Treasure Island

[Hispaniola]

I found this great webboard while doing some research for a report bout "Treasure Island" and hope someone here might be able to help me.
Well, I have some great photos of the 1964 Hispaniola in the harbour of Alicante (Spain). It was 2nd unit slut Jess Franco who begun filming a few first takes...but what happened than? And what scenes might found its way into the 1972 movie??? The Embarkment Scene? Mmh, couldn't really believe that, as this scene includes a large set and it must have been quite expansive. Need your help anyway!!!

[ToddBaesen]

According to the great new book ORSON WELLES AT WORK, Welles told the producers of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT that he would shoot TREASURE ISLAND in tandem with the shooting of FALSTAFF. Filming started on TREASURE ISLAND on Oct 5, 1964 in the port of Alicante, where Internacional Films Espanola had hired from producer Samuel Bronston a sailing ship that had been featured in several earlier films (probably JOHN PAUL JONES was among them). Welles assigned Jess Franco to the shooting at sea, while he began work on FALSTAFF. Welles was supposed to direct TREASURE ISLAND in earnest, once he completed FALSTAFF, and presumably he would film some scenes from both pictures on some of the same sets, with some of the same actors who would be featured in both movies: Keith Baxter would play Dr. Livesey, and Tony Beckley would play the pirate Israel Hands. Franco continued shooting on TREASURE ISLAND for a very short time until he was recalled by Welles to direct more important 2nd unit scenes for FALSTAFF.

It's not reported in WORKING WITH ORSON WELLES, but some people also surmise Mr. Franco actually directed the bulk of The Battle of Shrewsbury scenes in FALSTAFF! In any case, Welles apparently quickly abandoned all pretense that he would ever start shooting TREASURE ISLAND, once he began using Jess Franco to shoot second unit material on FALSTAFF. Franco's TREASURE ISLAND footage apparently then ended up in the 1972 version, along with all the new footage that was shot by John Hough.

[Tony]

There's a pub scene in the 72 Treasure Island that I like to watch in Black and White: it really smells of Welles, as there's a certain weirdness to it. But the movie is terrible.

It's really too bad Welles didn't direct Treasure Island (though it is his script) but I think he decided to put all the resources into Falstaff, and who can blame him? Even doing that, Falstaff was a threadbare production, and I seem to recall Welles having to shut production down at least once due to shortage of funds.

And, of course, it was another investor burned, but another masterpiece created at a bargain price.

[Hispaniola]

Thanks for the interesting informations. That book might be interesting for me. Well, I visited the Treasure Ship Locations near Mojacar, which is app. 300km south from Alicante. So the Franco Scenes can actually only be filmed in the Harbour of Alicante...or near to it (Sea Scenes) as I'm sure he never "sailed" the ship down to Mojacar. The 64 Hispaniola was still in the Outfit for the HMS Defiant Alec Guinness Movie and just got a new name on the stern and a new bow figure to play the Hispaniola 1964. In 1965 the ship was sailed to Barcelona and to play in the Surcouf Movies. Came back to Denia to sail for Cervantes. The 72 Hispaniola looks different but might still be the old Movie Ship (actually an italian one, named Marcel B.Surdo). If so, this is probably the last movie....and I lost its tracks.

[François Thomas]

The dailies of the 1964 "Treasure Island" have been preserved in Spain and you can see a few colour shots in "Orson Welles en el pais de Don Quijote" (2000), an excellent documentary directed by Carlos Rodriguez and scripted by Carlos F. Heredero and Esteve Riambau.

A good source of information on that "Treasure Island" is Juan Cobos's book, "Orson Welles : España como obsesión", Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana/Filmoteca Española, Valencia, 1993. It is worth using a Spanish-German or Spanish-English dictionary if you don't speak the language.

Keith Baxter, who was supposed to play Dr Livesey, briefly spoke about the project in various interviews published in English or French.

Both Cobos and Baxter only mention Alicante. In his biography of Welles, Frank Brady mentions some shots of ocean waves done in Casteldefels, without the ship.

The ship had been used in Peter Ustinov's "Billy Budd".

According to 1966 sources, that year, Welles abandoned the plan of using and revising Jesus Franco's material. He had new production plans for "Treasure Island" that did not come to fruition.

On the 1972 "Treasure Island", see also Esteve Riambau's "Orson Welles : una España inmortal", Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana/Filmoteca Española, 1993.

Good luck with your research, Hispaniola !

[Hispaniola]

..another great Infos, thanks. Well, the Story will be ready this Sunday.
The 64 Hispaniola looks like a piece of art, very similiar to the H.M.S.Defiant (its the same ship)...but the 72 Hispaniola looks like a WRECK! in comparison to the old movie hero ship. So actually I now think that none of the old Franco filmed takes found its way into the movie of 1972, as Franco only filmed sequences with the Ship still dressed as Defiant...!?

[François Thomas]

For me, there was no reason for the production company of the 1972 Treasure Island to buy some shots of the 1964 film that would have had a quite different photographic style. The two projects were completely separate in terms of production.

