Drink and the devil had done for the rest
My quest to watch as many Treasure Island adaptations as humanly possible continues apace, although I'm beginning to believe there may be such a thing as too much Treasure Island. (Gasp!) So, I'm going to save you the trouble of watching all these by telling you all about them behind the cut.



(I'm giving links to Wikipedia pages, because they all link to the IMDb anyway, and it saves me looking up two links.)

1934: Treasure Island starring Shirley Templesome adorable kid with curls

I started with the earliest adaptation I could find on Netflix, Treasure Island, 1934, from MGM and starring Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper. Wikipedia tells me that this is the first adaptation with sound (there was a silent version in 1920, which I haven't been able to find). Jackie Cooper as Jim is too adorable for words, and rocks a definite Shirley Temple vibe--he's got a head full of curls, and is constantly exclaiming, "Bless my soul!"

I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality of this production, too. The sets were remarkable, and must have cost a pretty penny. I don't know what the budget on this film was, but at some points I began to suspect that they were just showing off--there's a whole scene where Jim just runs around the island looking at all the strange and fantastical creatures there. They have an emu (!) and iguanas (!!). Real, live ones!(!)

1950: Disney takes a whack at it

Next, I watched Disney's 1950 Treasure Island, starring Bobby Driscoll and Robert Newton. Apparently this was Disney's first full-length, live action film, which is pretty significant, but really, other than that, it wasn't much different from the 1934 version, except that it was in color. (There's not that much you can do, when you're sticking right close to the book.) Bobby Driscoll, I think, was a more convincing Jim--even though he was still young, he was a bit grittier. He even got wounded(!), where Jackie Cooper's Jim only had a near miss.

Also, it was at this point that I realized I'm a little bit in love with the character Dr. Livesey. Denis O'Dea plays a sensible, softspoken Dr. Livesey, and if I were going on a treasure hunt with a ship full of pirates, I would definitely want him on board, especially if we had to have somebody as ridiculous as Squire Trelawney around as well.

1954: To make Captain Jack Sparrow proud

Then I got the 1954 sequel, Long John Silver's Return to Treasure Island, and things started to get strange. Robert Newton is Long John again, and he's pretty much the only good thing about the whole film. It's just a cheap pirate movie, really. There's a governor's daughter who gets kidnapped, and--guess what!--another treasure, which, conveniently, only Jim Hawkins can find, because he has the special medallion with a map on it. Also, Jim (played by a different actor entirely than the one in the 1950 version) is for some reason an orphan in this movie, and is a badly abused cabin boy on a pirate ship, even though he should be living happily in great wealth with his mother in England. WTF?

But, it does get the character Long John right. He's conniving and deceptive, and I'm pretty sure he's the spiritual ancestor to Captain Jack Sparrow, with the way he double-crosses at every turn, but you know he's good at heart.

2005: Treasure Island: The Musical??

At this point, the oddities of Netflix broke up my attempt at doing this chronologically, and I found myself with a copy of Treasure Island the musical, 2005, which is basically a video of a stage production by the BBC. This is a recipe for strangeness. It's so obscure, the only link I can find on it is this one at Rotten Tomatoes, where it doesn't even have a rating.

This thing is . . . strange. The script is taken in very large part directly from the novel, but it's broken up by some of the most lackluster songs I've ever heard in a musical. (Also, every time the kid who plays Jim is about to sing, he screws up his face like it's going to take a massive effort to get the notes out.)

HOWEVER, the whole thing is made worth it by one scene near the middle of the movie. After an hour of truly unremarkable scenes and songs, Jim runs in to Ben Gunn on the island. And, just as Jim is about to leave, he notices some goats in the trees. "I say," he says, "are those your goats?" (Or something like that--I don't have the dvd anymore.) And then, about a dozen people in bad goat costumes come on stage and dance while Ben Gunn sings a song about cheese.

I am not making this up. Seriously, what had been a lackluster Broadway wanna-be suddenly turns into a lackluster Barney wanna-be, for about three minutes, and then switches right back as if nothing had happened. At one point, the goat-dancers, whose costumes are just cheap faux-fur body suits, white gloves, and masks, roll over onto their backs and wave their arms and legs in the air. It was AWESOME.

2006: Pirates of the *coughcough*

Finally, I watched Pirates of Treasure Island (2006), which is very loosely based on the novel, and, as other people have pointed out, was pretty much an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Basically, Pirates of Treasure Island, is Treasure Island with the addition of giant bugs and sexy women. I can find no fault with this premise.

I can however, find fault with the acting, which was largely abominable. Still, this movie is actually bad enough that if you've got some time to kill and you like amusingly bad movies, it might be worth looking at. I mean, it's got all the bad-movie classic elements: Pirates, giant bugs, and cleavage. (So much cleavage.) You can't go wrong!

So, that's my adventure so far. I'm coming close to exhausting my resources on Netflix--I'm trying to get Animal Treasure Island, and I'll probably rewatch Muppet Treasure Island and Treasure Planet for completeness, but once I'm done with that, I'm not sure what I'll do. I don't think I'm ready to start in on the realm of bad children's cartoon adaptations, of which there are plenty . . . my soul can only handle so much abuse.