Tag: pirates

Nautical But Not-So Nice: Women pirates through history

  By

pirate2“I couldn’t love a man who commands me – any more than I could love one who lets himself be commanded by me.”
— Jacquotte Delahaye

For the purposes of this article, we are defining “women pirates” somewhat loosely. You don’t necessarily have to be wielding the cutlass yourself, though such a hands-on approach is certainly appreciated. Staying safely on shore and commanding a bunch of scurvy swabs [am I doing this Piratespeak right?] is perfectly fine. However, we do draw the line at plausible deniability. For instance, in the era of Queen Elizabeth I, piracy was barely discouraged if the victims were Spanish, with “privateers” like John Hawkins operating with the more or less tacit approval of the crown. But, at least nominally, it was still a hanging offense.

Among the earliest examples of piratically-inclined ladies was Queen Teuta of Illyria, known as the Terror of the Adriatic, though she was more a commander of pirates than one herself. She inherited the throne of the area which would become 20th-century Yugoslavia, around 230 B.C. after her husband died, and gave local buccaneers the green light to go raiding in her name, up and down the Adriatic. However, these predations eventually brought her to the attention of the Roman Empire, who dropped the hammer on Teuta in no uncertain fashion, sending a 20,000 strong army over for a cup of tea and a chat. She ended up stripped of most of her territories, though was at least allowed to keep her life and, nominally, her title.

pirate1Alfhild

The 12th-century work by Danish author Saxo Grammaticus called the Gesta Danorum, was also a source when we  covered Viking warrior women a few months back – and, of course, the line between “piracy” and “extremely enthusiastic foraging” is a thin one. But Grammaticus also mentions, mostly in passing, others such as Wigbiorg, Hetha. Wisna and Princess Sela. The last-name was sister to the King of Norway, Koller, and Saxo calls her, “a skilled warrior and experienced in roving.” [She was killed by Horwendil, the father of Hamlet]

The most interesting is perhaps Alfhild [various spellings of her name exist, e.g. Alvid, Awilda], from Volume VII. According to the chronicler, she was such a babe, her father, a King of the Goths called Siward, kept her locked up, protected by snakes – and further decreed that if any suitor tried to reach her and failed, his head would be forfeit. Understandably, this limited her teenage dating exploits. Eventually, one brave warrior, Alf, succeeded. However, Siward still gave his daughter freedom of choice in the matter – and Alfhild promptly spurned his advances, spurred on by her mother:

Alfhild was led to despise the young Dane; whereupon she exchanged woman’s for man’s attire, and, no longer the most modest of maidens, began the life of a warlike rover. Enrolling in her service many maidens who were of the same mind, she happened to come to a spot where a band of rovers were lamenting the death of their captain, who had been lost in war; they made her their rover captain for her beauty, and she did deeds beyond the valour of woman.

But Alf eventually got his girl, though it took “many toilsome voyages” – proving that the term “playing hard to get”, takes on a whole new level of meaning when your fiancee is a Scandinavian pirate queen.

Jeanne de Clisson

Alfhild’s historical existence is uncertain, with Grammaticus writing a long time after her supposed exploits. That isn’t the case for our next seafaring lady, with contemporary French documentation offering supporting evidence. Jeanne was born in 1300, and first married at the age of 12, as was not uncommon for the era. After her husband died, she married again, but to little better end, as this second spouse was executed in 1343, on suspicion of collaborating with the English, against whom France was at war. Jeanne swore revenge on King Philip VI, sold her estates and began attacking his forces across Brittany. When the heat in France got too much, she relocated to England, and with help from King Edward III, created the Black Fleet.

