Pippi Longstocking, No. 4 - Pippi On the Run (1970)

I’ve just realized the last four movies I’ve watched have been G-rated. You don’t see that too often anymore (they’d be rated PG nowadays, purely because they’re live action).

There’s a surprising amount variety in the Pippi Longstocking film franchise, considering its origins – a reedited Swedish/German single-series TV program. We’ve had reasonably tight plots (Pippi in the South Seas) and wildly scattershot efforts (Pippi Goes on Board). There’s even a question if today’s final Pippi entry, Pippi on the Run, is actually the third or fourth movie – It was released third in 1975 , but presumably made fourth in the overall 1970 TV context…and it’s the only Pippi that doesn’t share a title with one of Astrid Lindgren’s novels. Curiously, it sort of splits the difference between the divergent South Seas and Goes on Board, perhaps meant (as the final TV entry) to cater to fans of either previous approach. So Pippi on the Run has a coherent through-line, but functions by stream of consciousness on a moment-by-moment basis.

(Stupidly, I sent the disc back to Netflix before remembering to take screen caps. What follows is my sad effort to correct that oversight in some small way. I think I got the date wrong in my “title card.”)


After the great setting experiment of South Seas, we’re back at Pippi’s home of Villa Villekulla…The film shall not move too far afield of readily available Swedish-German settings, though it sorta follows South Seas’ adventure story format, with a marked de-emphasis (read: complete absence) of secondary characters from Pippi Longstocking and Pippi Goes on Board.

Pippi Longstocking (Inger Nilsson, now a secretary in Stockholm) pounds clamorously upon her dishware, like “Stomp” or whatever, aided by her bested buddies/henchmen ever, the Settergren siblings Tommy and Annika (Pär Sundberg and Maria Persson). So far, so random, the sort of motiveless Pippi I most fear. But the Settergrens’ parents shall put a stop to this, seeing as their children have had far more merriment in their life than the socialist Swedish state usually allows. Sorrow, anger, and existentialist mourning is expressed – come on, it’s a Swedish film! Then the three children come to the mutual conclusion, in their infinite wisdom, on how to resolve this latest bout with traditional Scandinavian ennui.

They shall run away from home!

This forms the basis for the rest of the “narrative,” and at least “the random adventures of three emancipated minors” is more cohesion than Goes on Board’s “whatever scene remained on the cutting room floor – that’ll fill out a movie series!”


They leave on the horse, abandoning the monkey, reversing South Seas’ monkey-taking horse-abandonment. (Pippi owns both a horse and a monkey, just like this one guy I know in L.A.) Because the film series as a whole views unfettered childhood as being a mixture of skipping and tuneless singing, the children now skip and sing a tuneless tune – “Wake Up, You Lazy Bones.” My childhood was silly and loco and all, but I did it without such merriment, thank you. And once again the series forces me to think of Ingmar Bergman, even when I’d rather not, for the kids happen upon a patch of wild strawberries – What is it with Sweden and wild strawberries?! No matter, they eat the strawberries. It’s probably symbolic.

Night filter steadily closing in, the trio must rush to find shelter for the “night.” They discover a rancid old farmhouse that suddenly reminds me of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (uh oh!), and go right on in. And you know, every genre, every single film, has its agenda. Whereas a more adult flick would always stack the narrative deck to show, say, the harshness of existence, or whatever Sweden stands for, this kid’s flick shows creepy old farmhouses inhabited by aimless bearded transients are as whimsical as anyplace else. For indeed here is a completely trustworthy transient, Konrad (Hasse Alfredson, a Swedish comedian, if you buy that, apparently known for his ability to “extemporize wildly absurd comic situations”). This man loves little children, but in a good way, you know.


Upping Konrad’s trustworthiness considerably, he’s also an itinerant peddler – of Konrad’s Super-Gluer, a Nickelodeon-esque green slime capable of doing whatever the plot next demands. My God, it’s Flubber! Pippi instantly uses said goo to perform the sort of rotating-room routine seen in Royal Wedding, or Inception (or A Nightmare on Elm Street – Why do I insist on referencing horror movies?!). Shortly after the dance, and the desecration of Konrad’s beard, everyone beds down for the night. Annika, that endlessly anal and self-loathing little Swedish girl, insists repeatedly that everyone wash behind their ears – Does it even get dirty back there?!

Countering Annika’s persistent depression, brother Tommy is eternally beset by the sort of hysterical guffawing mostly associated with potheads, usually directed at Pippi’s latest shenanigan. What’s odd about this, though, is, er, Pär Sundberg’s performance. As a Swede, naturally he’s never personally observed true, real-life jollity, and yet he’s asked to replicate it on film. Frankly, it looks like the poor boy is in extreme pain, as though passing a kidney stone. That’s laughter in Northern Europe for ya!

Night passes, represented by scads of nature documentary footage of owls and frogs, mice and foxes. In fact, pleasant and unassuming nature docs fill out much of On the Run (and really, the series as a whole). This continues throughout the film, as we stand marvel to the greatest wildlife Sweden has to offer – kittens and piglets and chicks and such.


That day, again wandering aimlessly through the woods (horse having been unceremoniously abandoned some point back), the children happen upon a barrel, and are beset by the same sort of brainwave as the “Jackass” guys. That is, Pippi boards the barrel, then rolls down a cliff, a river, a waterfall, et cetera. Thus she and the Settergrens are separated, left to search the woods and barely miss each other, sort of like The Navigator – too obscure? And Annika, being Annika, grows horrified at the prospect that this forest is inhabited by nature documentary footage!

One terror-filled night later, and the siblings have reached a nearby town. Let’s start squeezing the moral into the story, shall we? They start to grow homesick – it’s not as hammered-home as a Hollywood production would make it, but the message is clear. Annika in particular misses her favorite food in the whole wide world – cabbage! I know Europeans slurp on cabbage with abandon, but seriously?!


Then they collide with Pippi, who has somehow coaxed a half-bicycle into being a hoverboard from Back to the Future Part II. It crashes, Wile E. Coyote style, the very instant realist nebbish Annika points out such acts are impossible. What a cabbage-loving killjoy!

Beset by days-long hunger, the children resort to their final option – begging. This is a kid’s fantasy! (Swedish.) Apparently, in Sweden (or Germany), if you dance in front of a person’s window, that person will hurl change at you. Makes those listless bums here in Chicago seem even more worthless, don’t it?

Then they buy food. Tommy channels Jakes Blues, and eats whole fried chicken. Annika dines on (you guessed it) delicious cabbage. Mmm!


Spitting in the face of Death rather less literally than in Seventh Seal, the kids leap onto a moving train, riding the roof, India-style. The train passes by mountainous heaps of nature documentaries. Then Pippi peers into a train compartment, causing an old lady to faint (or die of a heart attack, either way).


Tiring of the train, they all leap off in motion onto a nearby hay cart. An action movie would make a big deal of this, but not a kid’s flick! Thus they secretly hitch a ride to a farm, the lair of Sulky Farmer (Walter Richter). Here’s a chance of satisfy the guttural demands of Germanic television, and cast several strangely pale German children as farmhands. I know they’re German, partly through Internet research, and partly because they’re eating dirt. “Borrowing” an idea from Charles Schultz, one especially filthy and Teutonic tot is even called “Pigsty” – it ain’t exactly “Pigpen,” I guess.

