"Pirates" is Roman Polanski's failed attempt to resurrect the pirate genre, which was dead in the water in the '80s, and after it came out, remained so. They tried again in the '90s with "Cut-throat Island", which was an even bigger flop - in fact, the biggest in film history. It was only in the 2000s, with "Pirates of the Caribbean", that people got interested in seeing peg legs and eye patches again.
Walter Matthau is an evil pirate apparently castaway on a raft with a young man, whom he is contemplating murdering. Matthau uses an almost Cockney English accent.
Coming across a large ship, they climb aboard unbeknownst to its crew. In the climb, Matthau loses his treasure chest. The men are immediately apprehended and placed in the ship's hold, where they come up with false identities.
The movie has an oddly distancing feel to it, like none of the dialogue is meant for your ears. Plus, there is an overbearing musical score that, in seeking to underline everything on screen, only succeeds in making you realise how little it is effecting you.
There is a surprising scene early in the movie where Captain Red (Matthau) and his sidekick cold bloodedly murder a man in their attempt to escape the ship.
This is the problem with a lot of bad movies, especially those that also bombed at the box office: a lot of stuff happens on screen, but you don't feel involved in it at all. Perhaps the filmmakers just failed to give us an entry point to start caring about what's going on on-screen. Certainly Matthau doesn't help, and nor does "Frog", his utterly pedestrian sidekick. Matthau should have played the bad guy, and they should have given the side-kick role to someone like Matthew Broderick or Michael J. Fox or Rob Lowe or Tom Cruise. The movie cost 40 million - don't tell me they couldn't have afforded someone better.
Critics at the time used the occasion of the film's failure to remark that Walter Matthau is not an action star. That's some newsflash, there. I think a more apt observation might be that Polanski is not an action film director. There is an action scene midway that is not particularly rousing, and the soundtrack Mickey-Mouses it out the wazoo, of course.
Evil Captain Red and his equally murderous buddy take over the ship, and you are just left wondering why it took them so long. This should have been shown in the first twenty minutes. Everything between the two boarding the ship and the take-over is superfluous.
Poor, ill-fated Roy Kinnear, one of my favourite character actors, appears at the 50 minute mark, the second actor in the movie I have recognized after Matthau. The bad guy from "City of Lost Children" also makes an appearance.
Captain Red and the mutinous crew take the ship (the Neptune) to a pirate's cove where they dock and party. They imprison the guy who captained the ship, but of course he escapes.
Some more tedious scenes of action ensue and they travel to "Anaconda Bay".
A beautiful girl from the Neptune is taken hostage by Captain Red, who tries to use her as a bargaining chip with her uncle, who is a governor of the island they visit.
A fairly unconvincing anacdonda appears in one scene toward the end of the movie.
Then there is another tedious action scene. It seems to go on forever, and I didn't care about nor understand any of it. Nor did I care to.
The shark from the beginning makes another appearance. If more people had seen this movie, they might not complain that the shark in "Jaws" looks fake.
And then it's over. Thank god. This film deserved its failure.
Walter Matthau is an evil pirate apparently castaway on a raft with a young man, whom he is contemplating murdering. Matthau uses an almost Cockney English accent.
Coming across a large ship, they climb aboard unbeknownst to its crew. In the climb, Matthau loses his treasure chest. The men are immediately apprehended and placed in the ship's hold, where they come up with false identities.
The movie has an oddly distancing feel to it, like none of the dialogue is meant for your ears. Plus, there is an overbearing musical score that, in seeking to underline everything on screen, only succeeds in making you realise how little it is effecting you.
There is a surprising scene early in the movie where Captain Red (Matthau) and his sidekick cold bloodedly murder a man in their attempt to escape the ship.
This is the problem with a lot of bad movies, especially those that also bombed at the box office: a lot of stuff happens on screen, but you don't feel involved in it at all. Perhaps the filmmakers just failed to give us an entry point to start caring about what's going on on-screen. Certainly Matthau doesn't help, and nor does "Frog", his utterly pedestrian sidekick. Matthau should have played the bad guy, and they should have given the side-kick role to someone like Matthew Broderick or Michael J. Fox or Rob Lowe or Tom Cruise. The movie cost 40 million - don't tell me they couldn't have afforded someone better.
Critics at the time used the occasion of the film's failure to remark that Walter Matthau is not an action star. That's some newsflash, there. I think a more apt observation might be that Polanski is not an action film director. There is an action scene midway that is not particularly rousing, and the soundtrack Mickey-Mouses it out the wazoo, of course.
Evil Captain Red and his equally murderous buddy take over the ship, and you are just left wondering why it took them so long. This should have been shown in the first twenty minutes. Everything between the two boarding the ship and the take-over is superfluous.
Poor, ill-fated Roy Kinnear, one of my favourite character actors, appears at the 50 minute mark, the second actor in the movie I have recognized after Matthau. The bad guy from "City of Lost Children" also makes an appearance.
Captain Red and the mutinous crew take the ship (the Neptune) to a pirate's cove where they dock and party. They imprison the guy who captained the ship, but of course he escapes.
Some more tedious scenes of action ensue and they travel to "Anaconda Bay".
A beautiful girl from the Neptune is taken hostage by Captain Red, who tries to use her as a bargaining chip with her uncle, who is a governor of the island they visit.
A fairly unconvincing anacdonda appears in one scene toward the end of the movie.
Then there is another tedious action scene. It seems to go on forever, and I didn't care about nor understand any of it. Nor did I care to.
The shark from the beginning makes another appearance. If more people had seen this movie, they might not complain that the shark in "Jaws" looks fake.
And then it's over. Thank god. This film deserved its failure.