The Crimson Pirate

Burt Lancaster swings onto the screen shirtless, grinning at the camera, and promises us a romp. He delivers—mostly.

This 1952 adventure starts with real ships on real seas—Italian locations that put most studio-bound swashbucklers to shame. The Technicolor pops like a comic book. Reds, yellows, greens splash across the screen with the same vibrant joy as The Adventures of Robin Hood. When the film stays outdoors, it sings.

Lancaster plays Captain Vallo, a Caribbean pirate who captures a British ship, schemes to sell its arms twice over, then falls for a rebel leader’s daughter, played by Eva Bartok, and switches sides. The plot doesn’t matter much. What matters is watching Lancaster’s acrobatic body in motion.

Lancaster and Nick Cravat (his old circus partner) flip and tumble with genuine athletic grace. They swing from masts. They bounce off awnings like trampolines. Christopher Lee shows up with a beard and barely any lines. Bartok channels Maureen O’Hara and holds her own, though no one matches Lancaster’s magnetic presence.

But here’s the problem: it’s a swashbuckler without swashbuckling. No sword fights. The pirates use clubs. Lancaster wields a canteen like nunchucks while discarding perfectly good swords. What kind of pirate movie is this?

The third act goes completely off the rails. Instead of a proper sea battle, we detour into an A-Team episode thirty years early—hot air balloons, flamethrowers, nitroglycerin grenades. Lancaster and Cravat dress in drag as village maidens. Yes, really. When they’re discovered and flee to their balloon, Lancaster deadpans: “Let’s strip for action!” It’s the film’s best line. It almost justifies everything.

Almost.

The villain defeats himself by cutting the wrong rope and falling to his death. No climactic duel. No payoff. Just an accident. It’s lazy storytelling dressed up in bright costumes and clip-on earrings that wouldn’t fool a child.

Director Robert Siodmak reportedly transformed a solemn script into comedy in forty-eight hours.¹ You can feel the hasty rewrites. James Hayter plays a professor who exists solely to build those ridiculous third-act contraptions. Peter Ustinov would have been better. Ditching the diversion entirely would have been best.

Still, The Crimson Pirate entertains in fits and starts. Lancaster’s charisma carries it further than it deserves. But a swashbuckler that abandons the swash has lost its way, no matter how acrobatic its star or how bright its colors.

The film doesn’t sink, but it never quite sets sail either.