As I was watching the display of some of the most awful attempts at acting that I've likely ever seen, I kept wondering, 'Is this a spoof? Is this the Hollywood version of phishing?' OK. You go in and rent a movie for the evening and see the pirates splashed on the cover and think, 'Oh, a costume drama, as it were.' Besides, there's Lance Henrikson, the poor man's version of Clint Eastwood-- you know: tall, rangy with the same tight-lipped twang and contempt-filled scowl in the eyes-- it's gotta be OK. Well, even an old movie watcher like me can get taken in. This strange, discombobulated version of RLS's classic, with the name changed only slightly and the same list of characters slotted into different roles, with characters out of the rejects of a small town high school play, is not merely terrible, it's amazingly awful. I kept looking for a point in which it would be obvious that this was a lampoon but the whole thing kept lumbering on, taking itself a lot more seriously than it deserved. I mean they pulled out ever device you can think of, from snatches of Jules Verne's Mysterious Island with huge insects to jumping around on a staged deck, supposedly in the midst of a raging storm at sea. After viewing this debacle, my wife and I were both left wondering: "How they were able to create this parody of an attempt at entertainment with a straight face?"