For the next thirteen years, these boats, painted black and with red sails, hunted French ships in the English Channel, killing their crews, but leaving a few alive to spread the legend of “The Lioness of Brittany”, as de Clisson became known. Her reign outlasted Philip, who died in 1350, but Jeanne was clearly having too much fun, and continued her assault. Legend has it she especially enjoyed capturing French noblemen, and would personally behead them with an axe. She eventually married for a third time, and retired from the seas. [Note: she should not be confused with another medieval bad-ass, Jeanne de Montfort, though both operated around the same time, and supported the English in their war against France]

pirate3Sayyida al Hurra

Moving into the Middle Ages and the 16th century, we see the likes of Irish sea-queen Gráinne Ní Mháille, about whom we wrote previously. But equally notable was this Islamic pirate, whose full name we will only give once, for reasons which will soon be obvious: Sayyida al-Hurra ibn Banu Rashid al-Mandri al-Wattasi Hakima Tatwan. “Sayyida al Hurra” is actually an honorific title, apparently meanimg “the woman sovereign who bows to no superior authority.” She operated particularly around the Straits of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco, after the last Moorish outpost in Spain fell in 1492. She and her husband relocated to northern Morocco, and ruled over the city of Tétouan, which they had helped rebuild.

Following the death of her husband in 1513, the widow took over the reins, but also used the proceeds from trading to begin assembling her forces.  Her fleet set sail in 1520, attacking any Portuguese ships with the misfortune to meet them, and not just looting them, but taking hostages who could be ransomed for even more plunder – much of the evidence for Sayyida comes in the form of documents concerning these negotiations. But, as far as she was concerned, these attacks were as much an act of political rebellion as financial acquisition, harassing the Christians who had driven her and her family out of Granada. Such was her success that she was able to form an alliance with an even more well-known name, Barbarossa, carving up the Mediterranean so that each had their own territory. Her fleet operated for two decades, Spanish papers from 1540 recording a raid on Gibraltar, in which “they took much booty and many prisoners.” She was eventually deposed by her son-in-law two years later, and vanished from the historical record.

Jacquotte Delahaye and Anne Dieu-le-Veut

As we move in to the 17th century, pirate location changes. Previously, it had been based around the centres of civilization – in the apocryphal words of bank robber Willie Sutton, “because that’s where the money is.” But as the era of exploration blossomed, focus shifted toward the arena that would become most linked with pirates in popular culture: the Caribbean, as trade to/from the New World flourished.

These two operated there, and Delahaye was perhaps the first “true” pirate of the modern era, who has become a figure of legend. She was reportedly (let’s just take that word as read in this section!) the daughter of a French father and Haitian mother: the latter died in childbirth, and the former’s murder led to Delahaye’s entry into the world of piracy. She apparently faked her own death to escape those who pursued her, but her subsequent return to the fray earned this redhead the nickname of “Back from the Dead Red”. She is said to have led 100 pirates, and took over an island in 1656, turning it into a “freebooter’s republic”, a mini-Tortuga – she was killed defending it from the Spanish several years later.

Anne Dieu-le-Veut (Anne “God wills it”) appears to have a thing for pirates, marrying three of them. The story goes, she won the heart of the third, Laurens de Graaf, by challenging him to a duel to avenge the death of husband #2. When he accepted, and she wouldn’t back down, he proposed to her, in admiration of her courage. The two operated as equals in the piratical exploits, and attacked English-held Jamaica in 1693, but a couple of years later, Anne and their children were captured by English forces at  Port-de-Paix in Haiti. They were held hostage for three years before being released [presumably ransomed] and Anne largely disappeared from the historical record thereafter.

Anne Bonney and Mary Read headline the golden age of piracy

“Had you fought like a man, you need not be hanged like a dog.” — Anne Bonny

Bonney,_Anne_(1697-1720)It was not long after the turn of the 18th century that piracy in the Caribbean reached its peak, with the period from 1716 to 1726 considered the apex. as  multiple colonial powers – Dutch, British, Spanish and French – jostled for position. But with resources also required for conflicts back in Europe, local representatives were largely reliant on their own recruitment efforts, and were typically none too fussy about where ships or sailors came from, or exactly how they operated. It was in this environment that two of the most famous female pirates of all time are found. While they were initially independent and separate, they ended their careers fighting alongside each other as part of the crew of another renowned name, John Rackham, a.k.a. Calico Jack.

