Customer Reviews

Jolly Roger

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Oh boy... were to begin. The movie is about a pirate (Roger LaForge AKA Jolly Roger) who returns from the dead to seek vengeance on his former shipmates offspring. (because killing your mutinous shipmates great-great-great-grandkids is all the revenge a pirate should ever need) First I'll start off with the good: If you like obligatory sex scenes, lots of blood and "yo-ho-ho" lines, this is for you.
Its also short... an hour and twenty minutes (the first 2 and half minutes are pure credits of red text with a backlight ala Paintshop Pro 7 banner text... hoofa)
Now the bads:
Phony red ketchup blood... tons of it, or none at all, or just a drizzle... apparently when you chop off heads and limbs, it really is arbitrary how much should shoot out of a person.
Rubber heads. In one scene in a warehouse, I kid you not, our fearless pirate chops off a head, and it bounces, like a superball a good 2 feet in the air, not once... but TWICE.
Good acting.(this is sarcasm) In addition to whole sentences being garbled and then RESAID because the nimrods forgot their cues, we have scenes that are completely irrational. Such as a bouncer who gets his arm ripped out of his socket and stands there. (He doesn't scream, he doesn't drop to the floor in pain, or god forbid, run away... he clutches his stump.. and whines little like a little kid who doesn't have candy. Thank god he gets clubbed to death with his own limb) Also, you'll love the Mayor vs. Pirate scene... just pure comedy.
There is SOME production value to this... you can see they shelled out a couple bucks for the computer graphics... but not much else. If you like to MST3K bad movies (like I do) this is good fodder. 2 stars, some production value and enough horribly bad scenes to laugh at to make it worth a rental.

"Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove" is, as the title might suggest, a splatter flick in which the killer is a pirate. Since he died hundreds of years ago and this story is set in the present, Jolly Roger is in point of fact a resurrected pirate. Cutter's Cove has just gone through a hurricane and three teenage couples are having a cookout on the beach. One of the couples, using the beach because getting a room is too much of a bother, finds a giant chest, open it up and discover a skull. Yes, that is right, boys and girls, it is (wait for it) a dead man's chest. Having found what is either (a) an ancient relic of some archeological value or (b) the remains of a recent murder victim, the guy tosses the skull in the ocean to get back to the business in hand. However, the next thing we know the Jolly Roger is back in business and announcing his presence with authority.

The idea behind this movie is not the skull and crossbones known as the Jolly Roger, but rather the old pirate song about "Sixteen men on a dead man's chest...yo ho ho and a bottle of rum." The variation here is that Jolly Roger needs sixteen heads to put IN the aforementioned dead man's chest so he can get his treasure back. His victims would appear to be arbitrary, but there ends up being a logic behind it all (so to speak). This would be helpful for killing Jolly Roger and make Cutter's Cove safe once again for beach parties. Meanwhile, having survived the initial bloodbath, Alex (Tom Nagle) and Jessie (Kristina Korn), are the chief suspects. They are not covered in blood or anything tangible, but the local cop (Tom Downey) does not have any suspects, does not believe their story, and has learned that nobody in town has rented a pirate costume. He is not too stupid as far as cops in horror films go, but when the rules require the zombie killer to take 16 heads, you know he is at least going to get well into double digits.

Overall, director Gary Jones ("Crocodile 2: Death Swamp") and his co-writer, first time scritper Jeff Miller (XVII), go for humor rather than fright. We are encouraged to want to watch these sixteen people die and to enjoy the riffs by Jolly Roger (Rhett Giles), and if this movie is remembered by anybody for anything it will be for Jolly Roger getting a lap dance at a Cutter's Cove club (a zombie getting a lap dance will tend to stick in your memory far longer than it deserves to be, I can tell you that much). All things considered this is a splatter flick in which they just seem to be doing everything by the numbers (e.g., every woman whose naked breasts are seen ends up getting killed). The two kids who are going to survive the bloodletting are more concerned with saving their lives than making out, even if we now live in a world where all explanations come from the Internet rather than creepy looking old folks in town. But a movie that does everything by the numbers should not be taking two steps backwards like this one does to get to this ending. There are several naked women and a lot more blood courtesy of halfway decent special effects. However, ultimately this is an empty little horror film, and I only rounded up because of the aforementioned lap dance (but more for the audacity of the scene than its execution; plus, I feel bad about doing it).

This movie is pretty much a remake/homage (or more honestly, ripoff) of John Carpenter's The Fog. A pirate returns from his watery grave to seek vengeance on the descendants of those who wronged him. Like I said, a rip-off of The Fog. The acting and make-up are pretty decent, but the continuity is horrendous. I realize logic isn't something you should expect in a horror movie but the many flaws are clearly due to oversight or inattention or downright laziness. I love b-grade movies but unfortunately this movie doesn't suck enough to qualify. But it isn't good enough to qualify as a decent straight-to-video horror, either. I guess the best compliment I can give it is this: The production quality of Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove makes Bog Creatures look like Legend of Chupacabra.

If you love low budget, straight to dvd movies this is for you. The acting and story line are both hilarious.

I remember seeing this preview on Sci Fi and wanted to tape it. I believe this movie was released during the pirates craze of Disney's Pirates of Carribean. This movie may not be good as the first Pirates movie but its more entertaining then the sequels. Jolly Roger comes back and kills the family members of people who betrayed him. Alright this movie is by no means award winning, its cheap, the pirates costume was bad. The film is 80 minutes and very good. The kills are really cheap and fake looking but its still fun. The only thing I hated was the ending.

Note to film makers: If you make a cheap horror film, do not have endings that spell sequel. I know most horror films have sequels but start a trend that doesnt.

To get it out of the way, here's the plot: the pirate Jolly Roger has made a deal with the devil to get his stolen booty back by killing someone descended from everyone who originally stole the gold. This is all precipitated when a couple looking for a private spot finds a treasure chest washed up by a hurricane, opens it, and throws the skull into the ocean. Voila, instant undead pirate! The "protagonist" is a high school kid whose main reason for being suspected is that, in a far-away town, long ago, he had a fist-fight and in one punch put the other kid into a coma. This really is the drek of modern "B" horror movies. Most of them have some germ of interesting dialogue, plot, special effects, or at least sex interest...this movie has pointless, stilted dialogue; a plot with no purpose whatsoever; special effects I could've outdone with a bottle of catsup and three pieces of colored cellophane; and even the implants on the strippers were shoddily done. There's no suspense, some fake-y gore, and music with the excitement of "Yanni on Ice". It's lame beyond your wildest dreams.

Compared to many horrible horror movies I've recently watched, this movie isn't bad. Jolly Roger comes back from the dead to get revenge and he does. There were cool dying scenes and some gore which every horror movie needs. It was good enough to watch until the end without wanting to turn the movie off! For horror movie fans, I would recommend renting this film just for the death scenes. Jolly Roger delivers enough to keep you interested.