Blackbeard’s Ghost (1968)

I’m actually super stoked for this one, because while it’s the beginning of that weird period when Disney completely lost its footing without Walt, it’s got pirates! Pirates are cool! And Blackbeard’s something of a hometown hero (anti-hero… whatever) to me, so that’s even cooler. It can’t possibly be worse than the other time Disney tried to do Blackbeard, at any rate.

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This is the second movie in a row where I’m going to harp on excessively about being from North Carolina, so I apologize. While I grew up in the center of the state, close to Duke University, as I mentioned in The Happiest Millionaire, I went to college on the coast. For those that don’t know, costal Carolina is a treasure trove of pirate lore, as the Cape Fear River and surrounding inlets were a safe place to hide ships when they needed repairs. My university was just a few hours’ drive from Bath, North Carolina, the final port of call for old Edward Teach. My uncle, before he got sick, was even part of an expedition that brought part of the Queen Anne’s Revenge to the surface! So I’m pretty hype for this one.

Also, On Stranger Tides is terrible. I will hear no arguments.

Anyway, this movie came about not only because pirates are cool and Disneyland had just recently debuted their most famous pirate-y thing of all, but because Walt Disney had a close personal friend named Ben Stahl, who had just written a children’s book called Blackbeard’s Ghost. Uncle Walt optioned the book rights before it was even published, and then proceeded to trash almost the entire thing except for the conceit of the infamous buccaneer’s specter causing trouble. Or, more likely, writer/producer Bill Walsh and co-writer Don DaGradi did. Walt himself passed before production really got underway. Walsh ended up taking the helm, along with illustrious director Robert Stevenson, back in his wheelhouse of really weird fantasy movies.

Very few of these weird fantasy movies did very well, but this one did! It pulled in $5 million and overwhelmingly positive reviews, making Blackbeard’s Ghost one of the highest-grossing films of the late ’60s. Critics called it the best live-action comedy since The Absent-Minded Professor, uproariously funny and expertly directed in a way we haven’t really seen in quite a while. It’s still beloved today by those who remember it, with an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes! That’s super exciting! Now let’s go seekin’ adventure and salty old pirates, mateys!

STORY

Yet again, our film opens with Dean Jones’s character Steve Walker driving his car down a lonely highway to the town in which he’s going to be the new guy. He pulls up to a gas station to get directions from the attendant, who, by crazy random happenstance is also heading towards Godolphin. Gudger Larkin, the attendant with the worst name I have ever heard, offers to give directions if Steve gives him a ride, and the two shoot the breeze while Steve fills his tank. Steve’s headed towards Godolphin to start his new job as the local college track coach, and Gudger just happens to be captain of that very track team. It’s a little early to get excited, though. He’s not a great runner. Like, at all.

Steve drives Gudger down to a matte painting of Blackbeard’s Inn, the heart and soul of Godolphin. And real talk? This place would be awesome in real life. A pirate themed hotel in a place full of pirate lore made of pieces of old pirate ships and said to be haunted by pirate ghosts? The place would make a killing! But as this is a movie and a movie needs conflict, Blackbeard’s Inn isn’t doing so well. Gudger helpfully exposits that the little old ladies (and this movie is very insistent on that terminology) who live there need to raise $38,000 by the next night or the local loan shark will bulldoze the property. This seems like a poor business decision on the loan shark’s part, but what do I know? Also, why are they just now holding a fundraiser? This movie has so many plotholes. Anyway, Steve pulls into the inn’s parking lot but aforementioned loan shark, Silky Seymour whips on in, establishing himself as The Worst right out of the gate.

Times might be tough, but the little old ladies are having a great time at their Buccaneer Bazaar! There’s even a house band of little old ladies dressed like pirates with sashes declaring them “Daughters of the Buccaneers”. It’s kinda awesome. Steve has no time for frivolity, though. He just wants to get to his room and crash after a very, very long drive. Gudger starts to lead him through the crowds to find Emily Stowecroft, the owner of the hotel, and get his keys, but they’re interrupted by two new faces eager to meet the college’s new track coach. First is Dean Roland Wheaton, and second is the football coach Pinetop Purvis. Both warn Steve in no uncertain terms that the track team is completely hopeless and football is where the money’s at, but Steve is sure he can turn things around. Eventually Steve gets outside and finds Miss Stowecroft telling fortunes outside. And she is into it. Like, really into it. Way more into it than she is in the possibility of a customer, much to Steve’s annoyance. She seizes his palm and proceeds to dramatically and vaguely predict the entire rest of the story in the most extra way possible. I love her. And I am totally using “we accommodate the living… but who shall accommodate the dead?!” in a check-in someday.

