"Blackbeard's Ghost" (1968)

It's a little difficult to describe Blackbeard's Ghost (1968).  It kind of defies genre-ization, and it's astonishingly quirky.  Maybe that's why it's not as well known as some other Disney live-action movies from the 1960s.  That is a shame, because I think it is one of their funniest and most unique films of that era.  It was a big hit at the time, and received well by audiences and critics alike. 

Blackbeard's Ghost is about a morally upright -- even uptight -- college track coach accidentally calling the ghost of Blackbeard the pirate out of limbo and then being dragged into and rescued from a series of mishaps, hi-jinks, and calamities.  That's the best I can do at summing it up in one long and complicated sentence.  

This movie bears some big similarities to both The Shaggy Dog (1959) and The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), two live-action Disney films I grew up watching over and over on VHS.  I think the use of "a mysterious force/thing/person helping a hapless team of wannabes win a sporting competition" is far funnier in Blackbeard than in Professor, possibly because the event has higher stakes within the movie.  And I think the way Blackbeard explores the idea of having a perfectly ordinary person read a mysterious incantation aloud and inadvertently bring about some magical hi-jinks works better than The Shaggy Dog (1959).  In this case, it's funnier because the incantation doesn't turn the reader into a dog... it brings Edward Teach, better known as the pirate Blackbeard, back to life

Well, sorta.  It's complicated.

The story revolves around Blackbeard's Inn, a fanciful old hulk built from bits of wrecked ships that floated to shore over the centuries.  It's inhabited by a couple dozen little old ladies that call themselves the Daughters of the Buccaneers.  These ladies are about to lose their home because they can't pay off a big mortgage on their inn.

A local gangster named Silky Seymour (Joby Baker) is intent on making sure the old ladies don't pay off their loan because he wants to tear down Blackbeard's Inn and build a casino on the little spit of land that houses it.  Some tiny technicality of the law means it is the only place where he could build a legal casino in the state, so... if the Daughters of the Buccaneers can't come up with thousands of dollars by the end of the week to pay off their loan, out they go, and he gets to build his casino.  

As a villain, Silky Seymour feels a little tame, even for an old Disney movie.  He wouldn't stand a chance against Frank Stillwell from The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975), Long John Silver from Treasure Island (1950), or even Vicky from The Parent Trap (1961).

Anyway, enter our hero, Steve Walker (Dean Jones), the new track coach for Godolphin College.  Dean Jones is the perfect choice for this role because he exudes kindness and genuine niceness... but he is also excellent at portraying frustration.  He makes us believe Steve truly wants to do the right thing, to be nice to other people, but that he also doesn't have infinite patience.  That makes him feel human, and his humanity grounds a story that could otherwise devolve into too much silliness.

Steve quickly meets his love interest, Professor Jo Anne Baker (Suzanne Pleshette), who also works at Godolphin College.  She's friends with the Daughters of the Buccaneers and helps them organize a fundraiser to save their home.  The fundraiser does raise quite a bit of money, but not nearly enough to save Blackbeard's Inn.  Pleshette does a fine job acting shocked, incredulous, surprised, and suspicious as called for by the script, but I never really quite figure out why she falls for Steve.  Or why he falls for her.  I think Pleshette and Jones have way better chemistry a few years later in The Shaggy D.A. (1976).

One broken antique, one funny incantation, and a few special effects later, and lo and behold, Blackbeard (Peter Ustinov) has returned to the land of the living from the limbo realm where his dead wife Aldetha's curse had sent him when he died.

The minute Peter Ustinov arrives on the scene, the movie jolts into high gear.  I sometimes joke that I wonder if they had to pay him anything at all to play Blackbeard -- he is so obviously having the most enormous amount of fun in every scene!  Ustinov plays the pirate as conniving, selfish, bad-tempered, loud... and an absolute softie at heart.  Ustinov rants and roars and chortles and wheedles and yowls his way through the movie, and I love every minute of it.  He might chew up a goodly portion of the scenery, but he stops short of taking bites out of his co-stars, at least.

The comedic chemistry between Peter Ustinov and Dean Jones is perfect.  Watching them play off each other is an absolute delight.  Their every interaction is hilarious and poignant and relatable, and I'm in awe of how they pull off that specific mixture.

