Customer Reviews

White Eagle

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

VCI Entertainment presents "WHITE EAGLE" (1941) (290 mins/B&W) (digitally remastered) --- Buck's on a red hot thrill rampage in the greatest of serial epics --- A Columbia Pictures 15 Chapter Play vintage serial loaded with thrilling drama and high adventure sequences featuring heroes, Indians and villains --- Buck Jones stars as White Eagle who was raided by Indians after U.S. Army Officer, his father was killed in an all out Indian raid --- Jones works hard throughout the 15 episodes that the white settlers and Indians can live together in peace --- The two main villains James Craven and Jack Ingram keep the two groups stirred up and thus the plot thickens --- Buck carries the entire cliffhanger with the help of his sidekick Raymond Hatton, who would later become a member of "The Rough Riders", along with Jones and Tim McCoy --- In 1941, the deal was struck for a new western trio series called "The Rough Riders", starring Charles 'Buck' Jones (Marshal Buck Roberts), Tim McCoy (Marshal Tim McCall) and Raymond Hatton (Marshal Sandy Hopkins) -- Interestingly, all three B-Western actors were fifty years of age or older when the series began.

Under the production staff:
James W. Horne - Director
Larry Darmour - Associate Producer
Morgan Cox - Screenwriter
John Cutting - Screenwriter
Arch Heath - Screenwriter
Lawrence Taylor - Screenwriter
Fred Myton - Story
Lee Zahler - Original Music
James S. Brown Jr - Cinematographer
Dwight Caldwell - Film Editor
Earl Turner - Film Editor
Carl Hiecke - Second Unit Director
Yakima Canutt - Stunt Co-Ordinator

BIOS:
1. Buck Jones (aka: Charles Frederick Gebhart )
Date of Birth: 4 December 1889 - Vincennes, Indiana
Date of Death: 30 November 1942 - Boston, Massachusetts

2. Raymond Hatton
Date of Birth: 7 July 1887 - Red Oak, Iowa
Date of Death: 21 October 1971 - Palmdale, California

3. Charles King
Date of Birth: 21 February 1895 - Hillsboro, Texas
Date of Death: 7 May 1957 - Hollywood, California

4. James W. Horne (Director)
Date of Birth: 14 December 1880 - San Francisco, California
Date of Death: 29 June 1942 - Hollywood, California

the cast includes:
Buck Jones ... White Eagle
Silver ... Silver - White Eagle's horse
Raymond Hatton ... Grizzly
Dorothy Fay ... Janet Rand
James Craven ... 'Dandy' Darnell
Chief Yowlachie ... Chief Running Deer
Jack Ingram ... Henchman Cantro
Charles King ... Henchman Brace
John Merton ... Henchman Romino
Roy Barcroft ... "Poker" Pendleton
Hank Bell ... Parks - a Trapper
Horace B. Carpenter ... Townsman
George Chesebro ... Henchman Blackie
Steve Clark ... Suveyor Roberts
Edmund Cobb ... Dave Rand
George DeNormand ... Civic leader Smith
Kenne Duncan ... Henchman Kirk)
Al Ferguson ... Henchman Butch
Bud Osborne ... Henchman Bart
Jack O'Shea ... Tough Standing at Bar
Charles Stevens ... Henchman
Al Taylor ... Trapper
Bob Woodward ... Pony Rider

CHAPTER TITLES:
1. Flaming Tepees
2. The Jail Delivery
3. The Dive into Quicksands
4. The Warning Death Knife
5. Treachery at the Stockade
6. The Gun-Cane Murder
7. The Revealing Blotter
8. Bird-Calls of Deliverance
9. The Fake Telegram
10.Mystic Dots and Dashes
11.The Ear at the Window
12.The Massacre Invitation
13.The Framed-Up Showdown
14.The Fake Army General
15.Treachery Downed