Our trio of noble Swedish youths spends the night in the hayloft, doing as children are wont to do and trading swear words with their German counterparts. Annika, of all freaking people, knows the worst swear of ‘em all! Lest we think they’re holding back, Pippi goes and shrieks it out the barn window: “SHUT YOUR DAMN COTTON PICKIN’ MOUTH!” It’s not too dirty, but I think it’s vaguely racist.

Pippi’s saves Pigsty’s life from rampaging doc footage of a bull, in a pastiche of a bullfight. To my pleasure, this means Spanish horns on the soundtrack! Just like a spaghetti western! In thanks, Sulky Farmer gifts Pippi her very own junky jalopy.


Pippi doesn’t merely get the heap to run, she gets it to fly – through a powerful combination of rainwater, pure grain alcohol, precious bodily fluids, and Konrad’s Super-Gluer – See, Flubber? Also, I think there’s a bit of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in here. Oh, and the car can also fly because Pippi flaps her arms, and believes it can fly. Yes, in children’s films, if you simply beliiiiiieeeeeve hard enough, and say it in a constipated voice, you can achieve anything! What the hell kind of a message is this anyway?! It’s making people lazy!

The almighty glue runs low, farting out of the exhaust pipe like so much Taco Bell; childlike faith in the impossible is also flagging (I blame Annika). At any rate, the jalopy splashes down without consequence in a lake. And when the randomly flowing narrative has deposited you here, you swim! With a rather undue amount of child nudity, I might add. But that nudity serves a purpose, beyond satisfying another bizarre demand of Germanic television standards: a cow eats the Settergrens’ clothes. (Pippi, in her acumen, has never disrobed.)

With this setback, the Settergrens clothe themselves in itchy potato sacks. Then it’s back to begging shamelessly, in hopes the same homeowners will hurl clothing out their windows. Horribly, the children excuse their lack of clothing by claiming to be Turkish. Is that a common Turkish stereotype – nudity?! Okay, sure, their baths…still…And, sure, their prisons too…Still, it’s not like they’re that poor or anything.


Pippi performs a tightrope act, represented immaculately in the above image. This earns them their money for clothing, and a brief run-in with a poliskonstapel. But no matter, for the movie is coming to an end, and Annika’s laments are gaining greater prominence. That means they shall decide to head home, and give up their lives as travelling Turks.

Rather than joy, the children’s journey home is conveyed with the sort of bleakness I’ve never experienced firsthand. It’s this moment, more than any other, which I dearly wish I’d captured in a cap; my chicken scratch cannot substitute, so here’s the image that most closely conveys the dreariness these Swedes find themselves in:


Now they’re home, reunited with parents (and more importantly, horse). With the overall series narrative having progressed not a scad, but having provided momentary delight nonetheless, the Settergren siblings curl up in bed, say their prayers and bid us a fond farewell…

Then Pippi flies outside their window on a broomstick, cackling incessantly. She’s a witch! BURN HER!

These four Pippi Longstocking movies count as a franchise (only barely) for their brief theatrical release in the U.S. Still, they’re best remembered, in Sweden and the U.S. both, as TV programs! For following their theatrical run, U.S. TV stations re-reedited these movies-from-a-TV-show into a TV show. It is this, unseen by me, which ran through the ‘70s and ‘80s, and defined most American’s nostalgia for the series.

That was the end of the Pippi we’re here to consider, but it wasn’t the end of her media treatment. The Soviets were the next to respond, via questionable legality, with a 1982 made-for-TV movie, Peppi Dlinnyychulok. And man, if the Swedish entries occasionally dabble in depression, I can only imagine what the Commies could produce!

The Americans are not ones to let a potentially profitable franchise pass by without at least some input of their own – even beyond their redistribution of the Swedish stuff. So in 1985, a two-parter “Pippi” portion of the “ABC Weekend Special” was produced.

I’m stalling…None of that matters in light of the Hollywood Pippi, 1988’s The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking. This is a new adaptation of the original novel, totally unrelated to any previous filmed versions. And because Pippi’s literary, this isn’t the sort of remake which has any bearing on our investigation. I shall not be watching it.

Yeah, yeah, Nelvana made an animated TV show, simply called “Pippi Longstocking.”

Lamentably missing from this latter stock of Pippi pics is an aborted effort from master animator Hayao Miyazaki, of My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away fame. Just picture how well he could’ve expressed pure, unfiltered childlike glee! I cannot imagine a more perfect director for this material, and it’s only a question of Miyazaki’s position in Japan circa 1971 that prevented us this version.

And that’s it for Pippi, a rather bizarre footnote in the overall scheme of things – though she’s got herself a Swedish postage stamp…so there’s that.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Pippi Longstocking (1969)
• No. 2 Pippi Goes on Board (1969)
• No. 3 Pippi in the South Seas (1970)

Pippi Longstocking, No. 3 - Pippi in the South Seas (1970)

Steeling myself and preparing for the worst, I pop another Pippi Longstocking DVD into the player…

But saints be praised, this one isn’t merely bearable, it’s good, and it has a plot! With conflict! The first Pippi Longstocking film in the series, Pippi Longstocking, could get along without a plot, since it was an introduction (and a slice-of-life). The second, Pippi Goes on Board (or maybe this is the second – it’s confused) had no excuse, though. It was more random than an episode of “Family Guy.” It’s basically the worst thing you’d picture when told of a Swedish public television kid’s show reedited and dubbed for U.S. theatrical distribution. But Pippi in the South Seas, it takes the promise in Astrid Lindgrin’s original Pippi Longstocking and does something with it. This entry is so much more disciplined, narratively, I’m shocked it’s by the same people.

Also, it has pirates.

On top of having a plot (and villains), Pippi in the South Seas is notable for one other thing – emotional resonance. It wholly focuses on the relationship between Pippi Longstocking (Inger Nilsson) and her Papa, Captain Efraim Longstocking (Beppe Wolgers, noted Swedish translator) – a relationship which was entirely missing from Pippi Goes on Board, yet another of its detriments. And in this endlessly feather-light children’s franchise, Pippi and Papa ground things more thoroughly than any halfhearted realism or the “audience surrogate” Settergren siblings.

Things seem at first to be following the standard Pippi rule of randomness, with Pippi floating around in a bed hoisted by her hot air balloon, as Tommy and Annika (Pär Sundberg and Maria Persson) come over to visit, their parents on vacation. But let us not fret, for Pippi is already well underway detailing her family’s piratical pastimes, with talk of a treasure she herself helped bury, once belonging to her grandfather, the dread Pirate Unspellable. Then her bed falls apart.


Pippi promptly finds a message in a bottle, and our story is off! Papa Efraim, as flashbacks reveal, has been kidnapped by evil pirates (unlike his fun-loving self), and is being held in a tall tower until they can extricate info on his buried treasure. Well, no hour and a half of disconnected scenes for this flick, for it’s off to the rescue!

Yup, this is an adventure story, told from a child’s point of view. That means many good things: It takes place in whole new settings, suggesting a rather substantial budget for this government-funded work of Swedish TV. The budget’s clearly not too huge, as evidenced by the cheap and makeshift special effects on display, but that’s part of the charm. It evinces the sort of consistent (yet clearly artificial) fantasy universe I’d hazard inspired the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (that is, if that 1971 film had access to the original Swedish TV show, since the actual film wasn’t put out until 1974, apparently). This is another one of South Seas’ triumphs: its magical realism. This was already present in previous Pippis, but removed from Pippi’s tiresome hometown, it seems more apropos, more imaginative, and far, far less crammed full of stifling whimsy. And being away from that hometown is doubly good, since it means most of the series’ regular adults are not to be seen.