Blackbeard and Steve take turns being angry with each other and feeling sorry for each other, and I'm not sure which is funnier.

Blackbeard decides he needs to do something really good to make up for all the bad things he's done in life, and that will enable him to leave reality AND limbo behind.  Bad theology, but a good recipe for a funny movie.  Blackbeard decides he will help the Daughters of the Buccaneers save their home, and that will earn him his ticket out.  He will bet lots of money on Godolphin's track team and then ensure they win their meet.  However, Steve insists Blackbeard cannot and must not use his ghostly powers to make the team win by cheating!  

At one point, Blackbeard opines, "I perceive now how difficult it be to do a good deed in this dirty world."  I think that's a central theme for the movie: that our world and the people in it are in no way better than the world and the people of Blackbeard's day.  Cheaters prosper, so good guys must find ways to cheat the cheaters.  A dubious moral, maybe, but one that provides a lot of laughs.

One of my favorite random things about this movie is this sportscaster, who is played by Elliott Reid.  Reid played an English professor in The Absent-Minded Professor who also taught at a small-town college, and I kind of wish they had tied this movie to that one via this character.  Like, maybe had him be Shelby Ashton, now an ex-professor who discovered being a sports commentator was more lucrative?  And who makes comments about having flashbacks to a really weird basketball game once a few years ago.  They don't do it, so it's just my head-canon.

I can never decide what is the funniest part of the movie.  It might be the track meet, which involves So Many Madcap Exploits and funny sight gags.  Plus, Blackbeard doing a dance with a bunch of cheerleaders, which Ustinov absolutely rocks.

But the funniest part also might be the final showdown with Silky Seymour and his goons, because it involves finger guns.

So many finger guns.

Yes, I agree.  A shocking number of finger guns.  And every minute with them is funny!

All's well that ends well, of course.  It's a classic Disney movie.  All the good characters get a happy ending, including Blackbeard.  

Is this movie family friendly?  Absolutely.  There are a couple of low-level scary moments involving Aldetha's portrait, lightning, and Elsa Lanchester telling a spooky story.  And Silky Seymour's men pull guns out of their coats so they can kill our heroes, but are prevented from doing so.  Also, gambling and dishonesty aren't exactly portrayed as being the worst ideas in the world, which some families may object to.  But there's no cussing, no real violence, and no smut.  I don't think Steve and Jo Anne even kiss.

This is my contribution to the Make 'Em Laugh Blogathon hosted this week by the Classic Movie Blog Association.

"Project Hail Mary" (2026)

Hang on... did Hollywood just release a really good movie?  Like, a really, truly good movie?  A movie I wanted to see more than once in the theater?  A movie I wanted to take my teens to see?

Whoa.

And to think, I almost didn't go see Project Hail Mary (2026) because I've been so busy!

I'm really glad I made time to go see it last Saturday, and was able to go back with my husband and our teens before it left the theaters.  Because this movie was so much better than I expected.  And I say that knowing that it was based on a book by Andy Weir, who also wrote the book The Martian (2015) is based on.  And I really like the movie version of The Martian.  

I really enjoy stories about astronauts and space travel.  I really like stories about figuring out how to survive in dire circumstances with limited resources.  But this movie is so much more than either of those!

In fact, at its core, it's a buddy comedy.  About two super smart dudes working together to save both their home worlds.

But it's more than that, too.  It's a look at the incredible preciousness of life.  It's a study of what it actually means to be brave.  It's an examination of what deep friendship can accomplish.  And it beautifully exemplifies the Biblical principal that "No one has greater love than this: that someone lays down his life for his friends" (John 13:15).

Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) didn't think he could save the world.  He didn't think he could even make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.  Be a good science teacher at a middle school, sure.  He could do that.  But solve the question of why the earth's sun was going dim?  Find a way to fix the problem?  Not him.  He was just too ordinary.  He was not a hero.  He couldn't become a hero.  He didn't even want to try to be one.

Because heroes are big, tough guys like John Wayne and Rocky Balboa, right?  

