Rating:
There are some things in this world I simply don’t understand, and Curse of Pirate Death is one of them. The title alone indicates the creators of this film had no intention of even trying – if anyone can come up with a title that better says, “Generic Low-Budget Pirate Slasher”, I’d like to hear it (but I wouldn’t much care to see it.)

This film is awful. Just bloody awful. The acting is atrocious, the writing worse, and the virtually identical heavy metal music during every action seen is outright bizarre. Ron Jeremy’s cameo is slightly amusing, in that it is almost entirely comprised of him wandering around the woods alone yelling, “hello, anybody out there?” but other than that this film is an all-out dud.

Which is why I don’t understand it. I’ve seen bad films with some redeeming features – some glimmer that at least indicates what the creators thought they were going to accomplish, however misguided or unatainable the end product may have been. But with Curse of Pirate Death, I really don’t get it. There is no way this is a story someone wrote down with the thought that it needed to be told (the plot, by the way: pirate dates witch, witch charms pirate so he never dies and can bring her back to life after she dies, pirate spends eternity looking for “me treasure”, while wielding plastic hook. Or something to that effect.)

The only possible answer I can come up with is that there are folks out there as nutty about gore as others are about smut, and will therefore gladly watch a film in which the entire movie is merely a shallow effort to string together various special effects into something that only vaguely resembles a movie (This would be the gore equivelant of two smut directors sitting around crafting such genius plot points as, “Hey, how about during the slumber party, the three brunettes decide to order a pizza, and the pizza boy is some dude they ask to join them?” to which the other director says, “Hey, what if instead of three brunettes, we had four blondes?” to which the first director responds, “Wow, that’s inspired!”)

So, if we watch this with the same critical eye as the average stag film and forgive the acting, plot, lighting, music, direction, costume consistency (indeed, there’s at least one scene where a girl’s outfit changes back and forth between camera shots) – if we forgive virtually every aspect that goes into making a half decent film, how’s the gore? All right, I guess. Mostly just splattered blood by the bucketload, and mangled wounds that might be skin and brains, or might be oatmeal and latex. There are a few exceptions, including when Pirate Death breaks his hand through the back of a girl’s neck so it comes out her mouth, but mostly it’s nothing to write home about.

If you like low budget gore, give it a go. Maybe. But otherwise there’s really no point.