The Unexpected #4
I slot in a VHS tape of TOMBSTONE CANYON, a B-western starring Ken Maynard and Tarzan (Tarzan is his horse), and this is what I see, first image up? It was certainly unexpected from my point of view, and I felt I should share it.
Ah, right, yes, that’s much better. Puts the whole thing in context. Yes, I’m definitely no longer trying to claw my way backwards through the couch. I am wondering, however, why the World Wide Lady’s torso seems to extend straight down from her shoulders, maintaining a constant width, like a, well, tombstone with a head on top. And two large, er, globes.
Even though TOMBSTONE CANYON is, technically, a pre-coder (from 1932), nothing else about it suggests an era of license, or licentiousness. It’s a cute little B-western where everybody drawls slow and draws fast, but not as slow/fast as Ken Maynard. Of sex there is scarce a whisper. The logo stands alone in the desert, a big-boobed Ozymandias.
October 22, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Those look like massive tits…
October 22, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Wasn’t it Shelley who wrote ~
“Two vast and trunkless tits of stone
Stand in the desert.” ~?
October 22, 2010 at 1:32 pm
There’s massive, and then there’s World Wide.
October 22, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Reminds me of the shot of Sophia Loren in BOCCACCIO 70, as she holds up two strategically-placed watermelons!
I actually found this film weirdly homoerotic in tone, and loved its blend of Wetsern and Gothic horror. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?
October 22, 2010 at 1:59 pm
I recognized this precursor to Carol Doda, and she was the most precode thing about the film I saw as well.
October 22, 2010 at 2:49 pm
The watermelons were probably descendants of Jayne Mansfield’s milk bottles. Raquel Welch in The Four Musketeers is grabbed by a hand emerging from a stack of melons. She was quite clear what the symbolism was and objected, but they talked her round.
I’ve just been reading The Return of Bruce Wayne, where Batman is sent back in time. The western episode is a reminder of the fact that Batman is related to all those masked figures in old westerns, who are sometimes good like The Lone Ranger, and sometimes more sinister like the dude in Tombstone Canyon.
October 22, 2010 at 3:07 pm
To quote the Divine Miss M “How do you like THESE Golden Globes!”
October 22, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Somebody mention watermelons?!
October 22, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Aw, words make her happy! Although that’s actually, strictly speaking, wider than world wide, by a factor of two.
October 22, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Ken Maynard is also responsible for one of the loveliest moments in American song, “The Lone Star Trail,” which Harry Smith included on The Anthology of American Folk Music. You can listen to it here:
As for Batman time-traveling to the old west, the excellent Justice League Unlimited cartoon also did that in an episode called “The Once and Future Thing, Part 1: Weird Western Tales,” which co-stars many of the heroes DC Comics featured in its old Western comics, such as Bat Lash, “Pow-Wow” Smith, El Diablo, and Jonah Hex.
October 22, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Return of Bruce Wayne featured Hex, and also the preposterously named Vandal Savage, who’s been around since the stone age (Batman meets him there too).
At some point in the history of Batman’s backstory it was decided that, on the night his parents were killed, the Wayne family had all been to see a Zorro movie. Interestingly, since Batman is always 38 years old, the movie might originally have been Doug Fairbanks, but now it’d have to be George Hamilton in Zorro, The Gay Blade.
October 22, 2010 at 9:33 pm
I have lots of b-westerns and several Ken Maynards..but wow..I’ve never seen this logo before!..I’d like to see the UNIVERSAL plane try to weave in and out of those things..
October 22, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Wasn’t it Frank Miller who added the Zorro thing to Batman? Making it Ty Powers I suppose. Since he was old.
October 23, 2010 at 12:22 am
I think you’re probably right. Of course, The Dark Knight Returns doesn’t have a specific time-setting either, although it’s some kind of future…
In another ten years or so we’ll have to assume the Waynes were seeing the Hopkins-Banderas version.
October 23, 2010 at 3:54 am
The World Wide Lady reminds me of the joke about the well-endowed chorine trying to break into the vaudville circuit. The manager of the theatre asks her agent is she can sing or dance or take a pie in the face, and the agent shakes his head and says
“None of that.”
“So other than having sumo breasts,” says the manager, “what the hell does she do?”
“She comes out on all fours and tries to stand up straight.”
October 23, 2010 at 4:38 am
Here’s a link so you can get the full effect:
October 23, 2010 at 1:17 pm
“She fainted the other night and it took four men to carry her out. Two abreast.” — Albert Finney in Gumshoe.
Thanks, Zabby! Good name, by the way, sounds like a grizzled western sidekick — in space!
October 23, 2010 at 8:15 pm
LMAO…they twirl..shes happy..