| Gow the Headhunter | |
|---|---|
 Poster | |
| Directed by | Edward A. Salisbury |
| Language | English |
Gow the Headhunter (or Gow, the Headhunter, with a comma) is a 1931 exploration film. The footage, from the 1920s was originally released as 4 different films before being released as a 63-minute feature film in 1931. The film was released in the 1950s under the title Cannibal Island. [1] The film is also known as Gow the Head Hunter, or simply Gow, [2] and Gow the Terror and Gow the Killer.
The film consists of genuine documentary footage but an attempt at creating a plot may be perceptible in the end. [3]
Footage originates from a two-year expedition led by Edward A. Salisbury, a wealthy British adventurer, in the Western Pacific. [3] The aim of the filming was to document the life of cannibals in the South Seas islands (Western Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides and the Eastern Solomons), [1] including the practice of headhunting. [4]
In 2012 Flicker Alley released a Blu-ray edition [5] of The Most Dangerous Game including Gow presenting the film as an Exploration classic [1]
According to the company, the film "is not only a true curiosity but also in many ways a key influence of later Cooper and Schoedsack productions including King Kong." [1]
Robert Joseph Flaherty, was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, Nanook of the North (1922). The film made his reputation and nothing in his later life fully equaled its success, although he continued the development of this new genre of narrative documentary with Moana (1926), set in the South Seas, and Man of Aran (1934), filmed in Ireland's Aran Islands. Flaherty is considered the father of both the documentary and the ethnographic film.
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, sometimes simply called Tabu, is a 1931 American synchronized sound film directed by F. W. Murnau. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the Western Electric Sound System sound-on-film process. A docufiction, it is split into two chapters: The first, called "Paradise", depicts the lives of two lovers on a South Seas island until they are forced to escape the island when the girl is chosen as a holy maid to the gods. The second chapter, "Paradise Lost", depicts the couple's life on a colonised island and how they adapt to and are exploited by Western civilisation. The title comes from the Polynesian concept of tapu, from which is derived the English word "taboo".
Stuart Maxwell Whitman was an American actor, known for his lengthy career in film and television. Whitman was born in San Francisco and raised in New York until the age of 12, when his family relocated to Los Angeles. In 1948, Whitman was discharged from the Corps of Engineers in the U.S. Army and started to study acting and appear in plays. From 1951 to 1957, Whitman had a streak working in mostly bit parts in films, including When Worlds Collide (1951), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Barbed Wire (1952) and The Man from the Alamo (1952). On television, Whitman guest-starred in series such as Dr. Christian, The Roy Rogers Show, and Death Valley Days, and also had a recurring role on Highway Patrol. Whitman's first lead role was in John H. Auer's Johnny Trouble (1957).
Martin Elmer Johnson and Osa Helen Johnson were married American adventurers and documentary filmmakers. In the first half of the 20th century the couple captured the public's imagination through their films and books of adventure in exotic, faraway lands. Photographers, explorers, marketers, naturalists and authors, Martin and Osa studied the wildlife and peoples of East and Central Africa, the South Pacific Islands and British North Borneo. They explored then-unknown lands and brought back film footage and photographs, offering many Americans their first understanding of these distant lands.
Hell Divers is a 1932 American pre-Code black-and-white film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starring Wallace Beery and Clark Gable as a pair of competing chief petty officers in early naval aviation. The film, made with the cooperation of the United States Navy, features considerable footage of flight operations aboard the Navy's second aircraft carrier, the USS Saratoga, including dramatic shots of takeoffs and landings filmed from the Curtiss F8C-4 Helldiver dive bombers after which the movie was named.
James Patrick Hogan was an American filmmaker. The films Hogan directed include Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police (1939) and The Mad Ghoul (1943), his last film. He died from a heart attack aged 53.
The Lost World is a 1925 American silent fantasy giant monster adventure film directed by Harry O. Hoyt and written by Marion Fairfax, adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1951 American Southern Gothic drama film adapted from Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name. It is directed by Elia Kazan, and stars Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. The film tells the story of a Mississippi Southern belle, Blanche DuBois, who, after encountering a series of personal losses, seeks refuge with her sister and brother-in-law in a dilapidated New Orleans apartment building. The original Broadway production and cast was converted to film, albeit with several changes and sanitizations related to censorship.
