Pirates of the 20th Century

A Soviet cargo ship is carrying medical opium. On the way another vessel sends a distress call; they go to help, and the people who come aboard are pirates. The pirates take the cargo and leave the crew to die on a sinking ship. The sailors get off it, reach an island, and find the pirates' base. From there the film turns on the first mate, Sergey: he knows karate, and those fights are the scenes it is remembered for. Boris Durov directs the Soviet film, with Nikolay Yeryomenko as Sergey. It sold more tickets than any other film in the Soviet Union: over eighty-seven million admissions. Being openly an action picture, and the fight scenes themselves, were new things in Soviet cinema at the time.