7.29.2007

Blackbeard's Ghost




Lobby card for Blackbeard's Ghost (dir. Robert Stevenson, 1968).

I remember being all broken up about missing this when it first came out. (I did have the comic book, and I remember reading Ben Stahl's original novel and being confused because its plot was so different from the movie's.) Well, I finally saw it. Biggest surprise: how talky and sloooow it is. It's probably about as close to Beckett as a Disney kid's film about a lameass track team helped to victory by the ghost of a centuries-old dead pirate could possibly be. Peter Ustinov is wonderful, despite (or maybe because of) looking completely unengaged. When he sings "a-diddly-diddly-yo-ho-arrrr" or whatever in that chubby, lazy voice, in imitation of the bad faux-eighteenth-century harpischord soundtrack, one must chuckle.

5 comments:

kathryn l. pringle said...

i was in love with suzanne pleshette when i was 8.

AB said...

I'm still in love with suzanne pleshette! (sorry ksm)

Kasey Mohammad said...

No problem, Anne--me too.

Minor American said...

wow.

i thought i was the only one.

i especially loved support your local gunfighter. i always imagined myself as james garner. sigh.

kathryn l. pringle said...

o... that was me not maggie. sorry. she loves my computer.