There’s something else marvelous about the adventure story framework: Tommy and Annika have no choice now but to cease being ciphers. No longer are they simply anthropomorphized reaction shots; now they have individual personalities. Like in any good three man band, we have Pippi the leader, Tommy the stupid but gung-ho lackey, and Annika the realist who is always getting shot down. That makes her far more interesting than Annika the depressive and angst-ridden Swede.


So off these three children sail, on their balloon-hoisted bed, ready to make the 2,000 mile trek to the South Seas. Logic is not an issue here, in that perfect way of childhood, ‘cause we cannot let it taint the fantasy. Of course, that a bottled message would unerringly reach Pippi in the first place…

(There’s a possibility this whole story is merely make believe, but raising such questions is to disbelieve and misinterpret the childlike intent of the tale.)

Soon enough Pippi’s balloon has run out of air and deposited them on some mountaintop. This is but a minor setback for three imaginative and enterprising youths, for while an adult may see the nearby junkyard wasteland as an isolated hell, Pippi sees it as an opportunity. An opportunity to fashion a rickety steampunk airplane out of boxes, driven by a bicycle pedal. Soon they’re back on their way, flying through the air!


And flying through a volcano!


Meanwhile, Papa is pondering his imprisonment and pirate parrot persecution. We’ll be joining him whenever the movie needs a narrative cutaway. The two villainous pirate captains, Jocke med Kniven (Martin Ljung) and Blod-Svente (Jarl Borssén), continuously trouble Papa about the treasure, to little effect. As villains in a Pippi Longstocking movie, they are none too effective, but unlike the crooks we’ve seen before, they’re at least somewhat of a threat. Considering the past narratives, it’s amazing these filmmakers were comfortable with clear cut bad guys.

But to undercut their threat somewhat, we instantly see the Pirate Captains (What, you think I’m bothering to write out their insane Swedish names each time?) training for defense, all in preparation for than inevitable scourge, Pippi Longstocking (shudder!).

That scourge, meanwhile, has drifted her less-than-sound aircraft onto an isolated island paradise – with lions. Such wildlife shall offer little threat to our prepubescent heroes, as the cats are represented primarily in the form of culled nature doc footage. And while we get several minutes of Pippi’s gang existing in pure “Gilligan” mode, it never feels like an intrusive non sequitur, as in the past films – because the narrative structure of such an adventure tale allows for picaresque episodes. As long as the characters persist, the plot needn’t be airtight.


And just when we’re pondering how they’re gonna get off that island (Pippi has a raft-building book, and is openly considering the Jack Sparrow method), a pirate ship appears in the cove – ah, The Curse of the Black Pearl, I see where you’ve been stealing from! This crazy new set of pirate-neutrals, led by the fearless One-Eyed Oscar (Alfred Schieske), makes berth just as – Pippi et al steal away in their ship. Pippi’s spurious logic, moral relativist that she is, justifies that these random pirates as least have their rowboats. Just as in the equally plagiaristic Muppet Treasure Island, expect this one-off gag to become an extended callback.

The children sail into the sunset, as the movie wholly embraces the childhood fantasy of pirates divorced from their historical realities – not a complaint. It turns out, against all reason, that this film is something of a musical. Okay, sure, we’ve had that “Pippi Longstocking Theme” bellowed at us incessantly for all three pictures so far, usually sung by Pippi herself in full self-narrator mode. Oh, and she (or her redubbed voice) even sings it LOUD, in a way that neither my television’s speaker system nor my ears are happy with.

(“I am Pippi Longstocking. / When you say it fast, it’s funny. / Pippi Pippi Longstocking. / Don’t you love to hear my name?”).

Still, this movie feels the need to add in occasional new songs. What is with this compulsion for children’s films to make pirate movies into musicals?! Hilariously, the dub’s translators don’t seem equipped to respond to this problem; they do rephrase the first few new songs, but after about halfway, we start hearing everything in Swedish. Ah, laziness. I can relate.

Halfway through, and Pippi has reached the port town where her Papa is kept (by unerring inner compass, combined with childlike fantasta-logic). Considering how terrified the Pirate Captains are of Pippi Longstocking (a name which sends a chill up the heartiest spine), I expect the rescue section shan’t take too long. Then it’ll be a Third Act to recover the buried treasure, right?...Right?

In what I’d call South Seas’ greatest misjudgment, the remaining majority of the film shall concern Papa’s rescue, leaving a mere 10 minutes at the end for treasure hunting. It’s the same plot I’d expect, really, but it seems somewhat disproportioned. This means the latter half drags, but then again, I’ve been spoiled with my 62 minute Charlie Chan movies, which would just be ending around now.


Of course, it’s always possible to fill up a nearly interminable amount of minutes with time-honored pirate clichés. One of those clichés, available on a budget, is the pirate tavern. This is where Pippi goes next, seeking info on Papa’s whereabouts. The many, many grown men skip about unerringly, singing a chantey full of the vague “Yo hos” the translators replaced Swedish lyrics with. Then, in regular dialogue, one pirate says something so incomprehensible, it too is left in the original Swedish. And you know, the original movie’s good enough, I could care less how awful the translation is – it’s like Drunken Master!

The Pirate Captains arrive, they of the greatest Pippi-terror known to mankind. Still, somehow they do not recognize this freckled redhead girl with the sideways ponytails – Who else could it be?! And just like when you act scared in front of a pit-bull, their sudden horror when Pippi reveals herself (through song) prompts her to torment all the adult men with a deadly long-sword. Non-graphically, of course, and non-fatally.


Despite her clear mastery over the baddie brigade en masse, Pippi is soon on the run, as it were, in a foot chase filled with wonderful cartoon logic. And still, in all the danger, the three children skip! It’s their main mode of locomotion, an odd and distancing form of glee that’s best left behind in the other Pippi pics.

In all this chaos, Pippi has learned where Papa is – the prison cells (NO! – sarcasm). Thus they break into the central fort, accomplished all Trojan-like within three separate cannons. Then the Pirate Captains consider testing said cannons in anticipation for the final deadly standoff. Thus Pippi & Co. sneak out and hide in a nearby well, taking a hint from the Disneyland ride.

Night falls, and scores of lazy, terrified Scandinavian South Seas pirates sing a song as they fall into sleep. I cannot decipher the lyrics, as it’s in Swedish, but given my familiarity with this nation’s cinema, it most reminds me of the flagellants in Seventh Seal. That’s happy Swedish kid’s entertainment for ya! And as they sleep, the children creep over their prone, grog-deadened Swedish husks, like Woody and the Cheetos in Toy Story 2.

Ultimately Pippi is able to sneak her way into Papa’s tall tower, for the heartfelt reunion. You’d think, considering the story’s internal logic, that she could easily best the Pirate Captains when they then arrive to check in on Papa, and the escape will be affected! You don’t think like Pippi, then. She hides, which is as nonsensical as if Superman did it (she even has Superman’s icy breath, as of this entry, to compliment her superstrength). That rescue shall have to wait for a while, since Papa has an even more important task for Pippi to fulfill first. He’s hungry, and he wants Pippi to sneak him food in his cell. (Papa’s fat, you see.)


When the Pirate Captains discover Papa’s secret food, and learn of their Pippi infestation, they proceed to move him from the tallest tower to the deepest dungeon. Oh, my dear pirate friends, you’ve played right into Pippi’s devious trap!

