Perils of the Wild (lost adventure film serial; 1925)
This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its poor reference formating.
The film's poster.
Status: Lost
Perils of the Wild is a lost 15 chapters serial featuring Joe Bonomo, the strongman, in the lead role. It is an adaptation of the novel "The Swiss Family Robinson " by Johann Wyss and was released in 1925.
Synopsis
The serial takes the premise of the original novel and uses it as a starting point for an entirely new storyline. In the serial, the Robinsons are marooned on the island as in the novel, but they accidentally stumble on the hideout of a gang of pirates led by Black John (William Dyer). Judging by surviving stills, the Robinsons make off with Black John's treasure chest, which he tries to retrieve, setting the action into motion (the chest being the MacGuffin of the plot). Not much else is known about the plot of this serial.
Notes
This was the first adaptation of Johann Wyss's novel. The novel itself originally had no clear ending, and ending most people are familiar with today was actually written by the lady who translated the novel into French, hence the new storyline involving the pirates. Joe Bonomo suffered an injury to his hip during filming, which forced him to drop out of Tarzan of Terror; Boris Karloff plays one of the pirates.
References
Continued Next Week (book by Kalton C. Lahue) Bound and Gagged (book by Kalton C Lahue)
External Sources
1. PERILS OF THE WILD (Wikipedia entry) 2. PERILS OF THE WILD (IMDB entry) 3. PERILS OF THE WILD (Silentera entry)