Saturday article by R. Taylor
This is my first post to the faol forum so apologise if it is not in the appropriate
section , if not mods are invited to shift it.
Being familiar with the era Richard is referring to in his well written article
appearing on the home page this week, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
We are from different countries but was interesting to note how similar our
experiences of that era were.
Would just like to add a couple of other nostalgic comments if I may.
Back then, movie plots, were easy to understand, clearly defined, none
of the complicated double dealing conspiracies & not knowing who was who
of many of todays, movies. You were further assisted in this direction by
the fact that the goodies invariably wore white hats, the badies black &
those inbetween either beige or none at all. Of course badie or an informer
often infiltrated the goodies camp, initially unperceived by the goodies, which
was very puzzling to the juvenile audience to whom it was plainly obvious
as they were plainly identifyable due to wearing a black hat.
This fact of life, never seemed to occur to the goodies & no amount of
shouting to that factfrom the audience to enlighten, them seemed prompt
a revelation.
Indians of course wore feathers & NEVER won, which made you wonder why
they bothered.
Six shooters of course were capable of firing at least 15 or 20 shots without
reloading but if a baddie had run out of bullets, trying to escape the pursuring
hero. Usually having used them up firing at the hero 200 mtrs away with a
hand gun with a maximum effective range of 80 to 100 mtrs. Then of course
when their ammuntion was eventually expended the villian would look at the
weapon in disgust & throw it away.
Knocking someone unconcious with a pistol butt never split anyones skull or
caused more than a minute or so concussion which they completely recovered
from in no more than a minute or two & any resulting headache within seconds.
Flesh wounds to the hero merely need hot water & bandages by the heroine
to effect total recovery in 24hrs. a matter of hours.
The hero could if he wished shoot a pistol out of the hand of an opponent
without inflicting any discomfort that could not be cured with a mere shaking
of the wrist, accidents from richocets of course were unheard of back then.
In the entire history of the West no horse was EVER shot as apparently both
sides of any encounter were accurate enough to only hit their riders. This was
particularly amazing as Indians or bandits would chase a wagon or stage coach
suffering horrific casualties when merely shooting one horse in the team would
have brought the coach to a rapid halt.
But the most amazing thing of all is how the hero could be shot dead or plummet
over a cliff at the conclusion of the feature Saturday serial yet had the
miraculous abilty to recover before next Saturdays' episode none the worse for
the experience.
Ah, those were the days.
Would be nice if life now could ocassionally be as uncomplicated.
Cheers
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Originally Posted by WarrenP
Another big canard is the ability of a double barrel shotgun to lift a person off his feet and toss him ten feet through the air. Makes for dramatic (if gruesome) theater, but it just doesn't happen. Old or new, I love a good western, especially a well-done believable western. Alas, authenticity was never their stong suit.