Or so I think. Here are Pippi, Tommy and Annika loitering funkily upon the beach, tossing rocks. Careful, guys, you’re edging into directionless Pippi Goes on Board territory here! But the gods of plot momentum respond, in the form of another bottled Papa message – Man, those things are more efficient than texting! So now that Pippi knows Papa’s in the dungeon, she shall finally go and freaking rescue him the only way you can in movie climaxes – with explosives!


Making a long and ridiculous story short, now that Pippi’s set her mind to it, Papa’s rescue is as easy as Swedish meatballs. Pausing briefly so that Pippi can go all Donkey Kong and hurl barrels at pirates, she, Papa, and those two somewhat useless other children can all sail off in One-Eyed Oscar’s pilfered pirate vessel.

Now they’re off to retrieve the buried treasure, but so are the Pirate Captains. See, in their final moments of pre-Pippi peace, those masterminds were at long last able to torture the info out of Papa’s corpulent gourd – he’s ticklish, it turns out. So now it’s a race to buried treasure, with…nothing in particular hanging in the balance. Except the good guys deserve the treasure more, apparently, by dint of their being the good guys.

The treasure, by the way, is on another desert island, inside this really interesting multi-colored drug cave which we really should’ve spent more time in.


As Pippi and her two loyal droogs divvy up the loot on the beach, the notorious Pirate Captains near in their ship, actually equating themselves with chickenhawks…Oh – oh my dear. That’s…something the translators ought to have altered (I’d bet it means different things in Sweden).

There is a final conflict concerning possession of the treasure, involving a few more parties than I have the energy to explain right now. Suffice it to say, this is the moment where One-Eye Oscar makes his grand reentry, and a bunch of maroons are there too. It all pans out, of course, with Pippi in possession of the gold, and the baddies now marooned on the island with its unspellable Scandinavian name. Pippi’s left them with her raft-building book, though, and here the translators do manage to work in a good gag of their own: the book’s title is in Swedish, and our English-speaking villains cannot speak Swedish. That’s comeuppance for ya, combined with a funky interpretation of the translation convention!

As the film ends, Pippi and Papa resolve to go their separate ways (again), Pippi to return to her home at Villa Villekulla, everything back to normal. It’s originally a TV show, remember, so there’s decent justification for the snapback.

So, what are my main complaints? It drags a little, and the sound mix on the DVD is overwhelming. That’s not much of a problem, considering Pippi in the South Seas does everything I thought this series should do. A child of a sufficiently low-tech mindset (that is, one who doesn’t need farting CGI Chihuahuas to be happy) could appreciate this, though I’d say it’s a bit outside of my target demographic. Still, on an intellectual level I can see the film’s value – sadly, I lack true nostalgia for this series. And with Astrid Lindgren writing, I’d wager most of the success here not having to do with the production design or Inger Nilsson has to do with her original novel. And that’s a classic of children’s literature – so I’m told.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Pippi Longstocking (1969)
• No. 2 Pippi Goes on Board (1969)
• No. 4 Pippi on the Run (1970)

Pippi Longstocking, No. 2 - Pippi Goes on Board (1969)

First up, let us clear up a little confusion. The Netflix sleeve this thing came is cites it as the last Pippi Longstocking movie in the series…I’m counting it as the second, following both the almighty Wikipedia, as well as the logic which dictates the second film released would coincide with the second “Pippi Longstocking” novel. The source of this confusion, of course, is how the Pippi pictures were produced – first as a TV series in 1969 and 1970, then released theatrically in the U.S. over some vague period of time in the following half decade. Well, curse it all, this may have been put out second or last or whenever in the U.S., but I’m pretty sure those Swedes made it second – and that’s what counts…Right?

Whatever, the movie’s copyright is 1975, so…Everyone’s right!


Actually, the opening scenes of Pippi Goes on Board feature the entire closing sequence of Pippi Longstocking, providing us the entire emotional arc of that flick, no matter how little it affects the proceedings this time around. Still, it turns a 75 minute movie into a 79 minute movie, and stretches your 13 TV episodes a bit more over four movies.

Now, Pippi Goes on Board was made concurrently with Pippi Longstocking, so there’s no change in cast, crew, or reason for its existence. Just refer to yesterday’s post. Where Pippi Goes on Board differs is in somehow being even more plotless than its predecessor, if you buy that. There is no overarching story, no conflict, and 92.35% of the time no apparent connection from one short scene to another. If you asked me to do so, I could possibly identify three separate television episodes encased here, but they’d seem unmotivated by television standards as well. And as the first sequel, there is the natural reduction of novelty value which drove the original; this is just 79 minutes of wheel-spinning.

Also, in the whole of Pippie Goes on Board, Pippi never goes on board anything.

Rather than struggle to discuss the proceedings, it shall be simplest to merely relate them as they happen. This horribly re-edited Swedish TV series turned U.S. movie deserves no less…

Pippi Longstocking (Inger Nilsson) sits alone at home, pondering what she shall do next. She never does quite figure that one out.

Those nameless crooks (Hans Clerin and Paul Esser, I think) escape from prison yet again, for as little impact as they had last time.

Pippi’s best friends, siblings Annika and Tommy (Maria Persson and Pär Sundberg), greet her. She proposes they all take “crumulous pills,” which will keep them children forever. Pippi’s a pusher, and even a closet druid, as the scene further proves. One minor film thread becomes apparent here: Pippi frequently does things which are highly inadvisable (especially for a kid’s film). Here it’s taking drugs.

Pippi’s inexplicably red footprints walk into town, causing feckless cops Kling and Klang (Ulf G. Johnsson and Göthe Grefbo) to fear a serial murderer. (Kid’s film.)

Pippi hassles a shopkeep about her anti-freckle bias.

The siblings’ father shows them how to play darts. Then Pippi comes along and plays darts.

The children fly kites at the lake. Pippi resumes her “don’t do this at home, kids” habit, and jumps off a cliff. She jumps off a cliff! To see if she can fly! Bad influence! I’d oppose such action more so, except I feel any real children dumb enough to follow Pippi’s obviously fictional example here would be doing Darwin’s good work. And stop editing the violence out of the Looney Tunes, everyone!


Pippi floats twigs in the stream when she sees the crooks. They ask for gold, but she instead floats them things like pancakes, eggs, and whatever.

Pippi plays darts again.

The three children loiter uselessly when a random little girl arrives to ask about her father’s whereabouts. No one knows, so she skips off idly. This is the first and last we’ll ever hear about this. Still, it killed like 30 seconds.

At home alone, Pippi lights candles and eats fruits.

Tommy and Annika arrive at Pippi’s to celebrate her birthday. Pippi practices a reverse gift-giving policy, giving her pals presents rather than receiving. Then she clears the dinner table in the laziest way possible – I think I could learn something from her.

The children invade Pippi’s attic, Annika the worrywart terrified of ghosts (she’ll make a terrible, psychologically-scarred adult). They find no ghosts, but instead an enormous cache of loaded pistols. Again playing the übermensch/bad influence, Pippi lets the other children fire the firearms wildly, nearly killing Pippi’s pet horse and monkey.

Apropos of nothing, Tommy announces his parents are out of town and they are being babysat by town prude, Fröken Prysselius (Margot Trooger). They may not get to play with Pippi for a while.

Well, that didn’t matter, ‘cause here they are fishing at the lake. Pippi discovers a submerged canoe underwater and salvages it, with intent to fix it up.


