“In all the bloody pages of history, no bloody chapter was more bloody than the bloody era of the buccaneers. Over the seven seas the Brethren of the Coast, as these bloodthirsty pirates called themselves, roamed at will. Killing, plundering and looting. Writing their names in blood across the bloody record of time. They were a murderous, bloodthirsty crew who feared neither men nor the Devil. But the bloodiest of all these bloodthirsty buccaneers was the bloody pirate: Bloodthirsty Dave.”
There’s more blood in that prologue than the entire Friday the 13th franchise. Throw in Michael Myers and Freddy Kruger and you still won’t get enough blood. But take heart, mates. The film itself is a friendly spoof of the pirate film, and the only casualties are the ones who died laughing. Donald O’Connor was a kind of poor-man’s Danny Kaye, and it doesn’t take long to see the resemblance, if not in stature, then in technique. What we have here is a rather silly little story with some high seas action and more than a few laughs.
“Whoever heard of a seaman with a heart?”
Davey (O’Conner) works in a port shop in Charleston with his coworker and friend, the simple Tom Botts, played by future Grandpa Walton Will Geer. Davey has a thing for Lady Sylvia, played by Helena Carter. She’s a ward of the Governor and a frequent shopper in the store. The Governor (Emery) is also entranced by the little shop of treasures and arranges a private viewing for Lord (Logan) and Lady (Givney) Montrose. It’s a most unfortunate event, as the Lady Montrose recognizes one of the pieces as one liberated by pirates. Of course, it’s the Governor himself who has engaged to selling these stolen treasures, but he fakes outrage and arranges for the shop owner to be arrested. As they are arrested and escorted to jail, the escort is attacked by pirates, and Davey and Tom escape. They end up in a pirate tavern where they hope to board a ship to escape Charleston. They find Captain Bloodthirsty Ben Wickett (McGraw), who is willing to take them, but they need money to pay their way. This leads to a rather slow moment for Davey to entertain the pirates on stage for money. They finally get the dough, but the pirate intends to dump them overboard and keep the money. Just as he’s about to walk the plank, Davey takes a drink from a bottle of rum. It appears he’s allergic to the stuff and breaks out in hives, which fool the pirates into thinking he has Pox, and they abandon ship, leaving Davey and Tom alone on the ship. Of course, that’s when they spot the Governor’s ship where he’s taking Sylvia to marry him. The resulting encounter has Davey pretending to be Bloodthirsty Dave, the feared pirate, and a slew of misunderstandings lead to Davey getting a reputation that is not deserved for being cutthroat. In the end the good guys win, and Davey is celebrated at a committee of famous pirates.
There are some great cameos in the pirate committee. Captain Ben Avery is played by long-time Universal stuntman Glenn Strange. Strange is known to horror fans as the man who played the Frankenstein monster in House Of Dracula, House Of Frankenstein, and Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein. It was his makeup piece that was reused later on Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster in The Munsters. Captain Kidd is played by Alan Napier, who we all know best as Alfred to Adam West’s Batman in the 1960’s camp version of the Dark Knight. James Arness, famous as Gunsmoke’s Marshal Dillon, has an uncredited cameo. Horror fans know him better from The Thing From Another World and Them.
Donald O’Conner has had a pretty good career mostly doing these slapstick comic routines. He’s also had parts in such classics as Singing In The Rain with Gene Kelly and Rita Moreno. His Danny Kaye resemblance actually came back to haunt him once. When a flu bug kept him from doing White Christmas with Bing Crosby he was replaced by … you guessed it … Danny Kaye. His greatest fame, however, came from the Francis the Talking Mule films. He made six of those altogether. It might have been somewhat of an embarrassment to him that his most prolific guest star was a horse. Now we get to see another gem. “We have our own ways of testing a man’s mettle.”
