Believe It or Not (Second Series) #1

Believe It or Not (Second Series) #1 (1931)

** (out of 4)

The first entry in the second group of twelve shorts from Ripley is a rather strange one. It actually plays out more like the upcoming MGM TravelTalks series. Here Ripley goes to Africa and the "Holy Land" where he tells us about various strange things that go on there. We're told that men wear veils, one woman was blinded due to looking at another woman's husband, a cliff where husbands put their wives into bags and throw them off the sides and another cheerful story of a special stone where people rub their tongues against until they bleed. This was the first episode I had seen from this second series and it's certainly a lot different. It's hard to say if that's good or bad but this first entry certainly is weird enough to be slightly entertaining. None of the stories are all that interesting on their own but while watching then you will be fascinated just by asking yourself why they decided to include that story in a film. None of the video footage has any sound as it's just Ripley and his narration. We also get to see the original Olive Tree.

Robert Riley heads off to Africa, where he shows us unveiled Tuareg women, a building built to house a hair from Mohammed's beard, and other unlikely oddities in the first entry in his second series of shorts from Vitaphone.

Ripley began as a sports cartoonist. He published his first BELIEVE IT OR NOT cartoon on 18 December, 1918, and it became a regular weekly feature. Although Ripley died in 1949 at the age of 59, his series remains in syndication to the current day under the authorship of Kieran Castaño.

In this short, Ripley narrates with a flat voice in a dogged manner that seems boring to me, but I'm sure contemporary audiences must have enjoyed it.

In this installment of Robert Ripley and his Believe it or Not films, you see him take a journey to the Muslim world--including North Africa, the Middle East and Turkey. Much of this strange, new material is taken for granted today and some of it seems of dubious authenticity. Much of it centers on the Muslim world's mistreatment of women--and some of this, including blinding women and tossing others off cliffs sounded apocryphal to me. Additionally, you see a place which claims that the first shot of World War I was fired there (complete with a plaque). However, I did some checking and no one seems in agreement about this, as many places claim to be the first and historians have no definitive consensus. Overall, a reasonably interesting film but one that seemed a bit naive and patronizing as well.

Robert L. Ripley travels throughout Northern Africa and declares much of the Muslim world very strange. Of course, the first strangeness is the veil. The blinding in Sudan is a bit too happy. Some of this is really interesting. Some of it is silly like capturing thieves with their own turban. In a pinch, I can see being done, but it is just silly.

I'm not saying that this is the be all and end all about the Muslim world. It is interesting to see this world through the eyes of a western presenter from that time. I expect his audience to be completely clueless and this is all very fascinating to them.