This next section is the most coherent thought in the film so far – Several whole minutes concerning the kids’ fixing the canoe, sailing it out to a Huck Finn island in the middle of the lake, living there for a bit, then going home. Out here, the children all skip aimlessly around the campfire in a strange parody of misremembered childhood. Then they sing campfire songs, and seeing as they’re Swedish, these songs all concern alcohol and death.

The following morning, before going home, Pippi momentarily hides the canoe from her best friends for no reason, prompting depressive Annika to lament her own imminent death. Nice girl! There’s something about this whole impromptu camping session which strikes me as another bad influence.

Prysselius sings an ear-rapingly vomitous Swedish version of “Twinkle Twinkle” on the piano.

The children wander the forest roads with no direction or focus, as though the director just wasn’t around that day. Here I realize I’ve spent the last half hour watching children play vaguely, and I shall do so for another hour still. Why am I doing this to myself?

Pippi, struggling to outdo her former atrocities, briefly considers kidnapping the mayor and holding him for ransom. Her spurious logic dictates this is allowable, since the mayor is on the floor. Finders keepers is actually cited as legal precedent. Lucky for this free-range mayor, instead Pippi merely feeds him celery. (What the?!)

Suffering from Swedish ennui, Tommy and Annika grow bored of Pippi, movie still not half over. Left to her own devices, Pippi decides her monkey and horse are a married duke and duchess, respectively, irrespective that they’re both dudes. She briefly struggles to enact interspecies romance. (Kid’s film.)


One of the crooks pretends to be an organ grinder. I usually do that at night.

Tommy and Annika, growing tired even of ennui, return to see Pippi. Pippi is now disguised as a psychotic old lady, and tells them Pippi has gone to the moon. They believe her. Then Pippi reveals herself, a truly pants-soiling image of hideous drag-queenery that – Damn it, I forgot to screen cap that! Aw well, consider yourself lucky.

Pippi skips around her house a little, singing a self-promoting song about herself. Increasingly, Pippi is taking to speaking in the third person, which isn’t cute.

The carnival is in town, meaning it’s time for another connected series of vignettes, all centered around the carnival. Here they are:


Kling and Klang sneak onto the carnival rides ahead of schedule, then get dizzy. The town’s children accuse them of midday public drunkenness.

Some weirdos perform on the trampoline.

Pippi wins at a can toss game. She also wins at the strength bell.

Pippi wrestles the traveling carnie strongman…and wins. Suddenly acting the responsible role model (possibly because it’s a different episode now), she lets the strongman have her winnings.


In a scene which has absolutely no place in a children’s film (though I’m not complaining), a hot Swedish blonde does a sexy stripper dance with a snake before an audience of pre-teens. Pippi throws one of the deadly poison snakes around the audience, going right back to “bad influence” mode.

For no reason, Kling and Klang are hit with pies.

Well, that’s it for the carnival sequence. And now on to the final episode, hastily glommed onto this ostensible theatrical film – the winter episode. At least this one has a connecting theme: Christmas.

Tommy and Annika crow to Pippi about how pleased they are about the upcoming Christmas vacation. Pippi, ever the sound logician, laments how she, as a jobless, unschooled lay-about, has no “vacation.” Thus she shall get one, by going to school.

Pippi preps for school the only way she knows how – by going home and washing the dishes…Okay.

Then I see something I never thought I would – Pippi Longstocking steps foot inside a school building. I rather expected something a bit more like Damien’s first communion from The Omen, but rather Pippi merely gets one better on that high-fallutin’ schoolmarm, what with her book learnin’ both them there maths and alphabets. Specifically, and strangely, Pippi is loudly opposed to Plato – which personally offends me.


Completely running rampage, Pippi draws her horse on the wall, then just walks out, ‘cause to hell with school. The poor, exasperated teacher has her remaining students sings a nice new German song (read: the dubbers didn’t want to translate this). Behold throngs of blonde youths singing “Lang Phasenscheiße!,” or whatever.


Pippi makes the largest snowball in the whole wide world. The crooks, in a surprise moment of competence, have managed to steal Pippi’s chest full of gold, when they make the relatively-shortsighted decision to crow to Pippi about this. Thus Pippi bowls them over with her snowball, Japanese game show style. Didn’t see that coming!

Pippi bakes cookies while singing of herself in the third person.

Pippi makes homemade ice skates out of knives. Hey kids, do that!

Surely enduring some sort of brain aneurysm, Pippi hangs Christmas gifts all over a tree.


The filmmakers suddenly grow aware that there are only 10 minutes left, and there’s been less meat in this thing than in a McDonalds sandwich. As with the first, that means we gotta suddenly force-feed some healthy dollops of Swedish sorrow onto the proceedings, with Pippi alone at home on Christmas Eve. To break that up a little, we also see Annika acting sad, but that’s just her regular mood. And sure, being alone on Christmas is sorrowful, but this movie sort of lost the benefit of the doubt with me some 48 minutes back.

But – Oh joy! – here come the town children, with an incredibly unsurprising surprise for Pippi. They’ve remembered her, and have arrived bearing fire and trumpets – yup. Pippi wisely advises these dozens of children climb in the tree at the same time to retrieve the gifts, while she toots her own horn (the trumpet she’s just been given). The movie ends with a freeze frame of this confused, directionless child – Oh, way to rip off The 400 Blows at the last minute there!

This movie was about nothing, and there’s nothing more to say about it. Besides, I gotta save something for the final two.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Pippi Longstocking (1969)
• No. 3 Pippi in the South Seas (1970)
• No. 4 Pippi on the Run (1970)

Pippi Longstocking, No. 1 - Pippi Longstocking (1969)

Travelling back to 1944, that most childlike of years, we find once again a literary origin for the next franchise down the pike. Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, beset by the double horrors of World War II and being Swedish, fashioned a get-well story for her nine-year-old daughter Karin. Thus Pippi Longstocking was born, a children’s literary hero renowned for her superhuman horse-lifting strength, red hair, and a healthy disregard for all adults everywhere. Lindgren’s first published “Pippi” novel, 1945’s “Pippi Longstocking,” is on record as the first ever joyous thing to ever come out of Sweden.

All told, Lindgren published three “Pippi” novels, released as a salve to freshly de-Hitlered post-war Europe. On top of “Pippi Longstocking,” we also have “Pippi Goes on Board” and “Pippi in the South Seas,” released in 1946 and ’48, respectively. And so here at long last was the tonic needed to stave off war for the rest of human history.

With any popular novel, particularly one beloved by children and acclaimed by snobby bookish societies, it didn’t take long for “Pippi Longstocking” to become Pippi Longstocking – 1949. This Swedish production was done with no approval (or even copyright) from Lindgren, and by all accounts it sucks…It is not what we’re here to discuss today.

The “Pippi” name lingered cinematically terms until 1961, when American TV program [shudder!] “Shirley Temple’s Storybook” did a thirteen episode run readapting the first novel. Sparing all of mankind most extreme horror, the dreaded Shirley Temple bowed out of playing Pippi, in favor of Gina Gillespie. Maintaining a Swedish “pedigree,” and awesomely conjuring up memories of Ed Wood, mentally-challenged wrestler Tor Johnson was there too!...It is not what we’re here to discuss today.

Nope, what we are here for is the 1969 version, produced back in Sweden, with Lindgren’s direct involvement (she wrote the scripts for this new series). And this fresh “Pippi Longstocking” I am set to discuss was…was…was a TV series. Now, hold up! This blog isn’t about discussing television, let alone Swedish television from the ‘60s! Just relax for a minute, will ya, and it’ll all become clear.

