Treasure Island

(...)Who in the world actually thinks that a movie made from a book should include every line of dialog from the book? The beauty and art of cinema is supposed to be in the many interpretations of the same story/tale. Each director/producer team makes these interpretaions for themselves. Byron Haskin (director) and Perce Pearce (producer) have made a wonderful adaptation of the R.L. Stevenson classic tale.

This Disney movie can be enjoyed by both children and adults. I personally have seen this movie as a child in the 1960's, as a teenager in the 1970's and yet again as an adult in my thirties in the 1990's and appreciate it now more than ever. Who says that a child can only be entertained by cartoon characters and silly songs? As a child I loved the adventure storyline and friendship between pirate Long John Silver and young boy Jim Hawkins.

The quality of this film can be traced directly to the production team of Haskin/Pearce and indirectly to Walt Disney himself. All of the Disney films by this production team ( Treasure Island, The Sword and the Rose, Robin Hood and His Merrie Men and, I think, Song of the South) have the same beautiful stage sets with a look not seen elsewhere, rousing and thrilling musical scores by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, lush cinematography shot in the English countryside and excellent casting and acting. If the characters were not perfectly casted then there were certainly none that seemed out of place. Treasure Island has all these good qualities about it.

And finally, this movie as well as the others listed were released when Walt Disney himself were still alive. After Walt died the quality of Disney fare became... uh.... well, one can see the quality of today's Disney with Eisner in charge. I'll leave it at that. I hope that I am wrong, but I don't think cinema like this will ever show up again. To bad! What a great treasure of a movie! (Pardon the pun)

Billy Bones, an old, scarred sailor arrives at the Admiral Benbow inn, where Jim Hawkins works. Billy Bones fills Jim's ears with stories of the open sea and warns him to be on the lookout for a one-legged man. Some of Bones' former shipmates appear and give him a slip of paper with a black spot on it, terrifying the old man. Bones dies of a stroke, and Jim escapes with his treasure map as the other sailors polish the inn. Jim takes the map to Dr. Livesey, who forms a plan with his friend Squire Trelawney to sail after the treasure, which was buried by the pirate Captain Flint.
Jim travels to Bristol to meet up with the ship, the Hispaniola. In Bristol, he meets the ship's cook, Long John Silver, a one-legged man who recommended many of the ship's crew to Trelawney. Despite Billy Bones warning about a one-legged man, Jim is won over by Silver's friendly charm. Then, after an uneventful voyage, Jim is on deck one night and overhears Silver plotting a mutiny.. While on the island, Jim sees Silver kill a sailor who won't join the mutiny and meets Ben Gunn, a marooned sailor who lives on the island. Meanwhile, Dr. Livesey, Squire Trelawney, and the others leave the ship and find a stockade on the island, where they settle in for a fight.
Under Captain Smollett's command, they endure the pirates' first attack. Jim arrives at the stockade and joins the defenders. The pirates storm the stockade, and several men are killed and Captain Smollett wounded in a bloody battle.
After anchoring the ship in a new place to fool the pirates, Jim returns to the stockade, where he is captured by Silver's men (this is the climax of the story). Silver tells Jim that Dr. Livesey and the others agreed to give the pirates the stockade and the treasure map. (Dr. Livesey did this because he discovered that Ben Gunn had already dug up the treasure.) Silver lets Jim live when Jim promises to testify for him if the mutineers are caught. The pirates set out to look for the treasure, but find only an empty hole. When they turn on Silver and Jim, Dr. Livesey, Ben Gunn, and another loyal man ambush the pirates and drive them off. They rejoin the captain and Squire Trelawney, who are waiting with the treasure. They sail back to England, but Silver escapes when they land in South America.
The theme of the story is the victory of good over evil. Saving the treasure from the hands of the pirates and their safe return also records Jim's journey from an immature young lad to a responsible youth.

The Disney studios first official full length, live-action feature, TREASURE ISLAND is good fun. Although it lacks the slick story-telling flair of recent family films, the story, based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel, is precise and fluid. Robert Newton chews up the scenery as Long John Silver, paving the way for many lovable villains. Bobby Driscoll (Song of the South) plays the brave little Jim Hawkins (or "Jim Harkins" if you speak pirate) who gets involved in a treasure seeking adventure of good vs. evil. In the end, like the viewers of the video, the line between the two is not so well defined. That is a clever twist, especially for a Disney family film. The VHS format already shows some deterioration after a few viewings so I look forward to a DVD release but in the meantime. Yo ho yo ho, A Pirate's Life for Me!