Actually, the character of Rocky Balboa comes into play a lot during Project Hail Mary, and it is not an accident that author Andy Weir picked him.  Think about the movie Rocky (1976) for a minute.  A very ordinary guy (Sylvester Stallone), who is actually a loser, a wannabe, a part-time puncher who makes most of his money menacing people for the Mob... has one shot at being something better.  At proving what he can do.  And showing that even a loser like him can stand tall alongside the kinds of people everyone says are winners.

There's a lot of that in Dr. Grace's story too.  He just has to grow into the shoes a little at a time.

And can we talk a minute about Ryan Gosling's acting?  Because, to be honest, I have never had much time for him.  In fact, he's the reason I wasn't necessarily super excited to see this movie, initially.  The only thing I have really seen him in was The Notebook (2004), which I sat through because a) I do love James Garner, and b) I was sequestered on jury duty and it was the movie picked by my fellow jurors to watch in our sealed-off lounge one night.  And that was not my kind of movie at all, and Gosling seemed so perfectly suited to that sort of maudlin fare that I just couldn't take him seriously ever since.  

Yeah, I take him seriously now.  Because wow.  I will start watching movies of his now that I had previously avoided.  

I liked the whole movie so much the first time... and I loved it the second.  Going to have to pick up the soundtrack by Daniel Pemberton -- I already love his scores for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017).

Also, the screenplay is by Andy Wier and Drew Goddard.  Drew Goddard was an important part of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and I was so excited to see he was part of this!  

Is this movie family friendly?  It is!  Okay, there is one little joke about the alien, Rocky, saying an inappropriate variation of the phrase "fist bump," which is not explained and will go over the heads of clean-minded kids.  There's a super-short discussion of suicide by some very minor characters.  Zero cussing.  (For real!)  Zero romance, a little mild violence when some security guys restrain someone.  There are a couple of jump scares, and there are several very tense and dangerous sequences.  So you wouldn't want to take really little kids to it.  But it's remarkably clean.  (As I have repeatedly remarked, lol.)

"The Least" -- A New Story in a New Magazine

If you or someone you know is on the hunt for clean fiction that is appropriate for teen reads, then you definitely need to check out Sparkler, a brand-new online magazine!  Sparkler is devoted to connecting readers in search of clean YA fiction with authors who write exactly that.

Authors like me :-)

In fact, I have a flash-fiction story in their debut issue, which dropped today!  It's all about a young man striking out on his own who has taken what he was told is a shortcut, and he finds something unexpected along his chosen trail... something that forces him to make a difficult decision.  It's called "The Least," and you can read it right here.  It's historical fiction, a cozy Christian western just like you'd expect from me :-)

Guest Appearance on the Tumbleweeds and TV Cowboys Podcast

As you may or may not recall, The Big Valley (1965-69) is my favorite TV western.  Today, I get to be the guest star on the podcast Tumbleweeds and TV Cowboys, in which we discuss my two favorite Big Valley episodes: "A Time to Kill" (1966) and "Showdown in Limbo" (1967).

You can listen to this episode on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts.  

I never really got into podcasts, but Tumbleweeds and TV Cowboys has changed that for me -- at least, for this particular podcast!  Might be the only one I ever listen to more than a couple episodes of, but that's okay.  I'm very much enjoying it!  It's like sitting down and chatting with western film-obsessed friends :-)

Upcoming Blogathons

There are so many cool blogathons coming up!  I'm all set to participate in four over the next couple of months, and I wanted to share those with you in case you're interested in any of them too.

First up, May 4-8, is the Classic Movie Blog Association's spring event, the Make 'Em Laugh Blogathon.  I plan to review Blackbeard's Ghost (1968) for this one.  It's a newer favorite of mine, and one I simply don't get tired of!

CMBA blogathons are only open to members of the association -- but if you are a classic movie blogger and not a member, applications are open this month!  Check out this page for further info.

At the end of May, and extending for a whole week, Quiggy is hosting a celebration of drive-in movies at his blog, the Midnite Drive-In.  So far, he only has a brief announcement post up, but more details will be coming soon.  I already plan to review The Outsiders (1983) because it has a pretty pivotal scene that takes place at a drive-in movie.

