Long John Silver’s Return to Treasure Island (1954)

Long John Silver’s Return to Treasure Island (1954)

Directed by: Byron Haskin

Starring: Robert Newton, Lloyd Berrell, Kit Taylor

Screw the plot of the movie, I don’t care. It’s got Robert Newton in it! You probably aren’t aware, but if it wasn’t for Newton’s role as Long John Silver in the classic 1950 version of Treasure Island, the pirate way of speaking that we all know and drive into the ground nowadays would NEVER EXIST.

Not to be confused with Return to Treasure Island, a movie also made in 1954 with Newton as Long John and based on the book of the same name, Long John Silver’s Return to Treasure Island is another adventure based on the idea that they were out of Robert Louis Stevenson books but everyone loved Long John Silver, so what the hell, let’s put him in another movie! After this film, they even went and gave Long John a TV series from ’55-’59, even though he died in ’56! This man was so devoted to the role that he was still playing it THREE YEARS AFTER HE DIED.

As far as the movie goes, it’s a pretty strange and cobbled-together plot, almost like it was taken as three different movie ideas and hastily scrounged together into one idea. At first, Silver helps the island’s governor get his daughter back from another pirate, Captain Mendoza el Toro (Berrell), then backstabs the governor and sacks his goods warehouse with Mendoza, then backstabs Mendoza and gets the governor’s daughter back anyway, then takes Jim Hawkins (Taylor) and steals a ship to go to Treasure Island but tries to mutiny and fails and they get there and arrrrggghhhhhhhh

It’s really so complicated that it just makes you stop caring at about the second backstab. The only thing that makes this movie worthwhile is, as I said earlier, Robert Newton as the classical pirate. Really, anyone who even tries to mimic pirate slang based on Johnny Depp can go jump in a lake. Robert Newton is the way to go. ARRRMEN.