Blackbeard!
Guy was a laugh a minute
This week's flashback: check-out 1952's BLACKBEARD THE PIRATE. The movie was originally pitched by Val Lewton, the Horror Cinema's Renaissance Man, as a vehicle for Boris Karloff. But the whole thing was eventually subverted into butcher shop for Robert Newton's deliciously hambone performance in the title role (I suspect that scenery had to be hurriedly dismantled before he ate it). The film's sex/violence quota (i.e. horror content) somehow eluded the censors. Newton's Blackbeard cracks a joke about Linda Darnell's ample cleavage, which is barely concealed within low-cut, crimson-colored finery ("Har-har, Little Robin Red Breasts," lustily growls the pirate, after stripping-off Darnell's scarf. "I be a lover of nature," he smirks while ogling her chest, "however, we'll go into that later." Darnell's reaction: "If I had a pistol, I'd shoot out your gizzard pin." Were these double entendres so subtle that they weren't branded as provocative by the Hollywood watchdogs?). Also pretty risque for '52: a very stark image of Darnell's betrothed swinging from the yardarm, a noose around his neck. Darnell, oblivious to the corpse, inquires about her suitor's whereabouts. Blackbeard's comeback: "Hee-hee. He's aboard alright. I left him hanging around somewhere." If he weren't a bloodthirsty pirate, Blackbeard would be doing standup. Check-out his act on AMC broadcasts or rent the cassette. Another shock scene: a severed head is suspended from a rope in the town square. Gruesome stuff (remember, this film debuted during the same year that THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE AND HARRIET myopically turned the American family into a Rockwell painting with canned laughter). Equally impacting is Linda Darnell's heroine, who deflects stereotype: never registering fear, she smuggles loot, kicks ass and twice tries to blow-away Blackbeard. Cool beans.
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