Universal’s advertising department actually counted the sword clashes in Swashbuckler. The posters bragged about 692 of them, supposedly more than any pirate movie before.That tells you almost everything you need to know about how serious the approach was by the filmmakers here.

This is not a brooding pirate epic. It’s Robert Shaw grinning his way through Jamaica in giant boots while people swing from ropes, leap off balconies and smack swords together as often as possible. Universal spent enough money to make the party look good, too, renting the Golden Hinde, a 102-foot replica of Francis Drake’s ship, while Puerto Vallarta and an old sugar mill near Cuernavaca stood in for 1718 Jamaica.

The plot could probably fit on the back of a doubloon. Pirate captain Ned Lynch (Shaw, Jaws) rescues his friend Nick Debrett (James Earl Jones, Star Wars) from execution and turns his attention toward Lord Durant (Peter Boyle, Young Frankenstein), the sadistic acting governor of Jamaica. Jane Barnet (Geneviève Bujold, Anne of the Thousand Days) has her own reasons for wanting Durant gone, and she has no intention of standing on the sidelines while the men handle it. A young (and hunky?) Beau Bridges joins the crew, Geoffrey Holder (Live and Let Die) brings exactly the kind of presence a movie like this needs, and a young, beautiful Anjelica Huston (The Witches) turns up without saying a word. 

Shaw attacks the movie with exactly the right amount of seriousness, which is to say not very much. He plays Lynch like a rock star on shore leave, all grin, swagger and enormous confidence. That may explain why the costumes look less like 1718 and more like somebody raided a very expensive Sunset Strip boutique. Costume designer Burton Miller apparently wasn’t interested in strict period accuracy, and that becomes part of the movie’s charm. Everyone looks fabulous. Historically questionable, perhaps, but fabulous.

Shaw also did a lot of his own stunt work and reportedly called the production tougher than Jaws. Coming from a man who spent months fighting a mechanical shark that refused to cooperate, that’s not nothing. Bujold may be the movie’s biggest surprise. Jane isn’t just there to admire Lynch or get rescued by him. She rides, fights and pushes back, and Bujold gives the film a spark whenever the plot starts drifting. 

The trouble is everything connecting those pleasures.

The story is awfully thin, the comedy gets broad fast and the danger rarely feels dangerous. There are plenty of swords, stunts and cannon blasts, but very little urgency underneath them. Director James Goldstone keeps things moving, yet there are stretches where Swashbuckler feels like it’s waiting for the next excuse to swing somebody across the frame. That proved to be a tough sell in 1976. The movie sank at the box office, while Leonard Maltin’s guide later branded it a BOMB, which feels unnecessarily harsh for something this determined to make sure everybody has a nice afternoon.

Seen now, it’s easier to enjoy on those terms. It sits comfortably between Jaws and The Deep in Shaw’s late-career run and belongs to that long stretch when Hollywood kept trying to revive the pirate movie without finding much treasure at the box office.

Decades before Pirates of the Caribbean finally cracked the code, Swashbuckler was already out there swinging.