THE CORSAIRS is a light and breezy costume adventure in the swasbuckling mode and a collaboration between Spain and Italy. The star of the piece is the little-known American import Dean Reed, an actor from Colorado who died young under mysterious circumstances in East Germany in the 1980s. You know the type: handsome, agile, and extremely bland.
The story is set in the Caribbean and involves an heiress at the mercy of an evil power-hungry duke played by Alberto de Mendoza, completely unrecognisable without the garb of his mad priest character in HORROR EXPRESS. To the heiress's rescue comes Reed and his motley band of pirates, who proceed to kick up a storm by fighting bad guys and general henchmen at every turn. Said heiress is played by Annabella Incontrera, who occasionally gets to show some feistiness but who is generally wasted as a love interest.
The main problem with the film is that it feels so old-fashioned for its area; the swashbuckling genre pretty much died out in the early 1960s so this was made ten years too late. To counter the dated feel, the action scenes tend to be quite comedic in the same mould as the Terence Hill and Bud Spencer comedies as well as the outlandish (and acrobatic) 'super men' film series, but they're never as successful or as much fun as those and the whole thing feels quite sluggish and dated as a result.
The story is set in the Caribbean and involves an heiress at the mercy of an evil power-hungry duke played by Alberto de Mendoza, completely unrecognisable without the garb of his mad priest character in HORROR EXPRESS. To the heiress's rescue comes Reed and his motley band of pirates, who proceed to kick up a storm by fighting bad guys and general henchmen at every turn. Said heiress is played by Annabella Incontrera, who occasionally gets to show some feistiness but who is generally wasted as a love interest.
The main problem with the film is that it feels so old-fashioned for its area; the swashbuckling genre pretty much died out in the early 1960s so this was made ten years too late. To counter the dated feel, the action scenes tend to be quite comedic in the same mould as the Terence Hill and Bud Spencer comedies as well as the outlandish (and acrobatic) 'super men' film series, but they're never as successful or as much fun as those and the whole thing feels quite sluggish and dated as a result.