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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
dr_hermes' InsaneJournal:
| Thursday, March 8th, 2012 | |
| 6:41 pm | RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER This is not as quite as over the top with the gore as the first Street Fighter flick, which got a rare X-rating for violence and had to be edited down to play in most theatres. (Although in one unexpected scene, Tsurugi punches a thug in the back of the head so hard both eyes pop out, which is either funny or gross, depending on your standards). RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER is more of a sraightforward crime thriller with martal arts instead of guns. I think there are handguns shown in only two scenes the entire film, and they are in the grip of American gangsters. The title character works well in a gunless context but to be honest, he would have a tough time functioning in a city like New York or LA where cops and crooks alike are armed like combat troops. This is the second appearance of Tenuka Tsurugi (okay, in Japan where family name comes first, Tsurugi Tenuka), called "Terry" in the American dubbing. I hesitate to label him even as an anti-hero, hes very much one of the villains. Tsurugi is a hit man for hire, and in the first movie when he doesnt get paid on time, he throws the client out the window and sells the guy's sister into forced prostitution to recover his expenses. The only redeeming quality Tsurugi has is a respect he feels for a karate sensei who has always played fair with him. We identify with Tsurugi because he is after all the protagonist carrying the film and because he ends up battling other crooks even worse than he is. But honestly, if Jackie Chan or Michelle Yeoh turned up in these movies as police investigators, Tsurugi would be even more clearly revealed as one of the villains. Its an interesting side of Tsurugi that he is half Chinese and half Japanese; even today in Japan, prejudice against mixed heritage people has by no means disappeared and it was very strong back in this era. Tsurugi saw his father executed by troops and grew up counting on no one, making his survival by violence. It doesn't justify his living as a mercenary assassin, but it does explain it a bit. As in the previous film, Tsurugi has a sidekick that follows him around and helps out, even though he hardly notices them. This time it's Kitty, a slightly unbearable woman with Pippi Longstocking-pigtails and enormous round sunglasses. She was an orphan starving on the streets and either Tsurugi semi-adopted her or she just latched on to him and wouldn't go away. In either case, he uses her as a vague accomplice but there is no sign he has any sexual or romantic interest in her. Kind of odd, maybe its a side of Japanese culture or tropes of that time I'm not familiar with. (Of course, she has an agenda of her own...) The plot is okay, we're not watching Hitchcock here. Some Japanese crooks are embezzling large amounts of money from a chain of karate schools all over Asia. When grandmaster Masaoka catches on, the gangsters want Tsurugi to kill him but get a surprising refusal. Masaoka is one of a very few people that Tsurugi respects (we saw them spar in the first film and the sensei knew Tsurugi's father). So it's no way Jose errr Omagata. And because he knows too much, the mobsters order Tsurugi killed, which fills much of the movie with many well-done fight scenes as our Street Fighter beats up everyone that jumps him. Then it turns out that Mafia is behind the whole mess and is scheming to take over the Japanese underworld. Good luck with that, boys. Don Costello is played by an American with a beard and a head of shiny black shoulder-length hair that is as out of character as a sunbonnet would be. (His constantly calling everyone "slant-eyed" and "yellow-skinned bastard" is a hint that he is not a nice person.) Shinichi Sonny Chiba plays Tsurugi of course with his usual sullen ferocity. With a few exceptions, everything Ive seen Chiba in has him perpetually ticked off and eager to start breaking heads. He eats a bowl of rice as if he wants to hurt it. Chiba does not have those flashes of boyish appeal that Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan showed. He's just badass straight through and if thats what you like, he's your man. Chiba of course was a highly skilled martial artist himself and it shows (I tried Kyokushinkai-kan for a few months when I was young and believe me it's a hard style; the idea was to get so that wherever your opponent hit you, it wouldn't hurt but wherever you hit him would do real damage) As far as I can see, Chiba does all his own stunts, even the impressive acrobatic flips, and he plays Tsurugi as a sort of a highly skilled werewolf in his fights. In the opening scene, he gets into a police station to silence a witness and thrashes at least twenty cops before easily escaping. But he is not invincible, he can and does take a lot of damage by the end of each movie. And one final note. Tsurugi does most his fighting in a sort of black uniform that has two long leather cuffs on each forearm. These cuffs have thin flat metal blades set in parallel slots around them so that he can block sword or knife slashes with them. Also, when necessary he can tug a few of the blades out and throw them. I thought this was a clever gimmick. |
