Nonureva Really Surprised!

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Edgar Allan Pooh " . . . Trouble that starts with "T" which rhymes with "P," which stands for Petrol. Before THERE WILL BE BLOOD, before GIANT, even before THE MUSIC MAN, came this Robert Preston expose of Big Oil, known as TULSA. This flick shows exactly WHY it has been illegal for the past century to discard a lit match into any Oklahoma lake, river, pond, stream, swamp, and crick, or any other body of "water." Most if not all of these liquid conduits sport such a thick sheen of petroleum product that a stray spark could well burn down half the state, depending upon which way the wind's blowing. To add in salt to injury, Oklahoma's top lawman labored for the past decade to make the so-called "Sooner State" the World's Man-Made Earthquake Capital. President Putin was so impressed when this was revealed on his Fox Station (and he was already well aware of the Sooner brand of "A-OK," having watched TULSA repeatedly) that he appointed the Real Life "Bruce Brady"-type joker to be in charge of transforming "America the Beautiful" into a Sudbury\Chernobyl-style wasteland where even grass won't grow. TULSA inspired the USA's "Drill, Baby, Drill!" Movement, and remains a fund-raising tool for a major U.S. political party.

Art Vandelay Any time Robert Preston shows up in a movie it's a good day. He looked good. He could act. He could sing and dance. The guy had it all. Here he plays a college-educated geologist on hand to continue the legacy of his oilman father. Except instead of being a rough-and-tumble wild- catter he's several decades ahead of the curve in wanting to extract oil sustainably. To the credit of the movie's writers Preston's character isn't some preachy enviro-tard, either. He's a nice balance to Susan Hambone's Oil Queen, whose greed is turned up to 11. The outdoor filming was refreshing. Even watching the lousy print on Silver Screen Classics you can feel that OK sun pounding down. The less said about the Indians the better. They include the stereotypical ''chief''-type with the long braids and fractured English - I mean, c'mon, the movie is set in the 1920s not the 1820s. And then there's the Indian ''sidekick'' who is actually a Mexican and talks like he's brain injured. Chill Wills is on the screen just enough not to grate on my nerves. Hayward is gorgeous but I'm sorry she can't act. Had she not died early she surely would have starred in some night-time TV soap like Falcon Crest. The finale is spectacular. Ruined only by the preachy enviro-whining epilogue. The only reason I'd watch this again is if I needed a Robert Preston fix on a slow afternoon.

expatinasia One reviewer posted: "nicest bit of the film was the conservation angle about too much oil in boom times ruins the land for the future when they dry up." What a hoot! Evidently, this posted has mistaken the "conservative" and the "liberal" perspectives, and that certainly makes the poster a conservative. In reality, it's a liberal view not to waste natural resources - correct during the 20's time-frame of the film; true during the 40s, when the film was produced - and it is true today. The conservative perspective is to "take the money and run", that is: it's a flee market. Throughout the film, greedy conservatives are willing to destroy the environment, in order to maximize their profits. The liberals lobby for restraint and governmental regulation, to prevent the destruction of the environment. From a scientific perspective, the film is inaccurate. Specifically, uncompressed oil does not explode. Regardless, that mistake does not detract from the power of the film.

weezeralfalfa Susan Hayward and Robert Preston star in this story about a wildcat wildcatter. In my opinion, this is one of the most appropriate roles she did, considering her reported "sock it to em" personality. I don't understand why this film isn't better known and is not even mentioned in rundowns of Susan's major films. She plays the tough-as-nails Cherokee Lansing, part Native American daughter of a cattleman in the expanding oil country near Tulsa, OK, of the 1920s. She looks great, whether riding a horse around her cattle ranch or elegantly dressed in her mansion after becoming wealthy. Quite a few westerns dramatized the conflicts between cattlemen and sodbusters or between cattlemen and sheepherders in hillier terrain. This film explores the conflict between traditional cattle interests and emerging oil interests. Cherokee, herself, personifies this conflict as she transforms from an irate spokeswoman for the cattle interests into one of the leading promoters of oil interests, then backtracks, under pressure from her sometimes fiancé Brad Brady(Robert Preston) and her native American friend, Jim Redbird, to repromote a more balanced coexistence of oil and cattle interests. As often happens in such group conflict films, there is a disaster sequence, perpetrated by the established interests, to try to get rid of the invaders. In this case, it is a spectacular oil field fire, well done, although in reality, such a conflagration would have been practically impossible to extinguish with the technology of the 1920s. The perpetrator, Jim Redbird, could claim he was just trying to get rid of the oil slick that was killing his cattle, and that the fire just happened to spread to the adjacent oil field(It's not clear how?).This is at least the second film in which Susan was paired romantically with Robert Preston's character, the other being "Reap the Wild Wind". in which both die before the film is finished. Preston generally played supporting roles, often as wishy washy villains. Here, he does an excellent job as the top-billed male, Brad Brady. His relationship with his employer, Cherokee, undergoes a roller-coaster ride, starting very low and ending on a high note. The son of "Crude Oil" Johnny, who serendipitously signed his oil leases over to Cherokee just before being killed in a barroom brawl, Brady shows up unexpectedly at her drill site, fresh from a degree in petroleum engineering. He teams up with Jim Redbird in recommending a conservative approach to exploiting any oil found. In contrast, Bruce Tanner(Lloyd Gough), the reigning "oil king" of this region, wants to drill many wells and pump out the oil as fast as possible. At first, seen as an adversary by Cherokee, eventually, she agrees to cooperate and do things Tanner's way rather than Brady's way. Tanner even proposes marriage when he is thinking of running for governor, thus uniting the "oil king" and "oil queen". Jim Redbird also has romantic hopes with Cherokee. The oil field fire then becomes the focus. In the aftermath, Cherokee rethinks things and makes her final choice of policy and lover.This film invites comparisons with the previous film "Boomtown", staring Gable, Tracy, Colbert and Lamarr. They are both excellent stories in my opinion, relating to the development of oil fields and empires. Some viewers, no doubt, will strongly prefer one over the other. If you enjoyed this film, by all means check out "Boomtown" There are several obvious differences. Boomtown was shot in B&W versus Technicolor for "Tulsa". The featured wildcatters were Gable and Tracy and much of the movie deals with their up and down relationship and fortunes, somewhat similar to the up and down relationships between Cherokee and Brady, and Cherokee and Tanner, in the present film. "Boomtown" does not explore the dimension of conflict between cattlemen and oil developers. Both films end up promoting strategies for prolonged production rather than maximal short term production. They both include a spectacular oil field fire that threatens to destroy fortunes. Chill Wills, a native Oklahoman, is the only actor I know of who was in both films. In "Tulsa", he served as the occasional narrator and as a secondary acquaintance of Cherokee. He seemed to spend most of his time singing the title song "Tulsa" in a local club. Lloyd Gough serves as a charming, if sometimes double dealing, Bruce Tannner. His film career began late and was not very long.