The 1969 “Pippi Longstocking” was a Swedish/German coproduction (the good Germans, the West Germans) done for Sveriges Radio TV and the communistic, state-run monopoly TV station Swedish SVT! And boy!, nothin’ says childlike innocence and glee quite like a German commie coproduction! Still, the program was popular, and is surely the most whimsical bit of programming to issue forth from Sweden since Ingmar Bergman literalized a metaphor to question God’s magnanimity.

Okay, but where’s the movie?! Well, that’d have to wait until 1973 (or 1974 or 1975, depending upon which source I go with – Yeesh it’s confused!). The presumably 13-episode “Pippi Longstocking” TV show was redubbed and repackaged for theatrical release in the United States…Well, there you are, then, in a rather roundabout way, “Pippi Longstocking” is now a film franchise.


Now, this is an interesting way to fashion a franchise – The TV show was well finished by the time those sneaky Swedes thought to make Americans pay for their free socialist programming. Given this, there shall be no need to question why sequel follows sequel – All entries were already done, complete, simply awaiting distribution. At the very least, Lindgren’s own preexisting series of novels served as the basis for the Pippi film divisions – So we can see something like unified stories here, even while television itself would seem to preclude such possibilities.

The first film released, naturally, is Pippi Longstocking, which I’ve dated to 1969, as per its year of production – though not theatrical release. The cast and crew remains the same for all entries…and here’s one of ‘em: Our director is that swell Swede Olle Hellbom, also known for other glorious Scandinavian works such as Raggare!, Emil I Lönneberga, Nya hyss av Emil I Lönneberga, Världens bästa Karlsson and Rasmus pâ luffen! Man, that was a fun bunch of IMDb title searches!


The movie (and certainly those to come) is told with a decidedly childlike mentality – the colors are vibrant and solid, the characters are played with equal simplicity, and the “storyline” is a pastiche of different semi-connected set pieces – possibly an artifact of its TV show origins as much as an unfailingly gentle form of “non-aggravating” children’s entertainment. It’s all somehow both slice-of-life and stylized. There are no fart jokes.


Pippi Longstocking (or, by her full name, Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim’s Daughter Longstocking, which is an even bigger mess in Swedish) rides into a quaint and seemingly unnamed town upon her polka dotted horse, Old Man, her capuchin monkey Mr. Nilsson upon her shoulder. Her red braids stick out sideways, and she is strange looking. As played by Inger Nilsson (no monkey-relation), Pippi is pretty thoroughly out-of-control – she leaps, skips, and goes through life with an excess of energy I couldn’t hope to achieve with a fraternity’s worth of Red Bull and ecstasy. I’ve known girls like this, and it’s exceedingly tiring being in their presence. Still, Nilsson effectively gets across Pippi’s essence, so I cannot fault her for a crazy character.

I can mostly only comment on the actors’ physical performances, as the thing was dubbed for the U.S…and by my stated franchise demands, I hafta review the theatrical movies. Well, we oughta be familiar with dubbing conventions of the ‘60s and ‘70s, through chop socky flicks and/or spaghetti westerns. It’s never great. Actually, the voices seem to hover outside of the film eerily, never remotely matching the mouth movements (if 1969 Sweden was anything like 1969 Italy, they had no on-set recording equipment anyway). And because Pippi Longstocking plays up kid lit archetypes quite as The Good the Bad and the Ugly plays up western archetypes, the dubbed voices exacerbate the simplified cartoonishness of Pippi’s world.


Pippi has just moved herself into the bright pink chatteau, Villa Villekulla. She’s something of an emancipated minor, enjoying a life of pure freedom, without parents or school responsibilities – it’s like college! What a child does with such freedom, though, unlike a coed, is not to get pukingly drunk and violated, but to buy candy and play all day. It’s something of an unstructured childhood utopia, made possible by Pippi’s strength and her seemingly-inexhaustible chest full of South Seas coins.

Sharing in Pippi’s adventures, ‘cause we need a “viewpoint character,” are the Settergren siblings, Annika and Tommy (Maria Persson and Pär Sundberg). Especially contrasted with Pippi, they’re rather affectless and bland – they’re audience surrogates, after all. Really, they’re mostly here so that Pippi can have someone to (non-literally) bounce off of, when a horse or monkey just won’t do. They’re also, tenuously, our connection back to reality. A Swedish reality, mind you, meaning they’re somewhat glum sticks-in-ze-mud even whilst living in their socialist paradise.


As stated, there’s really no story to speak of, merely random low-key adventurizin’. What little conflict there is (author Lindgren, unlike Pixar, seems painfully opposed to fictional conflict) comes from the few adults who most directly oppose Pippi’s lack of structure – To over-read, I could pick out an institutionalized opposition to creativity amongst these adults, which seems exactly like something the Scandinavian and Germanic cultures would do.

Chief among Pippi’s tormenters is the town’s self-appointed busybody spinster frau, Fröken Prysselius (Margot Trooger). She balks at Pippi’s parentlessness, and demands she go to school – Pippi’s response rather reminds me of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” – she don’t want no education. Sorry, bluenoses, this child’s gettin’ left behind!

Prysselius summons her minions upon Pippi in the form of slapstick constable duo Kling and Klang (Ulf G. Johnsson unt Göthe Grefbo). Watch as Pippi finds a gentle means of physically assaulting these “grown” men. Considering Pippi’s powers, she’s something of a Superman, minus the responsibility. It’s a good thing Pippi’s a good person, ‘cause otherwise – watch out! Germany-wise, I’d love to hear a Nietzschian’s take on her – I mean, she was created in 1944 Northern Europe! Annika and Tommy, of course, simply sit perfectly still and watch as what accounts for the plot happens all around them.


The other “threat” to Pippi is a cartoon duo of nameless crooks (by guesswork I assume they’re played by Hans Clerin and Paul Esser). They seek Pippi’s fortune of gold. While Pippi sits on her table (in a most “uncouth” and “rambunctious” way) counting her coins out like the Leprechaun, the crooks arrive to steal it. Pippi fools them in precisely the way Bugs Bunny does Elmer Fudd – for the first of many times. When the crooks aren’t enduring Pippi’s normally-fatal drubbings, they’re fleeing “Sir” Nilsson in fear of monkey-rabies. These are our villains here, people.


Now, you’d think with even how ineffectual these guys are, they’d at least form the bare backbone of a plot – you’d be wrong. The film’s middle half seems like this is the case, but then the crooks are defeated with a pure half hour or so left. Hell, everything that seems climactic proves not to be, including a hot air balloon ride that shall appear further down in the screen caps, I’m sure.

So, apart from these nebulous childish adventures I’ve neglected relating, is there any drive whatsoever to Pippi Longstocking? Oh sure, for even when Drama, that most tricky of genres, lacks for external conflict, you can always rely upon “internal conflict.” Pippi didn’t just spring ex nihilo; she has a back story – Oh boy! See, she has parents – the best parents possible, letting her run adorable rampage throughout Sweden. Her father, Efraim, is a South Seas ship’s captain and “cannibal king” (he eats no one, cannibals simply like him) – and he’s off on business. Pippi’s mom, meanwhile, is dead, which we learn through kid’s film euphemism. (And here I thought the Swedes were comfortable with Death.) Thus Pippi’s longing, as she speaks to her invisible, spectral Mother on many an occasion. Ah, token depth.


