Saturday, February 07, 2009

Ken Maynard Gets Shot At There Too! (Red Rock Canyon Series)

I totally forgot about this until I was e-mailing someone this week about this location. I was going to put up a video from this movie, but I think it is best just to show pictures on this one. This will give me a chance to explain one of my techniques I use in trying to find these types of locations. Someone may have wondered how in the world I knew where this area was from the last blog. This movie ended up being the key and not the last one.

This is from the movie called Tombstone Canyon (1932) with Ken Maynard. It is a really cheesy b-western, but it does do some good location work here. Our mysterious black clothed figure is getting ready for revenge over the cliff below.
Meanwhile Ken Maynard's character (this is probably his stunt double) is climbing up from below.

With the editing in the movie they switch to having them much higher up over another ledge. You see it from the distance. However, they switch to this area for close ups. You can tell they are just using the rock formation to the far right.


This is where Ken Maynard is shot at by the mysterious dark clothed figure. Below is one of the pictures from the last blog. To get a identical shot I would have to move over to my left a few feet. If you want you can compare with the other picture in that blog too, but this one should do the job.
I have driven by this area tons of times before, but I never had stopped here and walked around until about a year ago. When I come to a new area for the first time I usually walk around and take a bunch of pictures of the area. I try not to look for too many specifics. I just try to get the general feel for the area. When I come home I usually start doing the heavy work of comparing my pictures to movies.

This movie does a good job of showing you this area. It ended up being the key to finding the site and then I knew for sure where to go for the last blog. So, this ended up being a case of where seeing another movie ended up helping me find the location of another one. Then about six months later I ended up getting Schmidt's book which was further confirmation that I had the right area. I went back in October and filmed the area.

That is my typical strategy in that I take a bunch of "general" pictures, figure them out, and then come back at a later time. I can not do that all the time and I have other techniques I use if I know I will not be back, but this is one of them.

You are most likely to see Tombstone Canyon in a dvd set called Creepy Cowboys: Four Weird Westerns. They make it seem like it is some sort of horror western movie set with the packaging, but it is not. Believe me, you will end up laughing more at these movies than anything. The four movies are really cheap with this movie being the "best" of the bunch which is not saying much. Really, the menu on each dvd is the only thing cool about them. I really would suggest you rent this off of netflix if you really want to see it because it really is not worth your money.

If you want to go the free route then check these links out:

Internet Archives Version

or

The Youtube Version

Finally, this is another b-western that uses the typical George Lucas Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker type of confrontation. I have mentioned this before, but there are so many b-westerns that have used this formula. In fact, at the end there are some words that are almost the same as what is said at the end of Return of the Jedi.

Where Reagan Was Shot (Youtube Version)

Where Reagan Was Shot (Vimeo Version)