EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.
It seems like every one of my favorite 1970s studios put out a family wilderness movie. I mean, Sunn Classic had their Grizzly Adams movies, Cannon had The Alaska Wilderness Adventure and 21st Century had this, The Legend of Black Thunder Mountain, which starts with a whole bunch of volcano stock footage.
Well, as we soon discover, “Black thunder, you know, is the Indian name for earthquake. They say its the earth speaking from inside her soul. And that fire and smoke from a volcano is a warning, that the earth is angry with man. Well, it turns out the earth had good reason to be angry.”
Anna (Holly Beemer) and Jamie (Steve Beemer) Parrish are lost, their dad (Ron Brown, who was also in Lefty, the Dingaling Lynx and Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar) has been knocked out by two criminals, George (Keith Sexson) and Buzz (John Sexson). As they look for their father, the children meet plenty of stock footage animals, as well as a real bear named Mrs. Mullen, who is played by Bozo the Bear. If he looks familiar, he was Ben the Bear on the Sunn Classic TV series The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. There’s also a bald eagle named Balderdash, but he hasn’t been in anything else.
Directed by Tom Beemer — yes, whose kids are in this — and who wrote this along with Susan Shadburne (who also wrote the frightening The Adventures of Mark Twain, so it makes sense that Will Vinton was an editor on this), Tyler Johnson (whose only other IMDB credit is writing a Harry Styles video and that has to not be true), Lola Thompson and Don Chasan.
Yes, when we had only a few channels and went to the movies often, producers would make family wilderness movies with weird pop songs in them and sometimes make it look like volcanos were going to kill kids.
You can watch this on YouTube. Watch it in Spanish like I did.
B&S About Movies 
You forgot about THE WILDERNESS FAMILY – they always advertised to make it seem like someone was going to get eaten by a bear, that was always I why I wanted to go. And then at the end dad is scared by some bear stock footage or something; what a gyp. The sequel was a little better. Thank god Star Wars came long and swept all those things aside. Man, I even had a RANGER RICK subscription (not sure if you know that one) I wrote a big rambling post about it as a segue to a thing about DAY OF THE ANIMALS here: https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2014/01/leslie-of-heretics-day-of-animals-1977.html
LikeLike