Film

Swashbuckler (1976)

Director: James Goldstone

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

The success of Jaws sent Hollywood scurrying for movie adventure styles to refurbish; hence this multi-million dollar pirate swashbuckler. Although Jeffrey Bloom's arch and relatively uninspired script lacks the more evocative components of a Robert Louis Stevenson story, it still manages to combine all the staples of the genre with a certain gusto: treasure, duelling, knife-throwing, ambushes, dungeon escapes, sea fights, disguise, and hints of exotic sado-masochism are all here in grandiose style, plus the usual sexual hostility between hero (Shaw) and heroine (Bujold). Shaw and Boyle (the villain) camp it up too much, but at least the pirate ship and tropical sea beaches are spectacularly real, not the tanks and crude sets that the genre has almost invariably suffered in the past.

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