| 6:39 pm | HORROR IN GOLD The second of the "All-New WILD Adventures of Doc Savage," written by Will Murray but based on material by Lester Dent. (It's credited to the house-name Kenneth Robeson, a nice gesture and nod to history, as well as a help to readers who might be caught up and track down other books in the series.) Great stuff, really hit the spot. I have been reading Doc Savage nearly all my life, making my way through the Bantam reprints of the original pulps as they came out and finishing the final Omnibus with UP FROM EARTH'S CENTER with a curious feeling of satisfaction and let-down. I had never expected to get to read all of the series, but there I was. Then came Philip Jose Farmer's ESCAPE FROM LOKI and seven new books based on Lester Dent's false starts or rejected outlines, given full life by Will Murray. After the seventh one, when there was seemingly no chance for any more, I wrote that it seemed we will never again enjoy a new authentic authorized Doc Savage adventure "but then.. that's what we thought in 1949." I am probably going to grouse about length with each new entry in the series but this sucker is just too long. At 300 pages, it's more than twice as big as a typical pulp novel and feels like it. The story rushes right along, there are no slack spots that drag and one event leads to the next. But I grew up with 124-pagers you could chew through on a lazy afternoon or a sleepless winter night and the stories just had more impact that way. They were an experience with no breaks for the momentum to be broken or mood lost. About two-thirds through HORROR IN GOLD, when the first of the two major villains is captured, it felt like a natural satisfying conclusion to a fun story. But everything started up again and went on for almost the same length. To be honest, I was not as interested in the following events and my attention weakened. I know publishing goes for big thick paperbacks at this point, and single novels sell better than collections, but if I had a vote, I would rather this volume had contained two stories at half the length. HORROR IN GOLD is a Mad Science yarn with a new scientific discovery immediately falling into wrong hands (figures) and being used for mass destruction and loss of life. I thought it was clear almost immediately what was going on, not that I'm sharp but just that I have read way too many thrillers when I should have been learning French to read Proust in the original. It starts when the heads of two men on a NYC street explode just like that. What a mess. Doc and his friends investigate, enigmatic clues are all over the place and then bigger explosions start around the city as the menace escalates. Given that the title of the book is HORROR IN GOLD and the cover shows a woman holding what looks like a raygun, it's not the best kept secret since D-Day that a new device is causing gold to explode with great violence. Fillings in teeth become little grenades, wedding rings vaporize third fingers and leave cauterized stumps, bank vaults look like warzones. Behind it all is a mysterious figure going by the name A. Alchemist (later known as the Abolisher, which sounds more like Temperance leader. "I am the Abolisher of Gold... the one destined to remake the world.") The Abolisher or Anti-Alchemist is certainly a bizarre enough figure in that grand pulp tradition. ("..a repulsive spider of a person, dressed in robes of royal purple, face framed by the carapace of an enveloping hood topped by a broad-brimmed cavalier's hat.) Quite early on, its clear that the evildoer is a woman, or maybe two; one with silver eyes and thick black hair, the other with lavender eyes and stringy grey hair. Elvira Merlin (there"s a pulpish name!) has "a ripe beauty that suggested she had been quite ravishing a decade or so in the past..." very nice touch, not making her the young and stupefyingly gorgeous villainess we usually get. As everyone panics and runs around in little circles like lunatics because having gold near you might be fatal, Doc Savage puts on his equipment vest, blows on his hands and rubs them together and gets to work. Joining the usual Abbott & Costello of crimefighters (Monk and Ham, that is) is Long Tom. He is his usual sour, grouchy, impatient self and as always a delight. The aides are used to him, they seem to have an understanding that keeps their friendship unruffled by surly remarks from the electrical wizard but then these guys are self-made millionaires and worldclass experts in demanding fields, so they have healthy egos and self-assurance. Renny and Johnny turn up late in the story, and Pat is just an offstage voice. Personally, I would rather Monk and Ham got delegated to waiting the wings, we see more than enough of them during the series and I enjoy seeing the other four get a share of spotlight. But what do I know, maybe most fans think Monk and Ham are the best part. Also turning up is Lea Aster, dating this around the time of THE RED SKULL if I remember correctly. Monk's beautiful blonde secretary is likeable and reasonably brave when facing death but shes not a Navy Seal or anything, just a normal person trying to cope. Will Murray gets everything dead right as far as characterization goes. Every detail of all the gadgets, Doc's two-hour exercizes, the 86th floor, the Crime College, the Fortress of Solitude and the Flea Run and much more are captured just right. His version of Doc is completely satisfying for fans of the early 1930s near-superman and the bursts of violent action are balanced by quick thinking and scientific genius. He can go from punching out a roomful of thugs to performing spinal surgery to inventing a new process for infrared photography in the same day. But the best part is that the bronze man is not infallible; some of his strategies dont work, he is capable of making mistakes or being outfoxed and he does let slip hint of genuine feeling behind the stoic mask. If Doc was actually emotionless or completely invincible, he would not be interesting at all. Its these clues