The Crimson Pirate

Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat aggressively embodying their unfettered masculinity in The Crimson Pirate (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1952)...



...as a corrective to having severely compromised it in this scene.

Tourneur's The Flame and the Arrow was a hit, and for the follow-up (not a sequel--the characters are virtually identical, but this one takes place in the eighteenth century), another noir giant, Robert Siodmak, switches genres to take the directorial reins. The Crimson Pirate is much more conventionally robust and action-packed than its predecessor, and in truth, considerably more (mindless) fun to watch, even if the images don't linger in the mind as long afterward. You can see much of the spirit that inspired the Pirates of the Carribean franchise here, and even some specific character models, I would guess. Tell me, for example, if the pirate who gets his pegleg caught in the ship's grate during the climactic fight scene doesn't prefigure the guy with the wooden eyeball in the Verbinski films.