Blackbeard's Ghost (1968)

I don't' usually do reviews of movies which I had previously seen before on this blog, but for Blackbeard's Ghost I will make an exception as its been more then 30 years. Growing up it was not unusual in the last day or two of the elementary school year for the students to be taken to the gym to watch a projected movie, this is in part so the teachers can use the time to clean out their classrooms. For my Kindergarten year that movie was Blackbeard's Ghost, a 1968 Disney live action comedy staring the studios all purpose leading man Dan Jones. I loved this movie and I think I had my parents rent it for me a short time later, but after that it wasn't until last week that I saw it again. It held up remarkable well, yes there are some pretty major plot holes, and the sense of the passing of time in the film is unclearly, even badly handled, but otherwise I really liked, perhaps too much.

I can totally see what would have appealed to me as a young kid about the movie. First off Peter Ustinov really goes for it, he ain't phoning in Blackbeard, he's having a blast with the part. The old pirate's ghost was accidently summoned by Jones, the newly hired track coach at a small college, I think somewhere in the Carolina's. Blackbeard can be released from the limbo he's been in for the last 250 years if he does a good deed, and he has decided that deed will be to help a bunch of old women (descendants of his crew mates) keep the old inn built on what had once been pirates hideout. You see a group of gangsters have bought the mortgage on the place and are calling it do, the plan is to force the old ladies out because the jurisdictional status of the island on which it is located is ill-defined, so that mob plan to build a fancy casino there. To raise the needed funds Blackbeard decides to cheat at gambling, which means making Dean's loser track team win, by using his supernatural powers to throw long jumpers higher, turn runners around and replace batons with hotdogs and soda bottles. Blackbeard is invisible to everyone but Jones so there are charming special effects of him moving objects around, driving a motorcycle ect. This is precisely the kind of thing a 5 or 6 year old me would just love, only later in life would I recognize the charms of the love interest, Suzanne Pleshette. Anyway Blackbeard's Ghost is great, I heartily recommend, and I think even contemporary children, of the right age, will really enjoy this film. ***