Around the early 1960s....West Germany finally got into making authentic cowboy movies.....written by the series of book by Karl May in the 1870s-to-1890s. I should note...Karl never traveled to the American west, and he basically bluffed his way to writting each.
The book used for the first movie was Der Schatz im Silbersee (translates to the Treasure of the Silver Lake).
Shot cheaply? Well...they did the entire movie in Yugoslavia, and it was the first of several cowboy movies circling around the Indian character Winnetou. To add some big names to the movie.....Lex Barker was borrowed from Hollywood.
The basic script?
There's some treasure map existing, and some evil folks have killed the owner....taking the map and making their way through Indian territory.
The Lex Barker character (with the help of his Indian friend) is supposed to help the Indians, and by the end.....kills all the bad guys.
Profit-wise, this was the highest grossing movie of 1962, and attracted a fair amount of attention. Translation into English? It didn't come until three years later (fall 1965). Most Americans who remember it...probably will tell you they went to drive-in theaters in the spring of 1966 and witnessed it there.
This one movie opened up a significant number of May-written pieces.....produced in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1968 (17 total cowboy films).
No comments:
Post a Comment