As I said in a previous review, I got a set of 20 musicals on dvd for Mr. Otter. A cheap set, and the fun here is mostly to see how bad they were going to be. But in the list of movies on the back was The Dancing Pirate, which, since we chez Otter love both musicals and pirate movies, was the first one we wished to watch, and in fact got VERY EXCITED at the thought of pirates and dancing and all.

But no. In the list of 20 movies on the back of the box, all are actually in this collection EXCEPT THIS ONE. Instead of this one, when you put in the dvd for these four movies (five dvds, four movies on each)...it's a SINGING COWBOY WESTERN. Now I'm not saying that westerns aren't good, I'm very fond of them myself, but this was SO not what we were in the mood for. Sigh. So we watched Glorifying the American Girl instead, and whined to each other about how we really wanted to see the pirate movie.

So when that not-too-bad movie was over, I got on Amazon and ordered The Dancing Pirate, a cheap copy, and it arrived about four days later.

And we sat down, prepared to laugh at it and make fun of it.

And were we ever surprised! It was ACTUALLY PRETTY DARN GOOD.

The lead, Charles Collins, is one of those tall, whipcord-skinny dancers who can do anything. Energetic yet graceful, and very good looking, wearing tight pants all the way through the movie, nice. The girl in the movie was Steffi Duna, a Hungarian playing a Spanish girl (as evidently she often did in the movies). And an added bonus was Frank Morgan* as the silly governor of the California town where the dancing master ends up when he runs away from the pirates. Santa Barbara? Los Angeles? somewhere in there.

Folks, this is funny and charming. The dances are great, not so many songs, but that's ok too. Everyone in here can dance, and the big numbers are worthy of Busby Berkeley himself. And the 'dancing on the gallows' scene is a show-stopper, it was WONDERFUL.

If you can get a copy, it's certainly worth the six or eight bucks we paid for it on Amazon. Or come on over, I'm sure we can find time to watch this gem again...and again....

*Mr. Otter was outraged to see Frank Morgan touted on the back of the box as 'the beloved actor from the M*A*S*H series' (actually Harry Morgan) instead of the actor who is best known as the Voice of the Great and Terrible Oz, which is who he really is.