that a human being is trying to be superhuman that makes the Man of Bronze so compelling. Doc even gets in a rare subdued pun about the elusive woman who keeps escaping custody. " 'If Trixie is her true identity,'said Doc, 'she is well named'") e learn that the huge library on the 86th floor has a section packed with ancient books on esoteric subjects such as alchemy and yes, the thought that Johnny might keep his copy of THE NECRONOMICON there came to mind. These new adventures seem open to more overt science fiction than the pulps,although that original series did feature invisibility, mind-eading machines, twelve foot giants, the Blue Meteor and the Green Death and more. I would never want Doc to meet a genuine vampire or sorceror with real magical powers. But the bronze man tackling a cult that worshipped Cthulhu with hints of something dark and potent behind them... I'd sit up all night reading that. ) I dont know why I waited so long to order this. Honestly, as soon as THE INFERNAL BUDDHA is available, I will snatch it up like my life depends on it. |
| 6:38 pm | THE TEACHER I'm sorry I watched it. THE TEACHER (1974) isn't funny or sexy or suspenseful. It's just there, dawdling along like a car in your way taking up the passing lane. I didn't catch it back in drivein days, and now I wonder if all the softcore pornish comedies or softcore pornish thrillers would be as dismal if I watched them today. The music alone made my kidneys shut down, it's that lame lame 1970s studio drivel I hate so much. There were a lot of great film scores in that era, but this was not one of them. THE TEACHER is the story of a beautiful young blonde teacher (sounds fair enough) who seduces a former student BUT they both are being stalked by a psycho with a grudge. Okay, there's enough material there to work with and a good director could go in a number of directions. Play up the teasing and build to a hot sex scene or emphasise the suspense and make it into a thriller. Or heck, turn it into a light-hearted spoof, anything but just let it play out halfheartedly. Angel Tompkins plays the title character. She's good-looking enough to be sure, and as a bonus, she seems to be exactly what we see. That's her face, that's her body, she has not been disasssembled and surgically rebuilt like so many beauty stars today. This alone is kind of refreshing. She's not a good actress, barely competent in fact, which surprises me. Angel provides a fair amount of topless scenes, which is fine with me as far as they go but she just seems disinterested. The big seduction moment is so sedate and modestly staged that I have seen TV commercials that are more tititllating. The only thing I remember her from was the old TV series SEARCH (first known as PROBE). This by the way could stand a movie version, I think today's tech would make it more believable; a team of spies or detectives or whatever are monitored from their home base through little camera/radios they wear on necklaces. Whatever they needed to know, an expert back at the base can relay to them and the probes also gave them information on peoples' pulse rates to see if they were lying. Angel played one of the technicians at the base and I remember her being funny with her snarky remarks about the lies the agents were telling. Actually, just reminiscing about SEARCH just now gave me more fun than watching THE TEACHER. Playing the student is Jay North, yes DENNIS THE MENACE. I don't know what happened here. Maybe he was stoned all the time, maybe he was being forced to do this movie at gunpoint, but honestly he gives a performance that is like a blank spot on the screen. He is like one of those floaters you see out of the corner of your eye. I notice the film has him just having graduated and waiting to go to college next fall, so he is not a minor and not even The Teacher`s student. Sheesh. Way to kill the fantasy for all the lovesick high school boys mooning over a pretty young teacher. I can't imagine why he doesnt jump all over this golden opportunity but he keeps excusing himself to go work on his van. I imagine when this showed at driveins the character was ridiculed profusely. Anthony James is good as always as the twisted maniac. He could always be counted on to deliver the goods with a role like this. A pyscho who wears a bright canary yellow windbreaker while skulking around, who keeps all his gear in a coffin and who ogles his prey through binoculars as she lounges on her boat... I'd say the guy has issues. I picked up a few similar 1970s epics in one of the public domain packages but now I don't know if I want to try them. What else have I got sitting around here? Some Mario Bava maybe, heres BAY OF BLOOD.... |
| 6:36 pm | TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE Let me see if I've got the most interesting aspect of this Mario Bava movie right. There is no one killer making his invincible way through a series of victims. No, instead everybody is killing everyone else left and right. It's as if a referee blew a whistle and yelled, "Start the murders!" And what makes it confusing is that no one within the movie really knows everything that's going on. Right after (for example) putting an axe in someone's face, the murderer himself turns around to get a knife slash across the throat. This strikes me as slightly funny in a twisted dark way. This could easily veer off into MONTY PYTHON territory without much trouble, and Bava throws us some clues not to take this too seriously. He cuts from one scene to the next with some silly paired images. Going from the moon to a flashlight is obvious enough, but when we see a gory and unconvincing closeup of a newly decapitated neck and cut immediately to the