As I write this review, some of these 'Believe It or Not' stories are making the rounds on Turner Classic Movies. I thought they would be more interesting than what this one proved to be, but you have to keep in mind they were made in the early 1930's and documentary film making was in its infancy. Robert Ripley himself appears in the vignettes, but you don't see him speaking on camera at all. This episode takes us to Africa and the Holy Land, starting off with a tribe of fierce fighters called the Tuaregs, who supposedly made it routine to plunder camel caravans. That's when my antenna first went up, as I had to wonder how Ripley managed to get them on film. In Algeria, there are glimpses of an old mosque, and the narrator seemed to make light of the fact that often times, in order to rid a member of his harem, a warlord would simply throw her off a high roof. This episode also offered a bit on a so called 'nilometer' in Egypt, by which a pharaoh would levy a tax on how high the water level got on a cliff bordering the Nile River. During a drought, no tax was required. There was also mention of the Tree of Abraham, considered to be the oldest living thing at the age of thirty five centuries!!, and a glimpse of the olive tree in the Garden of Gethsemane where Christ prayed prior to His crucifixion. I don't know how to take any of these stories credibility wise. Of course, being so old, some may not even be verifiable.