Anne was the daughter of a Irish lawyer who emigrated to America when she was young. She reportedly demonstrated a fiery temper, stabbing a servant at age 13, then married minor pirate James Bonney, and moved with him to Nassau, a sanctuary for pirates supporting the English crown. There, she met Rackham, became his lover and eventually abandoned her husband – according to lore, disgusted by James having turned informant. She never saw the need to disguise her sex, but was apparently among the first to realize that new shipmate “Mark Read” was not exactly all he claimed to be. For Mark was actually Mary Read, though she had been brought up as a boy since she was very young, part of a plot to fleece money out of her grandfather. Read, however, continued the deception after leaving home, and served in the British military before eventually marrying another soldier. When he died, she set sail for the West Indies, but the ship was captured by pirates, and “Mark” was pressed into service, reverting to the illusion of manhood.

Some time later, she ended up becoming part of Calico Jack’s crew, and things became murky. Some say Bonney took a fancy to the young “man”, or that Jack grew jealous of their relationship, before matters were settled peacefully, and both allowed to remain part of the crew. This didn’t last long though: in October 1720, the ship of pirate hunter Jonathan Barnet attacked Rackham’s vessel. Whether through drink or cowardice, most pirates failed to put up a fight, leaving Bonney and Read to lead the defense. According to Daniel Defoe, the creator of Robinson Crusoe, who also wrote a book called The General History of the Pyrates, “none kept the Deck except Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and one more; upon which, she, Mary Read, called to those under Deck, to come up and fight like Men, and finding they did not stir, fired her Arms down the Hold amongst them, killing one, and wounding others.”  However, they were overpowered and, along with Rackham, taken to Jamaica. There, they were tried, convicted and sentenced to death – leading to the quote above, reputedly Bonny’s last words to her man. The two women both claimed to be pregnant, allowing them a stay of execution. For Read, it was a temporary escape as she died of a fever in prison. Bonney? History has no record of either her execution or her release. Make up your own ending.

Ching Shih

Ching_ShihBut it’s the other side of the globe which saw perhaps the most successful female pirate of them all. Some estimates have her in command of up to 1,800 ships and 80,000 crew, her territory covering much of the China Sea in the early years of the 19th century. It’s one hell of a character arc. She was originally a prostitute in the City of Canton, but was captured by pirates, and married one, Zheng Yi, in 1801. He came from a long line of buccaneers, and forged a coalition of rivals into one entity, the Red Flag fleet. Zheng died in 1807, but his widow used her own phenomenal negotiating and political skills, not just to hold the fleet together, in the face of circling rivals seeking to take advantage, but to increase its strength even further. She bedded her husband’s adoptive nephew, Chang Pao – who, some say, was also his lover.

She is particularly remember for a rigorous pirate code, which punished disobedience harshly, and helped forge a force which basically ruled the waves. The Chinese navy couldn’t defeat her. Even the colonial superpowers in the area, the British and Portuguese, were unable to restrain Ching’s fleet. In the end, the Chinese government basically said, “Look, just stop, and we’ll give you amnesty for everything you’ve done.” There was some friction over the authorities’ demand that the pirates kneel to them – something Ching Shih refused to do. But a compromise was reached whereby a government official would act as witness at her wedding to Chang Pao, so could be acknowledged without loss of face. She lived up to her end of the bargain, becoming one of the very few ever to retire from piracy with both life and loot intact. Ching opened a gambling house back in Canton, where she lived for more than three decades, before dying at the ripe old age for a pirate, of 69. Well played, madam.

