User Reviews

This was a classic Disney at its best!

Set during the American Revolutionary War about a band of guerrilla soldiers who each week battle against the English conventional forces. Based on the exploits of South Carolina guerrilla leader Francis Marion,also known as The Swamp Fox. The series starred Leslie Nielsen as Francis Marion. Originally ran on ABC-TV as part of the weekly series "Disneyland" that aired from 1959 until 1961. The series produced eight episodes. These original episodes were basically produced,marketed and filmed in color,but ABC-TV otherwise telecast this series in black and white,but would however be telecast in color later on when Disney moved there series over to NBC-TV in 1961 as part of "The Wonderful World of Disney" when the series were aired as repeated episodes for most of the mid-1960's and throughout part of the 1970's.

The series ranks up of their with the best of the "Disneyland" series from the 1950's that featured "Davy Crockett","Zorro","Texas John Slaughter",and "The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca". Speaking of the classic series "The Swamp Fox",several episodes were in fact exceptionally brilliant with Leslie Nielsen in the major role. In fact,the final two episodes of the Swamp Fox was probably the best of the entire series. In the two-parter episode,Francis Marion and his men is captured by the British,but how he makes his escape from his captors is classic Disney. However,the final two episodes which were shown on television,were condensed into a theatrical feature film released by Disney in 1960,but it was also re-released back in theatres during the 1960's and part of the 1970's in full color.

The theme song: "Swamp Fox,Swamp Fox, tail on his hat.... Nobody knows where the Swamp Fox is at".

Hoping to fill the folklore mantel left vacant by Davy Crockett on his weekly television series, Walt Disney turned to the historical stories of Elfego Baca, Texas John Slaughter, and Francis Marion, a.k.a. "The Swamp Fox", to keep his young audiences intrigued. Marion, a Colonel in the 1780s who became a guerrilla fighter, working with the Continental Army in South Carolina to eradicate the British Redcoats, was indeed a fascinating figure in U.S. history. Unfortunately, the Disney formula (a little fact mixed with a lot of fiction) bottomed out with "The Swamp Fox". Running on and off from 1959 to 1961, this eight-episode serial only really kicked in with some fervent action in the final installments. The Revolutionary War is covered--not by interesting detail, but by gun-blasts and horse chases--while Leslie Nielsen's wooden portrayal of Marion mitigates against enthusiasm. The production isn't as sharp or as keen as Disney's previous output, lumping together stock footage and canned melodramatics for a monotonous effect. In the first three episodes (the only ones yet available on DVD), the African-American characters are given far more personality than the Swamp Fox, bringing humor (however obvious) and song into the mix. Tim Considine is solid as Marion's nephew (when he finally proposes to a young woman in the third installment, we know he's doomed), but the females in the cast are dull and the villains--Tory fighters and Dragoons--are stereotypes from stock, enacted floridly. The generally lax direction in this opener fails to get the serial off to a grand start; and, while the locations are serviceable, the lighting is poor and the camera-work amateurish.