Really, though, it’s just all random silliness. My favorite example of this comes halfway through, when Pippi decides to crown a nonsense name upon a Japanese flower (don’t ask). That name she comes up with?...Spunk! Oh yeah! Now, at what point did translation fail us here? Says Pippi, in regards to her “spunk,” it “has a nice sound of it,” and she “don’t know what it means.”

Amassing Tommy and Annika for the hell of it, Pippi leads them in like 10 minutes of simply saying “spunk” at every possible moment – it’s like a “Beavis & Butthead” sketch! Then it’s off to town, to see how many of the menfolk have spunk. “I want to scare lions with my spunk.” “My spunk hurts, let’s go to the doctor.” The doctor informs Pippi she is without spunk, assuring her “spunk examinations are free.” Then Pippi catches Prysselius in a paint-bucket “spunk” trap, announcing “That must be spunk in her hair.” I am dead serious about all of this! Of course Europe is sexually liberated, so maybe this was all intentional.

So, that final half hour where it seems all conflict (and even unmotivated craziness) has failed us? Well, this is when Pippi’s father Efraim (Beppe Wolgers) comes to visit her – mere minutes after she sends off a letter in a bottle, as per the film’s casual magical realism.


So, father’s back. Alongside the whimsy inherent in trading spunk for seamen, here’s our new conflict – That self-pitying sourpuss Annika cries that Pippi shall soon leave them, the all-deserving Settergren siblings, to be with her father. How selfish of Pippi! But, really, would it be a Swedish movie without a lengthy scene of a little girl weeping?

Let us ignore purposeless Scandinavian sorrow, and instead focus on the final grand silliness. All the town’s children, and all of Efraim’s seamen, childlike minds to a one, have been invited to Villa Villekulla for a crazy, free-for-all, alcohol-free going-away party. Cue pie fights:


Cue raising one’s own seamen up on a door for all to see:


Then it’s off to the docks, for the finale, Pippi and Papa prepped to pull anchor. Well, it’s a somewhat lengthy scene, but I tire of typing, so here’s the gist – Annika sobs loudly in public, as is her Swedish wont, prompting Pippi to stay. Pre-adolescence has been perpetuated, Peter Pan style, as Pippi shall continue her wackiness with the bland siblings. It’s the sort of “status quo is god” ending one sees most in TV (hmm…), though it rather points to the emphasized lack of growth or change in this story. But really, it was all just meant initially as an author’s way to get her child to fall asleep, so can you fault it for that?

So Efraim alone sets sail with his yellow seamen, firing cannons into off screen parts of town as Pippi waves farewell. Jan Johansson’s perpetual, oompa-tinged soundtrack rises, having undergone a film-long evolution from “charming” to “ear worm” to “AARGHH!” “Here Comes Pippi Longstocking” ("Här Kommer Pippi Långstrump") plays, as Pippi leaves.

Oh course there’re three more of these, so what seems stagnant and plotless now may yet have someplace to go. That is essential when telling a serialized story, which is surely not what Pippi Longstocking is (TV aside)…I am at a loss now for things to say, rather as the movie itself seemed to be at, but maybe Pippi Goes on Board will set things right… (Reedit from the future: It won’t.)


Related posts:
• No. 2 Pippi Goes on Board (1969)
• No. 3 Pippi in the South Seas (1970)
• No. 4 Pippi on the Run (1970)

The Karl May Franchise

If you thought my inability to find the last two Ilsa films was embarrassing, well, I can’t find a single entry in this 23 movie series. But then again, we are talking about a series of B-movies from 1960s Germany, so this isn’t too surprising. Apparently some exist on VHS, without dubbing or subtitles, or translated into Czech, which is even worse! I’m not going to try finding those. And without content to bother with, I can instead do a bit of meta-franchise examination.

The story of the Karl May motion pictures starts long before motion pictures were a twinkle in the eye of Thomas Edison or whomever. For the Karl May pictures are a franchise derived from literature (a fairly common phenomenon), and as such we must first consider literary franchises. Actually, I would suspect there are far more franchises in book form than on film, for all it really takes to create a literary franchise is one author (or sometimes more) willing to stretch his stories out indefinitely, no matter how off-the-wall they may become. Compare that to film, which is beholden to budgets in the first place, and is also more dependent on audience box office receipts. Stories in a movie series thus must conform to audience expectations and not stray too far, while a lone author meanwhile may go crazy and publish increasingly unreadable tomes ad infinitum. Consider the “Dune” books.

Karl May was a German born in 1842 in Schönburgische Rezessherrschaften (I love that detail), and who was active in literature and even music up until his death in 1912. Two years later, World War One happened, entirely due to May’s absence. His most well-known books, and the ones that formed the basis for the later movies, were essentially westerns. You know, stories set in the western United States during the post-Civil War years. The western as a genre has enjoyed foreign, non-American appreciation for quite a while, and many of the greatest cinematic westerns happen to be of foreign origin – I am talking about Spaghetti Westerns primarily, specifically Sergio Leone’s magnificent films, though I’m sure nearly every country with a substantial film industry has contributed something to the western genre. What astounds me here is how old this tradition is. May was writing westerns before they had been codified as a genre, and so he may (uh) have had a impact on westerns in the U.S. This I cannot say, really, but it’s likely.

Of course, if I was taking this project seriously, I would have somehow been able to track down the Karl May movies. Maybe I should have gone to freaking Germany, like many a drunken American before me. Hell, at the very least, I should have put off this entire movie project until I had read every one of Karl May’s novels, in order to speak of them with the fullest scholarly confidence…To hell with that! Who knows what that would yield, and I have like 34 Godzilla movies to cover at some point. Seeing as it’s now June, I’ll just do what I can with May.


May’s novels, set in the (Old) West, are connected as a series by a consistent set of characters, including narrator and May alter-ego Old Shatterhand. May would write tales set in other exotic locales such as the Middle East and the Orient, and occasional characters overlap into these stories. It seems arguable that Old Shatterhand was the lead character of these semi-unrelated tales, as the narrators in each series share the same personalities (May’s), and are known by local nicknames. In the case of the westerns, Old Shatterhand is the German blood brother of Apache chief Winnetou, the other central figure of May’s literature. Though he hadn’t yet seen America while writing these novels, May claimed to have experienced all Old Shatterhand had, for May was also part of that silly Romantic spiritualist movement, of which we can also sadly count Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In fact, once May finally made it to the States, he never made it past Buffalo, N.Y.! Old Shatterhand himself is a forerunner to the standard western hero archetype, and greatly influenced later heroes such as the Lone Ranger. You’re talking about a pretty old character when he predates the Lone Ranger.

Winnetou, for his part, is a proud member of that great white “noble savage” concept of natives. While today we’re all pretty well beyond this stereotype, this was not the case in the nineteenth century, and that goes double for Europe. With no Native Americans to directly observe, authors such as May had to build up Winnetou based on Romantic European ideals, reflecting very “period” notions about nature, civilization and Christianity. Throw in a little James Fenimore Cooper, and you’ve got yourself an iconic Injun.

Let us briefly consider a few of May’s titles in his western series, and excuse ze occasional German:

Deadly Dust (1880)
Ein Oelbrand (1882/83)
Im »wilden Westen« Nordamerika's (1882)
Winnetou I (1893)
Winnetou II (1893)
Winnetou III (1893)
Old Surehand I (1894)
Old Surehand II (1895)
Old Surehand III (1896)
Satan und Ischariot I (1896)
Satan und Ischariot II (1897)
Satan und Ischariot III (1897)
Gott läßt sich nicht spotten (1897)
Ein Blizzard (1897)
Mutterliebe (1897/98)
Weihnacht! (1897)
Im Reiche des silbernen Löwen I (1898)
Winnetou IV (1910)

I love how unimaginative those titles are, even in German! He actually uses numbered titles! This is actually a great find for me, as it reveals a certain sequel titling trope has existed for far longer than I’d expected. Why didn’t all those “Return of...” movies from the 40s employ this Roman numeral trick?

