Tarzan of the Apes is a 1918 American action/adventure silent film directed by Scott Sidney starring Elmo Lincoln, Enid Markey, George B. French and Gordon Griffith. It was the first Tarzan movie ever made and is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original novel Tarzan of the Apes. The movie adapts only the first part of the novel, the remainder becoming… Read more →
Zorro’s Fighting Legion is a 1939 Republic Pictures film serial consisting of twelve chapters starring Reed Hadley as Zorro and directed by William Witney and John English. The plot revolves around his alter-ego Don Diego’s fight against the evil Don Del Oro. A trademark of this serial is the sudden demise of at least one native informant in each episode…. Read more →
Zorro Rides Again (1937) is a 12-chapter Republic Pictures film serial. It was the eighth of the sixty-six Republic serials, the third with a western theme (a third of Republic’s serials were westerns) and the last produced in 1937. The serial was directed by William Witney & John English in their first collaboration. The serial starred John Carroll who also… Read more →
Zorro’s Black Whip is a 1944 Republic Pictures film serial starring Linda Stirling. The film was made after the 1940 20th Century-Fox remake of The Mark of Zorro and Republic wasn’t able to use the character himself, but still wanted to capitalize on it. However, and despite the title, Zorro does not feature in this serial. The hero(ine) is actually… Read more →
The Mark of Zorro is a 1920 silent adventure romance film starring Douglas Fairbanks and Noah Beery, Sr.. This genre-defining swashbuckler adventure was the first movie version of The Mark of Zorro. Based on the 1919 story “The Curse of Capistrano” by Johnston McCulley, which introduced the masked hero, Zorro, the screenplay was adapted by Fairbanks (as “Elton Thomas”) and… Read more →
Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery, is the first motion picture ever to have a Hollywood premiere, held at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre on October 18, 1922. The movie’s full title, under which it was copyrighted, is Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood. It was one of the most expensive films of the 1920s, with a budget estimated at approximately… Read more →
The Black Pirate is a 1926 silent adventure film shot entirely in two-color Technicolor about an adventurer and a “company” of pirates. It stars Douglas Fairbanks, Donald Crisp, Sam De Grasse, and Billie Dove. The Black Pirate was the third feature to be filmed in an early two-tone Technicolor process that had been first introduced in the 1922 feature Toll… Read more →
Jungle Book is a 1942 independent American Technicolor action-adventure film by the Hungarian Korda brothers, based on a screenplay adaptation by Laurence Stallings of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, about a wild boy who is kidnapped by villagers who are cruel to animals as they attempt to steal the jungle’s lost treasure that possesses people. The film was directed by… Read more →
The Big Cat is a 1949 American outdoor action film in Technicolor directed by Phil Karlson. The cast included Lon McCallister, Peggy Ann Garner, Preston Foster, Forrest Tucker, Skip Homeier, and Gene Reynolds. By Phil Karlson (https://archive.org/details/The_Big_Cat) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Info.
The Big Wheel is a 1949 American drama sport film directed by Edward Ludwig starring Mickey Rooney, Thomas Mitchell, Mary Hatcher and Michael O’Shea. It includes the final screen appearance of Hattie McDaniel. This film is now in the public domain. By Edward Ludwig (https://archive.org/details/TheBigWheel) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Info.
