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39-735: The Radio King is a 1922 American adventure film serial directed by Robert F. Hill and released by the Universal Film Manufacturing Co. The ten chapters began with "A Cry for Help" released October 22, 1922. The film is now considered to be a lost film . This article about a silent adventure film is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Adventure film Adventure films boast their setting and visuals as key elements. This ranged from early technical showcases such as The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933). These films set up exotic locations as both beautiful and dangerous. This would be

78-852: A script supervisor and assistant during production of King Solomon's Mines . Additionally, the cave scene was filmed in the Slaughter Canyon Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park and other scenes at nearby Sitting Bull Falls in Lincoln National Forest , both in the state of New Mexico , in the Southwestern United States . In February 1950, after five months of location filming in Africa, Andrew Marton replaced Compton Bennett as director. The official reason given

117-478: A "landmark of effects-led adventure cinema." Outside technical effects, adventure films of Douglas Fairbanks such as Robin Hood (1922) with its scenes of battles and recreations of castles cost a record-setting $ 1.5 million to produce also provided a variant of adventure spectacle to audiences. Tasker stated that The Lost World (1925) arguably initiated a jungle adventure film cycle that would be expanded on in

156-443: A booby trap that seals the adventurers inside. They find a way out through an underground river and return to Twala's compound just as Umbopa and his followers arrive. Umbopa's people decide a disputed kingship by having the two claimants duel to the death. Despite cheating by one of Twala's men, Umbopa wins. Afterwards, he provides an escort for his friends' return trip. In November 1946, MGM announced it had purchased film rights to

195-468: A continuing trend for Hollywood adventure films. The other major Hollywood style was the historical adventure typified by early films in the style of The Black Pirate (1926) and The Mark of Zorro (1920) which feature less intense violence. Historical adventure was a popular Hollywood staple until the mid-1950s. While the historical adventure film would be parodied or presented as highly camp , special effects -driven adventure films began to dominate

234-444: A convoy of Dodge trucks traveling a total distance of over 70,000 miles (110,000 km). Like virtually all film versions, this also changes Haggard's plot to include a female lead. But it strays even further from the novel than the 1937 British adaptation King Solomon's Mines . There are several African characters in the book, particularly Umbopa, a king in disguise. In the earlier film, Paul Robeson received top billing for

273-587: A low critical status, with a few exceptions. Historically, the genre has not been seen as authored cinema. The genre's cinematic traditions were effectively absent from debates on genre cinema since the 1960s. Chapman echoed this statement. He argued that with only a handful of exceptions, adventure films have not won much favour with film critics: "In traditional film criticism there are few 'good' adventure films; those that have won critical acclaim have usually done so on grounds other than their status as genre films." When action and adventure cinema secure awards, it

312-400: A number of excellently staged fights-to-the-death." Harrison's Reports called it "a highly spectacular romantic adventure melodrama that has the rare quality of holding an audience captivated from start to finish." John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote, "'King Solomon's Mines' undertakes to show what a safari through Africa might have been up against fifty years ago. In this, I think,

351-688: A profit of $ 4,049,000, which made it MGM's most successful film of 1950, and the second highest-grossing film of that year in the United States . The film was the third most popular film at the British box-office in 1951. It was also a big hit in France, with admissions of 4,108,770. Robert L. Surtees won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography , Color, while Ralph E. Winters and Conrad A. Nervig won for Best Film Editing . The film

390-512: A quest narrative, where characters seek mythical objects or fabulous treasure as seen in films like King Solomon's Mines (1950) or Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Tasker opted for a broader sense of genre, and commented on Taves limits, stating it was an understandable impulse to place generic limits on potentially diverse bodies of texts, while included films like Raiders of the Lost Ark which she described as feeling "like an adventure in

429-590: A setting that was both remote in time and space to its audience. While Cameron refuted the idea of a clearly defined adventure genre, he said films described the "positive feeling for adventure" evoked from the scenes of action in the film and the identification with the main character. Taves echoed this, exemplifying the character of Robin Hood who deals with a valiant fight for just government in an exotic past. Taves wrote in The Romance of Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure Movies (1993) that defining

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468-461: Is often in categories such as visual effects and sound editing. Tasker found this reflected Richards comments on the creative labor as being the primary appeal on work in the genre. King Solomon%27s Mines (1950 film) King Solomon's Mines is a 1950 Technicolor adventure film , and the second film adaptation of the 1885 novel of the same name by Henry Rider Haggard . It stars Deborah Kerr , Stewart Granger and Richard Carlson . It

507-488: The silent films of the 1910s and 1920s. These films required elaborate visual effects that were important to displaying menacing or fantastic worlds. These films often took narratives from novels, such as films like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) and The Lost World (1925). Beyond being adaptations of famous books, Tasker said that the appeal of these films was also in their effects laden scene, finding The Lost World