Still keyless, Steve backs out of the tent and finds a kissing booth, just the thing to fix his grumpiness. He drops a dollar in the box and smooches the pretty lady standing in front of it. Except, whoops, Jo Anne Baker is not the kissing booth girl, she’s on the executive committee, making sure everything’s going well with the whole acceptable sexual harassment thing. The girl who actually did consent to this pops up, so Steve smooches her, and for some reason Jo Anne gets jealous. So jealous, in fact, that she offers Steve the “$5 special,” the first of several lines in this film that sounded like a much, much different kind of movie. It’s cool, though, all she does is make out with him a little bit and flounce off. So you know she’ll be the love interest.

The ring of a bell announces the beginning of the auction! Well, Steve’s not going to bed anytime soon so he might as well join the crowd. Jo Anne makes a speech about saving their town’s culture, but when the bidding starts no one wants to spend more than a dollar on a genuine historical flintlock pistol. Even a prop flintlock goes well over $100, I’m just saying. Steve does his good deed for the day and starts the bidding, but Silky and his goons whisper through the crowd that they should save their money or else. Miss Stowecroft starts to panic as she tries to auction off an antique bedpan, and good guy Steve saves her. Not to be outdone, Pinetop Purvis launches into a bidding war. Silky tries to warn Steve he’s playing with fire but Steve does not give a crap and wins the bedpan. Yay!

The party ends, everyone leaves, and Steve checks in with Jo Anne. The auction ended up going well, but not well enough. They only earned $900. Perhaps they should have started earlier. Either way, Steve doesn’t much care, he just started the betting to make Jo Anne happy which would be very sweet if they hadn’t met in such an incredibly creepy way like an hour ago. Pinetop Purvis shows up to drive her home and Miss Stowecroft finally, finally gives Steve a room. Not just any room: Blackbeard’s own room. There’s a lot of lore and legend here, and Miss Stowecroft is SUPER into it. Some say they can hear his ghost banging around, making noise and scaring the patrons, because his tenth wife Aldeatha Teach cursed him to limbo until he can do a good dead as punishment for ratting her out as a witch. Steve smiles and nods until she shuts up and lets him go to bed.

At long last Steve sits down to start getting ready for bed. Unfortunately, he sits on the bedpan’s handle and breaks it in half. At first, he’s put out because he spent $200 on that thing, but then he notices a slip of paper sticking out of the hollow metal. It’s a page from Aldeatha’s spellbook! He mockingly reads over some of the spells, then notices one conveniently specific one to allow the living to see a soul bound to limbo. Like Wilby Daniels before him, he makes the brilliant decision to read the spell out loud. Never read the spell out loud! Haven’t you people seen Evil Dead?

Thunder claps and Blackbeard himself pops up right behind him. Steve brushes him off as an exhaustion-induced hallucination but quickly discovers that the very sharp pointy sword is as solid as the ghost holding it. Blackbeard suddenly cries out in anguish as he spots the portrait of Aldeatha, loudly lamenting that he didn’t listen to his crew when they said she was a cheat. As it turns out, he didn’t denounce her as a witch after all- he only ever killed his wives in jest. That makes it better. Anyway, there are more important things to attend to. Like rum. Steve doesn’t drink, so Blackbeard saunters right past Miss Stowecroft to steal some from the bar. To Steve’s astonishment, she can’t see or hear the ghost, meaning that he’s stuck with the guy.

That’s qute enough weirdness for one night, so Steve goes to get ready for bed while ignoring Blackbeard ranting about how he’s a loser. When he turns back around, the pirate is making himself comfy on Steve’s bed! Or… Blackbeard’s bed? They argue and end up compromising by sharing the bed, which is progressive for 1968. But of course, Blackbeard is the most gloriously obnoxious person ever to have lived or died, so he snores like a freight train and treats Steve to a dramatic, sleep-walked reenacment of the battle in which he stole this very bed from a Portuguese trader. I wouldn’t want to share a hotel room with this guy, and neither does Steve. He storms out, deciding that coastal NC is full of hotels that don’t come with crazy drunken ghosts.