 

Women pirates in the movies

There have been a number of attempts to depict women pirates over the years, in . Some are fully reviewed elsewhere on the site, as listed at the end. But there are others worth at least a mention in passing.

buccaneers girl

  • The Spanish Main (1945) – Binnie Barnes takes on the role of Anne Bonny.
  • Buccaneer’s Girl (1950) – Yvonne de Carlo stars as a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a pirate.
  • Against All Flags (1951) – Errol Flynn falls in love with pirate captain “Spitfire” Stevens (Maureen O’Hara), even as he is on an undercover mission to take down her organization.
  • The Golden Hawk (1952) – French sea captain Kit Gerardo (Sterling Hayden) seeks the pirate responsible for killing his mother, and meets female buccaneer Captain Rouge (Rhonda Fleming).
  • The King’s Pirate (1967) – A remake of Against All Flags, with Doug McClure and Jill St. John playing the two leads.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) – Likely inspired by Ching Shih, the third entry included Mistress Ching (Takayo Fischer), a pirate queen who retired to enjoy her incredible wealth.
  • Black Sails (2014) – Anne Bonny is portrayed in the Starz series by Clara Paget.

One worth mentioning never got off the ground. In the early 1990’s Paul Verhoeven was working on a film called Anne Bonny: Mistress of the Seas, based on John Carlova’s book. It had a stellar cast, with Geena Davis attached, plus Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as Calico Jack and Mary Read. However, Pfeiffer soon lost interest, saying, “I had two meetings with Paul Verhoeven… Both conversations were about how much skin I would show.” She may have had a point, one studio exec describing Verhoven’s concept as ”a sex film that, oh, by the way, had a couple of ships in it.” Pressed to take it mainstream, the director left in July 1993, citing “creative differences”, and the studio turned to Davis’s beau Renny Harlin instead. However, Verhoeven agreed to return, only for Davis to bail, allegedly due to the studio ditching her man. She and Harlin went on to make Cutthroat Island, a megaflop which basically killed the entire pirate genre for a decade. Verhoeven was left without a star, and eventually, a film, sniping, “The studio didn’t dare to make a movie about a woman.”

There’s another project which was announced a year ago, but of which little has been heard since. In February 2014, news broke of a “limited series” biopic from Steven Jensen’s Independent Television Group, about Ching Shih called Red Flag, starring Nikita‘s Maggie Q as the Chinese pirate. Said Q, “It’s exciting to have the opportunity to share Ching Shih’s real-life story with audiences that are both familiar and unfamiliar with her prominent history.” But since then? Nothing since March, when it was announced that Francois Arnaud would be the male lead. The silence may not be terminal at this point, and the project is still listed as “in development” on IMDb, but I’d have though something further would have happened by now…

See also

Grace O’Malley: Scourge of the Sea

  By

The daughter of Owen “Dubhdarra” (black oak) O’Malley, famous Irish sea captain, is somebody whose life could easily be made into a film. Known as Gráinne Ní Mháille in her native tongue, I suspect the English version, Grace O’Malley, would be a little more manageable for cinemagoers, and so, that’s the form we’ll use here. She was born in 16th-century Ireland, which at the time was largely allowed to operate independently of England. However, during her lifetime, that gradually changed, and it’s this which was behind many of the turning points in her life.

Her family were great seafarers, and there are tales that say Grace went to sea with her father while still a child, and decided that a life of adventure was for her. In one story, she cut her hair – either to disguise herself as a boy, to sneak aboard, or because she was told it would get caught in the rigging – this led to her nickname “Grainne Mhaol”, or “Bald Grace”. In another tale, her father tells her to get below when their ship is attacked, but she disobeys him. Climbing the rigging to watch the fight, Grace noticed one of the attackers was about to stab her father in the back. Screaming in fury, she swung down from the rigging and attacked him from behind. While folklore-esque exaggeration is likely, there may be an element of truth involved – at the very least, it sounds like a pretty good movie scene to me.

