Ahoy polloi

"Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove"
(2005)

There's a certain set of expectations that come with a direct-to-video killer pirate movie. For starters, the pirate has to show up a lot. None of this waiting an hour before showing the main attraction; that's for stupid big budget horror movies that think they're better than their audience. Second, the pirate needs to be cool looking. He should sport the full costume, brandish all your typical pirate weapons, be dirty as shit, guzzle rum and holler vaguely applicable things about scurvy dogs walking planks. Third, he needs to fuck people up, not just drown them or toss them out of windows. A lot of times when you have a goofy sort of villain like this, the filmmakers feel like they're making a comedy for kids, so they stupidly tone down the gore, as if that's somehow "better" for any teenager who would watch it. Finally, although it should be as hard an R as possible, it should not be without a sense of humor. Pirates are funny, this is a given. At the very least, the film should be laugh-inducing to some degree. Well, "Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove" lives up to all of those requirements, and thus ends up as an enjoyable late night cable z-picture. It comes from The Asylum, the spotty indie studio that distributed "Leeches!" and "Snakes on a Train." Looking to branch out from genre entertainment, the Asylum recently put out a low-budget movie based on the 9/11 Commission Report, which I am now dying to see.

"Jolly Roger" begins with what is normally a bad sign: killing off the two best-looking women in the movie. It soon recovers, however, when the resurrected pirate decapitates a dude and tosses his head on the concrete - you've never seen a human head bounce like this. As a villain, Roger's basically the Leprechaun, cracking quips, chopping heads and looking for his gold. Our lead teenage couple, Jessie and Alex, have their friends chopped up at the beginning, and apparently have no other friends or living relatives, since they don't try to enlist help after they escape from police custody. Alex is scared he'll get fingered for the murders because he once put a dude in a coma for flirting with an ex... this doesn't seem to bother Jessie in the slightest, but she's not the brightest bulb in the Lite-Brite in the first place. The kids break into the school at night to use the internet, which in a hilarious expository sequence explains that Jolly Roger was a mean pirate who used to hang around their seaside town, Cutter's Cove. After they've determined who he is, that he says his victims' names before he kills them - as if he knows them - and that he was keelhauled by his crew, who stole his gold and founded tha Cove with it, Jessie suddenly reaches the astounding conclusion: "Jolly Roger's come back from the dead to get his revenge!" Alex's shocked reply: "Jessie! Think of what you're saying!" This kind of confounding dialogue is what saves the movie whenever smelly ol' green Roger isn't lopping off heads and singing sea shanties to himself. A hero cop, a cowardly mayor and an obligatory strip club scene all enter the picture, and there's naturally a "surprise!" ending to set up a sequel that will probably never surface. This is enjoyable trash that doesn't try to be anything but that. The short trailer, with plenty of blood and nudity to get the flick's intentions across: