Strong and Moving!

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Blackbeard's Ghost stars Dean Jones as GoDolphin College's new track coach. On his first night arriving, he stays at Blackbeard's Inn and discovers said ghost after accidentally conjuring the spell that makes him visible only to him. The rest of the story centers on the relationship between the two and how they help the ancestors of Blackbeard's crew retain ownership of the Inn from the clutches of the local casino-running gangster. Richard Deacon plays the Dean of the college and Suzanne Pleshette plays the psychology professor assigned to keep an eye on their new track coach once they notice he seems to be talking to himself a lot (although it is really to Peter Ustinov as Blackbeard, who is invisible to everybody else). You have to suspend some disbelief in the beginning that this track coach comes in to town knowing very little about the school or the team of track misfits he inherits and that there is no athletic director character or anybody that enters the story that actually hired him, but oh well, I digress... Ustinov does a great job with the character, taking full advantage of the opportunities he gets to show off his comedic skills, and Dean Jones does a sneaky good job too with the role he's given, playing the good man going crazy over dealing with the ghost he didn't sign up for. There are plenty of special effects and sight gags, and some are entertaining to watch, but overall it's just not that funny. Suzanne Pleshette plays the straight woman to perfection, which you can see becomes the precursor to her role on The Bob Newhart Show. Overall a watchable show with some slow patches and some good performances, but I wanted to leave it with a few more belly laughs than what I got. Maybe I needed to be ten years old again to enjoy it more.

A feel-good Disney production, a priggish track-and-field coach (Jones) accidentally invokes the ghost of the centuries-old notorious pirate Blackbeard (Ustinov), who has been stuck in limbo eternally after death because of his 10th wife's vicious curse, while being only visible to the coach, Blackbeard needs to do something good to break the curse, so he decides to assist the coach's lame team to win the college competition (using his stunt of invisibility) in order to win the wager to pay back the bank mortgage and save the hereditary hotel which runs by Blackbeard's descendants (a gaggle of old ladies led by Lanchester). Directed by Robert Stevenson after his post-MARY POPPINS (1964, 7/10) glory, the film fully taps into the jejune bickering and antics between the coach and Blackbeard, an anachronistic farce which hones up to a gratifying hilarity meanwhile tips the scales in hasty absurdity. The over- exploited shtick of Blackbeard's invisibility is as stock as fatiguable, it is a decent family treat after all. Ustinov's eloquent oratory shines even under the circumstances of nothing stimulating needs to be uttered, whose mellifluous cadences alone can save the audience from the stodgy character' default setting, a tad annoying, a tad self-boasting, but nothing remotely hints Blackbeard's venomous nature. Dean Jones, with a Sean Connery-alike visage, contradictorily jibes with Ustinov's maverick image, has a holier-than-thou standard offering in his goodly appearance, completely sedated under Ustinov's grandstanding and so is Suzanne Pleshette, a professor of child psychology but more frisky and outward than her formal love-interest. Elsa Lanchester, owns a great gambit as an offbeat soothsayer, shamefully then steps off most of the time as a sightseer. The embellished plot-line of the track events and casino gambling works well with the laughters, Stevenson and screenwriters surely had contrived a plan to let everything looks plausible no matter how illogical it seems, so as hard as they tried, it is a run-of-the-mill level of creation and self-aware of its demographical appeal.

note: do not bother to watch the American release DVD of this. for some reason with a few of the harder to find live action classics from Disney like 'Gnomemobile' or 'One of Our Dinosuars is Missing', the DVD transfers offered on the American disc are inferior transfer. they looked like Disney transfered them from VHS or something. the region 2 DVD releases from England are, for some reason, a far superior transfer and look like they were transfered from film and not VHS. don't know why you should have to go to a foreign market to get the best quality from an American studio, but this seems pretty typical of the failure by the Disney co. to adequately showcase it's live action classics from the studio's golden age.all that tech talk aside,'Blackbeard's Ghost' has always been one of my favorite live action Disney fantasies. and definitely one of the studio's best comedies ranking with 'The Absentminded Professor' and 'One of our Dinosuars is Missing'. with the (shall i say it?) stellar acting combination of Ustinov and Jones, 'Blackbeard' plays out like a Diney/fantasy version of Neil Simon's the 'Odd Couple'. and if you are partial to Disney and slapstick, possibly a lot funnier.the performances by Ustinov and Jones are decidedly a focal point that drives the film and gives it it's most weighty substance. the performances, especially Ustinov's, are inspired and sharp witted. they come off as sort of lunatic fringe, counterparts to Matthau and Lemmon, but with a lot more testosteroned, highly charged, craziness. Ustinov and Jones performances are much more "over the top" than Matthau's or Lemmon's, but as charged up as their performances get, they are restrained and controlled with lots of character insight that makes the two protagonist seem like human beings and not nuttily drawn cartoons which could have easily have happened with all the buffoonery.even though cartoonish, the characters are developed with some psychological insights. insights very similar to Simon's 'Odd Couple' play. one is uptight and repressed, the other is gregarious and lacking any moral conscience and a slob. also much like the 'Odd Couple', this is a take on the age old saying "you can't keep two bulls in one pen". a testimonial satire on the difficulties in the male relationship and of male dominance assertion. the compatibility between the two is aggravated by their extreme differences. one is a square, the other a pirate, one is living, one is dead, etc. of course in true Disney fashion, they learn to come to terms with their differences and work together.it's also interesting to note that for a film that is over forty years old (God. forty years. i saw this at the movies when it first came out), the gimmicks and FX are still true today as ever. in many respects, the mechanical effects are even more inspired in an age that relies on CGI for everything. Peter Ellenshaw's beautiful matte composites look even better and more painted art than the monochromatic CGI composites of today.classic Disney doesn't get much better than this. and it is certainly better than a lot of the bland, under-whelming fare, offered by the Disney channel TV movies of today.

While silly and over-the-top at times, this film is a lot of fun. My main problem though with "Blackbeard's Ghost" though is that it is tad too long by 10 minutes. But it is hugely enjoyable entertainment for the whole family, with some nice costumes and cinematography. Also a vast majority of the jokes are very funny, the intriguing plot is along the lines of "The Canterville Ghost" and the performances are spirited. Peter Ustinov, a great actor, makes a very lively lead who is condemned to wander in limbo until he performs a good deed, and Dean Jones also does a good job. Elsa Lanchester almost steals the film though, as one of the ladies he must save from gambling gangsters. Overall, while not perfect, it is enjoyable and worth watching. 7/10 Bethany Cox