It is known that Grace’s mother did not approve of such things. She employed a tutor to educate her daughter at home and teach her things a well-connected young lady should know, such as Latin. Owen O’Malley was the chieftain of the Barony of Murrisk and controlled a powerful clan and quite a lot of land. At a young age, as was the custom of her people, Grace was married to Donal O’Flaherty, the son of another clan leader. Although it was an arranged marriage it seemed to work well and her new family soon accepted Grace as she got involved in politics, fishing and trading.

Rockfleet Castle, Grace’s home

After a few years she began to overshadow her husband was in charge of the O’Flaherty fleet of ships, an important position and in an age when such jobs were not given to accountants, let alone women. The port city of Galway was refusing to trade with them, so Grace starting seizing ships that passed through her clan’s waters. This is where her reputation as a pirate comes from. It has been recorded that she used to fight with a sword in each hand and the thought of watching her boarding another ship in this manner has a lot of appeal for a scene. She used to let them go on their way once they had paid her off – it’s not like she made anyone walk the plank.

But all good things come to an end. During the 1560’s, there was a power shift in the clan: another leader who had been making trouble for the English, was bought off by being made clan chief. Soon after this, Grace’s husband died in battle and she was left with nothing. Taking her three children, and accompanied by 200 followers, Grace headed back to O’Malley country, determined to make a fresh start. She set up base on Clare Island and rebuilt her fortune by trading and piracy. She did well and soon owned five castles in the area and married the man that owned the sixth; Richard Burke.

Initially, the marriage was on a trial basis, for one year; legend has it, Grace ended the trial – and kept the castle! – but must have relented, as they remained married for many year thereafter. They had a son called Tibbot, who was born aboard a ship while Grace was on a peaceful trading expedition, and what happened a few days later would have to be in the movie. I have speculated a little on the beginning of the story, but left the rest intact.

I see Grace singing a beautiful Irish lullaby to her baby below deck. Suddenly the peace is shattered by the shouts of angry men – their ship is under attack from Moorish pirates. The baby starts to cry and Grace tries to calm him by saying that her crew will take care of the nasty men. She listens intently to the sounds of fighting from above and soon realises that her men are loosing. Muttering that she has to do everything herself, Grace loads her gun and sticks two swords into her belt. After a few soft soothing words to her son; “Don’t fret, darling – Mummy won’t be long. I just have to go and kill the nasty men myself.” Grace bursts on to the deck, in a very bad mood, blasts the first enemy with her gun and then takes to the rest with her swords. The tide of battle now turns and the attack is repulsed.

It is important to realise that this was a period when ships of rival nations frequently attacked each other on the high seas. On his first trading expedition to the Americas, Francis Drake was attacked by Spanish ships, and spent the rest of his life attacking them. The Spanish always regarded him as being a pirate, although to the English he was a privateer, a subtle but significant difference. A privateer is a privately financed ship, that has letters from the government giving permission to attack ships belonging to an enemy power. Their purpose is to capture, rather than sink, such vessels and make a profit for the shareholders who had financed the expedition.

Drake made several trips to the Caribbean, and on his most famous voyage sailed around the world 1577-80. When he returned, the Spanish wanted him executed as a pirate and their treasure returned to them. They had a point: at no time during his voyage were the two countries at war. Elizabeth had been warned by her advisors not to antagonize the Spanish, but as usual, took no notice. She knighted Drake, her favourite adventurer – then, as main financial backer of the expedition, gleefully collected her share of the loot. The Spanish were of course, furious, but their moral indignation is suspect: the gold and silver involved originally belonged to the Incas, a civilization destroyed by the Spanish in the process of ripping them off. Drake’s return to England, where he was greeted as a hero, would make an great scene and would establish Elizabeth as a character.

The English decided that the best way to gain control of Ireland was to buy off the Irish Lords with English titles. Grace was not interested, so the Governor, Richard Bingham, decided to put her out of business; Slowly but surely he started working on this, constricting her operations, and at one time even put her in prison; she escaped execution only when her son-in-law traded himself for her, with the condition Grace gave up her independent ways. The situation was becoming unbearable and all Grace’s appeals to the Governor came to nothing. In desperation she went over his head and sailed for England, determined to ask Elizabeth to intervene on her behalf. This was a courageous thing to do – but she would not have achieved what she had without being a shrewd judge of character. She gambled her life on this ability. Grace started off by writing Elizabeth a series of letters asking for an audience.

