The horror. The horror.

Like I didn’t hate you people enough, now you have foisted a Kristy McNichol/Christopher Atkins movie on me. How can I forgive you? Only by first satiating the bloodthirst for revenge which The Pirate Movie has instilled in my heart. To give you a picture of what I endured, here is the tagline from the film: “Buckle Your Swash and Jolly Your Roger for the Funniest Rock ‘N Rollickin’ Adventure Ever!” Sigh.

The “plot”: Mabel is a geeky girl who attends a pirate festival. Mabel gets selected by hunky Christopher Atkins (who I swear almost NEVER wears a shirt the whole movie) to participate in a pirate act, and afterwards he invites her aboard his boat for a real ride on the high seas. Mabel’s friends sail off without her, and she rents a small sailboat to chase them. She is thrown overboard during a storm, and loses consciousness….thus begins a pirate fantasy.

So, is The Pirate Movie some kind of exploratory Mulholland Drive-meets-Pirates of the Caribbean? No. Sadly, Mabel’s fantasy is not the result of the final firings of Mabel’s dying Neurons, although I did find myself wishing for her death throughout the movie. No, The Pirate Movie is a musical romp, an over-the-top remake of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, with new lyrics, music and adaptation to make it hip, up-to-date and appealing to the kids of the 80s. It’s exactly as horrible as it sounds.

Instead of Mulholland Drive-meets-Pirates of the Caribbean, it’s The Banana Splits meets miscellaneous pirate crap. Bizarre, nonsensical songs are interspersed among “zany” scenes with vaudeville music and pop references (there is even a lightsaber at one particularly mind-numbing point). Winks at the screen are frequent. Jokes are of the one-liner sort, accompanied by literal drumbeats or whizzer sounds.

Here is the list of crimes of which I accuse The Pirate Movie:

• Presenting a Pirate King who sings a song about himself with the chief lyrics, “I’m the Pirate King! Yes, I’m the Pirate King,” similar to The Wiz from Seinfeld.
• Adorning said Pirate King with a bejewelled codpiece, I kid you not.
• Making Christopher Atkins shirtless for the entire movie, setting the model for Nigel ‘The Torch’ from 1984’s Top Secret!
• Completely destroying The Pirates of Penzance for a movie filmed with the care and precision of an after-school-special.

How do you plead to these charges, O The Pirate Movie? The director’s commentary is as usual most revelatory as to criminal intent. Here’s a transcribed excerpt from the finale’s commentary with Ken Annakin (yes, he is the source of the name for Anakin Skywalker):

DVD Producer: When you look at this picture now, Ken, what part of it are you most proud of? What gives you the most pleasure when you watch it?

Ken Annakin: I’d have to say, looking at it now, I’m rather fond of all of it. It seems like something created out of people’s dreams…and what they would like to happen.

DVD Producer: Well it’s certainly very romantic and full of joy, isn’t it?

Ken Annakin: Yes, and I think basically that could be the reason why some people have found it, is that there’s so many very sad pictures which are dealing with people’s everyday problems, that they like to perhaps get away and see something which is completely away from it… I know, it’s in, it’s in my, in my the timing in the moment. Last night I saw a picture, I saw the Eastwood picture. Beautiful picture, beautifully done, but SO downbeat.

DVD Producer: Billion Dollar Baby. Yeah. Certainly one of I think the primary reasons people go to the movies is basically to be uplifted.

Ken Annakin: That’s right! Well, that’s a picture where you can be uplifted by how good Eastwood is to the little girl that he adopts — Swank — but what they go through, and the fact that he encourages her to be a boxer, I don’t believe a woman should get…should suffer the blows that any boxer can give her, and therefore I wasn’t pro it, from the beginning.

DVD Producer: The subject matter troubled you, then.

Ken Annakin: Yeah. But there we are.

Whether you call an Oscar-winning film “Billion Dollar Baby,” or whether you consider your Kristy McNichol pirate musical a superior form of entertainment to it, it matters not. You are GUILTY and must walk the plank. Avast, The Pirate Movie! Off ye go with yer scurvy on-screen menus, to the Davy Jones Netflix locker!

Stay tuned for a new Cinemasochist theme tomorrow.