On the way, his car suddenly starts smelling suspiciously like rum. He forgot the number one rule of dealing with the Disney supernatural: beware of hitchhiking ghosts! Now that he has Steve’s attention Blackbeard starts boo-hooing about how lonely he is, then questions what exactly he’s riding in. Because what’s a fish-out-of-temporal-water story without discovering cars? Blackbeard decides it’s his turn to take the helm and tries driving the car like a ship, standing on the gas and yanking the wheel as hard as he can. While drunk. Yeah, it goes about as well as you would expect. They miss crashing into the policeman from The Ugly Dachshund by about half an inch and of course the policeman can only see a man in a car with a bottle of rum talking to thin air. The simplest solution is usually the correct one, so he starts writing Steve a ticket and suggests that he get help for his mental health crisis. Blackbeard tries to get him out of it by admiring the cop’s gun and stealing his motorcycle, but of course the inexplicable invisible shenanigans only upset a cop already planning on arresting Steve.

Steve spends his time in jail poring over the spellbook page, which they conveniently didn’t take from him. Blackbeard pins the whole debacle on Steve’s knock for trouble which is rich, and notes that Aldeatha always ensured her spells were unbreakable. That reminds Steve of what Miss Stowecroft said: if Blackbeard can do a good deed, he’s freed from limbo. What deed could be better than donating his buried treasure to saving the Inn? There’s just one problem: there is no treasure. He blew it all on blackjack and hookers– I mean, “flesh pots and gambling dens.” Yes, really. That is a line in this movie. The second thing, I mean. Not the first thing. There is really no way I could possibly do justice to just how hard Blackbeard chews the scenery when confessing that there’s no possible good dead for him to do and it’s amazing.

Any workplace will be a little concerned when a new hire gets arrested for drunk driving, and Godolphin College is no exception. Pinetop Purvis is all for tossing him out like last week’s garbage (because he was driving “stoned” and man, Walsh and DaGradi did not care about the G-rating one bit while writing this script did they?). On the other hand, Jo Anne points out that the cops didn’t find any real evidence of wrongdoing and there were no illegal substances in Steve’s system. Besides, he was so brave and manly standing up to Silky Seymour at the auction. After some deliberation, Dean Wheaton sides with her and agrees to let Steve keep his job, on the condition that Jo Anne watch him carefully.

Getting to keep his job might not be such a good thing after all. This track team is even more hopeless than the repeated warnings could possibly have prepared Steve for. ’60s Disney has a finite number of plotlines, after all, and it’s been a minute since we’ve dusted off “embarrassingly hopeless sports team”. The hurdler can’t even clear the hurdle. It’s that bad. To make Steve’s bad day worse, Blackbeard staggers over after a day of binge drinking and gambling, offering to help Godolphin to win the upcoming track meet for “those little old lavender-scented old ladies.” And he actually does an impression of an old woman and it’s the best thing I love this guy. Steve is naturally horrified, and Blackbeard’s promises to take care of everything don’t help. He’ll surely be a bad influence on these impressionable college kids and they can’t cheat even if it is the only way to win.

In an upstairs window, Jo Anne watches Steve arguing with thin air. It’s happening more and more often, and she’s starting to get worried. All she wants to do is figure out what’s wrong. Come on, girl, you’re a psychology professor. A child psychology professor, but surely you have some knowledge of what mental illnesses this could be a symptom of. It’s okay, though. She has a plan. She asked him out to dinner! Purely as a professional thing, of course. It has nothing to do with her attraction to him. Really. She leads him to Silky’s Place, because being the nicest restaurant in town totally outweighs the whole “mafia cover-slash-gambling-den” thing. No one seems to mind that particularly. She doesn’t see the door open by itself behind her, nor does she notice a bottle of rum mysteriously flying off the bar.

Finally, Steve finds a willing ear to listen to his ghost pirate problems. Okay, sure, Jo Anne is mostly humoring him and filing it away as a figment of his imagination, but she’s listening nonetheless. Before he gets very far into his story, she goes into her purse to find the address of someone who can fix the broken bedwarmer because that’s clearly the problem here. In the process, she spills her purse, knocking a wad of loose cash from the fundraiser onto the table. Who carries $900 of someone else’s money loose like that? Like it’s not even in a wallet or anything. It’s just shoved in there. Blackbeard gets some wonderful, awful ideas as he looks on through the fishtank, allowing the special effects guys to show off a little. As Steve continues his story, Blackbeard creeps around under the table to steal Jo Anne’s money.