Finally the English Queen agreed and Grace came to court to make her pitch (left). She horrified them by addressing the Queen as an equal – Grace’s use of Latin, the language of nobles, would have impressed the Queen. She made a point of saying that they were much alike, both prepared to fight to keep their possessions. Grace referred to the way Elizabeth had joined her army at Tilbury, when the Spanish Armada threatened to invade in 1588. She made a difference too, as her rousing speech did wonders for the moral of her, up till then, pessimistic troops. [It is historical fact that Elizabeth was fond of hunting, and an excellent shot with a crossbow, so it is possible she may well have got involved if the Spanish had landed.] Around the same time, some Spaniards were shipwrecked in Ireland and slaughtered by Grace. A scene of each of these incidents would help illustrate that they did have a lot in common.

The English Queen took to Grace and the two were soon chatting in private, like old friends. They were about the same age and had both led eventful lives. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, had her mother, Ann Boleyn, beheaded for treason, and her half sister, Mary, imprisoned her for a time in the tower of London. It was experiences like this that made Elizabeth a lot tougher and more pragmatic than many people give her credit for. She gave Grace everything she asked for, provided her piracy against Britain ended. Soon Bingham was forced out of Ireland in disgrace – for doing exactly what he was told, to the woman he called, “Nurse of all the rebellions in the province for 40 years”. Politics, it seems, doesn’t really change much in 400 years.

Another interesting tale is told about an incident on the way home to Ireland. She stopped at Howth Castle, where hospitality dictated she should have been offered a meal and a place to stay. But she was told the lord was dining, and wasn’t to be disturbed: an infuriated Grace was leaving, when she met the lord’s son, who was returning to the castle. She kidnapped him, and as the terms for his return, demanded that in future, anyone who asked at Howth Castle would get food and a bed. The tradition continues to this day; the family that lives there still has an extra seat for dinner, just in case…

Grace lived on into old age and died peacefully – in the same year as Elizabeth, 1603 – although it is said she never lost her sense of adventure. The meeting would involve several scenes in the film, and it would be a case of deciding what to leave out rather than having to make things up. I first heard about Grace from the Warrior Women series hosted by Lucy Lawless (right). The enthusiasm for her subject was quite infectious and I can’t think of anyone better to play her in a movie version.

[Jim chips in: I think Nicole Kidman might be an interesting alternative too. She seems to have the kind of quietly steely personality that would be right for the role. Sigourney Weaver is another possibility. The difficulty is the film needing to span several decades of time, so it might be best to have several actresses playing Grace at different times in her life. On the plus side, the total lack of any portraits or illustrations drawn from life does give us enormous flexibility in this area. Though it does pose problems when it comes to finding pictures for this article!]

Cutthroat Island

  By

★★★½
“Rated Arrrrrrr…”

It seems to me that Cutthroat Island was largely just ahead of its time. Made in 1995, it shares a lot of the same elements as the wildly-successful Pirates of the Caribbean, which also had two gangs of pirates, feuding over treasure, while the British navy runs interference. Hell, there’s even an annoying pet monkey in both movies. But Cutthroat was such a big disaster at the box-office, it sat in the Guinness Book of Records, until subsequently passed by the likes of Gigli, and helped bankrupt Carolco.

Certainly, with an estimated $92m budget and a US gross of only $10m, it was a disaster movie, in the most literal sense of the word. But, truth be told, it’s not that bad: in the IMDB it rates a 5.4, which is respectable enough, and there’s no denying that, unlike many such films, the money is actually obvious on the screen. For this was made in the days before large-scale CGI, when the only way to have pirate ships battling on the high seas was…well, actually to have pirate ships battling on the high seas. Malta and Thailand stood in for the Atlantic, Davis mostly does her own stunts, and the finale features one of the best explosions captured on celluloid.

