The Crimson Pirate (1952) review

Captain Vallo (Burt Lancaster), a feisty pirate clad in Commie Red - along with his mute companion Ojo (Nick Cravat) - gets up to all kinds of hijinks on the open seas (and dry land): they pretend to be dead to steal one of the King's warships and make enemies with the vile Baron Gruda (Leslie Bradley) ... and naturally, there's a love interest (Eva Bartok), whose father is the leader of a pack of rebels.  This is a tremendously fun - if sometimes too cartoon-y for my taste - take on the swashbuckler, with some Keystone Cops-like foot races and ol' fashioned doubling-crossin' and using physics to breathe underwater (which was paid homage to in Pirates of the Caribbean) before using a hot air balloon to chuck explosives.  I've never, in a single second of my life, had as much self-confidence as Lancaster has in every single scene: his optimism borders on lunacy.