Pippi in the
South Seas
(aka PIPPI IN TAKA-TUKA-LAND,
With: Inger Nilsson (Pippi Longstocking), Pär Sundberg (Tommy), Maria Persson (Annika), Beppe Wolgers (Captain Longstocking), Martin Ljung (Jocke), Jarl Borssen (Blod-Svente)
English-Language Version:
Plot Outline: Mr. and Mrs. Settergren are going on holiday. Inexplicably they decide to leave Tommy and Annika behind, in the 'care' of their neighbour Pippi Longstocking, the 'strongest girl in the World'. Hardly have the three friends begun to enjoy their freedom, when Pippi gets a 'bottle post' message from her father, Captain Ephraim Longstocking, who has been captured by fierce pirates and is being held captive on a tropical island, undergoing threats of starvation in an effort to force him to divulge the whereabouts of his buried treasure. Naturally Pippi must rescue her beloved Papa, and she and her two trusty companions - and the pesky monkey Mr. Nilsson - set off forthwith for the South Seas in a makeshift balloon that Pippi refers to as her 'Myskodile'. When the balloon - with Pippi's bed slung underneath! - deflates and leaves them stranded atop a mountain-crag, the trio continue first on foot, and then perched perilously on top of a ramshackle aeroplane knocked together from scrap and kept aloft by pedal-power courtesy of Annika and Pippi! However, this too breaks down and they crash-land on a deserted island. Stranded briefly, they build a hut in the manner of Robinson Crusoe. Tricking a shipload of conveniently passing pirates, Pippi, Tommy and Annika steal their galleon and continue on to the island where Captain Longstocking is being held. After many adventures and tricky encounters with the bolshy buccaneers, Pippi rescues her father and they flee the island. But the angry pirates are in hot pursuit - can Pippi and her friends escape their clutches, rescue Captain Longstocking's marooned crew and recover his treasure in time?
***
The great success of the original 13-part PIPPI LONGSTOCKING television series and the first two film spin-offs demanded further adventures for Pippi and her friends, the end result being this wonderful and lively pirate-pounding epic, which has become something of a camp cult classic. Much of the film shoot took part on Barbados in the West Indies, adding a whole new and exotic look to this swashbuckling saga. PIPPI IN THE SOUTH SEAS also benefits immensely from being a deliberately scripted film as opposed to the haphazard method utilised for the previous two films, which had been constructed from snippets of the TV episodes, cobbled together with scant regard for continuity etc. However, it seems author Astrid Lindgren had less input into this script as the story has little in common with her best-selling book of the same title.
In fact the updated storyline for PIPPI IN THE SOUTH SEAS is cracking stuff in its own right, full of inventive ideas and visuals which are compromised to a degree by the low budget and the 'special effects' technology then available. However, as usual the central trio of Inger Nilsson, Maria Persson and Pär Sundberg as Pippi, Annika and Tommy dive into the action with commendable vigour, pulling the viewer into the film with ease. This is a very physical film, with the children being required to jump into water, climb palm trees, hide inside wells, clamber up steep hillsides and even crawl inside cannon barrels! Pippi of course takes it all in her stride, but her two loyal companions also toughen up as the story progresses.
Despite her early insistence that the three should wash their clothes to keep clean (a prim trait mocked even more in the next film), timid-as-a-mouse Annika soon forgets such mundane matters. To the amusement of Tommy and Pippi, she flirts with a helpful servant boy, Marco (Staffan Hallerstam), who is being pushed around and exploited by the pitiless but curiously inept pirates who infest the island of Taka-Tuka under the leadership of the colourful characters Blood-Svente (Jarl Borssen) and Knife-Jocke (Martin Ljund).
Pippi, herself a budding buccaneer, is in her element as she hurls grown men through windows, brandishes a cutlass like a fencing expert and blasts her way into her father's dungeon prison with purloined explosives! Let's hear it for 'Pippi Power'!
