The Pirate Movie is a 1982 Australian musical romantic comedy film directed by Ken Annakin, and starring Christopher Atkins and Kristy McNichol. Loosely based on Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, the original music score is composed by Mike Brady and Peter Sullivan (no relation to Pirates of Penzance composer Arthur Sullivan). The film performed far below expectations in initial release and is generally reviewed very poorly, but fared far more positively with audiences. It has developed a cult following following home media release and TV airings. Plot Mabel Stanley is an introverted and bookish teenage girl from the United States in a seaside community in Australia as an exchange student. She attends a local pirate festival featuring a swordplay demonstration led by a young curly-haired instructor and fellow American, who then invites her for a ride on his boat. She is duped by her exchange family sisters, Edith, Kate and Isabel, into missing the launch, so she rents a small sailboat to give chase. A sudden storm throws her overboard, and she washes up on a beach. She subsequently dreams an adventure that takes place a century before. In this fantasy sequence, the swordplay instructor is now named Frederic, a young apprentice of the Pirates of Penzance, celebrating his 21st birthday on a pirate vessel. Frederic refuses an invitation from the Pirate King, his adoptive father, to become a full pirate, as his birth parents were murdered by their contemporaries. Frederic swears to avenge their deaths and is forced off of the ship on a small boat. Adrift, Frederic spies Mabel and her older sisters on a nearby island and swims to shore to greet them. In a reversal of roles, Mabel is a confident, assertive, and courageous young woman, while her sisters are prim, proper and conservative. Frederic quickly falls for Mabel and proposes marriage, but local custom requires the elder sisters to marry first. Soon, Frederic's old mates come ashore, also looking for women and kidnap Mabel's sisters. Major-General Stanley, Mabel's father, arrives and convinces the Pirate King to free his daughters and leave in peace. The pirates anchor their ship just outside the harbour instead of actually leaving. Mabel wants Frederic to gain favour with her father so they can marry, so she plots to recover the family treasure stolen years earlier by the pirates. Unfortunately, the treasure was lost at sea,