Yet another Pirate Captain

The other night I watched The Devil Ship Pirates, filmed in 1963. The year before, in 1962, Lee had already starred in The Pirates of Blood River. This film is actually better put toghether, the screen writing and the scenery is more solid and better performed, and less studio. And no studio sounds! That is soo much better, since echoes in a studio has a somewhat cheep ring to it. Sure, I spot some of the usual Hammer faces, but not as obvious as in The Devil Ship Pirates.

SCL:s performance in this much better as well. More brooding and downplayed, and less overacted as Captain Robeles tended to be. This is less of "Tiger-tank", more of his usual, sinister and collected self.

 I enjoy Oliver Reed as Brocaire, a pirate involved in a sub-plot with one of the other pirates, fighting over the same woman, and fighting eachother in general. Oliver Reed was to star with Christopher Lee again, approximately a decade later, in The Three Musketeers - and the sequel, The Four Musketeers. In that, he played Athos. Great films, both of them!

Of course, there's some proper fencing and fighting in this film. What else? Here you can hear SCL talk of how to fence properly. Highly recommended!

Lee comments: "The Pirates of Blood River was in the top ten of that year in Britain as far as money was concerned." And he recollects the crossing over the lake, an enormously straining task, since the water was polluted to the point that Oliver Reeds eyes turned red. As he had to do a fight in the water, he had to be treated in hospital afterwards. Lee refused to film the crossing more than two times.