Even though I usually try to stick to one blog event a month, I couldn't resist signing up for the Marilyn Monroe -- 100th Birthday Anniversary Blogathon hosted by Hoofers and Honeys May 29-June 1.  I plan to review The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), which I have been meaning to see for years now.  I have a copy on my TBW shelves, and this will be a good reason to make time for it.

And I'll be participating in the Robert Duvall Tribute Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room, too.  That one takes place June 5-7, and I plan to review Newsies (1992) for it.  My daughters are a teensy bit obsessed with that movie right now, so I've seen it a lot lately and am glad to have a reason to sit down and review it.

You can always find a list of all the blog events I'm planning to participate in on my Upcoming Blog Events page.

Also, just a little teaser for you: Legends of Western Cinema Week will return this summer!!!  Stay tuned for details...

"One More for the Road" -- A Favorite "Combat!" Episode

I love to show people this episode as an introduction to my favorite TV series.  It's really approachable and relatable, and shows off most of the main characters really well.  If I don't have time to show them "The Long Way Home, Parts 1 and 2," I show them "One More for the Road."  

In fact, I used this episode to re-introduce my teens to this show recently.  I'd shown them a few eps over the years, but they never really got into the show.  I have patiently waited for them to be ready to love it, and I think we are getting there!  After watching this ep, they asked to see more, so we have watched a couple more eps since, and I'm slowly pulling them deeper and deeper into the fandom, bwahahahahahahahahaha!

Okay, enough maniacal laughter.

Combat! (1962-27) has been my favorite TV show since 1994, when I was in my early teens.  I've never seen anything else I love nearly so much.  And this is one of my top favorite episodes.  So I'm going to review it lovingly and thoroughly today :-)

The episode begins with The Squad engaged in a firefight with some Krauts who have a machine gun.  Once we take care of that, Kirby (Jack Hogan) gets sent to clear out an abandoned barn behind the machine gun nest.  He hears a noise, reflexively fires a few rounds toward it, and then is mortified to discover what he was shooting at.

Mouthy, rowdy tough guy Kirby... almost shot a baby.  And when I say he is shook, I mean he is shook.

Which, when you see how cute this baby is, is pretty understandable.  Look at that sweet face!  The baby is played by The Monroe Twins, who have no other screen credits, but clearly were very photogenic!

This episode is directed by Bernard McEveety, who directed a total of 31 Combat! episodes.  He's a lovely director for an ensemble show like this because he knows how to give the characters all their own moments to shine and their own closeups, and also how to show them interacting in groups.  In this particular episode, we have a lot of shots that are composed to show Sergeant Saunders (Vic Morrow) a bit distanced from his squad.  He can't be their pal; he has to be their leader.  I'll showcase a few more of those throughout this review.  It's subtle filmmaking, and so effective.

The Squad is currently behind enemy lines.  Saunders learns, via the handytalky, that the American lines are going to be advancing, and the area where they're skulking about is going to get shelled at a specific time.  His orders are to get his squad back to the Allied side of the river before that shelling starts, lest they get hit by their own artillery.

Isn't this a lovely shot of four regular characters?  Caje (Pierre Jalbert), Billy Nelson (Tom Lowell), Littlejohn (Dick Peabody), and Kirby all assume that they'll be taking this baby along with them as they retreat.

Series semi-regular Brockmeyer (Fletcher Fist) thinks so too, but he's much less shocked about what happens next.  Random ENG (Expendable New Guy) Stroback (Don Edmonds) hasn't been around long enough to have a real opinion one way or another, I don't think.

Doc (Steven Rogers) is so sure, he's got the baby all bundled up and ready to go.  But Saunders shocks them all.

The baby stays in the barn.

This is not because Saunders hates babies.  This is not because Saunders thinks a baby's life is not worth saving.  It's exactly the opposite:  Saunders knows how dangerous it is going to be to get his men back through enemy territory and across that river before the shelling starts.  He doesn't want to put the baby in that kind of danger.  He tells the men the baby will be safer in the barn, and they'll do their best to find a civilian and tell it about the baby before they get back across the river.

And here's another amazing shot chock-full of people, with Saunders just a bit removed from the squad.  The men let him know just how unhappy they are that he's abandoned that baby, and he bears the brunt of their criticism for a long time.  That's part of his job.  He has to make decisions, and it doesn't matter if they are popular or not -- they just need to be correct.

