Ghost Treasure

Carey Wilson narrates three vignettes about three times fold was discovered in Death Valley --- and then vanished.

Wilson was a well-respected writer and producer at MGM, one of the people who worked on the silent version of BEN-HUR, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY and the Andy Hardy series. He also produced and narrated a series of shorts about mysteries; he had a particular fascination with Nostradamus. Like the Pete Smith shorts and John Nesbitt's THE PASSING PARADE series, he used silent techniques, showing the action in dumb show, while telling the audience what they were looking at.

Ghost Treasure (1941)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely interesting Carey Wilson short tells the mystery behind a gold ghost in Death Valley, CA. The short tells three separate stories about men finding gold and the fate that befell them. In the first story four American soldiers kill some Indians in order to get gold but things take a nasty turn. In the second a man is being tortured by an Indian when he discovers a rock that turns out to be much more. In the final sequence an old man finds where the gold is but never tells and only takes out what he needs to live. You could really call this an early version of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE because both films deal with the subject matter of greed and what gold can do to a person. I was really surprised at how effective this movie was because it gets all three of the stories across in a rather eerie manor without preaching to the viewer. The movie was shot in Sepiatone, which is another major plus as it gives the film that certain look and brings out a dryness in the air. Character actor Henry Brandon, from John Carpenter's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, appears here.

Interesting little short produced by Carey Wilson for MGM in '41, a sort of forerunner of TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE where a greedy prospector ends up paying for his greed with his life.

This one is about Manuel Arguello who discovered gold in Death Valley, California, 1843. He and several other men go on a quest for gold after accidentally discovering that Indians have been making pottery from it. He and all of his men are gradually disposed of by an unseen predator. Next, another story along the same lines, another prospector dead. The final story covers the same sort of ground.

All of it is filmed amid rugged mountain locations and photographed nicely in crisp Sepiatone.

Worth watching but the stories could have had more contrast.