The plot is patterned after classic Errol Flynn films like The Sea Hawk, with Davis in the Flynn role as Morgan Adams, who inherits a ship after her father is killed by her evil uncle, Dawg (Langella). She also has part of a treasure-map – Dawg has another chunk, with the final portion owned by a third brother. The film is largely concerned by the various parties trying to acquire all the parts of the map, race to the treasure, avoid the British navy, and escape with the loot. There’s also a romantic subplot involving career thief William Shaw (Modine), needed to translate the map, but he and Morgan don’t have much chemistry. That’s perhaps because Davis was, at the time, married to director Harlin, and it’s certainly notable that every other woman in the film looks like she’s been keel-hauled beside the impeccably-styled Davis.

cutthroat1[The plan at first was to have Michael Douglas as the male lead – at a price of $15m – but he supposedly withdrew when his role was shrunk to make Davis the lead. Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise got the same offer, but declined. The producers then worked their way down the food chain, through Daniel Day Lewis, Jeff Bridges, Michael Keaton, Charlie Sheen, Liam Neeson and Tim Robbins, before getting Modine for $4m. It’s interesting to speculate about how the film might have ended up with any of the other names – I mean, Charlie Sheen in a pirate film? On the other hand, a lot of people thought Johnny Depp, and letting him channel Keith Richards, was a bad idea…]

What the movie lacks in love interest, it more than makes up for in action – particularly, things going BOOM. This was set in an era when men were men, but women were men too, and everything was apparently likely to explode in a monstrous fireball at a moment’s notice. The opening sequence sees Morgan being recognised as a pirate, and chased by the British through Port Au Prince, a sequence which contains enough action for the climax of most films, not least when the navy decides to open fire from off-shore. The highlight has Davis rolling out a window, off a roof and onto a moving carriage, a serious “How the hell did they do that?” moment [the answer is, it’s a composite shot, joining one of her falling from the roof, to one of her pretending to have landed on the coach].

You will probably spend much of the film wondering how the film is going to top that, not least because the middle-part of the movie is not exactly enthralling. I mean, we know everyone is going to Cutthroat Island, so could they possibly hurry up and get there already? I’m also unimpressed by Chaykin as a journalist, embedded with Morgan, who is supposed to be writing up the activities of the pirates for his publisher. Not sure quite what his purpose was, and in a film that already runs over two hours, reckon he could have been removed without issue. It would also be fair to say that the plot, in general, is no more than a string of cliches, and the characters are similarly over-familiar, a disappointment given the transgressive concept at the film’s heart.

But it is a pirate movie and, to quote Roger Ebert, “is everything a movie named Cutthroat Island should be, and no more.” The final battle, where everyone collides in the middle of the ocean, is a great action set-piece, and Morgan duels her way with Dawg everywhere from the crow’s nest to the hold. Though I do feel his final dispatch (it hardly counts as a spoiler – I stress once more, this is a pirate movie) is, again, a slight shame, with the heroine forced to pull out the, ah, big guns to deal with him, rather than using her own skill.

Still, an entertaining effort, which truly deserves to be seen on a big screen with a good sound-system, and is an interesting precursor to The Long Kiss Goodnight, made by Harlin and Davis shortly after, which also tanked. In light of the subsequent success of Caribbean (and its imminent sequels), the time seems right for a re-evaluation, and I note that most of the recent IMDB comments have been warmly enthusiastic towards the movie. While the chances for the obvious sequel likely evaporated with the couple’s messy divorce – she filed in 1997, the month his personal assistant gave birth to his son – it certainly deserves to be freed from Davy Jones’ Locker of Hollywood Failure.

Dir: Renny Harlin
Star: Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, Frank Langella, Maury Chaykin