546-473: The Light Brigade (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). The historical adventure film continued to be a popular Hollywood genre into the mid-1950s featuring various male stars such as Tyrone Power , Douglas Fairbanks Jr. , Burt Lancaster , and Stewart Granger . Imperialism -themed adventure films continued in the 1950s with a greater emphasis on location shooting . Examples include

585-576: The Lost Ark (1981), The Mummy (1999), and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). Few other films embarked on more serious tones, such as Ridley Scott 's Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven (2005). Since the late 1970s, both action and adventure films have become synonymous with the high-budgeted and profitable Hollywood films and franchises. While both genres took on challenging material, towards

624-537: The Movies (1973) stated that adventure "is not confined to a particular genre [...] it is a quality which turns up in almost every sort of story film; indeed the most obvious adventures movies, the sword-and-bosom epics, are usually among the least interesting." American historian Brian Taves wrote in 1993 that having such wide-ranging application of the genre would render it meaningless. Despite their different definitions, both Taves and Cameron stated that genre required

663-501: The adventure film was defined from a fictional narrative and excluded films based on historical events and people such as Zulu (1964) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), finding they belonged to other types of narratives such as the historical film and the war film . Chapman summarized the complicated nature of the genre, stating that the "Adventure film is a less clearly defined than most: indeed, this might be one reason why film historians have left it pretty much alone." He described

702-415: The art director, costume designer, fencing master, stunt arranger, cinematographer and actor just much as the writer and director. For the swashbuckler is truly the sum of all their work." Both action and adventure are often used together as film genres, and are even used interchangeably. For Taves, he compared the styles saying that adventure films were "something beyond action" and were elevated "beyond

741-540: The box office hit King Solomon's Mines (1950) which was shot in Africa. 1960s fantasy films such as Jason and the Argonauts (1963) combined the set-pieces and fantastic locations of historical adventures with renewed emphasis on special effects. By the 1970s, The Three Musketeers (1973) marked a point where the historical adventure has been firmly associated with what Tasker described as "comic - even camp - tone" that would inform later films such as Raiders of

780-445: The broadest sense of the term." Tasker noted this specifically, that even when disregarding its historical setting, the film concerned a quest, with travel and developing moral sense of the hero's place in the world. Tasker wrote that these films films have no consistent iconography, their set design and special effects, ranging from stop-motion, to digital imagery and 3D are given a privileged place in these genres. Chapman also noted

819-473: The decade. Erb found that the jungle imagery of these films of the 1930s frequently showcased the jungle world as frequently alternating between "demonic and edenic " images, while Tasker said the jungle films and other adventure films of the period would establish a travelogue allure of these settings as romantic spaces. Within the Classical Hollywood cinema , one of the major other styles

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858-484: The evil usurper King Twala. Umbopa leaves with his supporters to raise a rebellion, while Allan, Elizabeth and John travel to a tense meeting with Twala at his kraal . With his last rifle bullet, John kills a would-be attacker, temporarily quelling the natives. The king's advisor, Gagool, communicates that they have seen Curtis and leads them to a cave that contains a trove of jewels and his skeletal remains. While they are distracted by this grisly discovery, Gagool triggers

897-431: The genre in context with the historical adventure, and said explicitly excluding films with fantasy settings such as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) as they involved the supernatural over human agency. Taves wrote that "unlike adventure, fantasy presents a netherworld where events violate physical reality and the bounds of human possibility." Comparatively, in his overview of British adventure cinema, James Chapman said

936-776: The genre that would continue into the 21st century with film series like The Lord of the Rings , Harry Potter , and Pirates of the Caribbean . In their analysis of the genre in 2018, Johan Höglund and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet found that the contemporary adventure form often appears in trans-genre work where the adventure component is perceived as secondary. They exemplified that in films such ranging from Top Gun (1986), Godzilla (2014), to Lone Survivor (2013), which range from fantasy film to science fiction film to war film genres, all adhere to traditional adventure narratives. Adventure films are generally perceived with

975-521: The late 1970s of an adventure style geared towards more family-oriented audiences with films like Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Star Wars exemplifies a resurgent adventure strand of the 1970s cinema with characters like the Jedi Knights who swing from ropes and wield light sabers recall sword-fighting and swashbuckling films. Tasker commented that this led to a commercially lucrative and culturally conservative version of

1014-414: The map he used. Elizabeth and her brother John Goode join the adventure. Allan has no use for women on a safari , but during the long and grueling journey he and Elizabeth begin to fall in love. The party encounters Van Brun, a lone white man living with a tribe. They learn that he met Curtis. However, when Allan recognizes him as a fugitive who cannot afford to let them go, they take him hostage to leave

