{"id":14035,"date":"2016-08-19T02:37:57","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T06:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=14035"},"modified":"2016-08-19T03:35:24","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T07:35:24","slug":"dvd-devil-ship-pirates-the-1964","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=14035","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Devil-Ship Pirates, The (1964)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IconsOfAdventure\"Film<\/strong>: Very\u00a0Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Very Good<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: n\/a<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Sony<\/a><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a01 (NTSC)<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0June 10, 2008<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Pirates \/ Adventure<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0After seeing fellow ships destroyed, a former pirate ship commandeered by the Spanish Navy hides in the English channel and besieges an insular village until ship repairs are completed.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 (to follow)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Never one to allow a genre to go unsaturated, Hammer Films wrangled producer-writer Jimmy Sangster to concoct a pirate tale for star Christopher Lee, with the end results feeling an awful lot like a variation on the writer\u2019s prior swashbuckling credit, the story for The Pirates of Blood River<\/strong> (1962), in which the outcast son of a Hugenot leader returns with French pirates who lay siege to the insular community until locals manage to gain an upper hand.<\/p>\n

For The Devil-Ship Pirates<\/strong>, Sangster\u2019s script has Spanish pirates laying siege to a small English Channel village, forcing locals to mend their damaged ship during low tide before fleeing south. Lee plays Captain Robeles, a 100% cruel SOB who shoots the Diablo\u2019s prior captain in the back when the modest Spanish Armada is virtually sunk during their attempted invasion of Britain.<\/p>\n

After the Diablo is beached during low tide, the real cat-and-mouse game begins as the sailors attempt to lay low. A plum opportunity for coercion arrives when a young girl (Natasha Pyne) wanders to close, and Robeles realizes her village is too remote to know of the Armada\u2019s defeat. So begins a clever ruse that initially convinces locals they\u2019re now subjects of the Spanish, but holes appear in Robeles\u2019 plans when there\u2019s an escaped hostage and more than suspicious behaviour by the sailors who revert back to their ornery, selfish pirate selves.<\/p>\n

When several challenge the authority of the ship\u2019s lone Spanish royalist, Don Manuel (Barry Warren), the locals\u2019 fortunes change as Don Manuel makes opportune maneuvers which weaken and ultimately threaten Robeles\u2019 plans.<\/p>\n

In a portent of his fine swordsmanship in Richard Lester\u2019s The Three Musketeers<\/a><\/strong> films, Lee gleefully engages in a few duels (which the actor clearly enjoyed performing), but Robeles is more one-sided than Blood River<\/strong>\u2019s LaRoche, a similar master manipulator, but a man with a few ounces of morals and one who stands by his word (when convenient). Robeles is just a murderer and bully, and like Blood<\/strong> River<\/strong>, there\u2019s a hanging of locals to shock the villagers\u00a0into submission; grubby, randy pirates wanting more from the women than mere groping; and complex power struggles among\u00a0the pirates and locals.<\/p>\n

In Blood<\/strong> River<\/strong>, Andrew Kier played the doomed Hugenot chief\u00a0whose religious fidelity leads to hangings, a break with his rebellious son, whereas in Devil-Ship<\/strong> his character aids rebellious son Harry (John Cairney). Peter Arne returns to play a pirate, behaving more googly-eyed than before, while the English village is headed by a weak-willed Lord (Ernest Clark) and a silly priest (Peter Howell) who soon realizes pirates are not exactly \u2018God\u2019s children, too.\u2019<\/p>\n

For its extremely modest budget and sometimes variable cast, Lee\u2019s fun to watch being mean stern, vindictive, and glowering at every turn, whereas Warren gives a sharp performance as the disgusted royalist whose small gestures slowly convince the village rebels of his fidelity to their goal of liberation. His stage training gives Don Manuel stark gravitas, but Warren never crosses over to theatricality; with the exception of uncredited roles in Lawrence of Arabia<\/strong> (1961), parts in Hammer\u2019s The Kiss of the Vampire<\/strong> (1963) and Frankenstein Created Woman<\/strong> (1967), and the murder mystery Do You Know His Voice?<\/strong> most of his modest career lay in TV. Also of note is child actor Michael Newport who plays the boy Smiler, and has a great little scene with Lee.<\/p>\n

Gary Hughes\u2019 second pirate score (after the superior\u00a0Blood River<\/strong>) is a bit bizarre; the dramatic cues are fine, but the main theme is wholly inappropriate, sounding like an unused march from a jovial WWII propaganda film. Hammer uses his opening cue to pad the Main Titles to a deadly 3 mins., but director Don Sharp keeps the pacing brisk, and ably handles the action scenes, managing to cover the demise of the Diablo with dual cameras.<\/p>\n

That said, Michael Reed\u2019s cinematography is eloquent but conservative, using very little camera movement or close-ups. Part of the film\u2019s portraiture style may lie in the use of Megascope<\/a>, the anamorphic process that very clearly turns peripheral objects and people very thin:\u00a0when characters walk off-screen or there\u2019s a slow pan, frame elements go through slight contortions, not unlike the old CinemaScope lenses.<\/p>\n

Sharp\u2019s other Hammer credits include The Kiss of the Vampire<\/strong> (1963) and Rasputin the Mad Monk<\/strong> (1966), plus the Hammer House of Horror<\/a><\/strong> episode \u201cGuardian of the Abyss\u201d (1980).<\/p>\n

Sony’s set includes some significant extras. Audio commentaries adorn each of the four films – The Pirates of Blood River<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>(1962), The Devil-Ship Pirates<\/strong> (1964), The Strangers of Bombay<\/strong> (1959), and the Sangster-penned The Terror of the Tongs<\/strong> (1961) – which will be assessed in future upgraded reviews.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2016 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a>\u00a0 — Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never one to allowing a genre to go unsaturated, Hammer Films wrangled producer-writer Jimmy Sangster to concoct a pirate tale for star Christopher Lee, with the end results feeling an awful lot like a variation on the writer\u2019s prior swashbuckling credit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[4577,4576,270,4578,2959],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-3En","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14035"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14076,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14035\/revisions\/14076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}