Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again host a fundraiser for Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.
Today’s theme: In Memoriam
This cinematic artifact marks the directorial debut of cinematic titan Kirk Douglas, who decided the world truly needed Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island—except relocated to Yugoslavia and recast as a landlocked Western. Facing a Hollywood that had temporarily stopped calling a legendary movie star, Kirk took matters into his own hands, self-financed the project and roped his entire bloodline into the nightmare. His wife Anne produced, one son took stills, and another fetched coffee. As Kirk famously joked: “So if this film stinks, we’ve got the whole Douglas family to blame.”
Douglas stars as Captain Peg Pettibone Stewart, a one-legged rogue (Douglas strapped his real leg up behind him to lumber around on a wooden peg), ready to chew the scenery. The narrative follows a crew of dry-land pirates who wait near makeshift ports for ships to dock, swim over and loot them. After scoring a fortune in gold coins, the gang splits up, and a treasure hunt begins across a dusty, drab landscape that looks like an Italian Western drained of grit, passion, and Morricone soundtrack.
Along for the ride are:
- Mark Lester (Oliver!) as a fresh-faced kid with a baffling British accent in the California/Mexico borderlands.
- Lesley-Anne Down as his sister, mostly hanging around to look bewildered and occasionally belt out an unprompted, jarring romantic musical number co-written by Lionel Bart.
- A talking parrot that apparently holds the secret to the map, because movie pirates.
- A pre-fame, Bob Dylan-lookalike Danny DeVito throwing rocks at a ram, kicking off an iconic screen career in the most bizarre way imaginable.
The tone is an absolute car crash. It’s pitched as a family-friendly G-rated adventure, yet it casually sprinkles in neck-snapping of a chicken, nude swimming and an attempted sexual assault just to keep the kids awake between the interminable pacing drags.
Before we close the book on this landlocked shipwreck, let us take a collective, cynical pause to pay proper respect and pour one out for the late, great George Eastman. For anyone who spent their late nights drugged out on European exploitation cinema, Eastman is royalty. Here in Scalawag, he plays Don Aragon, trading in his signature psycho-killer scowl to flash a friendly smile and play the good guy—briefly looking like a Euro-trash Arnold Schwarzenegger before heading back to what he did best Eating intestines.
Rest in peace, George Eastman. You survived far worse than a Yugoslavian sandbox with Kirk Douglas.
I’m shocked this isn’t also a musical.
You can watch this on YouTube.