Ontong Java Atoll or Luangiua is an atoll in Solomon Islands, and one of the largest atolls on earth.
The Lost World is a 1960 American fantasy adventure film directed by Irwin Allen, loosely based on the 1912 novel of the same name by Arthur Conan Doyle. Shot in De Luxe Color and CinemaScope, the film's plot revolves around the exploration of a plateau in Venezuela inhabited by cannibals, dinosaurs, carnivorous plants, and giant spiders. The cast includes Claude Rains, David Hedison, Fernando Lamas, Jill St. John, and Michael Rennie.
The Most Dangerous Game is a 1932 American pre-Code horror film, directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel, starring Joel McCrea, Fay Wray and Leslie Banks.
Tiffany Pictures, which also became Tiffany-Stahl Productions for a time, was a Hollywood motion picture studio in operation from 1921 until 1932. It is considered a Poverty Row studio, whose films had lower budgets, lesser-known stars, and overall lower production values than major studios.
The AFI Catalog of Feature Films, also known as the AFI Catalog, is an ongoing project by the American Film Institute (AFI) to catalog all commercially-made and theatrically exhibited American motion pictures from the birth of cinema in 1893 to the present. It began as a series of hardcover books known as The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures, and subsequently became an exclusively online filmographic database.
White Shadows in the South Seas is a 1928 American synchronized sound film adventure romance directed by W.S. Van Dyke and starring Monte Blue and Raquel Torres. It was produced by Cosmopolitan Productions in association with MGM and distributed by MGM. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the sound-on-film Western Electric Sound System process. Loosely based on the travel book of the same name by Frederick O'Brien. This film is important historically for being the first sound MGM film to be released as it featured a pre-recorded soundtrack. Clyde De Vinna won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
Found footage is a cinematic technique in which all or a substantial part of the work is presented as if it were film or video recordings recorded by characters in the story, and later "found" and presented to the audience. The events on screen are typically seen through the camera of one or more of the characters involved, often accompanied by their real-time, off-camera commentary. For added realism, the cinematography may be done by the actors themselves as they perform, and shaky camera work and naturalistic acting are routinely employed. The footage may be presented as if it were "raw" and complete or as if it had been edited into a narrative by those who "found" it.
"Goona-goona epic" refers to a particular type of native-culture exploitation film set in remote parts of the Far East, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and the South Pacific. These include documentaries and dramas, both of which rely heavily on travelogue and stock footage scenes of semi-nude native peoples performing exotic rituals and customs.
Jean Harlow was an American actress who made her uncredited debut in two 1928 films: Honor Bound for Fox Film; and Moran of the Marines for Paramount Pictures. While waiting for a friend at the studio in 1928, she was discovered by studio executives who gave her letters of introduction to casting agencies, where she was offered the two small roles that subsequently launched her film career. During the initial two years of her career, Harlow appeared uncredited in 16 films, including several Hal Roach productions developed for Laurel and Hardy. Her first speaking role was a bit part in the 1929 American pre-Code romantic comedy The Saturday Night Kid, starring Clara Bow and Jean Arthur. The film has since been preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Robby is a 1968 family film written and directed by Ralph C. Bluemke. It is a modern-day retelling of Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe in which the main characters are portrayed as children. The film deals with many themes, including friendship, homesickness, racial blindness and naturism.
The Hot Heiress is a 1931 American pre-Code comedy film directed by Clarence G. Badger and written by Herbert Fields, with three songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The film stars Ben Lyon, Ona Munson, Walter Pidgeon, Tom Dugan, Holmes Herbert and Inez Courtney. The film was released by Warner Bros. on March 28, 1931.
Valley of the Head Hunters is a 1953 adventure film directed by William Berke and starring Johnny Weissmuller in his eleventh appearance as Jungle Jim.