Yellowbeard

Yellowbeard (1983)

A shipload of laughs.

For years Yellowbeard had looted the Spanish Main, making men eat their lips and swallow their hearts. Caught and convicted for tax evasion, he's sentenced to 20 years in St. Victim's Prison for the Extremely Naughty. In a scheme to confiscate his fabulous treasure, the Royal Navy allows him to escape and follows him, where saucy tarts, lisping demigods and some awful puns and punishments await.

Date of release
1983-06-24
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (163)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
Comedy, Adventure
Director
Mel Damski

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $4.3M
  • Budget: $6.5M
  • Earned 0.7× its budget

Yellowbeard is a 1983 comedy film directed by Mel Damski and written by Graham Chapman, Peter Cook, Bernard McKenna, and David Sherlock, with an ensemble cast featuring Chapman, Cook, Peter Boyle, Cheech & Chong, Martin Hewitt, Michael Hordern, Eric Idle, Madeline Kahn, James Mason, John Cleese, and the final cinematic appearances of Marty Feldman, Spike Milligan, and Peter Bull.

Production

Peter Cook remembered "It all started when Keith Moon, Sam Peckinpah, Graham Chapman and myself were dining at Trader Vic's. Keith suggested doing a movie about pirates and we were all discussing it and being enthusiastic, when I saw Sam, who was too tired to actually go to the lavatory, relieving himself in the artificial palm tree by the table. It was then that I thought the whole thing was rather unlikely to get off the ground."

The original concept for the film was funded by Chapman's close friend Moon, who wanted to play the lead role, but was dropped early on because of his deteriorating health.

The film has a complicated development history, largely due to the amount of time taken to get funding. There are at least four versions of the script drafts. The one that is "truest to Chapman and McKenna's original version" is published in the book Yellowbeard: High Jinks on the High Seas.

In casting, producer Carter De Haven wanted to choose actors that would broaden the film's appeal to American audiences.

The actor set to play the romantic lead changed from Adam Ant to Sting to Martin Hewitt. Adam Ant was frustrated with production delays and left. Ant and writing partner Marco Pirroni were also due to compose the soundtrack at one point - a demo for a theme was included on the 2005 remastered edition of 1982 album Friend or Foe. Sting wanted to play the role, but the producers thought the film was becoming too British.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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