Un magnifico ceffo di galera

What a curious little film. Let me try to describe it to you: a one-legged outlaw in the Wild West takes a couple of kids and a bunch of fellow outlaws in search of buried gold. The plot is basically just a borrowed hotch-potch of ideas from Treasure Island, spruced up unconvincingly with songs, and thinly disguised by transporting it away from the Caribbean to the vast open plains of the Wild West.

There are some well-known faces involved in the muddle. Kirk Douglas plays the main character (he also directed); Mark Lester from Oliver plays one of the kids; Lesley Ann Down plays the other kid; and Danny Devito is in it too as one of the outlaws. For such a collection of talent, you'd have thought there must have been a decent script.... wrong!

Douglas often groans about the film, saying it was ineffective and a bad experience for a first-time director. As much as I like the guy, I can't disagree with him on that score. The acting is OK and the scenery looks nice, but the film just lacks passion and excitement and vibrancy. It was a nice idea, but the execution fails it. Maybe someone will remake it one day and do a much better job.

Great movie, fun to watch. Enterteining at his best.

Scalawag was one of two films Kirk Douglas directed himself in as well as acted, the second being the western Posse. He did far better on his second try.

Director Douglas had a hard time restraining actor Douglas and most likely didn't try too hard. The part of even a beached Long John Silver gives one a golden opportunity to ham it up and Kirk made the most of it. Possibly he was influenced by repeated viewings of what those two scene stealers Wallace Beery and Robert Newton had done with the part in the more traditional sea setting.

The pirates here are a beached lot, they ride horses instead of the waves and feast on the booty of ships that anchor near their lair. They dress as traditional pirates though, the whole lot of them could have fit right into Captain Jack Sparrow's crew without a problem.

One of them, Neville Brand, hid the treasure and ran with Kirk and the rest pursuing. He left a map in the form of a talking parrot who with voice by Mel Blanc has some of the best lines the film. But Brand and Kirk have it out at the inn run by brother and sister Lesley Anne Down and Mark Lester.

As in Treasure Island the heart of the story is the relationship formed between Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins. Douglas and Lester have some good chemistry here.

But in the end the addiction to ham trip up what could have been a much better film.

Director-star Kirk Douglas is all ham as 'Peg' in this surprisingly amateurish remake of "Treasure Island" in a western setting. What probably undoes this film more than anything else is the inept editing. Scenes do not transition well at all. Lesley-Anne Down is quite beautiful as Lucy-Ann, and even gets to sing a ballad (probably the film's highlight) written by John Cameron (who provided the film's score). Danny Devito turns up in perhaps his first major film role as a pirate, along with Don Stroud (the villain in "Coogan's Bluff"). Mark Lester's early '70s haircut (or lack of one) is more in keeping with then-mod fashion than with the early 19th century (he had a much shorter coif in the Dickens musical "Oliver"). Mel Blanc provides the voice of the parrot. Filmed in Yugoslavia. Odd picture. Should have been much better. Douglas is a maverick actor, but he plays this one verrrry broadly. At least he seemed to have been genuinely enjoying himself.

After Oliver!, I'm surprised anyone ever offered Mark Lester another part in a movie. Kirk Douglas must have felt sorry for him and offered him the part of his young sidekick in his movie Scalawag, in which he starred and directed. In this swashbuckling disaster, Kirk plays a peg-legged pirate with a band of misfits and a parrot. As like any stereotypical pirate, he's in search of treasure. As much as I like Kirk Douglas, I have to think he was having a bad day when he decided to make this movie. It's both incredibly silly and incredibly 1970s, a decade I don't think produced many quality films anyway. The awkward zooms, terrible haircuts, and odd music choices don't stand the test of time, and Scalawag is no different. Unless you make it your mission to watch every single pirate movie ever made, just stick to Robert Newton's films. You've got several to choose from, including Treasure Island and Long John Silver.

DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not your friend. There's a scene in a hot air balloon about ten minutes before the end where the camera spins in a circle, and it will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"