GHOST IN THE NOONDAY SUN (1973)
Until the
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN franchise took the world by storm, historically pirate
films had almost always failed at the box-office. GHOST IN THE NOONDAY SUN is a
shining example of why. It’s all at sea from the start…
Peter Medak
was the unfortunate captain of this leaky vessel, initially scripted by Evan
Jones and then Ernest Tidyman, but subsequently augmented by Spike Milligan
when he came aboard for his acting scenes.
The rambling
plot, salvaged from what was shot and stitched together in episodic title-card
form years after shooting and then released again in the 1980s, concerns
Sellers as a treacherous ship’s cook, Dick Scratcher (yes, the humour is at
that woeful level) who kills his captain Ras Mohammed (a sadly wasted Peter
Boyle) after they bury their treasure on an island. However, due to a poor
memory, he kidnaps a young boy and enlists him to help spot the ghost whose
appearance would signpost the location of their buried loot at a later date.
The crew of the Sword of the Prophet include such Sellers real life ship-mates
as David Lodge - and press-ganged American star Anthony Franciosa, clearly a
vain studio bid for international market success. Franciosa didn’t get on well
with his wayward leading man and despite cutting a dashing Fairbanks-esque
pirate look, his Portuguese accent at times circles the Cape of Chico Marx.
Sellers certainly transforms himself more acutely than he did for many of his
films in this period. He channels a tap-a-da-marnin’ t’ick southern Oirish
brogue for the film, and physically his floppy fringe, scraggly facial growth
and mad-eyed look is reminiscent of a young GOON SHOW-era Milligan.
On the plus
side, money was definitely spent, equipping a handsome ship and some nice aerial
photography to show it off on the high seas. The location footage to suggest
Algiers was done in Cyprus whose port and ruined pillars look very cinematic.
The movie also begins with a lush, lovely theme song by Denis King and a
protracted but authentic-looking sepia silent movie style prologue detailing
the initial skulduggery by Scratcher, albeit lasting too long.
What is
clear is that stories about Sellers’ mutinous behaviour off-screen affect what
is shown on-screen as well. Sellers mostly sounds like he’s indulgently
improvising his lines, sometimes going off on flabby flights of fancy that are
far from the welcome heights of comic invention he could reach guided by a
disciplining hand on the tiller like Blake Edwards. Such was Sellers’
displeasure though with the scenes shot before Milligan reported for duty as treasure-hunter
Billy Bombay that he tried to get Medak on side to scupper the production.
Medak refused, and found himself not only dealing with a selfish, sabotaging
star but this also seemed to rub off on Milligan. In Roger Lewis’s whopping and
invaluable biography ‘The Life and Death of Peter Sellers’, he confirms that
during an off-day he was enlisted by Sellers to shoot a TV commercial for a
well-known cigarette brand. Sellers refused to actually hold one of the
products on camera, claiming he was the President of the Anti-Smoking lobby.
Milligan similarly declined, citing that he was the Vice-President. The
hypocrisy alone beggars belief, never mind the non-compliance!
James
Villiers and Murray Melvin come aboard at one point investigating the boy’s
abduction, but mercifully quality classical actors as they are soon flee at
Franciosa’s ruse of faked contagious skin infection.
Milligan did
inject some fresh lunacy into proceedings, as well as some re-writing, and for
fans like myself at times it is a joy to see the two old Goons sparking off
each other, such as their bazaar (and bizzare) quarrelsome reunion scene where
Milligan is gulling people with the three-cup trick. Though they are obviously
entertaining each other, occasionally the audience gets a look in, but these
moments are miniscule doubloons in a beach of washed-up sea-weed. Milligan
cannot resist resorting to his peculiar but amusing expressionist acting and a
large punnet of vocal raspberries at the drop of a hat. Weirdly, from this
point suddenly Sellers and Spike’s breaking of the fourth wall to address us is
then adopted repeatedly during the second half of the film by them and once
even by Franciosa. Perhaps this was part of their plan to change the tone from
then on. It matters not a whit as this ship still runs aground.
Eventually,
Scratcher finds Bombay’s treasure instead of his own and makes off with it back
to his ship. Upon opening the chest, he is gutted that the haul is made up
entirely of cannon-balls. On land, Bombay and his crazily identical crew of men
(sporting the same white beard and tri-cornered hat as him) wade out to do
battle and all but he are killed by the balls - fired at them as cannon-fodder.
Bombay derides Scratcher for not realising the balls were composed from
valuable silver and that almost all have sunk to the sea-bed. I should add
there are a couple of quick sight-gags here worth noting: as Milligan pummels
Scratcher on the beach in frustration, we see from his point of view that one
fist from the side surreally turns into a rain of multiple arms punching
Sellers from all angles. Also, a slyer camera joke is during Sellers’ failure
to enlist his men to stop Franciosa; he continually exits and enters the frame
during the speech and as Milligan and the others shout after him to one side,
he startles them by reappearing from the other.
Finally,
Franciosa and the rest of the crew steal away with the real treasure, leaving
Sellers up to his neck in the sand and Milligan exaggeratedly tied to a tree. It’s
tempting to see that as a metaphor for the movie (or just desserts for the
twosome?) but really no-one comes out unscathed from this watery grave. All too
often it plays like a baggy tour of TREASURE ISLAND that’s gone on too long,
ragged and collapsing into indulgent in-jokery, especially from its pair of
comedy stars. Maybe they should have known better – or been prodded along the
plank by a director who could have helmed the voyage with more authority…
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