Crossbones -2005 – A Pirate Slasher

If you’re like me and have several thousands of DVDs in your collection, you’re always happy to find something that you never heard of that might fit your preferences. In this case I found a pirate movie and thought I would add a nice adventure film to my collection. Crossbones isn’t that though. It may be disguised as one but it’s really not.

Crossbones begins with a narrator telling us the backstory of this pirate that supposedly sailed on the seven seas, got captured, escaped, killed and buried a treasure. Sound like an adventure movie, right? Well, as soon as the movie is set to present time we’re taken to an island where a reality show is being filmed. It’s something like Survivor, people stranded on a desert island trying to survive.

By this point I was so fed up with the way initial narrative was told. To have a narrator explain things must be one of the cheapest ways there are to tell a story. It might also be the hardest way to make it interesting. For starters, you need to have an interesting voice doing it. Say John Thys-Davies, James Earl Jones or something. But Crossbones doesn’t have them.

Anyway, I was so fed up that I didn’t pay that much attention for a while. The actors weren’t lousy but not good either. They can deliver their lines adequately to the films standards. But for the most parts much of the cinematography is used for showing of the girls in their bikinis. Sexy bodies in low angles or focus on the breasts. I’m not complaining about that, but it could have been made less obvious.

Of course, this pirate from the beginning wakes up and start terrorizing the contestants of this reality show. I guess he’s after his buried treasure. But that’s not all. Apparently, he’s been cursed so he needs to kill and drink their blood as well. So instead of this cozy adventure movie I expected. I got something in a genre I never encountered before. Pirate Slasher!