Rated a BOMB by Leonard Maltin, this is not really quite bad if certainly misguided what was veteran British director Annakin thinking?: an old-fashioned pirate adventure, inspired by Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta "The Pirates Of Penzance" (contemporaneously receiving the big-screen treatment), set to horrid electronic music. Yet, the thing is fitfully amusing in spots (often campily so)...
Christopher Atkins is bland as the unwilling buccaneer hero, but tomboyish leading lady Kristy McNichol is cute (she even naively says "Ole'" instead of "Touche'" during the swordfights!). Ted Hamilton, then, is The Pirate King whose matinée'-idol looks seem like a cross between Adam West and Randolph Scott! Scenes from Fox's classic swashbuckler THE BLACK SWAN (1942) with Tyrone Power actually play throughout the opening credits: it transpires to be a TV screening of that film since the narrative here is given a modern-day framework, with the adventure within turning out to be a dream set off by the nerdy McNichols' visit to a pirate attraction! Apart from much romance and derring-do, we get a bumbling group of singing and dancing bobbies (cops) who constitute an obvious anachronism. Still, they're involved in one of the film's more inspired bits: during the climactic bout, they gang up on a isolated pirate and one of them attempts to obscure the camera's viewpoint (recording the event, as it were) which, of course, lampoons the usual expose' of police brutality!
Christopher Atkins is bland as the unwilling buccaneer hero, but tomboyish leading lady Kristy McNichol is cute (she even naively says "Ole'" instead of "Touche'" during the swordfights!). Ted Hamilton, then, is The Pirate King whose matinée'-idol looks seem like a cross between Adam West and Randolph Scott! Scenes from Fox's classic swashbuckler THE BLACK SWAN (1942) with Tyrone Power actually play throughout the opening credits: it transpires to be a TV screening of that film since the narrative here is given a modern-day framework, with the adventure within turning out to be a dream set off by the nerdy McNichols' visit to a pirate attraction! Apart from much romance and derring-do, we get a bumbling group of singing and dancing bobbies (cops) who constitute an obvious anachronism. Still, they're involved in one of the film's more inspired bits: during the climactic bout, they gang up on a isolated pirate and one of them attempts to obscure the camera's viewpoint (recording the event, as it were) which, of course, lampoons the usual expose' of police brutality!