I just saw Pirates of the Caribean and agree with the general consensus here, this movie is one of the best i saw recently
but i want more, anyone with good pirates movies, books, or even song or website around?
myself i’d like to recomend to everyone “Long John Silver” by Bjorn Larsson, it’s about the famous pirate from “Treasure Island”, very well written
Obligatory viewing for pirate movie freaks include: Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn. Great popcorn muncher where Errol Flynn starts out as a doctor, works his way up to slave, and finally reaches his apex as pirate captain aboard a stolen Spanish ship.
The Sea Hawk, also with Flynn, uses some of the same ship combat footage, and is also quite good, although it has somewhat more plot getting in the way of the story.
The Crimson Pirate, with Burt Lancaster, is great, and if I’m not mistake, is where Johnny Depp got the idea of hiding under a boat, and then walking the boat into the water with an air pocket underneath…
The Disney version of Treasure Island, with Robert Newton and Bobby Driscoll. Newton’s Long John Silver impression gave birth to half the pirate cliches in the book. The earlier version, with Wallace Beery as Silver, is also worth watching.
The book Captain Blood, by Rafael Sabatini is excellent, better even than the movie. It had several sequels, also by Sabatini, all of which were quite good.
If you want to see the exact opposite end of the spectrum from POTC, go rent (don’t buy) Cutthroat Island. Terrible, deplorable movie, well deserving of the title of “Biggest Box Office Bomb in History”. At one point in the movie, pirates use crude bazookas in a tavern the size of Yankee stadium. The only thing good about it is the really cool ship-to-ship battle at the end… and that’s why God invented the fast-forward button.
If you want the ultimate in loving parody of the Pirate genre, I cannot over-recommend George MacDonald Frasier’s The Pyrates. One of the funniest books I’ve ever read.