Here is a film or TV still that I am trying to identify that was unlabeled in a book. I believe it is a swashbuckler set roughly in the 1600s. One man is stabbing another man who resembles actor Gilbert Roland, but I’m not positive that it really is him. It might be a pirate film, but an examination of the background will show that this particular scene occurs on land within the walls of a fortress. (Gilbert Roland appeared in both The Sea Hawk and Captain Kidd, but I have viewed both films and can rule them out.) The book was published in 1965, so the film/TV episode must definitely predate that. Note that the picture appears as it was printed in the book and it may or may not have been reversed as if by a mirror.
This must be the worst movie book ever. Are none of these images even referred to in the text? What about the index?
I’m kind of curious about this entire series of questions by SIMresearcher, too. Not that there’s any problem with what he’s asking, it’s just that the project is kind of mysterious. And if he publishes the result of whatever research he’s conducting, will we get a plug for helping out? 😉
The problem with the book, titled “Sadism in the Movies,” is that it is a poorly made American edition of a well made French book. I bought this book about 40 years ago by mail order, sight unseen, at a discounted price. There is NO index and the pages in the picture gallery that follows the text are not even numbered. (I had to pencil in the additional page numbers myself.) The print quality of the photos is pretty poor and some are even printed backwards. The original French text was poorly translated and some sentences don’t even make sense. None of the pictures are captioned. The only redeeming thing about the book, was that it had a lot of interesting and obscure film stills. In fact the American publishers added their own photos to double the number in the French edition. Some of the stills were referred to in the text, but naturally only those that were in the original French edition.
Over the years I was able to identify a bunch of the stills myself, either from seeing the actual films or from pictures in movie books and magazines. I also had the help of my friends and relatives. With the advent of the internet, the IMDb, and reverse image searching, I was able to make even more progress.
Last year, I found a used copy of the original French edition on eBay and on looking at the sample pictures that were posted, I was surprised to see that the pictures in this edition WERE labeled. So I bought the book and discovered that the pictures were also much better in quality and printed on glossy paper. With this book I was able to identify all but about 18 out of the 263 pictures.
Since I was this close, I decided to try to get some help in identifying these last few and I found this very promising website. I decided to scan in ALL the pictures in the American edition and an internet acquaintance graciously allowed me to post them in their own gallery within his website.
So that’s the lowdown on the book.
Try Douglas Fairbanks Sr. instead – don’t know which film though.
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/two-pirates-sword-fighting-the-black-pirate-stock-video-footage/84558527
In answer to irtmadmin: I don’t know why it seems so mysterious. I just wanted to satisfy my own curiosity about these pictures that I’ve been wondering about for the past 40 years. I scanned in ALL the pictures and I posted them in a freely accessible gallery with accompanying identifications mostly for the benefit of other owners of this shoddily made book, but everyone is free to browse. Nothing is going to be published and I have no plans to somehow profit from this project.
After I’ve posted the queries about the last unidentified pictures on the IRTM website, I will ask the administrator of the SIM gallery to update it with my new information and I can ask him to add an acknowledgement for the help that I have received from this and other websites.
I am happy that so far I have managed to have 2 mystery pictures solved by users of your website and I have obtained some possible clues to others. So thanks a lot to you for allowing me to post my queries and also to anyone who has attempted to identify any of these pictures, whether or not they were successful.
(I’ve also tried to help solve some of the other user’s queries, but by the time I figure one out, someone else has always beaten me to the punch.)
Thanks. it’s not mysterious once we know the story about the book.
“I am happy that so far I have managed to have 2 mystery pictures solved by users of your website….”
One of those two has yet to be marked solved. (Ahem!) I seem to recall someone posting about this oversight recently in Endless chat.
Fixed now. But in the future don’t be coy, just say, “you need to mark this one Solved, dummy.”
Yes, Cotopaxi, there is also a resemblance to Douglas Fairbanks Sr., but when I examined the stills and posters from his swashbucklers, I couldn’t find a match in costumes. Also, Mr. Fairbanks was usually playing the hero in his films and his character survived in the end. It appears to me that the mystery man in the photo was the recipient of a fatal wound.
It could be that the mystery man was only an uncredited extra and he therefore won’t help us in identifying the movie.
Interestingly, when I did a TinEye reverse image search, I came up with the cover for a 1969 French pirate adventure comic book, “La Fin du Faucon noir” (The End of Black Falcon). The man who did the artwork for the cover obviously used this still as a basis for his painting. Here is a link to the cover:
http://i2.cdscdn.com/pdt2/7/5/8/1/700×700/9782205003758/rw/barbe-rouge-t-9-la-fin-du-faucon-noir.jpg
For unknown reasons, over the years the link to the picture seems to have disappeared. I am providing the link again in case anyone is still interested. (Comment if it doesn’t work.)
http://bcotd.com/Sadism_in_the_Movies_stills_identification_project/Sadism%20in%20the%20Movies,%20p310.jpg
(The photo that the link brings up is safe for work, but there are other pages on this website that are not, and so the entire site may be blocked by some firewalls.)