The Black Pirate

The opening is excellent, and the action scenes when they come are a lot of fun, but after the first half the excitement tapers off a bit as it turns into a waiting game for the finale. The colour is pretty cool, makes for a unique silent experience.

Loved it. It's certainly not perfect, in the casual sense of the word, but it is an adventure movie that hits every note on cue and in tune. The humor found in casual killing was a bit of a shocker, as is the "underwater" work. Again, in a good way.

An alright swashbuckler; I'm not sure if the technicolor helps it or hurts it, though. It doesn't look bad, and I'm used to seeing pirates in color, but it does look a bit fake, as do most color efforts from that era. Oh well, no big deal. It's a nice enough costume adventure flick, and it must have one of the earlier instances of the "twist" ending - though it's not a plot twist, really, more a character twist.

Historic? Yes. It ignited a genre and in some corners will merit a watch for being a very early Technicolor film. It was a hit in its day, visually fresh and as exciting as the open ocean. But I compare it to something like The Black Swan which I watched recently and it can't hold up. I'll concede that Fairbanks is superior to Tyrone Power for charisma but Fairbanks needed more to DO in this. I'm glad I watched it, but I'm left wishing it held more.

That peg legged pirate had the scariest mouth.

Excellent swashbuckler with Fairbanks in fine form, and Crisp especially good in support - early Technicolor makes the at times surprisingly graphic violence (for its era) especially vivid. The plot of infiltrating the villains gang to destroy them from within is a familiar modern trope, and it's a shame that this aspect isn't explored at greater depth, becoming more of a traditional action movie at the halfway point.

The overly simple story, tight camera angles and abundance of uninspired pirate archetypes do little to spark the imagination here, and the lack of proper editing dramatically draws out what should probably be an hourlong feature. Surprisingly, it also shows off rather little of Fairbanks’ phenomenal athleticism, and thus feels like a treasure trove of missed potential all round. The two-strip Technicolor affords a nice bit of grisliness during its unexpectedly bloody moments.