Karl May’s works were sort of the airport paperbacks of their day, I gather, simply meant to be adventure yarns. Great literature has come from similar aims, though – consider Robert Lewis Stevenson! May’s aims were distinctly pro-German, to create German heroes such as Old Shatterhand and also Old Surehand (May’s heroes were all Old S—hands). It seems Germany has always lacked the cultural frivolity we Americans treasure so, since May was pretty much the only German in history who actually wanted to create fun German literature with a fun German hero. This did temporarily elevate the German temperament, made them a more confident people, and sadly led to Naziism. No, I’m serious! One of May’s greatest admirers was Hitler, though surely we can’t blame May for that. Hell, May spoke of the Jews in a way that could be called sympathetic for a nineteenth century German. Of course the Nazis went about and totally reedited those passages.

The Ilsa films a recent memory, I tire of discussing the Nazis. And so that brings us, after all this time, to discussing the movies – the reason I even bothered researching a little May in the first place. As with the novels, I am too lazy to discover any plot summary or review or...or...Um...Oh hell, here’s all the titles:

1. On the Brink of Paradise (1920)
2. Caravan of Death (1920)
3. The Devil Worshippers (1920)
4. Through the Wasteland (1936)
5. Die Sklavenkarawane (1958)
6. Der Löwe von Babylon (1959)
7. The Treasure of Silver Lake (1962)
8. Apache Gold (1963)
9. Old Shatterhand (1964)
10. The Shoot (1964)
11. Last of the Renegades (1964)
12. Frontier Hellcat (1964)
13. The Treasure of the Aztecs (1965)
14. Pyramid of the Sun God (1965)
15. Rampage at Apache Wells (1965)
16. The Wild Men of Kurdistan (1965)
17. The Desperado Trail (1965)
18. Flaming Frontier (1965)
19. Fury of the Sabers (1965)
20. Legacy of the Incas (1965)
21. Half Breed (1966)
22. Thunder at the Border (1966)
23. Winnetou and Shatterhand in the Valley of Death (1968)

The dates tell a tale, and allow for quite a bit of detective work on their own. First of all, we have a trilogy of connected films from 1920, a one-off from 1936, and then a great series of constant releases (19 in all) for a decade from 1958 to 1968. From a series standpoint, I would hesitate to call these all one franchise. These films are initially from literature, remember, and one cannot consider every Sherlock Holmes movie ever made to be in the same series, right? Or hell, every time Dracula appears randomly as the villain in the final moments of some awful Euro horror flick? So no, for a film series derived from literature, there must be some other element apart from characters or source to define continuity. It could be a consistent producer, or star, or a continuum or producers and stars that maintains an identity, such as with the James Bond films. As such, I would not consider the Karl May movies to be a series until the 1950s – but then we still have a 19 movie film franchise, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

As for those three films from 1920, there’s little to say about them. They are silent films, black and white, of course. They are also lost, so no one has seen them in, oh, I’d guess 90 years. What is knows is that they star Carl de Vogt as Kara Ben Nemsi – that’s May’s non-western hero from his Middle Eastern stories, who may or may not actually be Old Shatterhand. So...yeah. These are even less tangentially connected to the 60s May western than I thought they were. These films also starred everyone’s favorite Hungarian morphine addict (and future Dracula) Bèla Lugosi.

Now why didn’t that one lone movie from 1936 engender a series? I don’t know. Perhaps there was something more important going on in Germany at the time.

And now we move on to 1958, and the real start of a Karl May film franchise! Actually, even now things aren’t quite as simple as all that. Though these are all westerns, all starring Karl May characters, there were rival productions. Information in English is scarce, but this is what I could piece together:

Certain producers had the legal rights to Karl May’s westerns, and started making movies out of them. Apparently the plots have very little to do with May’s original novels, but simply use them as a familiar starting point to justify a few generic Eurowesterns with an Old Shatterhand character. Again, isn’t it nice to see that the old “use the title, ditch the plot” ploy existed long before we started blaming our own contemporary movies? And you know, it makes sense that the Germans of the late 50s needed a populist hero like Old Shatterhand to wash out that awful taste of, well, that whole World War Two thing.

Starting in 1962 with The Treasure of Silver Lake, American actor Lex Barker started appearing as Old Shatterhand as part of producer Horst Wendlandt’s “official” series for the Rialto Film-Kompany. CCC-Film-Kompany rival Artur Brauner envied the apparent success of these films, so he did the obvious thing – also make Old Shatterhand movies starring Lex Barker. Wow, it’s like the exact same thing! Except Brauner did not have the rights to May’s novels. This doesn’t matter, because apparently Old Shatterhand and Winnetou were already in the public domain at this point, so he could simply make movies with them anyway, and cite them as being “inspired” by Karl May. Forget era or nation, the movie business remains ever the same!

All told, Lex Barker appeared as Old Shatterhand in seven films for these various producers. Further complicating matters, he appeared in two other May movies from 1965, The Treasure of the Aztecs and Pyramid of the Sun Gods, playing as Dr. Karl Sternau. Even more confusing, other movies in this “series” star Steward Granger as Old Surehand. That’s Surehand, not Shatterhand, even though those characters are interchangeable and Shatterhand enjoys far greater name recognition. Maybe Granger did this for vaguely understood legal reasons. At any rate, he is reported to have starred in “several” Surehand films, all still a part of this increasingly muddled series.

So of the May films of the 60s, there are at least two series here. Consider, one actor (Lex Barker) playing the same character in two different continuities for different producers at the same time. Yeesh! It seems what some would call a series was really just a compressed, all-purpose May-nia resulting in a pseudo-subgenre of Karl May-esque Sauerkraut Westerns throughout the 1960s...Right. Also, there was an unrelated Karl May TV series at the same time, which never counted in the first place. It’s a good thing Uwe Boll didn’t exist back then, and Karl May didn’t make video games.

So here’s something concrete I can say about some of these films. For ten of them (maybe for the same producer, but maybe not, since Lex Barker clearly was a whore) composer Martin Böttcher produced highly notable scores. His scores remain one of the things this May phenomenon is still fondly remembered for, and it is an accomplishment totally independent of May’s literature. I have actually been able to find some of this music. Compared to the Spaghetti Western scores by great Italian composer Ennio Morricone, Böttcher’s work sounds underwhelming. It more greatly resembles the classical scores from Hollywood westerns of the preceding decade. Still, his early May scores are supposed to have paved the way for Morricone. And if that’s even remotely true, we can all be profoundly grateful to these films.

All in all, the Karl May films are a part of the greater European western movement of the time, of which the Spaghetti Westerns were another distinct phenomenon. Hell, pondering these German flicks from a distance is the closest I’m going to get to reviewing Spaghetti Westerns – that is, unless I decide the 78 unlicensed Django knock-offs somehow constitute a series. As the Spaghetti Westerns were mostly filmed in Spain, the Mays were made in Yugoslavia, ‘cause nothing says “Old West” like Yugoslavia! And...well...that’s about as much B.S. as I can conjure about a film series when I can’t even find reviews.