Friday, August 29, 2014

THE BOY AND THE PIRATES / Bert I. Gordon Productions - 1960

It's Mr. B.I.G. Friday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!. Here's a movie Bert (who's 92 years old now) did between the EARTH vs. THE SPIDER and TORMENTED productions. The moniker Mr. B.I.G. was given to Bert by The Dungeon's own guardian angel and our mentor, who else... Forry Ackerman, who also coined the popular phrase... Sci-Fi!

Eegah!! sent over a sound clip of the theme and more for our earjoyment, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button over by the atomic genie bottle, NOW, Rufus The Gnat!.. Here's a taste of... THE BOY AND THE PIRATES!

Charles Herbert plays Jimmy Warren, he finds an old bottle with a mischievous genie inside! Charles racked up 64 acting credits before hanging it up in 1968 at age 20, but, was in these classic horror flicks... THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD, THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK, THE FLY and 13 GHOSTS! Charles was also born the in same year as Eegah!! and me.

Timothy (HEAD) Carey plays cut throat henchman Morgan, Murvyn (VOODOO ISLAND) Vye is the infamous pirate Blackbeard. They're trying to figure out what to do with the odd looking kid that just happened to show up out of nowhere! The genie in the bottle has sent Jimmy back to the days of pirates by twisting his wish.

Rather than feeding Jimmy to the sharks, which was the plan, one of Bluebeard's men talks him into letting the boy do a number of chores on the ship.

When you're a pirate, the only reason for living is that good old booty plunder!

Bluebeard is now in possession of the genie's bottle, so, the genie plays some pranks on him. Here, he changes the contents of his liquor keg into milk!

After Bluebeard's men attack and destroy another ship sailing close to them, they find Susan (ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE) Gordon, who plays Katrina, onboard and make her part of their cut throat crew.

This part is fairly intense... Morgan is trying to get some information about the genie out of Jimmy and threatens to subject him to the classic hot poker routine. Bert knew what he was doing when he hired Tim for this part!

There are more battles on the sea, this time though, Bluebeard and pals don't fare so well and Katrina nearly gets blown to Hell!

Bluebeard finds out that Morgan plans on a mutiny, so, fires a slug into his putrid gut! Also, the genie causes a volcanic mountain to rise out of the sea, making it possible for Jimmy, Katrina and their pirate pal to escape in a small row boat after Jimmy recovered the genie's bottle back from Bluebeard.

But, they are pursued by Bluebeard and his henchmen to an island where the pirates finally catch up with them.

Jimmy throws the bottle and hits Bluebeard with it, there's an explosion and everything is back to the present. Katrina is now Kathy and Jimmy has a small souvenir on him from the adventure, to assure that the whole thing was not just a dream! If you'll notice, EVERY movie with this type of ending ALWAYS has to have a piece of evidence to assure the victim and viewer of the validity of the movie... Hell, they even used it in FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND!!

Tune in tomorrow when Eegah!! will have something wild 'n' weird from 1967 Turkey for us!

1 comment:

  1. I don't know this one well enough (unlike many Bert Gordon movies), but I've always liked Murvyn Vye's villainous take on Merlin in the Bing Crosby version of CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT.

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