerard Landry) has no intention of allowing Manfred to assume the throne and after capturing a Saracen pirate ship creates all kinds of problems for the usurpers. Surprisingly, this movie doesn't follow the standard format typically associated with films of this type and--although it isn't very long (only 72 minutes)--there are several sharp twists and turns throughout. To me this was its best feature and the main reason I have rated it slightly higher than most people on IMDb. Make no mistake, it isn't a great "pirate film" by any means with the English dubbing being probably the biggest flaw to speak of. But it wasn't a bad movie either and because there was so much action compacted in the limited run time so I have rated it accordingly. Average.