Yellowbeard's a notorious pirate, who's spent twenty years in prison while the British Navy tries to sweat the location of the treasure he stole from a delusional Spanish priest (Tommy Chong). He escapes, but the only remaining copy of his treasure map is tattooed on the scalp of a young gardener whose mother (Madeline Khan) claims is Yellowbeard's son.
So it's loosely a treasure hunt, with Yellowbeard's one-handed former bosun (Peter Boyle) and his conniving yes-man (Marty Feldman) after the treasure, along with the head of the British secret service, but it's mostly just a string of gags that occasionally remember to drift in the direction of a buried treasure. Yellowbeard is barely involved for long stretches, usually whenever he's taking a break from raping.
There are a lot of rape jokes in this movie, which is not great. Madeline Khan pulls some laughs with some of her comments ("I never left anyone I raped alive!" "I do remember it being rather rough. . .") Most of them feel like someone trying too hard to be shocking.
There were a lot of parts in the movie I did laugh at, though. John Cleese is in there as a blind informer, who Boyle and Feldman eliminate in a hilarious manner. During the attack on the priest's stronghold, there are a lot of gags about his chief lackey (Cheech Marin) berating the soldiers for overacting in their "death" scenes. The various attempts by sailors to sneak women aboard the ship, which including Feldman's giant crocodile. The British spymaster being announced as such at a party, before the crier reads the part that says, "don't say this aloud." Enough funny bits to keep the movie rolling and keep it from focusing on Yellowbeard, who's too one-note to be compelling.
Martin Hewitt, who plays the young gardener, is a nothingburger, but I imagine that's by design. He's the relatively sane one surrounded by lunatics and idiots. He eventually gets into the swordfighting and swashbuckling, but closer to the Errol Flynn version of movie pirates than the sociopath Yellowbeard is.
2 comments:
I know I would have seen this a year or so after release, whenever it came out on video - I was a massive Monty Python fan so Chapman, Cleese, et al would have made this a definite watch for me.
Thing is, that would have been about forty years ago... and I can't remember a damn thing about it.
I'd never even heard of it until it showed up on Pluto TV's on demand selection, so at first guess, I wondered if it was a Mel Brooks movie I'd missed.
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