Ep. 119 Swishbucklers

The Pink Smoke podcast

Here it is. Our massive exploration of one of the most disreputable genres imaginable: The Swishbuckler. A loose collection of movies created in the mid-70s through the mid-80s parodying the classic swashbucklers of yore, swishbuckler films like Zorro The Gay Blade, Pirates, Yellowbeard and Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers are marked by their terrible comedy, penchant for grotesquerie, extreme campiness and even more extreme poor taste. This might be The Pink Smoke's most massive podcast undertaking yet: from the genre's roots in Richard Lester's Musketeers films to a send-off into the swashbuckler revival of the 90s ignited by Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, it's an improbably in-depth look at an utterly ridiculous genre for which hosts Christopher Funderburg and John Cribbs have an almost inconceivable enthusiasm. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke (Still need an explanation of what the hell is going on here? Here ya go: At the dawn of cinema, there was The Swashbuckler: intrigue, romance and derring-do that swept audiences into the colorful royal courts and handsome pirate ships from the pages of Dumas and Sabatini. Even after its post-war peak, the Swashbuckler remained the most popular of Hollywood entertainment, having made international stars of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn and modern legends of mythical heroes like Zorro, Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers and Captain Peter Blood. By the 1970's, the legacy of Fairbanks and Flynn had devolved into what we loving term the Swishbuckler: a subgenre of comedy that borrowed the same tales of adventure and romance mixed with a healthy dose of modern irreverence. For a solid decade, raunchy satires placed in historical settings marked a trail of flatulence and queasy sexual politics across American screens to an overwhelmingly hostile critical and poor commercial response. We at the Pink Smoke are so fascinated by this odd epoch of cinema that we recorded a nearly five-hour episode in which we chronicle 14 Swishbuckler "classics," trying to understand how this wave of mediocrity managed to stay afloat for 10 years in spite of marked indifference to outright derision from critics and consistently sinking box office returns. How did these always weird, sometimes nasty exercises in Golden Era grave robbing reflect the styles and attitudes of comedy of the time? How did they deal with huge movements like women's liberation? Was the heritage of the Swashbuckler respected, even while the outmoded ideals of gallantry and romance were being purposefully disrespected? If you ever asked for an in-depth analysis of this bizarre trend of parodying a bygone era of film, you've come to the right place!) The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"