Avenger of the Seven Seas (1962) Poster

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6/10
Enjoyable Italian adventures with intrepid pirates and exotic scenarios .
ma-cortes20 September 2019
Enjoyable Italian adventures with intrepid pirates and exotic scenarios . This ¨Avengers of the seven seas¨ or ¨La isla de la ambición¨ (1962) or ¨Il giustiziere dei mari¨(original title) contains adventures , thrills , action and ship battles . It's 1790 , somewhere in the South Seas , a British Naval Commander Redway (Roldano Lupi) is driven by ambition for getting money and will stop at nothing to get it . Redway arrives with his underlings men Lt. David Robinson (Richard Harrison) , Hornblut (Paul Muller and other troopers on the island of Freeland to collect the annual tribute in the form of pearls to England . Once ashore, greedy Redway, his second in command, and their men meet with the island's representative, Errol Robinson. David instantly recognizes Errol as his dad and it results out David has a brother, Gary, he hasn't seen since he was a baby. In order to save his sibling and avenge his father's death David must join forces with a band of pirates led by Captain Bernard Van Artz (Walter Barnes) and his daughter Jennifer van Artz (Michèle Mercier) , hunt down and kill Redway . Meanwhile , the pirates are pursued but they take shelter at their secret island of Quantral . By the way they take on enemies , are imprisoned as well as mistreated by abusive guards , whipped , betrayed and sold to a cannibal tribe . There then takes place riots , fights , escapes and attacks .

Entertaining adventure movie with natives , intrepid pirates , prisoners and colorful scenarios .Packing verwhelming battles and full of villainy , romance , swashbuckler and heroism . This thrilling picture turns out to be a be a mixture of Pirate movie and adventure , including blood-thirsty cannibals . Along the way we are treated to see swashbuckling , wall-to-wall action , sword-play ,treason , twists and turns .The film is a nice pirate-adventure movie , a passable , acceptable tale , being produced in enough budget . Amusing adventures with valiant pirates and spectacular scenarios on jungles and marshes with carnivorous plants . This classic story of romantic adventure come to life enriched by Eastmancolor cinematography in charge of Carlo Bellero , though a perfect remastering being necessary . This release has some nice and even quite exciting moments here and there , though isn't always interesting , sometimes is diverting and fresh and on a couple of sympathetic occasions is frankly delicious . The film bears remarkable resemblance to ¨Women of the Devil's land¨(1962) also directed by Domenico Paolella with similar cast , scenerios and shot at the same time . The picture is full of struggles , fencing , villainy , romance , ambushes , swashbuckler and heroism . As for the cast, as was also usual, at the top, we found an American actor decided to try his luck in European cinema . In this case the character brought to life , was rightly played by Richard Harrison. He is cool as the lieutenant/pirate hero who encounters dangerous situations while trying to revenge his beloved relatives . He was an actor who had his first major role in "Master of the world" by William Witney along with Vincent Price , then he changed in action roles , mainly series B westerns , get some success and ends up traveling in Europe in the sixties where he made many Peplum and Euro-westerns . Worthwhile watching for a demonstration of the confrontation between the Richard Harrison against the dangerous villain played by Roldano Lupi .Richard Harrison played in Hollywood some minor roles as ¨Kronos¨, and ¨South Pacific¨ . Then , Harrison jumped at the chance when offered the first character in 1961 ,¨The Invincible Gladiator¨ , which was filming in Europe . He wound up settling in Italy for the next two decades . To avoid being penned in too much as a muscle man , he sought characters in routine spaghetti westerns as ¨Texas the Red¨, ¨¨, ¨Reverendo Colt¨ , ¨One Hundred Thousand Dollars for Ringo¨, ¨Stagecoach of the Condemned¨ , ¨Gunfight at High Noon¨ ,¨Joe Dakota¨ , even the main role from ¨For a fistful of dollars¨ was offered to Richard Harrison , but he turned down and explaining : Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing Fistful of Dollars, and recommending Clint Eastwood for the part . The female role was performed by Michèle Mercier, unforgettable starring in the role of Angélique, "the Marquise of the Angels", was both a blessing and a curse. It catapulted her to almost instant stardom, rivalling Brigitte Bardot in her celebrity and popularity, but ruined her acting career. By the end of the 1960s, the names Angélique and Michèle Mercier were synonymous, and to escape type-casting, Mercier was compelled to leave France and try to re-start her career in United States, unfortunately without any success. Support cast is frankly good , thanks to the familiar secondary actors as Roldano Lupi and Walter Barnes . The rest of the cast , we find a negative character to which the director gives a special treatment : the nasty Paul Muller , a secondary actor who interpreted various roles for Jess Frank .

The motion picture was professionally directed by Domenico Paolella . He was a director and writer, known for filming all kind of genres such as Nunexploitation : ¨The nun and the devil¨, ¨Unholy Convent¨ , Peplum : ¨Maciste Nell'inferno Di Gengis Khan¨, ¨Il Gladiatore Che Sfidò L'Impero¨ , ¨Golia Conquista Di Bagdad¨ , ¨Ercole Contro Tiranni , ¨Maciste against Mongols¨, among others .
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6/10
Pirate Peplum Fun
PeplumParadise28 January 2013
Warning: Spoilers
Rollicking pirate adventure on the high seas with Richard Harrison on top physical and acting form. Unusually violent for the time it was made, it features a novel angle where the pirates are the good guys and the British navy the baddies.

