best movie i've ever seen.

Admirable film.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

To date, only one other viewer has reviewed this obscure item from 1954, and while I sympathize with that viewer's lack of enthusiasm, I feel "The Black Pirates" deserves a few words of mild commendation. True, it's land-locked and doesn't have a single scene set on the High Seas, but this terrestrial setting helps "ground" the action and keeps it focused on the interrelationships between the bereft pirates and the residents of the village where buried treasure may be located. Perhaps surprisingly, the villagers receive a majority of the attention, and they're presented not as a united force but as a collection of varied interests. Also surprisingly, the leading man (Anthony Dexter) and the leading lady (Martha Roth) are not the story's hero and heroine. In fact, Lon Chaney jr. provides the movie's moral core, being cast (against type) as a benevolent and determined priest. These and other factors are then shaped into a brisk, efficient, and thankfully short feature. In summary, those with even a bit of adventurous taste may find hints of value in this unassuming effort. (A point of possible interest: a bare-chested Robert Clarke, tied to the village's T-shaped whipping post, suffers a vigorous flogging in the movie's opening reel. This scene, probably because of its obscurity, doesn't make the list in the book "Lash! The 100 Great Scenes of Men Being Whipped in the Movies," but it's a good scene and worth noting. Curiously, the other two whipping scenes from 1954 movies both involve the same victim. Ricardo Montalban was flogged across his bare chest in "The Queen of Babylon" and was then flogged across his bare back in "The Saracen Blade.") Alas, surviving prints of "The Black Pirates," in fading color, are not in good shape.

1954's "The Black Pirates" stars Anthony Dexter as the pirate leader Zargo, his crew without a ship, seeking to recover buried treasure on the site of a 1777 Salvadoran community known as the 'Village of Miracles,' supposedly beneath the church presided over by Padre Felipe (Lon Chaney), who confesses that he discovered their long gone fortune and used it to build this village, believing it to be a gift from God. These pirates are not the romanticized type represented by John Payne in 1953's "Raiders of the Seven Seas" (also with Chaney), but a ruthless, despicable lot whose climactic comeuppance is surprisingly bloody. Shot in the cheap Ansco color process at a genuine 350 year old church on location in Panchimalco, El Salvador (under hot and humid conditions), a fairly unexceptional land-locked outing with few redeeming features, mainly seeing Chaney cast against type as a sympathetic priest (a part he wisely held out for, as he was initially tabbed for one of the interchangeable pirates), plus Robert Clarke as a lovelorn villager who gets whipped for his troubles before leading his people against the invaders to keep their village from being destroyed. Anthony Dexter was already a huge celebrity in Central America due to his starring role as "Valentino" (1951), but quickly settled into lesser features such as "Fire Maidens of Outer Space" (1955), "The Story of Mankind" (1957), "12 to the Moon" (1959), and "The Phantom Planet" (1961). The second of Lon Chaney's three features from Lippert Pictures (the only one in color), preceded by "The Big Chase" and followed by "The Silver Star."