The fact that the film features an island stronghold in which only men (and the aforementioned young boy) live has enabled the film to gain a Gay following which was probably not intended by the filmmakers in 1970, and several tickling scenes - particularly the 'tickle-torture' of Captain Longstocking (Beppe Wolgers) - have led to this relatively innocent family-orientated adventure being listed on dubious 'fetish' websites. Too bad... Of course children don't pick up on these perceived subtexts, and the film remains popular with Continental kiddies and was successful in the United States during the Seventies and through video and TV screenings to this day. Though it undoubtedly appears ultra-crude when placed alongside modern CGI-boltered Hollywood holiday fare, it's a fun film still for younger kids at least, and has a devoted following amongst grown-ups too, even if some perhaps love it for entirely the wrong reasons!
A new feature of this film (and the next one, PIPPI ON THE RUN) is having songs featured at key moments, rather like a Musical. Apart from a couple of drunken pirate sing-songs belted out in a tavern and round a campfire, the highlights come from Pippi's stirring solo numbers which she hollers on board her commandeered galleon. In the Swedish film these songs are actually sung by Inger herself (quite well as it happens) and one song, 'Kom an, kom an pirater!', featuring all three child-actors was re-recorded and released as a poppy Swedish single! My favourite song is the brief wistful one sung by Tommy and Annika beside a crackling fire during their unplanned marooning, with Pippi playing wavering harmonica accompaniment in the encroaching gloom... There are too many great scenes in this film to focus on here, but one is definitely the confrontation in the pirate tavern where Pippi taunts Blood-Svente and Knife-Jocke whilst dancing impishly on a table top, and I love the almost surreal touch of having Pippi declare at the film's finale that perhaps the whole adventure had been nothing but one of her wild fantasies! Indeed the film is a bizarre miscellany of ideas and visuals, casually placing references to modern inventions like spy-microphones alongside jarring anachronisms such as old-time galleons and more eye-patched and straggly-bearded rent-a-pirates than you can shake a parrot at! The result is a wacky cod-psychedelic romp that's difficult to dislike.
Despite her confident onscreen character, Inger Nilsson hated being away from home for the West Indies shooting and purportedly suffered from terrible homesickness. You certainly wouldn't know it from this film. In an interesting interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung magazine in 2001, Maria Persson and Pär Sundberg recall that the off-set atmosphere in Barbados was very laid-back and the children were allowed to drink wine and hang out with the adults, but wouldn't be led into a fuller discussion of certain aspects of what went on...
On a closing trivia-tastic note, eagle-eyed viewers of a certain age might recognise one of the pirate extras... Yes, that really is Thor Heyerdahl of Kon-Tiki expedition fame as one of the nautical ne'er-do-wells, seen standing at the far edge of a pirate group in one of the final scenes!
Pippi and her companions sailed away into the sunset at the end of this film, but they would be back soon for one more inspired outing...
-- Nigel Burrell
Video/DVD availability: On Video and DVD in Germany from Junior (full-frame, in German or Dutch on the DVD), on Video and DVD in Sweden from SFI, letterboxed at approximately 1.66:1 - the Swedish DVD is remastered from the negative and anamorphically enhanced at 1.78:1 (plays at 1.66:1 on non-widescreen TVs), available on Video in other European countries, also had various U.S. releases on Video (Video Gems etc.) - no U.S. DVD yet...
PIPPI LÅNGSTRUMP PÅ DE SJU HAVEN)
(1970, Sweden/Germany) color 99 minutes
Beta Film GmbH / Iduna Film /
Nord Art / Svensk Filmindistri / Constantin-Film
Story: Astrid Lindgren
Screenplay: Olle Hellbom
Music: Jan Johansson, Georg Riedel
Cinematography: Kalle Bergholm
Produced by Olle Nordemar
Directed by Olle Hellbom
(1974) G. G. Communications 99 minutes