His shenanigans trip the waiter, whose actor Gil Lamb had a whole vaudeville act that revolved around dropping food that also appeared in That Darn Cat. In the commotion, Jo Anne’s purse falls and spills out the $900, allowing Blackbeard to snatch it and carry it into the gambling den. While everyone’s distracted betting on a horse race (featuring questionable names like Daddy Dumpling and Hello Baby), Blackbeard drops the wad of cash in the window with a Post-It announcing he’s betting on Godolphin to win the track meet. Assuming that the closest living guy made the bet, the bookie agrees and puts down 50-1 odds because there’s really no way these losers can win. Back at the restaurant, Jo Anne advises Steve to just ignore Blackbeard and call her any time he needs someone. The waiter drops dessert on them and they head out, with Blackbeard following behind after swiping one last bottle of rum.

The day of the big track meet arrives and the newscaster throws a ton of shade at Godolphin in the snide way only Elliot Reid can (Shelby Ashton in the Flubber movies). Spirits are pretty low in the locker room but Steve does his best to give the kids a pep talk, using failing at track as a metaphor for overcoming adversity in life. It’s a nice sentiment but they’re still a bunch of goobers. As they waste energy racing out of the locker room, they nearly mow down a furious Jo Anne. She’s noticed the money missing by now, replaced by a post-it note announcing the impossible bet, and of course the only logical, ghost-free explanation is for Steve to have taken it. She appreciates that he’s trying to help the innn, but this is ridiculous, and his attempts to blame the ghost don’t help.

The ghost himself is inordinately pleased with himself, so Steve confronts him. While swigging rubbing alcohol and making what I can only describe as ghost noises, Blackbeard promises that he’s got this which shockingly doesn’t really reassure Steve at all. Gudger calls Steve out onto the field to watch the team screw up absolutely everything. Jo Anne turns away from the train wreck to beg Silky for mercy, but he refuses to give her her $900 back. And now it’s time for Blackbeard to get to work! Predictably, he uses his ghostly powers to give Godolphin a huge advantage over the competition and make a miraculous and unexplainable comeback, just like Medfield’s football and basketball teams had in The Absent-Minded Professor. It’s pretty much the same scene, but it’s actually funny! I don’t know any more about track than I do those other sports but I got to watch Peter Ustinov in a pirate costume dancing with cheerleaders and listen to Richard Deacon howl that he hates football.

The only person who isn’t happy about this turn of events is Steve, who tears into Blackbeard for cheating. This isn’t his definition of a good deed, even if it’s for a good reason. This is a really interesting moral quandary for Disney of this era, a sign we’re starting to back off from the wholesome wholesomeness just a little bit. They don’t go very far with it, but it’s a start. Steve’s harsh words hit home hard enough that Blackbeard disappears with teasr in his eyes, but of course, all anyone else sees is Steve screaming at nothing. They don’t mind, though. It’s a small price to pay for Godolphin tying for first at the start of the last event! But they still have to get through the relay, and it gets off to just as bad a start as everything pre-Blackbeard.

Watching his boys get creamed while the little old ladies lose hope sends Steve spiraling into a crisis of morality. Finally, he spots Blackbeard drinking on the pole vault mat and tries to convince him to get out there and help them. Blackbeard silently sasses Steve, milking every second he gets to say ‘I told you so’ and taking his sweet time about agreeing. When he does get off his ghostly rump, he trips the competitors and swaps out their batons with random stuff to give the Godolphin guy a chance to catch up. He still manages to literally trip at the finish line, but Blackbeard hauls him up and physically carries him over. Against all odds, Godolphin wins! Steve learns the value of cheating and the little old ladies bury an irate Silky under a mountain of affection and thanks.

The Daughters of the Buccaneers are so happy that they reveal to Jo Anne that they’re planning on burning their mortgage at the stroke of midnight (the deadline Silky set). That’s great and all but she’s here to see Steve and he won’t come out of his room. Turns out he’s packing to leave Godolphin because his coaching methods can never live up to everything Blackbeard did, which is fair, and he wants an honest fresh start. But Jo Anne has bad news: Silky welched on the bet! He’s still going to throw those little old ladies out! Steve flies into a rage and declares that he’s going to do what’s right and give the murderous mobster a piece of his mind no matter what Blackbeard and Jo Anne say. Blackbeard agrees to follow directions if he only gets to come help, and Jo Anne watches the exchange with tears in her eyes, sure her crush has truly lost it. As the two men saunter down to Silky’s Place, belting out sea shanties, she follows behind to make sure his percieved mental break doesn’t hurt him or anyone else. Oh, and Gil Lamb has a lobster on his head.

