ADVENTURE FILMS

Adventure Films are exciting stories, with new experiences or exotic locales. Adventure films are very similar to the action film genre, in that they are designed to provide an action-filled, energetic experience for the film viewer. Rather than the predominant emphasis on violence and fighting that is found in action films, however, the viewer of adventure films can live vicariously through the travels, conquests, explorations, creation of empires, struggles and situations that confront the main characters, actual historical figures or protagonists.
Adventure films were intended to appeal mainly to men, creating major male heroic stars through the years. These courageous, patriotic, or altruistic heroes often fought for their beliefs, struggled for freedom, or overcame injustice. Modern adventure films, some of which have been successful blockbusters, have crossed over and added resourceful action heroes (and oftentimes heroines).
Under the category of adventure films, we can include traditional swashbucklers, serialized films, and historical spectacles (similar to the epics film genre), searches or expeditions for lost continents, "jungle" and "desert" epics, treasure hunts and quests, disaster films, and heroic journeys or searches for the unknown. Adventure films are often set in an historical period, and may include adapted stories of historical or literary adventure heroes (Robin Hood, Tarzan, and Zorro for example), kings, battles, rebellion, or piracy.
Adventure films share many elements with other genres - there are numerous examples of sci-fi, fantasy, and war films with characteristics of this genre. Adventure films, in a broader context, could include boxing movies, motor racing films, and films adapted from literary novels (i.e., King Solomon's Mines (1937 and 1950), The Thief of Bagdad (1924 and 1940), The Three Musketeers (1916, 1921, 1933, 1935, 1948, 1973, and 1993), and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937, 1952)).
Directors and Stars of Classic Adventure Films:
Individual directors often associated with adventure films include Cecil B. DeMille, Henry Hathaway, Michael Curtiz, Howard Hawks, John Huston, David Lean, Zoltan Korda, and Raoul Walsh. The major adventure film stars through the years have included Douglas Fairbanks Sr. (and Jr.), Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Johnny Weismuller, Tyrone Power, Gary Cooper, Stewart Granger, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Alan Ladd, Sabu, Cornel Wilde, Sean Connery, John Wayne, and Harrison Ford. The female stars in these movies often were secondary figures, or romantic interests for the male

Serials:
The action/adventure film first became popular with weekly Saturday serials, running in installments that often had 'cliff-hanging' endings to entice viewers to return for the next show. Heroine Pearl White in the 20-episode The Perils of Pauline (1914) was the first major super-star of the silent serials. Besides Pearl White, there were other queens of the sound serials, including Kay Aldridge (as jungle Queen Nyoka in Nyoka and the Tigermen (1942)) and Linda Stirling (in the 12 part serial Zorro's Black Whip (1944) and as the "Tiger Woman" in another 12-episode serial, Perils of the Darkest Jungle (1944)).
Other action-adventure heros of B-picture adventure films included Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers. 'Buster' Crabbe was the most famous of all the serial action heroes in the 1930s and 1940s, starring as both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. But there were others: Kane Richmond (as the "Spy Smasher," "The Shadow," and a star in the "Cliffhanger Serials" and the "Rin-Tin-Tin" adventure serial), Tom Tyler (as "Captain Marvel" with countless episodes, and "The Phantom of the West"), and Don "Red" Barry (as "Red Ryder"). [See this site's writeup of superheroes in