[Hispaniola]

The producer of the 72 movie, Harry Alan Towers, has quite a connection to Jess Franco and might....!
Well, anyway, I also think that no old film material has been used.
Makes not much sense to use old Ship scenes if the actual one looks like a wreck.

[François Thomas]

The producer of the 72 movie, Harry Alan Towers, has quite a connection to Jess Franco and might....!

I know. But Franco did not own the footage.

[Harvey Chartrand]

I recall reading an excellent series of articles on Harry Alan Towers in Scarlet Street Magazine a few years back. Towers simply would not trust Welles to direct TREASURE ISLAND. He thought Welles was too unpredictable and would sooner settle for a hack helming the picture. With their shared history dating back to the early fifties radio drama series THE LIVES OF HARRY LIME and TALES FROM THE THE BLACK MUSEUM, you'd think Towers would have relented and granted Welles another opportunity to direct. No way, no how. And those Wellesian radio shows launched Towers' career – a career that continues to this very day: 87-year-old Towers is currently producing a remake of MOLL FLANDERS directed by Ken Russell.

[mido505]

I've never seen the 1972 Treasure Island, so I can't comment on it, but director John Hough has shown himself to be capable of directing stylish, entertaining genre films on a low budget. Twins of Evil, The Legend of Hell House, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, and the Witch Mountain flicks, are all a lot of fun and often visually inventive. What happened with Treasure Island? Interestingly, in Hell House, the film Hough directed after his encounter with Welles on Treasure Island, he makes extensive and effective use of the wide angle lens, unusual in the zoom happy 70's. Influence? I would love your take on this Harvey, as you are so extraordinarily knowledgeable about genre cinema.

[Harvey Chartrand]

I agree with you on the merit of John Hough's THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (1973), which I consider the greatest haunted house film ever made – even better than Robert Wise's much-vaunted THE HAUNTING. Now and then a journeyman director like Hough will create a masterpiece and this certainly is the case here. Which makes it all the more puzzling why his previous effort, TREASURE ISLAND, is such a fiasco. Perhaps this is due to the Welles curse or to lowbrow producer Harry Alan Towers' meddling. Not to take anything away from Hough's contribution to THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, but the director was working from a solid Richard Matheson screenplay, based on the author's searing novel HELL HOUSE, which in turn derives from his scary 1953 novella SLAUGHTER HOUSE. And HELL HOUSE's cast was absolutely top-drawer: Roddy McDowall as the frightened psychic, the sole survivor of a previous expedition to "the Mount Everest of Haunted Houses"; Clive Revill as a smug scientist intent on disproving occult forces; his straight-laced and increasingly lascivious wife (Gayle Hunnicutt); and Pamela Franklin as an "accident"-prone mentalist who is fatally attracted to a ghost seeking the light. One must also cite the eerie electronic score by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson, the opulent sets by Robert Jones and the dread-inspiring cinematography of Alan Hume, which induces a most peculiar feeling of claustrophobia and depression – suitable for an evil house that has witnessed "drug addiction, alcoholism, sadism, bestiality, mutilation, murder, vampirism, necrophilia, cannibalism, not to mention a gamut of sexual goodies," as McDowall's character explains.
Damn it all, I'm going to come right out and say it: THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE is better than any film ever directed by Orson Welles, and that includes CITIZEN KANE. It's certainly better than NECROMANCY (1972), in which a caped, putty-nosed, granny-glass-wearing Welles starred as a deranged toymaker.
So therein lies the mystery: why wasn't Hough able to pull off this coup de théâtre a second time? With the odd exception, just about everything else the man directed was forgettable.

[Alan Brody]

Which makes it all the more puzzling why his previous effort, TREASURE ISLAND, is such a fiasco.

Not that puzzling when you consider Welles's unintelligible line readings as Silver. I remember seeing Dirty Mary Crazy Larry at a drive-in. Good flick.

[Tony]

"Damn it all, I'm going to come right out and say it: THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE is better than any film ever directed by Orson Welles, and that includes CITIZEN KANE."

If you really believe this, Harvey, then I think it's time you started the official JohnHough.com! I better bone-up on this man who made the greatest picture of all time!

[Harvey Chartrand]

CITIZEN KANE is a bloody bore.
Generations of film critics come and they go into the ground, parroting the same old, never-to-be-questioned palaver to the very end... that old party line:
"CITIZEN KANE is the best movie ever made (squawk!) CITIZEN KANE is the greatest film of all time (screech!) Deep focus. Low ceilings. People interrupting each other in mid-sentence. (rawk!) Photos springing to life (scrawk!)" Who gives a toss?
Whereas THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE is the kind of entertaining, well-crafted film one can watch dozens of times... the kind Welles was incapable of making, by his own admission. That monster hit always eluded him, because he was totally disconnected from the masses, couldn't make a commercially successful film the way a Hitchcock or a Hawks could. These guys made real movies, while being able to maintain a clear cinematic identity.
Welles was an élitist. Eventually he became a rootless and disenfranchised élitist incapable of raising enough money to pay his bar tab at Ma Maison. He was the world's greatest vagabond.
What does it matter what you say about films? He was some kind of a director.