A Great Family Film

I grew up in South Florida and every year we went to Disney World in Orlando. This was necessary because I had worn out my coonskin cap that I had bought the year before. I was absolutely enthralled by Davy Crockett the man and the character as played by Fess Parker. My friends and I used to reenact the battle of the Alamo using the brick wall that stuck out from out house. I even had an Old Betsy replica rifle. Good times.

This movie is a hoot. Despite some of the overacting (Jeff York and Buddy Ebsen) the movie has a certain charm. Davy and his buddy, Georgie, are trying to get down to New Orleans to sell pelts they've skinned. They cross paths with riverboat captain, the boisterous Mike Fink, who attempts to extort money from for passage. Instead, the pair charter a different boat and a river race to New Orleans ensues. Along the way there are fist fights, gun fights, drinking, sinking, and danger (as far as Disney will allow).

I really loved the previous serial, "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier", but that ended with Davy's heroic death. This gives new life to the character and has a happy ending. The dialogue is a bit stilted and the stunts are kind of lame even by the day's standards, but this was just good clean fun. The early scene of Georgie, drunk and swinging on the chandelier, was pretty funny. Fink's character, while acted over the top by Jeff York, is a likeably curmudgeon. It was also good to see that even in the 1950s, people were starting to realize how crappy the US treated the Indians. The subplot about a band of whites pretending to be Indians and attacking boats along the river was pretty forward thinking for the time.

Fess Parker so epitomized Crockett for me that I still can't watch any other iterations of the character (John Wayne, Bill Bob Thorton) without comparing them to Parker.

Take some time and enjoy these old movies because Disney doesn't make these home spun films anymore.


My memory foam pillow says it can't remember my face. I can tell its lying.