Morgan the Pirate [Morgan il pirata] ** (1960, Steve Reeves, Chelo Alonso)

Steve Reeves stars as 17-century pirate Sir Henry Morgan, in the 1960 Italian-French historical adventure film Morgan the Pirate [Morgan il pirata].

Steve Reeves stars as Sir Henry Morgan, the 17-century Welsh pirate who became the Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, in the 1960 Italian-French historical adventure film Morgan the Pirate [Morgan il pirata], directed by André de Toth and Primo Zeglio.

Morgan the Pirate [Morgan il pirata] is not exactly good yet it is amusing. It has a sense of its own importance but also a sense of the ridiculous. The film is kitsch and campy, but fun, with an entertainingly overblown score by Franco Mannino, lurid Technicolor and CinemaScope widescreen cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli, and charmingly faded special effects. Chelo Alonso’s exotic voodoo dance as Concepción is a hoot, and so is the sea battle where Morgan’s men storm a Spanish galleon disguised as women. The climactic sacking of Panama is as over the top as the rest. Muscleman Steve Reeves isn’t very Welsh exactly, but he swashes a decent buckle, battling boldly. Ah, happy days of Italian spectacle. The dubbing in both the French and American versions is spectacularly awful, as expected.

It was released in Italy on 17 November 1960, running 95 minutes, and in the US by MGM on 6 July 1961, trimmed to 93 minutes, hence no doubt its fast pace. Anyway, there’s never a dull moment.

It is filmed in Italy around the Isle of Capri; Procida Island, Naples, Campania,; and Titanus Studios, Rome.

Chelo Alonso (born Isabel Apolonia García Hernández, 10 April 1933 – 20 February 2019) 

Cuban actress Chelo Alonso stars with Steve Reeves in Goliath and the Barbarians (1959) and Morgan the Pirate [Morgan il pirata] (1960), with Gordon Mitchell in Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops [Maciste nella terra dei ciclopi] (1961) and with Mark Forest in the 1960 film Maciste nella Valle dei Re [Son of Samson].

In 1960, while making Morgan il pirata, Alonso met and married production manager and producer Aldo Pomilia. He was the production supervisor of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Spain, where she visited him and made a brief uncredited mute cameo as Stevens’s wife.