1053-536: The market towards the late 1970s, with films such as Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). This trend continued into the 21st century. Adventure is a broad film genre. Early writing on the genre had wide categorizations. Critic André Bazin went as far to say in the 1950s that "there is not difference between Hopalong Cassidy and Tarzan except for their costumes and the arena in which they demonstrate their prowess." Ian Cameron in Adventure in

1092-418: The novel from Gaumont British , which had made the 1937 adaptation. Sam Zimbalist was assigned the job of producing. In October 1948, Helen Deutsch was assigned to write the script. MGM typically made one or two big "overseas" spectacles a year around this time. When Quo Vadis was postponed, it was decided to film King Solomon's Mines on location in Africa. Production equipment was trucked in, with

1131-1126: The physical challenge" and by "its moral and intellectual flavour." Forms of filmmaking that would become film genres were mostly defined in other media before Thomas Edison devised the Kinetograph in the late 1890s. Genres, such as adventure fiction were developed as written fiction. In the early Hollywood cinema, early adventure cinema were both original stories as well as adaptations of popular media such as adventure stories, magazines, and folk tales. Films were adapted from adventure stories such as King Solomon's Mines (1885), She (1887), and Treasure Island (1883). Tasker described both action and adventure cinema are resistant to any historical evolutionary chronology. Both genres are self-reflexive and draw from conventions of other genres ranging from horror to historical imperial adventure. Taves found that that films that were swashbucklers or pirate-themed adventures were often humorous, and that they retained viability even when parodied. Many silent films with action and adventure scenarios flourished in

1170-506: The picture, which was shot in the African highlands, succeeds admirably." The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "a somewhat stilted epic, strangely lacking in excitement", with Kerr seeming "miscast and out of place." According to MGM records, the film earned $ 5,047,000 in the US and Canada. It made $ 4,908,000 elsewhere. After production and other associated costs were deducted, the movie made

1209-578: The role, whereas in this version, Umbopa's importance is greatly reduced. Deborah Kerr was announced as the female lead in July 1949. MGM wanted Errol Flynn to co-star. The same month Compton Bennett was signed to direct; he had just finished That Forsyte Woman for MGM with Flynn. Flynn eventually chose instead to star in Kim . Stewart Granger was signed to play the role in August 1949. Richard Carlson

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1248-432: The similarly effects driven sound film King Kong (1933). In her study of King Kong , Cynthia Erb noted a conventions of both travel documentary and jungle adventure traditions. Tasker wrote that the best known displays of these films were those that focused on the character of Tarzan which found more significantly commercial success with the success of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films featuring Johnny Weissmuller during

1287-450: The style as being commonly applied to narratives where action and visual spectacle were foregrounded. He included styles like the swashbuckler , the British empire film, the sensationalized spy thriller, and mythological fantasy films as part of adventure cinema genre. Writing about the adventure genre in the 1970s, Jeffrey Richards said that "since the way a swashbuckler moves and looks is just as important as what it says, we must look at

1326-401: The style as not being a discrete genre in its own, but a flexible, overarching category that encompasses a range of different related narrative forms. British author and academic Yvonne Tasker wrote in her 2015 book The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (2015) that adventure films imply a story that is located within a fantasy of exoticized setting. She found that these films often apply

1365-435: The village safely. Van Brun tries to shoot Allan, killing his faithful right-hand man Khiva instead. Allan dispatches Van Brun, and the party flees from the angry villagers. They meet a tall mysterious native, Umbopa, who joins them. When they finally reach the region where the mines are believed to be, they are met by people who resemble him. They discover that their companion is royalty; he has returned to attempt to dethrone

1404-422: Was Bennett fell ill but there were rumours that Bennett had a falling out with some of the cast. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that "there is more than a trace of outright hokum in this thriller ... but there is also an ample abundance of scenic novelty and beauty to compensate." Variety called it a "striking adventure film" with "high excitement in meetings with wild savages and beasts and

1443-406: Was adapted by Helen Deutsch , directed by Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . In " British East Africa " ( Kenya Colony ) in 1897, experienced British safari guide Allan Quatermain is persuaded by Elizabeth Curtis to find her husband, who disappeared in the unexplored African interior while searching for the legendary King Solomon’s mines. She has a copy of

1482-636: Was cast in September. Filming in Africa took place at Murchison Falls in Uganda ; Astrida , "the land of giant Watusis "; Volcano Country and Stanleyville in the Belgian Congo ; Tanganyika ; and Rumuruti and Machakos in Kenya . The film marked the beginning of Eva Monley 's career as a Hollywood location scout and producer, specializing in Africa. Monley received her first film job as

1521-662: Was the historical adventure film. These films were typically set in the past and drew from the Fairbanks films such as The Black Pirate (1926) and The Mark of Zorro (1920). They feature violence in a less intense manner than other contemporary genres such as the Western or war film . While not specifically associated with one Hollywood studio, Warner Bros. released a series of popular historical adventures featuring Errol Flynn such as Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of

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