Norm Grabowski tries to send Jo Anne away, but Blackbeard punches him and the other goons out and rips down the whole door so she can get in because ghost powers make you hardcore. Thanks to their spectral friend, Jo Anne and Steve make it to Silky’s office quite easily, but Silky refuses to pay up. He’ll give back the original $900 and they can always try the roulette wheel! Yeah, that’s not enough. Still, Blackbeard has an idea so he gives Steve the go-ahead and Steve finally trusts him enough to go with it. They head to the backroom of the backroom and Blackbeard moves the chips to whatever number the ball lands on. Naturally, the mobsters get suspicious of their improbable luck. Blackbeard’s machinations fail much to Steve’s horror, but it doesn’t take him long to notice the wires running down to the table leg. The mobsters rigged the wheel! How dare they! Only the good guys are allowed to cheat! Blackbeard refuses to let this stand and hooks the wires to a mobster’s sock garter thingy, then goes back to using the much more palatable method of ghost magic to rig the game until they have the full amount in hand.

By now, Jo Anne is starting to develop an out of control gambling habit, but their work is done so Steve yanks her out of the gambling den. Silky and his goons block the exits for one final standoff, but Blackbeard’s got this. The mobsters draw their guns, but too late- the ghost pirate already stole them! Now full of confidence, Steve draws his own finger guns and “shoots”, and with Blackbeard’s help the mobsters actually fall! The ensuing fight scene is beautifully done, mixing some really impressive special effects work with humor that’s actually funny while keping to the wackiness audiences expected from Disney in this era. Even Jo Anne gets in on the fun! Hey, she might be practical, but she’s witnessing her boyfriend shooting people with finger guns so why not give it a try? Still, they’ve got a deadline to catch, so Blackbeard smashes a door in with a huge desk so Team Good guys can get out of dodge.

Time’s running out and the little old ladies are starting to get desperate while the banker looks at his watch to rub it in their faces. With just five seconds till midnight, Jo Anne and Steve slide up to the beach in a stolen motorboat with the cash in hand. The Inn is saved! The little old ladies beg Steve to do the honors, but it’s not really his place. Right on cue, a little rowboat rows itself to the island, singing drunkenly. Footprints stagger up the beach with nothing to make them. Everyone watches in astonishment until Steve teaches them the magic words. Now everyone can see Blackbeard! They’re all starstruck and more than a little flustered at meeting their hero, and Miss Stowecroft in particular has it bad. It’s a little weird considering the movie can’t decide whether they’re his descendants or his crew’s, but he’s happy to flirt back. Ooookay then. Blackbeard monologues about how Steve deserves the “lion’s share of the glory” (a line that made me giggle based on who else Ustinov plays) and he drops the mortgage in the fire with great prejudice. That’s his good deed! He can finally move on. He says his goodbyes in a beautifully bitter sweet moment, and he rows his little boat to meet his crew in the great beyond while the Daughters of the Buccaneers tearfully sing Jolly Good Fellow acting like groupies at a rock concert.

I actually loved this movie. It was so much fun! Everyone in the cast brought their A-game and it really helped elevate a lot of the stock jokes to something super entertaining. Naturally, the lion’s share (tee hee) of that praise goes to Peter Ustinov, who seems to have read the script, thrown it out, and gone absolutely nuts with the improv in the best possible way. Everyone else was the best I’ve seen, even Dean Jones playing the same character he always plays. Another thing that helps this one stand out was Robert Stevenson’s always brilliant direction. The guy has a talent for fun fantasy movies and it shows– while this is no Mary Poppins, he still makes it shine. This is definitely a hidden gem and I highly recommend giving it a watch!

CHARACTERS

Captain Edward Teah, affectionately known as Blackbeard carries this movie so far that it’s actually a shame the movie isn’t better known. His antics are hysterical, from trying to drive a car like a pirate ship to blubbering over blowing his treasure on one gloriously wild week. There are moments where you can see Dean Jones trying not to crack up, because Peter Ustinov is just having the time of his life. It’s his performance that makes this a shining, glorious festival ham-and-cheese. Also, something I noticed: Johnny Depp famously based his performance of Captain Jack Sparrow off of Keith Richards from The Rolling Stones, but after watching this movie, I have to wonder if he didn’t incorporate some of Ustinov’s Blackbeard. They have a lot of the same mannerisms, especially the way Blackbeard babbles on and on to the frustration and annoyance of pretty much everyone around him. There are a lot of similarities.

