Editor's Note:

While Zombos and the gang are tied up with all that 8th dimension nonsense (see previous posts), Zombos Closet agent One-Eyed Willy caught a midnight showing of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Here's his review for your edification pleasure.

Yo ho yo ho, it's the pirate's life for me! Crack open the rum, and butter me bum, this sure is a fine film. Before I drag my dead man's hairy chest to the office after spending the night watching me boy Jack Sparrow shiver his timbers, I want to put a few comments to digital paper for you landlubbers.

This summer movie sizzles! It has everything a good swashbuckling movie should have. It's a treasure chest full of pulse-pounding adventure and more; and more includes beautiful bonnie lasses, handsome men, rigorous swordplay, dastardly scoundrels, flogging, a scintillating score, and thar be monsters aplenty. Aye, mateys, monsters! From the legendary Kraken to old squidhead himself, Davy Jones, and his barnacle and mollusk-encrusted crew of the damned, they will take your breadth away through the clever and seamless use of CGI, makeup, and damn fine acting.

And sloshing his way through it all, from ship to island, is rum-soaked Jack Sparrow - oh, sorry, Captain Jack Sparrow. Just as he escapes from a nasty prison that features eye-plucking crows and very uncomfortable accommodations (wonder if they will add that to the Disney ride?), Bootstrap Bill comes calling with an untimely message from Davy Jones.

Seems Jack made a bargain with the sea-devil many years ago, and his time's run through. But always-conniving Jack brokers an interim deal, involving 99 souls, or so it would seem, to take his place aboard the Flying Dutchman, and he soon embroils Will Turner and Elizabeth in his little gambit with his impending eternal date with destiny. But Jack, Will and Elizabeth have their own agendas, and each go their separate ways until their paths cross across, a wee bit amidships, right about when we find them in Tortuga.

Gore Verbinski starts with a portentous opening scene of unused teacups filling up to overflowing with a torrent of rain water, and from there the story spins deliriously from stem to stern — like a drunken pirate — from ship to ship, island to island, and all of it leading our hapless heroes and heroines always, inexorably, back to the Flying Dutchman.

But before Davy Jones will have his due, Jack and Will, along with the Black Pearl's motley crew, must escape the clutches of a bunch of very hungry natives. In a volley of hilarious scenes, Jack fends off the natives with fruit while trussed up like a suckling pig, while his crew rolls — literally — through the jungle in giant cages to escape their captors. And once they are free, it's time for the Jack to double cross Will, and for them to meet the damned ship on a stormy night.