David Robinson (Harrison) is on the warpath after crooked British naval Captain Redway (Roldano Lupi), his former commander and the man responsible for the downfall of his family. To achieve his goal he teams up with jolly pirate Van Artz (Walter Barnes).

Michele Mercier, making one of her three Italian peplum appearances here playing the role of Jennifer, Van Art's daughter and David's love interest, went on to become a major European star with the "Angelique" series a few years later.

You also have some of the most unconvincing blackface this side of Al Jolson courtesy of "mulata" Marisa Belli, not the most attractive of women in the first place, and boot-polished up she just looks strange.

Things briefly take a turn for the very odd towards the end when Jennifer is sold to some natives who have a man-eating plant to placate and David has to come to save her – this sequence is so bizarre, even filmed with different colour filters, that it looks like it belongs in another film altogether.

It's all good uninvolving Saturday matinée style fun.
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3/10
Not so jolly roger.
mark.waltz9 April 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Colorful but tedious (until near the end), this is another one of those pirate movies that is fun to watch for the action and fake sets and period costumes but not much else. Walter Barnes is a pirate ship's captain, rowtound in the memory of other pirate ship captains (Charles Laughton, Wallace Beery, Walter Slezak, Robert Newton), and thus a jolly fat man even if he is a brutal killer. He's basically playing a George Arliss type part, the doddering old man assisting young lovers Richard Harrison and Michèle Mercier but dealing with British ship captain Roldano Lupi who wants Harrison clapped in irons.

A Caucausian actress is in dark makeup, obviously dark from above the neck, and light elsewhere. She reminded me of Delta Burke in her makeup on the "Designing Women" episode where she pretended to be a Supreme. Then there are the ridiculous looking native costumes, looking like the straw man from "The Wizard of Oz" had exploded. After a while, I just gave up on the movie for a story and just enjoyed noting how bad it was. But nothing that happened in the first 70 minutes prepared me for the delightful silliness of the flesh-eating plants that appear near the end. I put the time in so you will know after a certain point of watching it not to drink even a sip because you will definitely be doing a spit-take if you do.
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8/10
A real hoot
Leofwine_draca3 July 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Action-packed Italian costume adventure yarn which is a bit of a crowd-pleaser thanks to the fun characters, the ever-twisting plot which doesn't let up for a second, and the inclusion of lots and lots of battles, action, torture and bizarre plot devices like a savage tribe of bloodthirsty natives and a horde of man-eating killer plants! AVENGER OF THE SEVEN SEAS is a thoroughly entertaining old-fashioned affair of the kind they certainly don't make any more and I found it highly exciting entertainment.

The film begins on some tiny godforsaken island as slave workers fish for pearls and periodically are eaten by killer sharks. Into the scene comes the grandly villainous Captain Redway, who is played to the hilt by Roldano Lupi as a big, bear-like brutish man with no compassion for fellow members of the human race who is out for himself and himself only (later on in the film he kills his own girlfriend to be rid of her!). Redway is assisted by the heroic David Robinson, who can't bear to see his relatives beaten and whipped by Redway so rebels and is half-drowned in chains for his troubles.

To further muddy the waters, in comes a ship of good-natured pirates who drive the Navy ship away and rescue the slaves. Robinson and the pirate Captain join forces, but the Captain's daughter is captured by Redway. A fight between the two ships ensues with (wow! they had a budget!) lots of blazing cannons, massive destruction and men frantically fighting out to the death on deck. Unfortunately Redway escapes through the marshes and captures and kills the rest of the slave workers. Forced to give himself up after his brother's death is threatened, Robinson finds himself thrown into a torture cell where his body is swung through the air against sharp knives sticking out of the walls!

Meanwhile, the pirates are betrayed and their base massacred with only a few survivors taken. A small party manage to take the pearls into the swamps where they are butchered by a third party of savage natives. Redway agrees to exchange slaves in return for the lost pearls, and the prisoners are given over for sacrifice to flesh-eating carnivorous plants. Luckily Robinson manages to escape from his prison and arrives at the swamp to valiantly battle the killer plants, hacking them to pieces before returning for an all-out assault on the Navy fortress. Redway himself is finally captured and impaled under the spikes of a falling portcullis!

Peplum star Richard Harrison takes the heroic lead in the movie. A former magazine model in the '50s, Harrison's dependable strongman performance is one of the film's highlights as he makes for a powerful, charismatic lead. Roldano Lupi is excellent as the dastardly villain and Michele Mercier and Marisa Belli supply ample charm as the women caught up in the events. The film is pretty violent for the time with many scenes of bloody death, whilst the action is well-choreographed and always exciting. The cheesy scene of the man-eating plants attacking people is just the icing on the cake as we get to see Harrison hack the papier-mache creations to a pulp!

Although beset by sloppy editing and many plot holes (if Robinson wasn't the traitor who told of the location of the pirate base, then who was?), AVENGER OF THE SEVEN SEAS tries so very hard to be entertaining that it does its job admirably. Boosted by colourful photography and a rousing score, the film offers a thrill-a-minute pace and a plot which just about goes the whole shebang from beginning to end, starting with a one man rebellion and ending with an entire fleet destroyed, as well as a pirate stronghold and half of a slave base! Fine old-fashioned fun for all the family.
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