The Crimson Pirate

The Crimson Pirate (1952) is an American swashbuckling comedy directed by Robert Siodmak that you can watch online on iFILM. Captain Vallo — a feared privateer of the eighteenth-century Caribbean — seizes a Spanish galleon loaded with arms, then gets a tempting double offer: sell the cargo to island rebels, or sell the rebel leader to the Spanish for fifty thousand florins.

Burt Lancaster, a trained circus acrobat, did his own stunts throughout — mast jumps, brawls, rope swings — with his long-time partner Nick Cravat at his side. Christopher Lee appears in an early role. Vallo ends up squeezed between the Spanish navy, the rebels he nominally helps, and his own crew, who are ready to turn on him the moment the money looks better elsewhere.

It's a film that treats action as spectacle and never pretends otherwise. Watch The Crimson Pirate (1952) online on iFILM.