Pirates of Treasure Island (2006)

I love Pirates of the Caribbean (or... at least the first 3 movies anyway...) and I am not ashamed to admit that. Even now despite the fact that Johnny Depp might have become "problematic" or whatever, but I still love those movies. So much so that I brought them again second hand on DVD just so I could rip them to my laptop and me and Mrs. Popcorn could watch them again one after the other for 3 nights running whilst on holiday in a caravan. And I am 100% not joking when I say I really enjoyed that holiday. So naturally when I spotted a legendary knock off factory; The Asylum produced copycat movie: Pirates of Treasure Island it pretty much instantly earned itself a spot as the next movie I was going to cover on the blog. Some of these have been really bad and some of them not so much so, so I genuinely have no idea what to expect. I am lead to believe that despite being timed perfectly to coincide with the second instalment of the PotC series, and despite genuinely copying the font and art style of the aforementioned series to an absolute pixel perfect degree for it's opening title card... Pirates of Treasure Island does in fact have far more to do with the Robert Louis Stephenson novel rather than plagiarising the Caribbean Pirate variety movies so perhaps, just maybe, there is a glimmer of hope that some actual care and attention has been put into this to make it a halfway decent movie production. Maybe.

The movie starts with a slightly underwhelming action set piece where Long John Silver (Lance Henriksen) seizes the captaincy from his former boss, only for the skirmish to be interrupted by a massive flying insect... Now... I am not intimately familiar with Treasure Island the novel granted, but I am pretty sure there isn't a moment where Long John Silver gets mauled by a giant gnat... I think... Cut to some awful midi horns over the title sequence and we are with Jim Hawkins (Tom Nagel), an Innkeeper who dreams of raising enough money to buy his own ship and go off and be an adventurer. Opportunity literally lands on his doorstep when an old serving officer of Long John Silver, Billy Bones (Justin Jones) ups and dies inside his pub, leaving behind a treasure map to "Skeleton Island." Jim is enchanted by the idea of seeking out the buried treasure, despite protestations from those closest to him, and eventually after convincing friend and Doctor, Dr. Livesley (Jeff Denton) to become his partner, the pair convince Captain Smolette (James Ferris and his terrible French accent...) into chartering his vessel: the Hispaniola in order to travel to the island, under the pretence of it being a research expedition. The pair set about assembling a crew for the voyage and after recruiting Long John Silver as the ships cook, him going by the pseudonym Barbeque - who during the meeting warns young Jim of the dangers he is about to embroil himself in but promises him he can assemble an able bodied crew - Jim leaves his bar behind, forced to close it, in order to set sail to Skeleton Island. Along the way Jim learns that Mr. Barbeque is perhaps more than he lets on, and when he eavesdrops on him preparing the rest of his crew to mutiny and take over the vessel once they reach the island, Jim accidentally gives himself away and Silver takes him prisoner. Things are looking a little icy for Jim until his former barmaid and one of the most feared pirates of the high seas; Anne Bonney (Rebekah Kochan) reveals she has snuck on board and after saving Jim's bacon and being sufficiently feared enough that Silver would rather bargain than try to oust her, the trio come to an agreement to split the treasure but keep their arrangement from the others on board. Jim is initially a little bit upset after learning his barmaid is actually one of the most wanted pirates throughout all of central America... but she promises him that she is onboard for him and not for a share of the treasure... and as they get nearer the island, Jim and Silver appear to be bonding and developing something of a friendship. After arriving, as planned; Silver and the crew mutiny, taking control of the ship with ex-Captain Smolette and Dr. Livesley confined to lower decks. Jim and Anne join Silver and the landing party in travelling to the island. Back inside and Offier Wilkins (Rhett Giles), First Mate to Captain Smolette and a garrison onboard the vessel under command from the US Navy, begins to unravel the story behind the ships journey to the island from Dr. Livesley and the trio begin to hatch a plan to seize control of the vessel back from the pirates but also to obtain and share the treasure amongst themselves... and using the pretty females on board, they distract the pirate guards long enough to regain control, before heading ashore to rescue Jim. On the Island, Jim becomes increasingly concerned that he can't trust Silver and when Smolette and gang catch up with them, and a stand off breaks out Jim finds himself conflicted, unable to pick a side when a skirmish kicks off between the factions. Silver slaughters both Captain Smolette and Dr. Livesley in cold blood, despite Jim's cries but before either side can take the advantage, the battle is interrupted by the arrival of massive flying insects... and Jim, Anne and Wilkins seize the opportunity to escape. Meanwhile back onboard the Hispaniola, the pirates break free and regain control of the ship... Back on the Island and Jim and gang meet up with a marooned ex-pirate named Ben Gunn (Leigh Scott), a former part of the crew sailing under the Captain that Silver previously served under until he mutinied. He explains that he knows exactly where the treasure is and that they need to get to it before Silver does. He leads them to what looks like a Mayan pyramid... however once inside a substantial amount of the treasure appears to be missing. They are about to leave when Silver appears from the shadows and threatens to kill them all where they stand. Jim, still upset with him for killing Dr. Livesley calls him a liar and a cheat, but Wilkins steps in, preferring to fight Silver himself rather than leave Jim to be slaughtered. But instead of fighting, Silver just guns him down where he stands and then shoots Jim as well, albeit non-fatally. Offering Anne the chance, pirate to pirate, to take her share of the treasure and leave, Anne instead draws her sword and after a short fight is able to overcome Silver and power him to the ground. But when she is distracted, Silver draws a pistol and shoots her. Regaining consciousness, Jim draws a sword and attacks Silver, eventually able to overcome him and wound him fatally. Deciding they've seen enough, they take as much treasure as they can before returning to the ship and with a bit of help from the attractive ladies onboard, Jim and Anne regain control of the vessel after a good ol' scrap. In the closing scenes, for his work in dealing with one Long John Silver, Jim Hawkins is promoted to the rank of Captain and assigned as a Privateer for the US Navy, his vessel staffed with the ladies who helped him liberate the Hispaniola.

