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Thursday, May 25, 2017

The Boy And The Pirates (1960)

Starring Charles Herbert, Susan Gordon, Murvyn Vye, Paul Guilfoyle, Joseph Turkel
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A young boy, enamored with the historical exploits of famous pirates, encounters a genie in a bottle that transports him back in time onto the ship of the legendary Blackbeard. 

Bert I. Gordon, the producer/director and creator of special effects for 1950s sci-fi classics like The Amazing Colossal Man and Attack Of The Puppet People, tries his hand at a fantasy film with this time travel adventure starring Charles Herbert, the young actor from movies like The Fly and 13 Ghosts.  It's charming, but probably among the least of Gordon's films in my opinion, with a meandering story and some less than satisfying visuals.  The pirates, led by Vye's Blackbeard, are colorful, but their attacks on other vessels aren't very dynamic or exciting, and the bulk of the film focuses on weak humor in Herbert's exposure of the pirates to modern technology like safety matches and bubble gum.  Those faults aside, I still enjoyed the film, but it's a pale imitator of other fantasy classics.  The director's daughter Susan appears as a young victim of the pirates that Herbert rescues.

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