The movie John Cleese called “one of the worst six films made” in cinema history
When it comes to movie genres I have to place ‘pirate films’ pretty low down on my list; I can’t think of one example that I would ever choose to stick to no matter how bored I was, certainly not any of the Pirates of the Caribbeans, because a) Keira Knightley and b) Johnny Depp doing that weird drunk Keith Richards thing, and it would appear John Cleese feels the same way.
That’s because back in the 1980s, Cleese was roped, or rather forced, into partaking in a disastrous high-seas shambles written by his Monty Python buddy Graham Chapman and featuring an array of comic talent that should by all accounts have made for a half-decent movie, but in actual fact did not in any way whatsoever.
The movie in question was Yellowbeard, a 1983 pirate romp telling the story of Chapman’s titular character breaking out of prison after two decades spent inside for tax evasion and going on a search for his missing buried treasure: so far, so tiresome. A number of ‘famous at the time’ names are trying to get to his booty first, so to speak, including the blunt-obsessed Cheech and Chong, Taxi Driver’s Peter Boyle and yet another Python in the form of Eric Idle.
The idea for the film apparently came from Chapman’s friend and ‘co-conspirator’, The Who drummer Keith Moon, who Chapman thought would play Yellowbeard, but Moon had died before the project could get off the ground.
The legendary comedian Peter Cook was involved in writing, and celebrity favours were called in all over the place; David Bowie made a cameo appearance, and Harry Nilsson worked on music for the soundtrack, which had to be abandoned because he was in no state to finish it.
None of this could save the fate of the film however; production was fraught with financial difficulties, the wild-eyed British comedian Marty Feldman died of a heart attack halfway through filming and Cleese played a blind beggar role solely out of loyalty to Chapman, but afterward summed the experience up by calling Yellowbeard, “One of the six worst films made in the history of the world”.
Once released it lost millions of dollars at the box office and reviews were far from kind, but one thing that came out of it was a behind the scenes documentary called Group Madness: The Making of Yellowbeard, a 45-minute film put together due to the sheer number of different comics involved in the making of the movie, which would later be shown in the US before Saturday Night Live.
Another notable fact about the film is that despite the amount of celebrities who were involved at some point, several other big names turned down a part in the film, including Adam Ant, who dropped out and was replaced by Sting, who also left before filming started due to producers feeling the movie was becoming too British.
Yellowbeard proved to be the last cinema movie that Chapman wrote, although he worked on a Python-esque TV movie in 1988 called Jake’s Journey, which was released a year before he died. It was directed by Hal Ashby, who was known for making cult movies like 1972’s Harold and Maude and Being There, starring Peter Sellers.