If you're into vintage serials as I am, why not pick up a copy of the following titles from VCI Entertainment:
VCI CLIFFHANGER TRAILERS:
1. Adventures of Red Ryder (Don "Red" Barry)
2. Adventures of the Flying Cadets (Bobby Jordan)
3. Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe)
4. Captain Midnight (Dave O'Brien)
5. Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere (Judd Holdren & I. Stanford Jolley)
6. Dick Tracy's G-Men (Ralph Byrd)
7. Don Winslow of the Navy (Don Terry)
8. Don Winslow of the Coast Guard (Don Terry)
9. Drums of Fu Manchu (Henry Brandon)
10.Fighting Kit Carson (Johnny Mack Brown)
11.Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (Buster Crabbe)
12.The Green Archer (Victory Jory)
13.Jungle Girl (Frances Gifford)
14.Jungle Jim (Grant Withers & Raymond Hatton)
15.Lost City of the Jungle (Russell Hayden & Keye Luke)
16.Mandrake the Magician (Warren Hull & Dick Curtis)
17.Miracle Rider (Tom Mix & Tony Jr)
18.The Painted Stallion (Ray "Crash" Corrigan)
19.The Phantom (Tom Tyler)
20.The Return of Chandu (Bela Lugosi)
21.Riders of Death Valley (Dick Foran, Leo Carrillo & Buck Jones)
22.Secret Agent X-9 (1937) (Scott Kolk & Henry Brandon)
23.Secret Agent X-9 (1945) (Lloyd Bridges & Keye Luke)
24.Sky Raiders (Donald Woods & Billy Halop)
25.Undersea Kingdom (Ray "Crash" Corrigan)
26.Winners of the West (Dick Foran, Harry Woods, Roy Barcroft & Charles Stevens)
27.Zane Greys "King of the Royal Mounted" (Allan "Rocky" Lane)
28.Zorro's Cliffhanger Collection (Reed Hadley, John Carroll & Linda Stirling)

Hats off to VCI Entertainment and thanks to Les Adams (collector/guideslines for character identification), Chuck Anderson (Webmaster: The Old Corral/B-Westerns.Com), Boyd Magers (Western Clippings), Bobby J. Copeland (author of "Trail Talk"), Rhonda Lemons (Empire Publishing Inc), Buck Rainey (author of: The Life and Films of Buck Jones: The Sound Era (Paperback) and Bob Nareau (author of: "The Real" Bob Steele) as they have rekindled my interest once again for B-Westerns and Serials --- looking forward to more high quality releases from the vintage serial era of the '20s, '30s & '40s and B-Westerns ... order your copy now from Amazon where there are plenty of copies available on DVD --- if you enjoyed this title, why not check out Amazon and VCI where they are experts in releasing B-Westerns and Serials --- all my heroes have been cowboys!

Total Time: 290 mins on DVD ~ VCI Entertainment ~ (12/04/2007)

Excellent action-packed 15 chapter serial from Columbia restored by VCI Entertainment. A sheer joy to watch as Buck Jones stars as the title character White Eagle, a white man raised by Indians since childhood. James Craven is at his back-stabbing dastardly best as Dandy Darnell, out to prevent peace between the settlers and the Indians...for his own greedy purposes of course! This role rivals his gang leader in THE GREEN ARCHER(1940) and like that role, is played to the hilt, pure evil interjected with sly humor and comic exaspiration at the failings of his minions!
And what minions they are!!! A virtual Who's Who among B-Western cronies and henchmen, some of them even playing good-guy roles! I spotted Bud Osborne, Al Ferguson, Eddie Cobb, Roy Barcroft, George Chesebro, Charlie King, John Merton, Jack Ingram, Hank Bell, Kenne Duncan, Black Jack O'Shea and Edward Hearn. They pop in and out and most wind up pushin up daisies by the end!
As with a Columbia serial (especially one directed by James W. Horne) you get lots of running about! Everyone's in a hurry! At times it seems comical with characters running hap-hazardly around and about, through doors, down streets, leaping onto horses!!! But that's what Columbia delivered, Fast-Paced Action! Non-Stop Thrills! And this serial really delivers!
Buck is in fine form as White Eagle, mature yet still very atheletic. Raymond Hatton is side-kick Grizzly and does well boasting, providing laughs and even saving Buck on occasion. Dorothy Fay is the love interest and doesn't get in the way too much.
The print is BEAUTIFUL!!! Sharp, crisp, clear! A joy to watch! Thank you again VCI for doing such an outstanding job!
If you're a serial or Buck Jones fan this is an absolute must for your collection. I'm really glad I made this purchase!

White Eagle is a fast action western adventure, and a must have for any Buck Jones fan.

This serial should have been cut from 15 chapters to, maybe, ten. The acting was atrocious, the comedy was lame, the segues from chapter to chapter, and even within chapters, was herky-jerky. The explanatory blurbs between chapters must have been written by a 10 year old. Not a lot of care was taken in this production.

Buck Jones is one of my favorites, but he didn't look like he was having a lot of fun delivering some of the lines that were written for him. Raymond Hatton should have stuck with his taciturn characterization that he was so good at in the Rough Riders and other series. The writers had him delivering lines that were completely inane.

The cliff hangers were ludicrous; at the end of a chapter a half ton of rocks drops on our hero's head and in the beginning of the next chapter, Buck gets up and dusts himself off.

The villain was laughable. The bad guys were all over the place. It was like watching a Chinese firedrill.

I give it three stars because of Buck Jones.

