Tag Archives: low budget

Review: Curse of Pirate Death

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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. Continue reading →

Review: Pirates of Treasure Island

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Rating: ½☆☆☆☆
I really don’t know what to make of this one.

Some bad movies are just that – bad. They should be ignored, dismissed, or burned. They have no value and are a waste of your existence to even consider viewing. Other bad movies are an ironic piece of brilliance, enjoyable on levels that no “good” movie could ever hope to achieve. These movies are meant for a group of rowdy friends sharing rum. But this movie? It lies firmly within one of these categories, and I strongly suspect it’s the former.

Basically “Treasure Island”, but with gratuitous man-eating bugs. I say gratuitous because they’re barely used – this movie would be essentially unchanged if you removed them. But there they are, nonetheless – towering over Long John, and bellowing their maneating howls as they shudder in harmless CGI malevolence. Continue reading →

Review: Lost Treasure of Sawtooth Island

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Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Ye gads! I’m not sure what the motivation was behind this movie, but I can’t help but wonder how it ever ended up in a video store.

What intrigued me about this movie was the box’s mention of a search for pirate treasure in Lake Michigan. Careful viewers know that 1) Bilgemunky pities the Great Lakes for being sad little puddles of salt-water-envy, and 2) Bilgemunky lives right next to Lake Michigan. So I figured this might be an interesting premise for a non-ocean pirate adventure. That’s why I rented it – and that’s why I watched the first 20 minutes. I watched the other 72 simply for your benefit, dear reader. Lord knows I had better things to do with my time.

The plot could be decent enough. The basic idea is that hundreds of years ago a pirate buried a bunch of treasure in Lake Michigan. It was subsequently discovered by mobsters in the 1920s or so, but they had a shipwreck and had to abandon it – but they made a map. Now, Danny Quinn is obsessed with discovering said treasure, as his own father died searching for it. From there it’s all pretty basic fare: “oh no, Grandpa has tragically died in a deep-lake diving accident – yikes, the government wants to repossess the family schooner and send me to a foster home – hey, let’s go find the treasure and solve all our problems – oh no, it’s the one-eyed banshee!!!” Continue reading →

Review: Crossbones

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Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
I have no way to put this gently – this movie bites. It’s bad. It’s awful. It has not one single redeeming quality that bears its viewing. Watch it sober, watch it drunk – it won’t be good. The acting is bad, the script is bad, and the action is worse. It just might be the worst pirate movie ever. Not “Plan 9 from Outer Space” goofy bad, just bad.

Still want to know the plot? OK, a bunch of “Survivor” style contestants run around an island and get killed by a cursed pirate. Now go and rent something, anything, else.

Review: Jolly Roger – Massacre at Cutter’s Cove

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Rating: ½☆☆☆☆
This was bad. Really bad. But it was also amusing, which makes it kind of good.

Jolly Roger features all the typical elements of most teeny-bopper straight-to-video slasher flicks in the vein of such classics as “Leprechaun in the Hood” and “Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman” – a supernatural villian in search of his treasure kills many people along the way, some of whom get naked first. And while the costume of Jolly Roger himself is actually quite impressive, not much else is. Unbelievably, the best scene in the whole movie, in which Jolly Roger has a heart-to-heart while sharing rum with a bartender, got edited out – you can view it in the “deleted scenes” segment of the DVD.

Jolly Roger is bad. But watch it anyways. If you’re old enough to drink, watch it drunk. If you’re not, well, wait until you’re 21, and then watch it drunk.

Review: Seawolf – The Pirate’s Curse

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Rating: ★★☆☆☆
In the true spirit of Xena: Warrior Princess comes this low budget movie that, while technically not at all that good, has just enough fun with itself to remain enjoyable. Captain Thorpe is a modern day pirate – but he’s not some lowlife like those actual modern pirates out in Asia with their uzis, this guy’s a class act. He’s always got a half-empty bottle of rum in hand, and since he only steals from bad guys he doesn’t even have to worry about a tainted conscience. Hired by a german chick to escort an aging mexican with the secret to lost treasure, Captain Thorpe naturally ends up with more than he bargained for, including evil twins, storming castles, and a duel with flintlock pistols. Of course, his real challenges are the movie’s continuity issues – in some parts of the movie Thorpe speaks spanish fluently, while in others he can only say “comprende?” Even worse, there seems to be an entire scene missing from the end of the film since we cut directly from the bad guy’s victory to a scene were the good guys congratulate themselves on saving the day. Go figure.

Not really a good film, but hardly a bad one. And definitely unique – if it’s in your video store I’d say give it a chance.

Review: National Lampoon’s Last Resort

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Rating: ½☆☆☆☆
From the creators of Family Vacation comes this movie with a rather unique premise: Two teenage slackers, having gotten fired after blowing up the burger joint they worked at, land a couple of scuba instructor jobs at a swanky resort by pretending to be former Navy seals. The resort is owned by their uncle, a has-been Hollywood star who’s constantly trying to relive his glory days as a pirate captain on the silver screen as he wanders his island in full pirate garb whilst seeking buried treasure. Of course, the real action starts when these…

Oh jeez – I just realized you might be starting to think this sounds like a decent movie. My bad. Did I mention that they didn’t have enough actors, so many of the extras are played by cardboard cutouts? Or how about the fact that the underwater scenes are shot in a room painted blue with someone just offscreen blowing bubbles? And don’t overlook the fact that this little gem stars Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. This is a bizarre flick, and while it seems to try to poke fun at its own absurdity, it doesn’t do so nearly enough to be forgiven. But it does make lots of pirate references, so watch it if you must – I won’t hold it against you. Just don’t say you weren’t warned.