When I was a child in the 1980s, there was a brief stretch when my nice, suburban elementary school decided that trick-or-treating really wasn’t safe. I don’t know if this was the poisoned candy scare or the molestation scare or what—the gang scare was later, and actually at least somewhat legitimate; a kid I’d known in junior high was killed on his way home from a Halloween party in about 1994, because he and the two people he was with were mistaken for gang members. But whatever scare we were dealing with, it meant that my elementary school had Halloween parties on Halloween night for a couple of years. And one year, that mostly just meant showing us this movie.
Dean Jones is back in his fourth movie for Disney. He plays Steve Walker, incoming track coach for tiny Godolphin College on the Atlantic coast, apparently in Maryland. He is assigned to board at a creaky old hotel run by the Daughters of the Buccaneers, a group of elderly women who are descended from Blackbeard’s crew. He buys a bedwarmer at their bazaar in the hopes of impressing Godolphin professor Jo Anne Baker (Suzanne Pleshette)—and promptly breaks it. Inside is a book of spells once owned by Aldetha Teach, Blackbeard’s tenth wife, who was supposedly a witch. Steve reads the spell “to bring to your eyes and ears one who is bound in Limbo,” which apparently Blackbeard was. At any rate, he is now Peter Ustinov and a great big nuisance. He’s bound until he does something good enough to help outweigh the bad he did on Earth.
Magic is so often a nuisance for people stuck in Disney films. Blackbeard means well, of course, in the sense that he’d really like to overcome his curse and move on to wherever he’s meant to go, but he is still, when you get right down to it, a big, boisterous, drunken pirate. And, of course, a man of his time, because he doesn’t understand the modern world. So he’s causing trouble for Steve, made worse by the fact that, of course, no one can see Blackbeard unless they’ve recited the spell.
Why Steve doesn’t use that spell to get people to believe him is a fine question; surely the bright, practical Jo Anne would undertake the experiment when Steve is trying to convince her he’s not crazy. The real answer is that things are wackier if only Steve can see his new nemesis. The scene where Blackbeard tries to help Godolphin win their track meet is a fair wonder of special effects, all things considered, since we sometimes see what Steve sees and sometimes see what everyone else sees.
This is also one of those movies where the cast surprises people. Oh, not Dean Jones. His fourth Disney movie, as I said, and fourth of eleven, at least by my count. And Suzanne Pleshette made four, three where she was romantically entangled with Dean Jones. But I don’t think most people realize that Elsa Lanchester made three movies for Disney; if they remember any, it’s probably her brief turn as Katie Nanna at the beginning of Mary Poppins. I like to think that people might remember that Peter Ustinov was Prince John—and King Richard!— in the animated Robin Hood, but I doubt most people remember this, his one live-action performance for the studio.
It’s also interesting in that the plot deals with organized crime. Actually, it’s the second Disney movie we’ve discussed here that does, and in both cases, a lot of people are turning a blind eye to it because they enjoy the gambling. Silky Seymour (Joby Baker, who is still alive today and in the movie looks not unlike Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees) holds the mortgage to Blackbeard’s Inn. He wants to foreclose so that he can raze it and build a casino. And you can tell it’s 1968 because no one comes up with the suggestion of having the place named a historic landmark!
Once again, we are dealing with a Disney adaptation of an unfamiliar property; indeed, I didn’t even know it was an adaptation until I started work on this article. Apparently, the book makes the magic worked by two teenage boys, and Blackbeard isn’t nearly so silly and good-natured as he is in the movie. One wonders if that version talks much about how he governed with the support of his crew. One suspects not.
This is, yes, a silly movie. Of course it is. It’s a Disney Halloween movie. A live-action Disney Halloween movie from 1968. It does, however, feature one of my favourite sports-related moments in film. The dean of Godolphin, Dean Wheaton (Richard Deacon), is cheering on the track team and is asked by the highly put-out football coach (I’m not sure) why he’s never that excited at football games. In joyous enthusiasm, he declares it’s because he hates football.
Yes, there’s clearly destined to be redemption for Edward Teach, and of course Steven and Jo Anne will end up together. No surprises. But there is joy and humour along the way, enough to make me add this movie to my standard Halloween rotation. It’s never going to be the best-known Disney movie. It isn’t even the best-known Disney movie featuring Blackbeard. And, yes, it does feed into that weird cultural blind spot we have for how pirates are actually pretty awful. The real Edward Teach wasn’t exactly whimsical. But if we’re going to start criticizing Disney movies for being out of touch with reality, we’re going to be here a long, long time.