‘The Pirates of Blood River’ or — Arboreal Inconsistencies?
The Huguenots are being naughty.
Naughty Huguenot Jonathon Standing (Kerwin Matthews) is getting it on with a naughty female Huguenot in the woods/jungle/local municipal park. The only problem is the Huguenotina is married. Naughty Huguenots!
Jonathon is captured and sent to a penal colony by the strict elders for bringing disgrace to the Huguenot camp. The Huguenot-ess is eaten by piranhas in accordance to the word of the Lord.
Jonathon manages to escape his harsh prison and makes his way back to the Huguenot camp through deadly swamps and jungles. This must be some far-flung, distant island the Huguenots are living on as evidenced by the huge numbers of exotic and tropical oak, birch, chestnut and beech trees Jonathon must fight his way through.
However, soon after escaping Jonathon falls captive to Capt. LaRoche (Christopher Lee) and his band of bloodthirsty pirates. LaRoche offers to help Jonathon back to the Huguenot camp and overthrow the patriarchal tyrants who rule it. Jonathon agrees and shakes hand with the trustworthy pirate, although Jonathon is soon shocked that when reaching the Huguenot camp that the pirates start raping and killing everybody and looking for hidden treasure. It’s almost as though you can’t trust a pirate anymore!
And so a stand-off, of sorts, takes place as the pirates search for the Huguenots’ gold, the Huguenots attempt to keep their way of life preserved while Jonathon attempts to stage a Sixties counter-revolution and usher in an era of free-love and sex without fear of being eaten by piranhas.
From the description above you could be forgiven for concluding that ‘The Pirates of Blood River’ (1962) was a load of cheap guff… and you’d be right! Good grief, this is one disposable, low-budget, weirdly paced load of cobblers with dialogue that’s as stilted as a wooden leg. The action is clumsy and chaotic, the topography confusing, the directing haphazard and there’s a sense of total disregard for the safety of both humans and animals, possibly because director John Gilling wanted to wrap everything up as quickly as possible and go home. There’s a scene where the pirates have to traverse a dangerous swamp but it looks nothing of the sort and more like a bunch of crazed uncles and granddads who have escaped from their care homes and are now flailing around in some sewage surrounded by some wildly inconsistent foliage.
This is a laughably daft movie.
Yet it’s also oddly compelling. For one thing, the story is clear and simple meaning that at no point whatsoever during ‘The Pirates of Blood River’ did I have to stop the movie, scratch my head and think “I wonder what’s going on now?” or ever felt worried that the highly complex narrative might be beyond my capacity to comprehend. It’s also an incredible easy, almost rejuvenating, watch because you’d have to either be a child or at least be capable of thinking like one to tolerate sitting through any of this.
It also clips along at a decent pace with tonnes of incident and reasons for action, even if the action isn’t terribly inspired, and the script is packed with excuses for excitement of the highly stupid variety. A good example is the blindfolded duel between two pirates who are fighting over a woman. This should be a rousing set-piece but the idea is so silly (who the hell fights blindfolded anyway?) and the execution so pedestrian that it simply descends into Oliver Reed and Peter Arne stumbling about whilst destroying all the crockery and melons in their immediate vicinity with massive swords. But it also goes on for WAY too long meaning it’s somewhat excruciating and bonkers both at the same time. Which, to be fair, pretty much sums up the entire movie.
‘The Pirates of Blood River’ was, apparently, somewhat successful on release and I can sort of understand why as it’s both a fun watch and ridiculously easy to consume. It also manages to tread that fine line between being totally insufferable and mildly entertaining, which can be a tricky feat for any movie to successfully pull off. Although it does leave me wondering if director John Gilling was either a gifted filmmaker who could wring as much as possible from a miniscule budget or a talentless hack who, no matter how much money and resources were at his disposal, would always end up making something that looked as cheap as this. Or maybe he just had a thing for sewage?
