Davy Crockett and his sidekick Georgie compete against boastful Mike Fink ("King of the River") in a boat race to New Orleans. Later, Davy and Georgie, allied with Fink, battle a group of river pirates trying to pass themselves off as Native Americans.
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Reviews
Simply Perfect
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Great Disney sequel to the first Disney movie on Davy Crockett. I enjoyed the characters, particularly Mike Fink, who gave the film a lot of humor. I particularly liked the scene when Mike Fink had to eat his hat after losing the keelboat race. Meaning, in Disney fashion, the "sort of" villain was actually a tough guy with honor. Of course, at the end, the King of the River and King of the Wild Frontier part as friends. Excellent plot, good story, good action and a lot of good humor.
Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen are back as Davy Crockett and his sidekick in another film culled from Disney's TV series. This time they encounter Mink Fink, King of the River captaining a boat on the Mississippi. They agree to race him to New Orleans, and then they team up with him to defeat pirates masquerading as Native Americans. This one is slightly superior to the original film mostly due to having a less episodic story.
Wow.Sometimes a film is powerful because it WAS powerful.This is an amazingly dumb movie but perhaps no dumber in extremes than today's. The reason it might be on your radar is because of how influential it was.It was the first movie with multimedia tie-ins. You could buy Davey Crockett hats and weapons. And lunchboxes stuff like that. That wasn't all that extraordinary then. But this was also the first movie that was also a theme park ride. So it is the beginning of a food chain that leads us to the Depp pirate projects. That Davey Crockett ride lasted 40 years! (Incidentally, students of film will see blocking similarities between Depp's boat ride in the bayou and Parker's.)Its also one of the movies most obviously designed for boys. Here you have guys pretending to be Indians and dying by falling down. You have water play. You have racing. You have tricksters.And most of all, you have a juvenile version of that John Ford/ John Wayne meme: real men achieve honor through recreational fighting.Seeing it again fifty years later is very strange. Young people watch movies more closely than adults I think. I remembered the smallest details, like the lettering on barrels, which incidentally was inspired by the Our Gang/Little Rascals cosmology that things become props by labelling them.There are no "girls;" this is strictly boy's play. The only time girlie stuff appears is when the pirates try to attract Mike Fink's crew to an ambush. They do this by dressing up as floozies, which of course he cannot resist.And its also an influential film in melding a certain collection of values to a certain collection of cultural carriers.The values are honesty, plainspokenness, insight outside of book-larnin', loyalty (at least among men). The cultural carriers today are what's been labelled as "country" music (and its advertising affiliate, NASCAR).Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
"Davy Crockett And The River Pirates" was originally produced for television and was broadcast on ABC as two episodes of the "Disneyland" series in 1955.It is very easy to see why there was a Crockett phenomenon at the time. Fess Parker is perfect as Davy, and his sidekick, Georgie Russel, is played by Buddy Ebson, a few years before "Beverly Hillbillies". They play off of each other like a perfectly matched pair of shoes.This film is wonderful and makes me wish that Disney had made more of them back in the 1950's. Unfortunately, however, the interest in Crockett was winding down by the time this one played in the theaters, and Disney used Fess Parker in other movies, like "Old Yeller" and "Westward Ho! The Wagons"Still, this is a great film that is a lot of fun. The boats were later taken to Disneyland and utilized as the Mike Fink Keelboats ride.-- One sidenote here: the keelboats were removed from Disneyland in 1996 following an accident that dumped a load of passengers into the water! --As with most of the old Disney titles, I greatly recommend this film.