![]() ![]() For “we are all savages under the cloak that civilization fashions for us,” and Captain Blood permits readers to remain civilized while indulging in all the glorious incivilities of the pirates of the Caribbean. It is civilized entertainment for civilized readers that blows uncivilized cinematics to Davy Jones with all the ceremony of a broadside delivered by a glib-tongued gentleman-rogue bedecked unapologetically with weapons and lace. There are dusty volumes that bring the flashiest films to their knees in devastating surrender, and Rafael Sabatini’s 1922 novel Captain Blood is just such a marauding volume. ![]() ![]() The bold and brazen pirates of the West Indies have a reputation in rags and ruins thanks to the ravages of the American entertainment crisis-but it is not too late to rescue the New World buccaneers and all their romance from the platitudes of insanity and inanity that plague the Modern World, and restore them to flesh and blood figures that actually mean something and even stand for something. It was bound to happen. Even the venerable and visceral occupation of piracy has fallen to the vicissitudes of the movies. ![]()
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