But Saunders has a soft heart.  We know from other episodes that he has multiple younger siblings.  He had a sweet little moment with the baby where he handed it back its rattle and touched its head in what feels almost like a blessing.  Everything in him did NOT want to leave that baby alone.

And, eventually, he relents.  They haven't found any civilians, and they haven't run into any Krauts, so maybe it's safe for a couple guys to run back and get the baby and take it with them.  He finds a convent on his map and says they should be able to get the baby to the convent and still get back to their own lines before the artillery barrage.

Next thing you know, you've got eight men doing everything in their power to take care of that baby.  If you're getting 3 Godfathers (1948) vibes, you're not alone.  

Every single one of these guys is willing to risk his own life to see to it that this baby is safe.  It's so heroic and manly and wholesome that I could swoon.

Saunders still stays apart from the group.  The other guys take every opportunity to coo over the baby, tickle it, sing it a song, and generally overload it with love.

The composition of this shot is sooooo good, isn't it?  The arms pointing to the baby in the center, the protective circle around it of all those heads and helmets.  It's like a Renaissance painting.

Various adventures befall The Squad.  They get delayed.  They have to discard plans and make new ones.  The baby almost dies.  And then, a soldier does something stupid and dies, and look at that sorrow in Saunders's eyes.  If the soldier had listened to him, had obeyed orders, he would have stayed safe and alive, but he didn't.

Another grouping, as the guys process the loss of a buddy, and Saunders is not quite part of them.  Leadership is a lonely job.

We do finally make it to that river.  Crossing it is tricky and perilous.

So tricky and perilous that Brockmeyer must remove his jacket AND shirt so that we can all fully appreciate his physique.  He's so kind and thoughtful.

I'm going to SPOIL the ending of the episode, so if you care about that at all, jump down to the blogathon banner, okay?  I'll keep details kind of vague, but you will learn who survives to the end...

Caje executes a dangerous and cunning plan to get the baby across the river without drowning it.  And looks so nice in his borrowed disguise!

Saunders and the remains of the squad wait anxiously for Caje.  Brockmeyer takes his own sweet time getting dressed again.  Not like we're in a hurry to escape a barrage or anything here.

Annnnnnd we don't escape the barrage.  We get stuck in it just a weency bit.  The baby once again falls into Terrible Peril, and this time, it's Saunders who leaps to the rescue.  He's spent the entire episode refusing to touch the baby after they decided to bring it along.  He's given numerous lectures on how much danger they're putting the baby in, and how much danger the baby is putting them all in.  The men in his squad have kind of convinced themselves he doesn't like this baby at all.

And then they see just how wrong they were.  Because not one of them jumped to the rescue and covered that baby with his own body to protect it from debris and possible shrapnel.  Only Saunders did.

Which is why, when they finally do reach a convent where they can leave the baby in safety, they insist Saunders do the final bit of delivery.  

And man, is Vic Morrow just completely adorable with that baby in his arms!  He had two daughters of his own by the time this was filmed, one of them still basically a baby herself, and you can tell he's very comfortable holding babies, unlike a few of the other guys in the squad.  I think that works well for his character -- the episode "Just for the Record" establishes that he has a teenage sister, so we can assume he was old enough to carry her around when she was born.  It's assumed that his father is dead, and that he has stepped into a fatherly role for his younger siblings ("Mail Call," also directed by McEveety, shows that pretty clearly), and you absolutely see that fatherly side come out in this last scene.  

And it changes your perception of how Saunders has behaved throughout the entire episode.  He didn't think that baby wasn't worth protecting.  He didn't think it was a nuisance.  Time and again, he made the best decisions he knew how in order to keep it safe AND keep his men safe.  Just as a good sergeant should.

And we all have to say goodbye to the cute, cute baby and go back to the regular war, all a little wiser than we'd been before.  Yes, even including Saunders.  

This has been my contribution for the 12th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon, hosted this weekend by A Shroud of Thoughts.  

(I was already planning to use the above button, but losing Nicholas Brendon this past week would have made me switch to it if I hadn't planned to use it.)