Popular reviews

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★½ 1

  47/100

  A faded technicolor adventure full of tropes but bogged down by its plain, by-the-numbers approach. Fun and goofy in spurts, and very pretty, but still lacking that swift ingredient of energy that these movies need.

  Also, *look* at that poster.

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  Review by Matt J. 🇺🇦 ★★★★

  Is this a good movie? Not really.
  Is this an entertaining movie? Most certainly.

  This Technicolor beauty from the early '50s is filled will all the pirate tropes: swashbuckling, sea battles, wenches, bottles of rum, buried treasure, crew mutinies, pieces of eight, the jolly roger, and, last but not least, Robert Newton playing the archetypal pirate, replete with plenty of interjections of "arrrrr!" and "ahoy!"

  
  Wonderful, mindless, campy fun.

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  Review by Sophie Farrell ★★½

  Until I came across this film on BBC iplayer, I had never heard of this film before. However, as a history enthusiast with a strong interest in pirates, I thought I would give Blackbeard, the Pirate a watch. Blackbeard, the Pirate is a film that makes use of practically every pirate cliche in the book. A film about the notorious pirate seems like a really good idea and, therefore, I was expecting a fun piece of escapist fare. This is not the case as Blackbeard, the Pirate is really dull and is nothing to get excited about.

  The film follows British Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard, who sets out to earn a reward by proving that privateer Henry Morgan also engages…

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  Review by Channing Pomeroy ★★★ 4

  My family has a house on the coast of Georgia 10 miles from a place called Blackbeard Island, so named because he was said to hide in the creek behind it. A legend of buried booty persists despite the lack of a single doubloon lo these many years. The island is a Federal Wildlife Preserve and access is strictly limited but you can wade over at low tide if you’re tall enough. So the pirate Blackbeard long ago captured my imagination and I’ll watch any movie called Blackbeard, the Pirate even if the eponymous beard is horribly fake.

  Brightly Technicolored and studio-bound, this is more of an 1950s amusement park attraction than high seas adventure. It’s perfect for a covid Saturday morning over a bowl of cereal while clearing out your in-box.

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  Review by Bruno Andrade ★★★ 2

  (...) al mar de los Sargazos al Océano Ártico al Paso de Calais
  al Cabo de Hornos, de Buena Esperanza, Hatteras,
  a todos los rincones más lejanos
  del mapamundi soñado
  del Atlas Universal Ilustrado de nuestra infancia curiosa.
  Amigo de bucaneros, indios, contrabandistas,
  buscadores de oro, proscritos, soñadores,
  bebedores, poetas, rebeldes, villistas, camorristas,
  jugadores, balleneros, navegantes, exploradores,
  soldados rasos de a pie, generales de caballería, marineros,
  viejos lobos de mar, jóvenes locos y audaces,
  amantes perseguidos, prisioneros evadidos,
  emigrantes, colonos, vaqueros y bandoleros,
  gentes del rodeo, del hampa y del camino,
  de todos los rincones, las razas, las tierras, las fronteras.
  Surcó todos los mares, los senderos, atajos, carreteras,
  bahías, desfiladeros, cañones, lagos, ríos, cielos y cascadas,
  con Rita y con Marlene, con Eleanor Parker o con Jo Van Fleet,
  con el mismísimo Pancho Villa.

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  Review by Fint ★★½ 2

  I commented the other day that no actor was a bigger overegger than Tod Slaughter. Well, Robert Newton, when on full-blooded, eye-rolling form, could give Slaughter a run for his doubloons. Aaarrgh!

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  Review by 🥀 e m m é 🇵🇸 ★½

  The shame that I feel as I realize I’ve watched yet another mediocre adventure film! At least Linda Darnell is really beautiful, because Keith Andes is blaaaaaand here.

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  Review by Dan K ★★

  "What do you expect, sailing under a crazy man?"

  To be honest this isn't very good, there's a very non-existent protagonist and an awful barebones love story, but mostly I watched this for Robert Newton who is upping his pirate game from Long John Silver in Disney's Treasure Island two years earlier, and now playing the infamous Blackbeard. Strangely he's not even the hero in the story, but he plays it like he is (and let's be real, that's how you should approach it, as he's one of the only reasons to see this.)

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  Review by Jeff Light ★★★★ 3

  Simply THE iconic pirate movie, this is the one that sets the stage for true down & dirty pirating rather than matinee idols making grand speeches.

  The Good:
  I've been watching a lot of the more famous Golden Age pirate films and it's funny, they kind of go in historical order. In "Captain Blood", Errol Flynn is a surgeon who ends up forced into piracy. Then in "The Seahawk", Flynn stars again as pirates are legalized by the British as "privateers". In "The Black Swan", Captain Morgan gives up piracy to become the governor of Jamaica and hunt down pirates who refuse to serve The Crown. Then here, we follow Blackbeard, the most notorious pirate in the end of the pirate…

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  Review by Evelyn Rose

  Raoul Walsh sailed open seas throughout the early 1950s, making four sea-faring yarns for various production outfits in the years surrounding the end of his Warner Bros. contract. This one doesn't have the production values of Warner's Captain Horatio Hornblower, but the relative cheapness of Edmund Grainger's production is to be preferred in this domain. Austerity conveys a better sense of pulp adventure and of the ramshackle renegade going it alone, whether Blackbeard or Walsh. Robert Newton is the title ham here, perfectly adequate as cut-rate cutthroats go, but what makes this delish Saturday morning entertainment is gaspingly gorgeous Keith Andes, dancing through swordplay with nary a shirt in sight, all the better to study his technique. Linda Darnell, herself luscious in corsets, makes no attempt to conceal her excitations. Darnell's eyes channel the energy of lit candles, and Walsh casts about his candelabra in search of buried jewels.

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  Review by Pottlekid ★★

  Blackbeard himself is good in a fun hokey way, but the action was ho-hum. The story had potential, but none of characters could keep a secret for two seconds. The lady’s treasure was immediate discovered, Morgan found out about Blackbeard’s fake death the next scene, Blackbeard realizes the doctor is a spy right off the bat, etc. I lost count of how many times the hero stayed below during a battle or tried to sneak off in a middle of a fight.

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  Review by PapaMayhem ★★★½

  You just gotta love this era of film with the painted calligraphy slides for the opening titles. Gorgeous. Robert Newton is fantastic as Blackbeard. The rest of the cast does fine with their roles but Newton absolutely owns the title role. This story has some twists and turns in it as absolutely everyone in it is out for themself and the treasure. The effects, in the form of sets and costumes mostly, are very good.

  The model work for the ships is also nicely done. This is a fun one to watch actually as aside from the story twists it also gives us plenty of action. One on one sword duels, land battles, a good ship on ship fight. Everything a good pirate movie needs by thunder! The music score is a decent trumpet blaring 50s music score. It’s a good classic era pirate movie.