Okay, a few entries ago I posted about talk like a pirate day (mark your calendarrrs for next year ya bilge rats!). Well, the pirate speak carried over to the message board of Star Wars illustrator extraordinare Jan Duursema (check out Jan's message board here). She passed the swashbuckling speak on to her matey Tom's message board (found here). Not only are they married, and both comic creators, but they even collaborated on an old school issue of the Marvel Star Wars series back in the day (Issue 92 to be exact).

Well, the pirate speak over at Tom's shifted to pirate movies and I flashed back to The Pirate Movie, starring Christopher Atkins and Kristy McNichol. The campy film is best described as Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance blurred with Olivia Newton John in Xanadu - but with pirates instead of roller skates. Oh, and lightsabers. "WHAT!?!?! " you ask? Yep, amongst a variety of nods to 70s and 80s films (including Indiana Jones) there is a swordfight scene when our hero's foil is knocked away and he hears a voice call out "use the force". The foil begins to glow and levitate up to our hero who was dueling on a dining room table. Yeah, I actually watched the movie again after thinking about it, I certainly hadn't remembered the lightsaber scene all of these years. I forgot exactly how deep Star Wars' influence was on popular culture and other films, even of the pirate genre...