Treasure Island (1950)

Treasure Island (1950)

Opening title card: If sailor tales and sailor tunes, storm and adventure, heat and cold. If schooners, islands and maroons and buccaneers and buried gold, and all the old romance retold exactly in the ancient way can please as me they pleased of old the wiser youngsters of today... So be it!

Before ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean’, there was ‘Treasure Island’. This is the classic adventure tale brought to colorful life by Walt Disney in 1950. His first full length all live action picture. It has as much pirates running around and as many colorful characters as the modern day Pirates has.  This film also never suffers the same type of confusion as the POTC sequels does and remains a film worth watching almost half a century later. I remember when I was younger a friend of mine (Tony Nigro) gave me a copy of Treasure Island for Christmas. I actually never read the book, but remember him giving it to me. I tell that story only because writing this review recalled it to my mind, and I thought it would be fun to share. But you care more about , “Should see this film or not?”

It is a classic example of how violent a picture can be without having to resort to graphic gory details. If it was made by the same guy who made ‘Watchmen’, it would not be the family friendly violent picture that it is today. It is not about the violence however, but about the adventure of looking for buried treasure and avoiding nasty pirates trying to cut you down. It is also a classic example of how crucial the casting director is to a picture. The one who cast Robert Newton as Long John Silver, sure earned his paycheck. His portrayal of this whimsical and rascally scoundrel earned him the chance to reprise the role in the non-Disney sequels 'Return to Treasure Island' and  ‘Long John Silver’, and the non-Disney TV series of the same name. He alone is worth watching the film. This is adventure making at its best.

Interesting Triva: Author Robert Lewis Stevenson (the man who wrote Treasure Island back in 1883) was a devout Christian who was an outspoken defender of Blessed Damian of Molokai, The priest who contracted leprosy while serving the leaper colonies in Hawaii.

Memorble Quotes

"He pries into every seaman's past like a judge at a quarter session. When I threatened to step in, he told me to hire a sea cook, so, by Jove, I did hire a sea cook, right out of his own tavern! Ha ha! Fellow by the name of Long John Silver. I didn't waste my time poring over his credentials. All the credentials I needed was a taste of his ham and his buttered eggs!-" Squire Trelawney:

See it. Treasure it. Love it. Look for buried treasure.

Robert Newton Returns as Long John Silver in....

Return to Treasure Island (1954)

Long John Silver (1954)

The Adventures of Long John Silver 26-episode 1955 TV series


Besides Long John Silver, Newton was   Blackbeard the Pirate (1952)

A Few Other Treasures
 - Treasure Island  1934- Starring Jackie Cooper and Wallace Beery. An MGM production, the first sound film version.
 - Muppet Treasure Island 1996
-Treasure Planet (2002)
Other Swasbuckling Pirate Movies

The Black Piarate (1926) Douglas Fairbanks
Mutiny on the Bounty(1935)  Charles Laughton, Clark Gable Terry and the Pirates (1940)
The Sea Hawk (1940) Errol Flynn
The Black Swan (1942) Tyrone Power
Yankee Buccaneer / Double Crossbones (1951) Donald O'Connor
Against All Flags (1952) Errol Flynn
The Crimson Pirate (1952) Burt Lancaster
The Boy and the Pirates (1960) A High Wind in Jamaica (1965)The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie (2008)

The Princess and the Pirate (1944) Bob Hope
Captain Kidd(1945) Charles Laughton
The Pirate (1948) Gene Kelly

Pirates of the Caribbean (film series)

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)