Burt Lancaster plays it straight for laughs in this send-up of the swashbuckler that is itself a thrilling and enchanting addition to the genre. Lancaster, a former circus acrobat, lends his panther-like grace to numerous feats of derring-do, accompanied by his agile partner, Nick Cravat. “To see them somersaulting from balconies, swinging from topsail to the deck of their rakish craft and battling the King's men from bow to stern of his mighty galleon, one would think they never left the circus,” wrote one delighted adult in the New York Times. Indeed, one of the charms of the film for adults lies in the actors' ability to play a fantastic plotline in a manner befitting the tradition set by their predecessors: playing for real stakes in a world of absolute values, yet with a stylistic wink at the audience, encouraging them (as Lancaster does in his introduction) to “believe all of what you see... no, believe half of what you see.” Pauline Kael writes in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, “Roland Kibbee's script is bright and improvisatory (much of the film's wit derives from a series of casual anachronisms).” Robert Siodmak, a skillful stylist and veteran of the Hollywood film noir, here directs with an eye for imaginative detail over broad spectacle, making The Crimson Pirate as much of an art film as were the Fairbanks swashbucklers it spoofs.