Wonderfully offbeat film!

Instant Favorite.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Wily and suave buccaneer Blackie (a smooth and charming portrayal by the always solid Terence Hill) clashes with several fellow pirate captains while trying to get exclusive dibs on both a fortune in gold and enticing fair damsel Isabel (the ravishing Silvia Monti). Director Lorenzo Gicca Palli and screenwriter George Martin (who also appears in the movie as Blackie's bumbling destitute partner Don Predro) concoct an amiably silly tongue-in-cheek swashbuckler that unfolds at a steady pace while offering a winning blend of colorful characters, a flavorsome period setting (the sets and costumes are both impressively lavish), and plenty of lively action which includes the expected rousing sword fights and no-holds-barred rough'n'tumble fisticuffs. This jolly affair further benefits from spirited acting from an engaging cast: Hill displays his usual affable charisma as Blackie, Monti is simply luscious as Isabel, Bud Spencer is suitably redoubtable as Blackie's gruff rival Skull, plus there are neat supporting contributions by Diana Lorys as feisty barmaid Manuela, Edmund Purdom as the irritable viceroy, Monica Randall as the fetching Carmen, Sal Borgese as the kindly Martin, Pasquale Basile as primitive brute Stiller, and Fernando Bilbao as hulking strongman Moko. Jaime Deu Casas' polished cinematography gives the picture a nice sense of scope. Gino Peguri's jaunty score likewise hits the cheery spot. An enjoyable flick.

This is the tale of a buccaneer who takes over a ship of corsairs and wreak havoc on the high seas. The pirate named Blackie(Terence Hill) join forces with Don Pedro(George Martin, also screenwriter). They square off against their nemesis, the viceroy(Edmund Purdom, Sinuhe, The prodigal) and other pirates captains(Allan Collins and Pascuale Basile, also master of arms). Blackie and Don Pedro are helped by a corpulent hunk named Moko(Fernando Bilbao) and a sympathetic pirate(habitual of Italian B series, Sal Borgese). They're going a buccaneer settlement where encounter a prisoners selling, there is slaved the viceroy's spouse(Silvia Monti). The wife is bought by Blackie, but she's freed by a ransom. Meanwhile, viceroy wishes a shipment of gold transport from Guayaquil until Spain .This is an agreeable entertainment juvenile romp. The movie displays action, swordplay, slapdash, fist-play and humor with tongue in check. This release has some nice and even hilarious moments here and there , though isn't always interesting , sometimes is diverting and fresh and on a couple of sympathetic occasions is frankly delicious. Terence Hill (Mario Girotti, Massimo Girotti'son)is cool as the pirate hero who finds dangerous situations while trying rob the shipment. This isn't the usual Hill-Spencer(Carlo Pedersoli) buddy movie, but they're contenders instead of partners, for that reason they're best known for roles in Spaghetti, 'They call me Trinity¨and followings, where they're much better. The starring are accompanied by gorgeous girls, such as Silvia Monti, Diana Lorys and Monica Randall. This adventures movie of middling budget and confuse plot, is enriched by colorful cinematography but unfortunately the copy circulating is badly printed. The motion picture is regularly directed by Lorenzo Gicca Palli, alias Vincent Thomas. He's usually screenwriter of Italian Western and adventures genre(Zorro the invincible, Hercules the avenger,Fury of Khybers) and occasionally filmmaker(Last gunfight). This standard and average 7o's Italian swashbuckling film to be liked for Hill and Spencer fans.

Living on an island situated so close to the Italian peninsula, it is small wonder that celebrities emanating from those parts would be a household word in Malta as well and, during my childhood days, no Italian film stars were as popular as Mario Girotti and Carlo Pedersoli…er…Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. These two actors – who could roughly be described as the "Laurel & Hardy" of Italian genre movies – have made 17 pictures together between 1968 and 1994 and the film under review is one of their earliest and least-known. They had just hit the big time with the Spaghetti Western spoof THEY CALL ME TRINITY (1970) and it was natural that, after three successive Westerns, producers wanted to try out something else so, here, they decided to not only change genre (to the swashbuckler) but also to have them as rivals instead of partners. Ironically, the new recipe failed to nourish the hungry masses and a sequel to TRINITY was hastily cooked up… Apart from the incongruity of seeing the two stars swapping their by-now familiar cowboy garb for the pirate's feathered-hat and sword, the film itself comes off as a plodding and uninvolving adventure without even the benefit of their usual, protracted cazzotti (fistfights) sequences – save a few tired rehashes of people flying on top of cabinets with a single punch to the jaw! Terence Hill has the title role but is more morose than his usual self here and Bud Spencer is an opposing pirate leader who, true to the seaman's code, goes down with his ship in the end. Also in the cast are a trio of good-looking dames – Silvia Monti (as the vengeful wife of the Viceroy whom Hill abducts and even gets to bed), Monica Randall (as her companion who eventually joins the pirates' cause) and Jess Franco regular Diana Lorys (who is criminally wasted as a sympathetic innkeeper); the film's screenwriter George Martin(!) as Hill's aristocratic partner; Pasquale Basile as the annoying dumb brute typical of such fare; Luciano Pigozzi (hamming it up as another antagonistic pirate leader); and the customary Hollywood has-been generally roped in for such productions for their dubious marquee value: in this case, Edmund Purdom (as the Viceroy). Unfortunately, contrary to all convention, instead of relishing the role of an eye-rolling villain, Purdom underplays the part almost to the point of absentia! In spite of the film's title, it doesn't seem to have been inspired by the Emilio Salgari (creator of popular heroic figure Sandokan) novel "The Black Pirate" – which, apart from two earlier European film versions, would again be brought to the screen (far more effectively) a mere five years after this one (with TV's Sandokan himself, Kabir Bedi, in the lead).

One hesitates to pass judgment on a movie which, in the English-language videotape, has obviously gone through a lot of clumsy re-editing and re-dubbing. Still, it's all we have to judge it by and so the truth must be told: this movie makes virtually no sense at all. The plot has something to do with a shipment of gold which the Viceroy at Guayaquil wants to send back to Spain. A loose confederation of pirate captains has other ideas, as does the Viceroy's beautiful and ambitious wife. Any attempt to clarify the plot beyond these elements will be met with frustration.That said, the movie retains an amiable quality, is never out and out dull, and has an attractive cast. It's best viewed as an "In-Flight" feature -- one of those things you don't expect much of and which you halfway watch out of the corner of your eye while you're doing something else. The highlight, (such as it is), may come when Edmund Purdom walks into a room and finds a shirtless Terence Hill tied to a wall, several bloody whip marks on his back. One can't help recalling at this moment that Purdom himself felt the sting of a whip back in MGM's 1954 spectacle, "The Prodigal"