Reviews

Much like an "Abbott and Costello meet ...Lugosi" type movie. Nat Pendleton's bizarre and irritating yet somehow endearing slapstick is a major part of the film. The reporter and maid are also rather irritating characters like you find in the old screwball comedies. The midget crawling all over is one of many zany touches, and false leads. Legosi is earnest in playing it straight, as always, and he gets some good lines off. It's a treat to see Lugosi in color.

One thing that's irritating today is the (Theramin?) sound every time it flashes back from the body to what happened, because that sound was later appropriated as the "UFO" sound and is now so identified with them that it feels very wrong here.

The good: The historical information about the early years, about John Muir, Mather, Rockefeller and the railroads. Coverage of the tension between nature-use or "sanctuary vs. tourist resort". The fights to save various areas and their incorporation into the parks, to prevent spoilage of the parks, and the move to save predators, such as the reintroduction of wolves. The beautiful nature photography, and the historical photos.

The bad: Too many talking heads, such as creepy William Cronon. Peter Coyote has been overused as a narrator, and his voice here is too pretentious and sanctimonious. Too many tedious descriptions of traveler impressions of parks. Too many statements about values of wildness which say or imply they can only be found in national parks.

The ugly: The violins and weepy sentimentality. Break out the Kleenex! The phony religious and patriotic sentiment, such as the early parts about how the parks are primarily a place to worship a god. Later this becomes a claim it's the patriotic way to be part of America. Too much use of the Lincoln Memorial. Later for example, we get "We tend to put our highest ideals, our highest dreams in our national parks, therefore they function like consciences" - they improve your relation with your fellow man. Gimme a break!

I love the National Parks. I really like several of Burn's productions, but was bored by "The War". This is almost that bad.

Here is an example of a great presentation on the same subject, in a specific place: http://www.bigcypressswamp.org/bcs/home.html Elam Stoltzfus knows how to do it right.

This was hyped at the 2009 SF Silent Film Festival as dark, unconventional and more to 21st century tastes than most silent films. I found it a combination of over-the-top silliness with heavy-handed religious tedium. Perhaps it can be described as surreal. Unfortunately I did not find that entertaining.

There is a bit more sexuality than in other Fairbanks films, but nothing compared to Valentino. His continual silly cigarette tricks. too-fast jumps, Velez's arms-on-hips heaving-breast stances, the house dragging scene, and the German expressionist style fake landscapes, walls that crumble at a touch, and the constant performance of miracles, take away from any feeling of reality. They say El Gaucho is the prototype for Mickey Mouse, and the movie does have a cartoon-like character, except for the religious parts. Perhaps the religious element is part of the formula to "get away with anything as long as you throw in religion".

For me, it can't hold a candle to The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or even The Eagle. Fairbanks movies that I prefer include The Mark of Zorro and The Black Pirate.

Sex in odd places, death by strange methods, nudity and bondage. Even a bad sheriff.

Full frontal photo session. Sex in gas station bathroom. Bondage and wrist slashing. Roaches. Acid, shovel, crowbar, knife, crowbar, cross and mulcher -fu.

Similarities to Last House on the Left.

It begins with a B&W sequence of a chainsaw attack on a couple in a trailer. Then it jumps in color to 25 years later with a professor and students going to a rural state college research station, where an attack had taken place on 3 college students (25 years before). It has been long abandoned, and the locals they meet on the way there act strange about the place...

Based on c.1994 video version "Survival 101".

4 men in the old West must make a several day long crossing of a desert pass. 2 of them are scum - they're litterbugs (!) and drunks, and hope to rape and even kill a "squaw". It's Apache country, but they feel safe if they keep moving. They come upon a strange isolated cabin in the high country... The exact nature of what they encounter is unclear, but the result is not.

NOT an action movie, but a surrealistic fairytale. If considered as a standard rape & revenge plot, it becomes very tedious. The acting is poor. There is overuse of cuts to a bird or birds watching in the bushes. The youngest cowboy appears to be a decent kid, and the 4th member won't take part in what the worst two men do, so there is an exploration of the nature of not trying to prevent evil, or of simply being associated with it. Joan Stapleton looks a little like Barbara Steele. The video I saw from "Obscure Video & DVD" had very aged color. Most color, except the sky, was brown to orange, but it fit very well with the surreal feeling of the movie.

We can't blame the director, since the film was "butchered", but what I saw was seriously flawed. I've seen many great silent films, and this isn't in the same league with them. "Intolerance" is a better film on a similar subject.

Motivation is the worst problem. It feels wrong that someone upon winning a lottery would refuse to spend a cent of it, and suddenly become the world's worst miser. Her love for the money becomes more important than any other human emotion or comfort. We read of old people like this dying filthy and destitute, with a hidden fortune, but the sudden onset here feels wrong. Some of the greed shown is created because of the stinginess of others. The husband has a strange lack of influence over the wife, especially for the time, perhaps because the human love and friendships in the film are shallow and phony. It is a dark movie.

There are some terrific views of streetcars and street scenes in early San Francisco; of interurbans and outside Shellmound Park in the East Bay. The Death Valley scenes probably had more visual impact then, as today they seem commonplace. So I felt the images as well as the story petered out to an unsatisfying end.