Touches You

i must have seen a different film!!

Best movie ever!

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

George O'Brien swaps his usual cowboy gear for a coonskin cap to play Daniel Boone. It's an "eastern western", as he leads a wagon train over the Appalachian Mountains to found a settlement in Kentucky. In the course of the movie, he must court Heather Angel, deal with vengeful and effete Ralph Forbes, escape from Indians who want to burn him alive, under the command of renegade John Carradine, and an attack of the settlement.It's a well done B under the direction of David Howard, with some lovely compositions by cinematographer Frank Good. In story terms, it hearkens back to LAST OF THE MOHICANS, with a faithful, if brutal Indian companion, played by George Regas. Modern viewers may be upset by scene-stealing Clarence Muse, playing a slave; he does so with enormous dignity. For fans of Mr. O'Brien, it will be a delight.

This 1936 Daniel Boone movie starts badly—with a Plains Indian shooting a flaming arrow—even though Boone never encountered any of these Indians since he lived in the Appalachians—many, many, many miles away. In the 1700s when Boone lived, no contact had yet been made between Americans and these tribes. However, natives in the course of the film appeared to be the correct type and the film turned out to be pretty good.The film stars George O'Brien as Boone. He was pretty famous during the late silent era with the leads in such films as "Sunrise". He also later made a name for himself in westerns. He was pretty good as the believably rugged title character. His job in the film is to lead a group of colonists to new land in the west (probably around what is Tennessee or Kentucky—just before the American Revolution. However, there are a couple different baddies who are out to stop them. The most obvious of these is a guy played by John Carradine—a white man who has rejected his people and stirs up the Indians to attack. It seemed quite appropriate that he wore a skunk-skin cap! The other, less obvious, is a prissy Englishman who is in love with a girl who Boone secretly adores. See the film to see how it all ends, though I will say the end was a bit of a surprise, as good didn't necessarily triumph over all evil in this tale.This film is from RKO---and I am a bit surprised it was allowed to lapse into the public domain. It's rather entertaining and offers a look at the early settlement of the country. But, sadly, the sound is a bit uneven, though the print otherwise looks fine.Usually I make a lot of comments about the historical inaccuracies of the film. However, the spirit of the film is reasonably close to real life—and Boone's mythic status makes it difficult to determine what he REALLY did do!

Daniel Boone had a long and fascinating life and he's still the prototype for those classic American frontier characters. He set a standard which people in later generations like Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, and Buffalo Bill were measured by. His life would warrant a mini-series. Any resemblance to that life and the film Daniel Boone which was RKO films big budget item for 1936 is purely coincidental. They don't even get the name of his wife in the character Heather Angel plays right.I will say that George O'Brien does make an impressive looking Daniel Boone and it's definitely in the tradition of a hero for the kiddie trade. This colonial era film plays like a western, but even the great Cecil B. DeMille made some of the same mistakes with his big budget epic Unconquered that starred Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard and was set in the same era.Another and more infamous colonial frontier character makes an appearance in Daniel Boone. John Carradine plays a lean and mean Simon Girty and his performance here might have led John Ford to cast him in a similar role in Drums Along The Mohawk.Girty may have been one of the first diagnosed cases of Stockholm syndrome. As a kid he was captured by the Indians and adapted so well to their lifestyle that he sympathized with them and their cause the rest of his life. He sided with the Tories during the American Revolution so he's come down to us as a renegade and traitor.But as far as I know he and Daniel Boone never even met, let alone become antagonists. Simon Girty lived almost as long as Daniel Boone. Girty died in 1818 at his farm in Ontario, Canada where he's not exactly a hero, but doesn't have the bad reputation he has on this side of the Great Lakes. Boone of course died in 1820 and the action here takes place in the 1770s.The film might have been better had one of the bigger studios done it. Daniel Boone was a project for MGM or Warner Brothers not RKO Pictures.

Seeing the film today gave me an interesting perspective on our country's history, as the events took place one year before the Declaration of Independence. With the Revolutionary War in full swing, an entirely different battle was being waged on the near Western frontier of 'Kain-Tu-Kee', the Indian name for a 'dark and bloody ground'. It was here the legend of Daniel Boone was born, and the film states it tries to remain true to the core of the frontiersman's legacy.I was intrigued by a number of the portrayals in the film that had nothing to do with the main characters. Women in particular were shown chopping wood, spading hard ground and fording rivers on horseback carrying babies in the cause of civilization. The film also depicted blacks respectfully, though in typically subservient roles; it was the black character Pompey (Clarence Muse) who offered the suggestion for the name of Boonesborough.There's an interesting scene where Pompey and Black Eagle (George Regas) have a conversation about the similarities of 'black' and 'red' men. Pompey's take on it is that both were baked by the sun, but the Indian was 'underdone'! Boone is ruggedly portrayed by George O'Brien in a characterization that reminded me of George Reeves' Superman, to me he looked like two different people with and without his coonskin cap on. His first encounter with the renegade white Simon Girty (John Carradine) offered a comedic touch with the knife swallowing gimmick. Later on, his shirtless physique takes center stage when captured by hostiles and relegated to a burning stake, most assuredly one of film's early recognitions of the beefcake factor in heroic movies.My prior introduction to Heather Angel involved her role as Miss Phyllis Clavering in the 'Bulldog Drummond' franchise, a series of detective mysteries of the same era. Here she balances her affections between British royal Stephen Marlowe and the adventurer Boone until Marlowe realizes he's second string. Her young brother Jerry is played by Dickie Jones, who in the 1950's became Range Rider's sidekick and later starred as Buffalo Bill Jr. in a couple of early TV Westerns.For an early talkie "Daniel Boone" seems to handle it's subject fairly well with a nice blend of action, adventure and insight into early frontier life. It does seem to leave a question mark for an ending though, as the pioneers are shown heading out once again in search of new territory. One must assume that the governor in Richmond fully intended to deny squatters rights to the settlers, on land annexed to Virginia for the glory of the Crown.