April 30th - Zorro's Black Whip: Tomb of Terror

April 30th - Zorro's Black Whip: Tomb of Terror

 

For my final day, probably like a lot of other bloggers doing the April Challenge, I had trouble finding something that actually started with Z. This is the one letter that I can't find any of in my collection, so I had to go out onto amazon to find a movie I could watch for free. I thought about watching Zoolander, but that would have cost me more than I probably would have gotten out of it, so instead I tried to pick a Zorro movie that didn't cost me anything. In doing so, I found this old "movie" which was the only Zorro movie available for free that actually started with a Z. This film serial is from way back in 1944 and is only 24 minutes long. I wasn't able to get a hold of the rest of the series, but it's only the second one so it won't spoil anything to talk about it.

 

For an old black and white film, I'm strangely enamored by the characters. I don't like that Zorro (or the Black Whip) is a white, but that doesn't really matter when he's able to beat the bad guys. Like any good Western, the fighting is not quite realistic enough that someone only gets 6 shots before they reload, but the hand to hand combat has the feel of actual brawling (even if they're not actually hitting each other). Some of the scenes with horses are obviously sped up to make it look like they're going faster, and I really think it helps make the fight scenes exciting.

 

SO, for a short film, there's actually a lot of work and money put into this film. While there's nothing remotely like a "Tomb of Terror" in this, the story it does portray seems fairly realistic for the time. So I know I've probably broke my own rules for doing this short for Z, but I genuinely liked it. Like Yokai Monsters, this movie actually had a coherent story with no gravity guns making loop holes in the plot. All in all, I'd give it a 3 out of 5.

All pictures from Google Images