Treasure Island (1990 film)

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Treasure Island
US VHS cover art
Directed by	Fraser Clarke Heston
Written by	Robert Louis Stevenson (novel)
Starring	Charlton Heston Christian Bale Oliver Reed Christopher Lee Julian Glover Pete Postlethwaite Clive Wood
Music by	Paddy Moloney, The Chieftains
Release date(s)	22 January 1990
Country	UK / USA
Language	English
IMDb profile

Treasure Island (1990) is a movie adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous 1883 novel Treasure Island. Jim Hawkins (Christian Bale) discovers a treasure map and embarks on a journey to find the treasure, but pirates led by Long John Silver (Charlton Heston) have plans to take the treasure for themselves by way of mutiny. It was an original production filmed and aired by the TNT network, and directed by Fraser Clarke Heston. The name has appeared on some film covers as "Devils Treasure", rather than "Treasure Island".

The soundtrack was made by The Chieftains, and selections from it later surfaced on their Film Cuts album.

According to All Movie Guide, Charlton Heston "plays the character [of Long John Silver] as written: a cold, crafty, cunning rogue, by turns charming and deadly, but never to be underestimated". But reviews in 1990 were not so favorable: "The mast ain't all that's mizzen in a dreary and confused new production of Treasure Island...miscasting and embarrassingly poor performance of Charlton Heston as Long John Silver, a laborious mistake from arrival (in the second half hour) to departure. That Heston is one of the most humorless hulks who ever stood before a camera helps not a bit..." (Tom Shales, The Washington Post, January 22, 1990, STYLE; PAGE B8) Despite cult status, Treasure Island has yet to see a release on DVD. The video, now out of print, has gained a five-star rating on Amazon from customer reviews, and many of these complain of the lack of DVD-release. The film was also released on laserdisc.