Scalawag (1973)

Please don't spend money on this.

Don't Believe the Hype

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

After Oliver!, I'm surprised anyone ever offered Mark Lester another part in a movie. Kirk Douglas must have felt sorry for him and offered him the part of his young sidekick in his movie Scalawag, in which he starred and directed. In this swashbuckling disaster, Kirk plays a peg-legged pirate with a band of misfits and a parrot. As like any stereotypical pirate, he's in search of treasure. As much as I like Kirk Douglas, I have to think he was having a bad day when he decided to make this movie. It's both incredibly silly and incredibly 1970s, a decade I don't think produced many quality films anyway. The awkward zooms, terrible haircuts, and odd music choices don't stand the test of time, and Scalawag is no different. Unless you make it your mission to watch every single pirate movie ever made, just stick to Robert Newton's films. You've got several to choose from, including Treasure Island and Long John Silver.DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not your friend. There's a scene in a hot air balloon about ten minutes before the end where the camera spins in a circle, and it will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

I get the impression that "Director Douglas" told himself and all the other actors, "give me all you got!" for every scene. That, and every time his stunt coordinator said, "hey, we could do a fall from that rock, or tree, or that hillock, or that bridge, or that wall or that flat patch of ground there", they'd shoot it.That, and the way these pirate gauchos, or whatever they are keep killing each other off for no obvious reason -- I know, the gold, but they didn't just fall from the sky; they must have had fat times to go with the lean times they had right before the movie started. That, and that a major character (Mark Lester's hero-worshiping "Jamie") shows up 20 minutes in. That, and the pointless "twin" story. That, and the movie takes 25 minutes to 'sync up' with the story they're using. Now, there are a couple of nice scenes, don't get me wrong -- Peg and Jaime when they first meet, and the whole scene that follows, through the funeral. And then Peg starts throwing knives near people and shouting, and things go to weirdness again. That, and "indians" who seize Peg, "torture" him in a fairly dumb way, and who look a lot like Yugoslavians. That, and wooden legs that are made (and decorated) in the middle of a treasure hunt with evil "indians" and heavily armed "allies" who just turn up and are accepted into the hunt with no wonderings about who will kill who (and try to rape the woman at the first opportunity), and when told to "git", just do. But before and after, we sing!That, and we'll know the treasure location right away, because... gimme a minute... nope, got nothing. That, and a character actually *saying* as characters keep changing their minds about who gets the gold and who gets killed and where Jamie went, "Hey, it's getting complicated."That, and who exactly killed who for why at the end? And they did what with the which for huh?... anyway, an exuberant, but inexpert movie. But don't cry for Mr. Douglas, he may have been a bad director (and a very uneven actor) here, but "Final Countdown", "Draw!", "Tough Guys", a great performance in the lousy "The Fury", and an underrated version of "Inherit the Wind" are in his future. Nobody makes everything great, but as a low point, not such a terrible one.

Director-star Kirk Douglas is all ham as 'Peg' in this surprisingly amateurish remake of "Treasure Island" in a western setting. What probably undoes this film more than anything else is the inept editing. Scenes do not transition well at all. Lesley-Anne Down is quite beautiful as Lucy-Ann, and even gets to sing a ballad (probably the film's highlight) written by John Cameron (who provided the film's score). Danny Devito turns up in perhaps his first major film role as a pirate, along with Don Stroud (the villain in "Coogan's Bluff"). Mark Lester's early '70s haircut (or lack of one) is more in keeping with then-mod fashion than with the early 19th century (he had a much shorter coif in the Dickens musical "Oliver"). Mel Blanc provides the voice of the parrot. Filmed in Yugoslavia. Odd picture. Should have been much better. Douglas is a maverick actor, but he plays this one verrrry broadly. At least he seemed to have been genuinely enjoying himself.

What a curious little film. Let me try to describe it to you: a one-legged outlaw in the Wild West takes a couple of kids and a bunch of fellow outlaws in search of buried gold. The plot is basically just a borrowed hotch-potch of ideas from Treasure Island, spruced up unconvincingly with songs, and thinly disguised by transporting it away from the Caribbean to the vast open plains of the Wild West.There are some well-known faces involved in the muddle. Kirk Douglas plays the main character (he also directed); Mark Lester from Oliver plays one of the kids; Lesley Ann Down (ravishing, you may remember, in Sphinx) plays the other kid; and Danny Devito is in it too as one of the outlaws. For such a collection of talent, you'd have thought there must have been a decent script.... wrong!Douglas often groans about the film, saying it was ineffective and a bad experience for a first-time director. As much as I like the guy, I can't disagree with him on that score. The acting is OK and the scenery looks nice, but the film just lacks passion and excitement and vibrancy. It was a nice idea, but the execution fails it. Maybe someone will remake it one day and do a much better job.