"White Eagle" is a 15-chapter Columbia serial released in 1941, starring Buck Jones and directed by James W. Horne, with screenplay by Arch Heath, Morgan B. Cox, John Cutting and Lawrence E. Taylor. The story is credited to Fred Myton, who did the writing for the 1932 Buck Jones feature of the same name.

Out west in Gold country, where the whites have ruthlessly invaded Indian territory, a new treaty is being signed between Chief Running Deer (Chief Yowlachie) and General Randolph (Lloyd Whitlock), as negotiated by White Eagle (Buck Jones), a man of unknown origins raised by the Indians, who is trusted by both races. But the treaty needs to be ratified, and this is opposed by "mysterious Dictator of Crime" Dandy Darnell (James Craven), who knows there is gold on land designated for the Indians. He orders his thugs to prevent the treaty from getting to Washington, but their attempted ambush of the courier, Express Office superintendent Gardner (Edward Hearn) is foiled by White Eagle and his sidekick, Grizzly (Raymond Hatton) who have accompanied Gardner. But Darnell, assumed to be a respectable merchant, has plenty of other schemes to prevent the Treaty from being ratified.

The cast includes a large number of actors familiar to fans of serials, including Roy Barcroft, Charles Stevens, Kenne Duncan, Richard Cramer, and John Merton. Edmund Cobb gets to play a good guy, Dave Rand, division superintendent for the Pony Express, with Dorothy Fay as his sister Janet, who has to be rescued a few times. James Craven's crew of thugs has several returning from their previous serial, "The Green Archer" including Jack Ingram, Charles King, Al Ferguson, Eddie Featherston, Kit Guard, Bud Osborne and Constantine Romanoff. The basic setup is the same as that of the 1932 feature "White Eagle," and a few specific situations are used in the serial, including the stealing of Pony Express horses by fake "Indians," an attack by riled-up townsmen on an Indian village and rescue of the heroine from a mountain lion. But the feature's main bad guy is a horse thief posing as a government buyer, there is nothing about a treaty, and a "forbidden love" element was included to emphasize the question of White Eagle's origins. Unfortunately the serial has a less-believable plot with attempts at humor that don't always work, including poorly written "comic" dialogue which even Raymond Hatton can't save, having been given far too many lines to read. Many of Dandy Darnell's schemes make as much sense as those in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, and some of the cliffhanger resolutions can only charitably be described as "weak," though the logic improves in later chapters. Buck Jones' role limits his opportunities to engage in the humor, except in a couple places at the expense of Grizzly. Even Darnell's henchmen aren't up to the usual level of bungling expected in a serial directed by Horne. But the sight of John Merton as renegade Indian Ronimo is far more amusing than anything done intentionally, and there are some interesting minor characters, especially Roy Barcroft as the gambler 'Poker' Pendelton, whose presence is a mystery until late in the serial.

Columbia, like Universal, knew the value of stock footage, and here there is quite a bit of it, especially in the Indian attacks, where the grainy, flickery and too-fast silent-film scenes are added to the action, though Universal did a better job of splicing it into their serials. A few scenes from the 1932 feature were also recycled in the serial. Much of the introductory text, shown without narration, is repeated in each chapter. This is typical for Columbia serials of the time, but on this one the action of the previous chapter is often poorly described. The music, by Lee Zahler, is of a style familiar from other Columbia serials; not really inappropriate, but often sounding too upbeat and cheerful for the dramatic action. But while no classic score, it's at least as good as anything else in this serial.

VCI's edition, # 8523 is on two discs, from a print that is clean, free of significant dirt and scratches, well-framed and with excellent gray scale. The sharpness is good, though not outstanding, with some of the MPPDA certificate numbers a little hard to read. The focus goes a bit softer at the sides of the frame suggesting a 16mm reduction print, noticed mainly in the credits and not much of a problem. The sound is clear and low in distortion. The "Screen Gems" titles at the chapter ends identify the print as having been made for television; they replace the ones announcing the following chapter, and references to "next week" were roughly spliced out of the film in Knox Manning's narration. Not a major loss, given the fine quality of the print otherwise. "Extras" are limited to a one-minute "Cowboy Montage" of clips from many films at the start of each disc and three serial movie trailers, for "The Oregon Trail," "Riders of Death Valley" and "Adventures of Red Ryder."

This serial will be of most interest to those who like other serials directed by James W. Horne, such as "The Green Archer" and "Terry and the Pirates." Buck Jones fans may not be totally thrilled, but it isn't terrible, though Universal's "Riders of Death Valley," made the same year, contained more humor that actually worked. VCI's good-looking print is a big help, making it easier to watch than it might have been, and there are interesting performances in the smaller roles by many well-known 'B' western and serial movie actors. But the total length is almost five hours, so as with all serials, a day or more between chapters is the best way to watch it.

What's always been great about Buck is the amount of humour he brings to every film he ever did. Great serial!