Believe It or Not (Second Series) #7

Believe It or Not (Second Series) #7 (1932)

** (out of 4)

Middle-ground entry has Ripley boarding a cruise ship where he's asked to present some of his "believe it or not" stories. We start off with a couple drawings where we hear the fate of Columbus and the chains that were buried with him. We also learn the true definition of a "fathom". We then get video footage of a lighthouse in South Carolina that is leaning and then we see a man who has the ability to locate poisonous snakes. Most of the other footage is mildly entertaining but not enough to really make one take notice. For the most part Ripley is very energetic in his delivery of the stories and this here helps keep things moving. Once again I'm really not sure why they needed to come up with these fake stories to put Ripley in certain situations to tell these stories. The cut away footage to those watching here is always rather campy and even worse is that it makes it appear no one is really interesting because of the lack of people who showed up.

This episode of Warner Brothers' series of Robert L. Ripley's newspaper feature come to film would have us believe that Ripley is on a passenger ship, drawing pictures and lecturing his fellow passengers on things like an American flag made out of corn kernels, a hand-operated water pump on the streets of Washington D. C., and the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem.

What have all of these things got in common? Ripley and his staff decided they were odd enough to entertain his audience. The theory was that at least a couple of the many facts would do so. I can see that, even from my sophisticated, old-man's viewpoint almost a century later.