O Pirata Real

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.

It's 1577 Plymouth. English and Spanish swordsmen are battling over a document. It's a map to all the stored Spanish gold and it falls to privateer Sir Francis Drake (Rod Taylor). Queen Elizabeth I (Irene Worth) authorizes him to lead raids to steal the golden treasures.

This is a spaghetti historical drama. It's an Italian film for the English world. There is some swashbuckling. There are plenty of costume drama. The acting is fine if somewhat broad. Sometimes, it's almost camp. There are some impressive old style ships really on the sea. When the big battle finally happens, it is done with miniatures. It's a little too stuffy at times and I'm not taken with these characters. By the time of the final battle, I just want the movie to end.

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".

Yikes, this is pretty poor.... I saw "The Birds" recently and thought that I would look into some other Rod Taylor films. This is a hoot - he plays the dashing Sir Francis Drake with Keith Michell and Irene Worth co-hamming it up magnificently in this Italian-made Elizabethan romp. Edy Vessel as the love interest for Michell is gloriously fake and the score repeats the same themes in an almost comical manner as the plucky privateers battle the Spaniards to pinch as much gold as they can whilst trying to thwart the plot to put Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne of England. You really ought to see this just to watch the bendy swords as it swashes and buckles along - there's even a song!

Just as THE VIRGIN QUEEN (1955) dealt with Queen Elizabeth I's 'relationship' with Sir Walter Raleigh, this one involves her similar association with another well-known historical figure i.e. Sir Francis Drake. Unlike that film, however, which was done in lavish Hollywood terms, the title under review was a low-grade European venture, freely mixing the expected court intrigue and sea-faring stretches with elements of the swashbuckler genre, irrelevant romantic interludes and even instances of broad comedy (the discovery of potatoes, for instance, is attributed to a squaw's infatuation with Drake's right-hand man!). The brew proves uninspiring (despite interesting credentials, the best of which emerges to be Franco Mannino's rousing score) but undeniably entertaining in an unassuming way. Casting, too, is slightly above-average for this type of outing – with Rod Taylor (who had had an uncredited bit in the afore-mentioned THE VIRGIN QUEEN) a reasonably effective Drake, Keith Michell as his virile sidekick, Irene Worth as Elizabeth, Arturo (BLACK Sunday [1960]) Dominici as a Spanish ambassador, and there's even Terence Hill (still billed under his real name of Mario Girotti) as a conspirator and Michell's rival for the hands of one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting.