795 thoughts on “Site Index”

1. Steve

   Just watched your Lex Barker video. Probably the best posters of any star you have done as his career was so wide ranging from Tarzan to exotic adventures of all kinds to Karl May westerns. A couple of Karl May westerns head to list. And the Karl May posters are the most striking. Okay. I understand these are really big in Europe and have fun international casts, though they made almost no ripple then or now in America. They are hard to find today even on the gray market. The one I have is Old Shatterhand under the title Apache’s Last Battle. It is probably available because of Guy Madison more than Barker. The horror film The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism confused me for a bit. I recognized the actors and the artwork looked familiar. I have it under the title Castle of the Walking Dead.
   Two nitpicks. Two bad you didn’t include more of his Italian costume films like his pirate movies and exotica such as Terror of the Red Mask. Plenty of colorful posters there.
   But—–why not La Dolce Vita? Easily his most famous film (with by the way a great poster of Anita Ekberg lifting her skirt). His role is as big as the one in Woman Time Seven and the movie is a first-tier international classic. Barker’s name is featured on the poster. My take is it not only should have been included but should have been #1.
   Barker had a terrifically interesting international career after a mostly forgotten (except for his programmer Tarzan films) American career. He came from a wealthy family which disowned him when he turned to acting. He was well educated as a youngster and was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, and German, as well as English. This undoubtedly helped his Euro career. A sophisticated, multi-lingual man best known for playing Tarzan and Old Shatterhand is amusing.
   I recall over at IMDB that some his German fans were really shocked at his relative obscurity in his homeland. He was the best known foreign actor in Germany due to the Karl May films.

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   1. Thanks John, appreciate you checking out my Lex Barker video.

      The problem I had with La Dolce Vita is that yes he had a minor role in that film and it would have easily topped his video chart. I scanned quite a few full length comments at IMDB and Barker did not get a single mention. The original NY Times review doesn’t mention him either.

      The funny thing is in the past you and Bob have grumbled when I included actors in minor roles in high rated movies that turn up in the top 5 of my videos. 🙂

      I thought Lex Barker as Old Shatterhand in Winnetou would be a more fitting chart topper for this actor, and more of a crowd pleaser.

      My ex, Sandra – aka ‘she-who-must-be-obeyed’, was German and I remember her mentioning Old Shatterhand a few times. I had no idea what she was talking about at first and had to look up the character. I still haven’t seen any of those films, they weren’t huge in the UK.

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      1. Hey Steve…your Barker video has sparked an entire previously ignored movie subject. Reading John’s comment…made me think I knew nothing about movies…..just how far does this rabbit hole go?…lol. Good stuff here.

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   2. Hey John….truly impressed with your movie knowledge. Lots of great nuggets of information. Almost all of it unknown to me. Glad Steve’s video was able to get that information our of you. A comment that is both interesting and entertaining….glad you shared it here.

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2. HI STEVE
   1 Elsewhere on this site I think that Bruce and I agreed that Maureen O’Sullivan was the best Jane and certainly for my money Johnny was the definitive Tarzan. It is true that as he got older he like most of us put on weight so that he became too heavy for the role and they therefore put him into less strenuous parts like the Jungle Jim series but in the very first few Tarzan movies he was so lithe and athletic in the part that it was breath-taking.

   2 Your selections include many of the Jungle Jim movies but you didn’t seem to think too much of most of them. I note that on a poster for one of them – the very first simply called Jungle Jim – George Reeves is mentioned. George played Superman in a TV series and a 1951 B movie Superman and the Mole People and also was Sir Galahad in the 1949 serial The Adventures of Sir Galahad. George also had a bit part in the 1949 Samson and Delilah which has been mentioned a lot on this site ! Sadly George committed suicide at the age of 45 and after the coincidence Christopher Reeve’;s tragic accident there was much talk among journalists about ‘the curse of Superman’

   3 Among the treasure trove of poster reproductions I most fancied Tarzan and the Huntress, Tarzan’s Secret Treasure and despite their low ratings Mark of the Gorilla, Pygmy Island and Savage Mutiny. Fine stills were those Captive Girl, Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and the solo one demonstrating how striking the young Johnny was. Bruce’s Tarzan page covers the work of all actors in the role so that no direct Top 5 comparisons can be made in this instance but El Commandant agrees with 3 of your Top 5 of Johnny’s Tarzan films.

   4 Another 9.3/10 trip down Memory Lane for me and indeed I have just a single unhappy recollection of a visit to one of Johnny’s films. The 1947 Swamp Fever was showing in a second run movie house one Christmas Day when the cinemas used to open over here and that night I watched it with a bad toothache with no prospect of dental treatment until the Christmas Holidays were over. Despite that I was eagerly looking out for Swamp Fever in your video and was not disappointed.

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   1. Thanks Bob, appreciate the review, rating, trivia and anecdotes, glad you liked the posters and stills.

      IMDB voters, bless em, loved the Jungle Jim series and gave them higher ratings than movies by Ford and Hitchcock – for instance Devil Goddess had a higher rating than Marnie and Saboteur. And Cannibal Attack topped the ratings of Mogambo and How the West Was Won! Which shows how variable and untrustworthy those ratings are. A couple of other sources knocked the Jungle Jim ratings down a bit.

      But the important thing is I had posters for every single Jungle Jim movie, he said patting himself on the back. I might have seen some of those when I was a kid but I can’t remember. I added Stage Door Canteen to make it an even 30.

      Amazing that you can remember having a bad toothache on the day you saw Swamp Fire at your local movie house way back then. Were you keeping a diary of cinema outings?

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      1. A link to my Johnny Weissmuller video –

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5HEgmgTMGE

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         1. Thanks for sharing the link Steve….it is another quality video.

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         2. Steve & others

            First, on Johnny Weissmuller

            “IMDB voters, bless them, loved the Jungle Jim movies and gave them higher ratings than movies by Ford and Hitchcock.”

            I would like to probe a bit deeper. IMDB breaks down their voters by age and gender and such. When one looks carefully one can see why the ratings are so high and who is responsible. I picked three Jungle Jim films at random and checked the gender breakdown and—

            Jungle Jim (1948)—-Men (6.5) Women (8.2)
            Captive Girl (1950)—-Men (6.3) Women (8.7)
            Cannibal Attack (1954)—-Men (6.7) Women (9.5)

            Starting to notice something? So I picked three Weissmuller Tarzan movies at random and checked the gender breakdown and–

            Tarzan the Ape Man (1932)—-Men (7.1) Women (7.5)
            Tarzan and His Mate (1934)—-Men (7.5) Women (8.0)
            Tarzan Triumphs (1943)—-Men (6.8) Women (8.5)

            So maybe it is about the animals and setting of a jungle film, so I checked the gender breakdown for his one non-jungle adventure, Swamp Fire and–

            Swamp Fire (1946)—-Men (6.4) Women (8.6)

            Perhaps it just the “Tarzan” image of a well-built man in a loincloth and so other Tarzans would do as well. So I picked at random two other Tarzans and Tarzan movies and–

            Tarzan and the She Devil (1953)—-Men (5.3) Women (5.3) Tarzan is Lex Barker
            Tarzan the Magnificent (1959)—-Men (6.7) Women (6.1) Tarzan is Gordon Scott

            Okay, what do I conclude? Johnny was certainly tall and spectacularly built with the long, lean, lithe look which most women seem to prefer. Is that all, though, and why did the wide gender gap hold up into his middle age? My guess is the fantasy of being beyond the reach of the constraints of civilization “going wild” with a spectacularly attractive “savage” is somewhere in the female psyche. Just a guess from someone who is certainly not an expert. The very handsome Gordon Scott seemed to be more civilized with a cynical take ’em or leave ’em attitude toward his leading ladies. His revenge driven Tarzan appeals to men, but clearly didn’t have the same effect on women as Johnny’s amorous Tarzan did.

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            1. Steve

               Now to your Weissmuller video. First, I have seen all 30 of Johnny’s films up to 1955. I have not seen his 1970’s cameo roles. Why have I seen so many? When I was a boy an independent local station had something called “Safari Theater” which played several times over the weekend. They had all the Tarzan movies into the Scott era, the Jungle Jims, and various other low-budget jungle flicks such as Frank Buck’s documentaries, some cobbled together from the TV show Ramar of the Jungle flicks, and even jungle cheapies from Mexico. As a young fellow I enjoyed them, and honestly, still do. Many are awful of course, but they have a camp quality that similarly rotten westerns or mysteries or comedies don’t have (at least for me). Fights with rubber crocodiles, guys in ratty gorilla suits, stuffed lions, with scads of stock footage of wildlife (including some not found in Africa like orangutans and pumas and tigers) and often ultra-weird natives (like white “pygmies”).
               Weissmuller himself was the king of the genre, a presence rather than an actor, but it is interesting how he dominates the screen when sharing it with the likes of Buster Crabbe or George Reeves. They just look rather unimposing and stocky when standing next to Weissmuller.
               Your posters are generally among your best here as the jungle stuff gave plenty of opportunities for the artists (although some of the creatures shown fighting Johnny were hard to place). Jungle films on the whole have the best posters.
               The MGM Tarzans should be at the top, and I agree with your top two. I might drop Tarzan Escapes a few places, but otherwise your list is fine. As for the Jungle Jim films, clearly an acquired taste, but for me the best is the original Jungle Jim & Cannibal Attack (because of villains George Reeves & the sexy Judy Walsh)
               Anyway, thank you for an excellent video.

            2. Hi John, an interesting analysis on IMDB Jungle Jim voters and thanks for the video review, glad you liked it.

               Tarzan Escapes was probably my least favorite of the 6 MGM Tarzans but thats how the scores fell. I thought it was mostly a rehash of the first two films.

               Like I said in one of my comments to Bob, if it’s a movie you really like doesn’t matter if it’s low quality or how bad others might think it is, you will give it a high rating. It’s human nature.

               Professional critics have to be a little more fairer and even-tempered though I do remember years ago one critic giving Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) a rating of 1 star out of 5, in other words they thought the film was worthless and no one should go and see it.

               Okay there wasn’t much of a plot “theme park goes awry” but give it some points for the state of the art visual effects. It wasn’t meant to be a Shakespearean drama.or an emotional tear-fest, the film was an event, a funfair ride and it delivered.

      2. 1 Thought association is a great thing and just as many people can remember for years what they were doing when some significant event elsewhere occurs such as Kennedy’s death I can remember being in a cafe out in the desert when I heard about Churchill’s death. It is not hard therefore to recall the other activities that one was trying to get on with when one was in severe pain.

         2 I can even remember the Cinema in which I saw Swamp Fire and it was called the Coliseum now long demolished. It’s just a pity that I misquoted the name of the movie first time round but did recall it later and was about to ask you to forgive me when I noticed that you had quoted the correct title in your return post to me. I think we make a great team as between us we got right the title of a movie made some 70 long years ago !!! I had even written Swamp FIRE down in my notes when watching your video!

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         1. STEVE

            This is not my day with tagging Swamp Fire as Swamp Fever and not indicating that my previous post was meant primarily for you. I can only again apologise. Best wishes

            BOB

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            1. Easily forgiven Bob as only a handful of people on this entire planet have heard of Swamp Fever, sorry, Swamp Fire. 🙂

               There are already more references to that film on this page than any other page on the world wide web, Bruce must be very proud. [wink]

               Talking of cinema anecdotes, I remember watching The Exorcist at a local fleapit cinema as a wee lad, (and it frightened the hell out of me). I was tall so I could get into X rated movies Anyway rats were chasing each other between the seats and crashing into my feet, I watched a chunk of the film with my feet raised up! I suppose it added to the atmosphere of the film. But how shoddy was that cinema?

               In defense of IMDB ratings, they make sense even if they aren’t ‘scienfically accurate’ I mean you are supposed to rate the films you’ve watched. For example I watched 12 Years a Slave which was a well made well acted film which has won several awards, I didn’t like it and won’t be watching it again. How do I rate a film I didn’t like? I will give it a low rating. A film I did enjoy like Fast and Furious 7 will end up getting a higher rating from me than a prestige film like 12 years a Slave. Not something I should be proud of I suppose but those are my preferences.

         2. Hey Bob….thanks for sharing these memories both movie ones and non movie ones. I had not even thought how Churchill’s passing could be so eventful.

            You are right about thought association. Elvis’ passing is associated with by best friend’s mother….as she was devasted….while I could not understand why.

            Thanks again for sharing this information.

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      3. 🙂

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   2. Good comments and review of Steve’s latest. 🙂

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3. 1 Larry Buster Crabbe’s output was prolific and his career spanned an astonishing 52 years from 1930-1982 and he was the only actor to play all three of the Great movies heroes Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Tarzan. I never saw him as the latter two but the Flash Gordon serials were given regular reruns over here so I became very familiar with Buster through those and the 1947 serial The Sea Hound, which is included in your video

   2 Throughout his career he was largely confined to the serials and B westerns but seemed to be quite cheerful about it all once taking great delight in describing to a TV interviewer how he had thrilled audiences by ‘fighting’ an octopus undersea whilst in reality he was in a studio tank with a rubber beast whose tentacles he had to continually pull round himself to stop it from floating away from him!

   3 I thought your posters for Death Dive, King of the Jungle and Cattle Stampede were quite stunning. The classiest of stills were I felt Flash Gordon with the giant gun, the one of Gordon being held captive, the closing solo of Crabbe, and the posed still of Larry with Betty Grable for Million Dollar Legs one of the rare ‘prestige’ movies to feature Larry albeit in a supporting role. Super 9.4/10 stuff. Congratulations again.

   PS Turner Movies is showing later this week Heston’s 1970 Julius Caesar in which he played Mark Antony the role Brando played in the 1953 version. I didn’t think Chuck spoke clearly enough in his version !

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   1. “Flash! aah aaaaah… savior of the universe!”

      Thanks Bob, appreciate the review, rating and trivia. Glad you liked the posters and stills.

      I remember an episode of the late 1970s Buck Rogers TV series where old Buster Crabbe had a guest role as ‘Gordon’ helping out Rogers (played by Gil Gerard). A nice touch.

      I’ve seen the 1970 Julius Caesar starring Mr. Heston as Mark Antony and he also played that role again in Antony and Cleopatra which he also directed. And unlike the Brando version you didn’t need subtitles to understand what Chuck was saying. 😉

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      1. HI STEVE:

         In the interview that I mentioned Buster saw the funny side of it too when he also told of how the A list stars refused to sit at the same studio canteen tables as B stars like him. I wonder if Chuck was on the those A list stars?

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         1. Bob & Steve & Cogerson

            “Buster saw the funny side of it”

            He had a terrific sense of humor. I remember an interview with Johnny Carson where Johnny mentioned that he had seen one of his old PRC westerns where the bad guy was fleeing on horseback. Johnny wondered why the bad guy suddenly reined in his horse, dismounted, and ran up a hill. Buster followed a bit later and the two fought on the top of the hill, with the villain falling to his death off a cliff. As the villain had been trying to make a getaway, his action didn’t make much sense to Johnny when he saw the movie as a young fellow.

            Without missing a beat, Buster told Johnny that it was because PRC was so low budget they could only afford to rent one horse for that chase. So they spray painted the horse black when the bad guy was riding it and then spray painted it white when Buster was riding in pursuit. As they couldn’t have the usual bulldog the bad guy out of the saddle climax with only one horse, they elected to have him dismount and run up the hill so Buster could follow in a separate shot. Buster added the problem was the horse got all sweated up in the repeated galloping scenes with the paint starting to run until the poor thing ended up looking like a zebra.

            *By the way, Steve, in the 1959 Ben-Hur they spray painted Messala’s horses black as there aren’t many all black horses in Nature.

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            1. 1 Super story John. I don’t think Larry would have wasted a lot of time arguing about billing.

               2 Greg Peck and William Wyler didn’t get along when making The Big Country and one of the bones of contention was that Greg who was a producer as well as star of that movie paid for a whole herd of cows whereas Wyler said he just needed a few and with camera tricks he could make it look like a herd..

               3 Also there was a 1956 movie called Michael Strogoff starring Curt Jurgens in which an army of about 200 men were charging across the plains of Siberia and in the cinema that I attended the audience burst out laughing because the scene was so clumsily shot that it looked as if the 200 were fleeing for their lives from one straggler about 20 yards behind the rest.

            2. 🙂

            3. Hey John…great story about Buster and his low budget days….I can easily picture the scene you painted….funny stuff.

         2. 🙂

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      2. Hey Steve…not surprised you have seen that version of Julius Caesar with Heston….I love that song by Queen….I remember hearing that song on the radio all the time when it first came out….cool memories for sure.

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   2. Hey Bob…thanks for all the information on Mr. Crabbe…and thanks for the review of Steve’s latest You Tube video. Good stuff….as always!

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4. Steve

   Just watched your Buster Crabbe video. You did a great job. Your top four is excellent. It is as if you ignored your usual confused critics and sought advice from a guy who really knows his stuff.

   Seriously, I thought the outstanding poster was the one from the rather bad Tarzan serial. Generally, the serial posters were all right, but I thought the western posters were very by-the-numbers. PRC was rock bottom, so perhaps they were hard-pressed to afford someone who could do catchy poster art.

   As for Buster’s opening comment, I think he was a competent actor who might have done more in his later years. He hoped to latch on with Republic after his Paramount contract expired, but Republic wasn’t interested. As the top studio for serials and B westerns, Republic would seem to have been a good match for Crabbe. Instead Buster was left with PRC and a very low-budget B western series. Afterwards it was back to serials at Columbia.

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   1. Thanks for the kind words John, glad you liked the video. I had to make sure his most famous serials were at the top of the chart. I don’t think I’ve seen Crabbe in anything else, maybe Million Dollar Legs but I can’t remember. I agree the cowboy posters weren’t as striking as Buck Jones or John Wayne’s b-western output. I did like the foreign poster for Law and Order.

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      1. Hey Steve….I just watched your Crabbe video….job well done…though my tally count was horrible…actually it can’t be any worse…unless we go into the negative numbers.

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   2. Hey John….your knowledge on Buster is very impressive…..I just watched Steve’s video tonight…and had seen none of the movies….your comment makes me want to check out a Buster movie…..good comment.

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5. 1 STEVE Charles Buck Jones whose career started in the silent era was one of
   multiple victims of a fire and died tragically in 1942 aged 50 and that was therefore the year of his final movie. He would have been regarded as part of the Hoot Gibson/Tom Mix era rather that of Rogers/Autry although there was some overlap. In fact historians state that Gene and Roy replaced Hoot Gibson in popularity and that subsequently the TV cowboys like Matt Dillon and Maverick replaced the cinematic B movies cowboys in general as an entertainment force in the western genre.

   2 Buck was another one of those cowboy heroes whose films were not rerun in Belfast cinemas in the 1950s or on TV over here so I never saw any of them but was nonetheless very familiar with him via a monthly 36 page comic strip booklet of his adventures and I therefore felt that I knew him as well as I did the likes of Rogers and Autry whose films I did see often. Tom Mix like Buck died tragically, Tom being killed in a car accident. Another thing those two had in common was an apparent partiality to very large cowboy hats which in fact became their trade mark in the comic books.

   3 Unfamiliarity with the movies did not stop me from enjoying your video. As always whilst I admired most posters and stills I try to highlight the most pleasing. Ride Em Cowboy, The Avenger, and Sandflow all stood out but bettering even those I thought were the 2 breath-taking ones from the 1932 White Eagle solo feature. Best stills in my eyes were Buck lifting a woman onto his horse, the threesome [ie Buck, Tim McCoy and Raymond Hatton collectively known as The Rough Riders] from Down Texas Way and the closing solo of Buck.

   5 Again not having seen the movies you have selected I cannot give a fully comprehensive appraisal of the video but because the entire presentation had such strong nostalgic value for me and taking into account as well those stunning White Eagle posters it must rate a 9.3/10. A rare visual treat indeed.

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   1. Hello Bob, glad you liked my Buck Jones video. Thanks for the review, rating and trivia, always appreciated.

      I think you’re right about that the popular TV western actors of the 50s and 60s replacing the old b-western actors and the funny thing is that an average tv episode back then ran about 50mins sans adverts* which isn’t that much shorter than those b-western movies, some of those films had a running time of about 56mins in total. The old Star Trek episodes were roughly 51mins each in length.

      I think Gunsmoke was the most popular western series, 20 seasons and 635 episodes!!

      * These days the average TV episode would have a running time of about 42mins in length to squeeze in more ads per hour.

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   2. 🙂 Lots of good information in this comment…thanks for sharing it.

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