Steve Walker is once again, the straight man stuck dealing with all of the wacky shenanigans around him. Poor Dean Jones never really gets a chance to show off much range, but this time around they at least let him try! Steve is a lot more animated than many of Jones’ characters, getting swept up into the comedy and even getting a few funny scenes without his comic foil! Okay, most of these are him yelling at thin air, but it takes skill to pull that off.

Jo Anne Baker got hit pretty bad with the Designated Love Interest stick, but I’m sadly getting used to that. I do like that they showed her to be practical to contrast with the supernatural weirdness around her and clever enough to hold a professor job as a woman in the late ’60s, they just don’t give her very much to do. At least the script allows Suzanne Pleschette and Dean Jones much more chemistry than the last time they were paired off! She’s no Fran Garrison and for that we’re all grateful.

Emily Stowecroft doesn’t get a lot of screentime, but she makes the most out of what she gets. Seriously, Elsa Lanchester must have been picking bits of scenery out of her teeth for months based on like, three scenes. It’s amazing to watch. It’s really the first time in her Disney career where she’s been allowed to let loose and I love it so much. Also, you have to admire someone who commits that hard to local lore.

Silky Seymour, apart from having the second weirdest name in the entire movie after the poor kid whose mother carried him for nine months only to name him Gudger, inverts a tried and true Disney trope. You know how it’s usually the villains going absolutely berserk and overacting all over the place while the good guys have a lot more chill and are a lot less interesting? Just me? Well, I’mma continue it anyway. Blackbeard’s Ghost is the opposite of that. Silky’s just so restrained and oily and smooth (almost… silky) that it does become a creepy, effective villain, but he fades into the background when put up against Ustinov’s antics. I’m all for seeing something different, though!

MUSIC

Granny pirate band. It’s a thing. Actually, Robert F Brunner’s score for this film was one of the negatives I had for it. Once again, it’s barely there. It’s a real shame because the overture is great. The credits roll over some spooky flute music that fades into some harpsichord that beautifully establishes a piratey setting. And then it just… stops. I will say, Steve and Blackbeard belting out sea shanties remains one of many high points.

ARTISTRY

The set design on Blackbeard’s Inn is some of the best we’ve seen yet. The place looks like it was built out of timbers from old ships and cared for by people who were really really proud of their piratical heritage. I would stay there in a heartbeat. The place looks awesome. Most of this movie was shot on a soundstage and the scenes that weren’t in the Inn kind of look like it, notably in the track scene, but it works fine. The harsh shadows and heavy contrasts help the movie feel like lines are being blurred between the real and the supernatural, which is of course the point. Mission accomplished!

THEME PARK INFLUENCE

Yes, that is the best photo I can find. Two of this movie’s three theme park references are no longer with us, and the third is too dark for anyone to really confirm. So I’m pretty much going off heresay here. I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that this movie originally got a few little nods on Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean, which had opened the year before. The captain of the Wicked Wench, the pirate ship that shoots at you when you drop down the waterfall into the Spanish Main, was, according to a podcast quoting an Imagineer going “trust me okay”, supposed to be Blackbeard. More substantially, the portrait that stands in the foyer of the inn in the movie originally made an appearance among the treasure trove being carried up a hill by two pirates. Both of these references have since disappeared in favor of more contemporary Pirates of the Caribbean film references: the Wicked Wench is now the Black Pearl captained by Barbossa, and the two treasure pirates have been replaced by Jack Sparrow lording over his riches. As for the third, again, I have no way of really telling whether this is true, but apparently the incantation to bring Blackbeard back is written on a book in Madame Leota’s seance room in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. Man, I nailed this section this time, didn’t I?

FINAL THOUGHTS

I mentioned back in Babes in Toyland that I love corny, so-bad-it’s-good movies, right? Well, that’s what this was, except it was solidly directed with a tight, witty script to boot! Peter Ustinov was hilarious, mugging to the camera and stealing every scene like a pirate making off with a ship. Even better, the rest of the cast rose to the challenge of standing out with Ustinov’s crazy awesomeness. Even without my lifelong love of pirates or growing up surrounded by Blackbeard lore, this is a delightfully fun movie that you should all add to your Disney+ queues. Are queues still a thing? Ah, whatever. Watch this movie.

Favorite scene: Blackbeard’s monologue in the jail about how he blew all his treasure on a week-long bender must be seen to be believed.

Final rating: 8/10. The most entertaining ’60s comedy yet, even better than That Darn Cat.