Al Weisel - CDNow's 10 Essential Adventure Movies
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| The 10 Essential Adventure Movies
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By
Al Weisel
CDNOW Senior Editor, Movies
The movies can transport us from a dark theater or living
room to the four corners of the world, to brave torrential
storms, fearsome beasts, or assorted shady characters. When
travel was more difficult than it is today, movies such as
Gunga Din or African
Queen were for some people their
only chance to visit such exotic locales as India or Africa.
But even those who can travel probably aren't going to come
close to experiencing the adventures recounted in these films
while staying in comfort at the tourist hotel. One can ride a
camel in the Sahara like Lawrence of Arabia, but most likely
won't be leading an Arab rebellion. And some adventure films
travel to places that don't even exist, whether it's Lost
Horizon's Shangri-La or worlds where dinosaurs reign such
as those in King Kong and Jurassic Park.
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| 1. Lawrence of Arabia
(1962) |
 A
man blows out a match and in one of the great cuts in cinema
history we instantly find ourselves amidst the burning hot
sands of the Sahara, as Maurice Jarre's stirring score wells
up. David Lean's biopic about T. E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole),
the enigmatic British colonel who helped lead an Arab
rebellion against the Turks, is one of the greatest epic films
ever made. But while its enormous sand-swept vistas are
breathtaking, the landscape never overwhelms Robert Bolt's
literate script or the compelling man at the center of the
story.
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| 2. Treasure of the Sierra Madre
(1948) |
 Director John Huston's morality play about the
corrosive effect of greed was shot on location in the Mexican
desert. Starring the director's father, Walter Huston,
Humphrey Bogart, and Tim Holt as three prospectors who set out
on an adventure to find gold and end up turning on each other,
it's a riveting tale of man at his worst.
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| 3. Jaws (1975) |
 This film about a shark that terrorizes a small
coastal town and the men who set out to catch it, sent the
career of its 28-year-old director, Steven Spielberg, into the
stratosphere. Still one of the scariest films ever made,
Jaws is perfectly crafted, selectively unveiling the
shark a little at a time and using John Williams' ominous
score to build suspense to an almost unbearable
level.
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| 4. Raiders of the Lost Ark
(1981) |
 Inspired by the serials of director Steven Spielberg's
youth, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a rousing adventure
about archaeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and his
quest to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis get
their hands on it and use it to rule the world. From its
exhilarating opening where Jones attempts to seize a gold idol
from a booby-trapped Peruvian ruin to its funny, ironic
closing scene, Raiders of the Lost Ark never slows down
as it propels us from one exploit to another.
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| 5. King Kong (1933) |
 While the stop-motion effects that shocked audiences
of its day with their realism may pale by comparison with
today's computer graphic imagery, no special effects can
substitute for the memorable, mythic story King Kong
tells about a giant ape, found in a land where dinosaurs still
live, who is brought to New York to be put on display. The
sequence of the great ape perched atop the Empire State
Building swatting away airplanes is one of the great images of
cinema.
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| 6. Thief of Bagdad (1924) |
 Douglas Fairbanks moves with the gravity-defying grace
of a ballet dancer as he leaps from rooftop to rooftop in
production designer William Cameron Menzies' evocative Bagdad
sets. With flying horses and magic carpets this tale from the
Arabian Nights is one of the most imaginative and
entertaining films of the silent era. The colorful 1940
version of Thief
of Bagdad starring Sabu is also a feast for the
eyes.
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| 7. Jurassic Park (1993) |
 Dinosaurs roam the earth again in Steven Spielberg's
film about an entrepreneur who discovers a way to clone
dinosaurs from DNA extracted from ancient mosquitoes trapped
in amber and plans to open an amusement park with living
exhibits. Using state-of-the-art computer graphic imagery that
revolutionized the way films are made, Jurassic Park
has moments of both wonder and terror.
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| 8. Lost Horizon (1937) |
 Frank Capra's film, based on James Hilton's novel
about survivors of a plane crash who discover Shangri-la, a
paradise hidden in the Himalayas, is a departure for the
director, though it has in common with his other films a
curious mixture of misanthropy leavened with optimism. The
sets are spectacular and its evocation of Tibetan philosophy
is especially interesting for the contemporary viewer in light
of recent interest in the plight of Tibet under Chinese
oppression.
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| 9. The Adventures of Robin Hood
(1938) |
 Errol Flynn stars as the wealth-redistributing outlaw
in this swashbuckling adventure full of wonderfully
choreographed sword fights, daring stunts, and sizzling
dialogue. The best version of the Robin Hood story, the film
also features Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marion, Claude Rains
as Prince John, Basil Rathbone as the villainous Sir Guy of
Gisbourne, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's thrilling
score.
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| 10. Planet of the Apes
(1968) |
 Charlton Heston stars as an astronaut who crash lands
on a planet inhabited by talking apes that treat mute,
backward humans like animals. This clever satire has a lot of
fun with the reversal as it explores such highly charged
issues as racism and man's own animalistic violent impulses.
The shocking finale when Heston's character discovers the
secret of the planet and cries out "Damn them all to hell!" is
a classic.
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