Well, this was just fine really if I'm being honest. It had it's moments where it descended slightly into the wacky, totally unrealistic stuff that Asylum movies are famous for, but to be honest those moments were pretty sparse and for the most part it was just a regular run of the mill B-Movie. It was pretty clear that it was shot on a very tight budget and there was a kind of whiff of slight unprofessionalism about the whole thing but I honestly felt like more of a concerted effort was made to make a "proper" movie if you like, rather than a silly, sloppily cobbled together knock off. And that was mostly a good a thing. I certainly found this easy enough to sit through although it got a little bit boring at times, but yeah mostly just fine really?

If for nothing else, it was at least entertaining enough to watch Lance Henriksen as Long John Silver. He was mostly decent and I think lended himself to the weathered, sea dog role pretty well. Although he was a little bit difficult to understand at times and tended to mumble his lines a bit albeit in character, but I thought he made for a pretty decent Pirate Captain and it was enjoyable to watch him at work.

Unfortunately the rest of this cast mostly came across as pretty bland and vanilla. I felt like Tom Nagel was trying to do his best Orlando Bloom impression throughout the entire thing. And he was a little bit one dimensional to be honest. Similarly everybody else felt like they were just slotted in to correspond with their assigned stereotypical role. I wouldn't say any of the acting slid into being particularly bad at any point, couple of cheesy and cringey moments, but not necessary bad. Just a little bit average.

Productionwise was a bit of a mixed bag, there was really decent cinematography and some really interesting camera work. Especially the sweeping long shots of the ship as it travelled the island which, I'm pretty sure were shot for the movie and not stock footage. Similarly some good cinematography during some of the action scenes. But there was also a handful of moments that just made really confusing creative choices and were either filmed just really flatly or just gave the impression that no effort was put into composition of the shot. Also, it was only one brief, fleeting moment but there was an entire shot during a transitional part as they treked across the island, that was completely out of focus and captured nothing? I'm not entirely sure how or why it made it to the final cut to be honest? And during the battle scenes it got very confusing trying to digest what was going on. It was all just shots of legs and blurry shots of swords. It was here really that the movie suffered the most.

And I say that because the storyline was mostly pretty decent. From what I can gather it was pretty faithful to the original novel, excusing the island being inhabited with massive insects - a narrative that... doesn't really lead anywhere? So not sure why they even bothered to be honest... but the story was entertaining enough that it held the movie together and was paced well throughout the movie apart from the last 15 odd minutes where, in typical Asylum fashion, there was just so much going on and crammed into the final moments that it got a little bit carried away. For the most part though it was worked just fine. My only complaint here is that it was perhaps a bit too faithful and it felt like it dragged a bit as the movie developed on certain plot points.

I have subjected myself to far worse movies than this one though, and on the whole it was generally ok. I don't think it's going to snag any awards any time soon, but I don't feel like it just screwed me out of 1 hour 25 odd minutes that I'm never going to get back and it was a perfectly serviceable if not a bit underwhelming little B-Movie. Lance Henriksen was enjoyable to watch and there was enough of a plot and a storyline to keep the movie engaging. Not bad, but not exactly the most exciting movie I've ever watched. Strong 2 out of 5.