broken head of a ceramic doll, that's just being silly. The jarring juxtaposition of images from one scene to the next is difficult to do well by the best directors. Not that the killings aren't vicious and painful; we see some of the victims trying to cling to life and it's occasionally hard to take. And the splashing of bright red blood gets on your nerves after a while. One victim coughs up a pint of blood all over a killer's hands, which takes the killer off guard and visibly upsets him. Touches like that make it seem more real than the most elaborate special effects. TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE has more aliases than a spy. BAY OF BLOOD, CARNAGE, ECOLOGY OF MURDER... But the TWITCH title is bizarre and unique, so it's the one I prefer. It was directed by Mario Bava, and although I've enjoyed a few of his movies, I have never really made a detailed trip though Bavas films until now. Claudine Auger is the only actor here I recognize, and that only because of THUNDERBALL. Another actor was in a Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western. Aside from that, I don't know any of these people at all. I have to say there are only or two of the characters I found even halfway likeable. The rest are smug bitchy European golddiggers who are further saddled with some strikingly ugly clothing and hairstyles. It helps make the movie flow right along though. Not only aren't you saddened as the characters get slaughtered, a few times youre relieved theyre gone so you don't have to listen to them make catty remarks to each other. The springboard for the action (I don't know if you can really call it a plot as such) is the fate of a beautiful peace of real estate. It's a bay in the Italian countryside and the elderly Countess who owns it refuses to sell. So she finds herself with a noose around her neck and the wheelchair kicked out from under her. (All choked up?) And the relatives come swooping in like vultures after the lost man in the desert finally collapses. Some want to sell the property so it can be made into a gambling resort or condo or something, while others want to keep it becuse it's all beautiful and natural and stuff. I don't see where anything actually triggers the violence, it's as if when conditions are right for an avalanche, you get an avalanche. Naturally, watching a movie like this, you remember the stampede of slasher flicks that moved into American theatres and video stores during the early 1980s like the Mongol hordes. FRIDAY THE 13TH in particular swiped errr was inspired by TWITCH. But Jason as well as Michael Meyers and a dozen other masked slashers were different in that they were the only source of the mayhem in their movies. In a way, the masked slashers were just new movie monsters like the Wolf Man or Frankenstein Monster. The body count was upped and much more emphasis was placed on splashy special effects, but these were not thrillers so much as monster movies. TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE is more a thriller than anything else, but I could see it being classified as a grim comedy. |
| Sunday, February 5th, 2012 | |
| 2:12 pm | THE G0D IN THE B0W1 More fun with Conan here: http://dr-hermes.livejournal.com/tag/ro "The God In the Bowl" You know, this really isn't very good. Yes, it's an original Conan story by Robert E Howard, but still... There were duds from Howard's typewiter the same as any writers, and I think this is one of them. It's one of the weakest Conan yarns, in any case. This was written in 1932, along with the very first stories in the Conan series. Howard pounded it out and fired it off to Farnsworth Wright of WEIRD TALES, who fired it right back. It never did get published during Howard's lifetime and finally saw print in 1952 (in a magazine called SPACE SCIENCE FICTION) after L Sprague de Camp found the manuscript and abused it a little with his usual minor revisions and dilutions. De Camp was a nitpicker by nature and would change the type of dagger or helmet used if he thought it inappropriate, as well as throw in references to other stories by himself. Of course, today it is available in its original form. Anyway, "The God in the Bowl" is a sort of rudimentary detective story until the end, when we get a revelation of a monster. The final page works well enough when Conan faces the true murderer and deals with it in his usual way, that is some impromptu surgery with a big sword. It`s the first fifteen pages that I found tedious and unrewarding. Talk, talk, talk, with Conan giving everyone dirty looks while they try to figure out who has done the killing. It`s like having Tarzan stand around during MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. The story takes place in a huge, elaborate house of antiques and curios owned by a typically fat decadent son of civilization (this is Bob Howard writing, after all) named Kallian Publico. As we begin, we find the same Publico lying strangled on the floor and being discovered by the night watchman. Also in the area is a burglar that the watchman detains for questioning... a big beefy barbarian with tousled black hair and angry blue eyes. Yep, our favorite Cimmerian. This early in his career, the young Conan is still a teenager as I recall, making an uncertain living as a thief and learning how to get by in the world. As an aside, this story is an instance of Conan actually looking the way he is usually in depicted. In most stories, he dresses appropriately for the situation in local garb. Here he is wearing only a loincloth and sandals strapped above his ankles, with a girdle holding his scabbard. This rig has become the way we usually imagine Conan, much as Doc Savage has his torn white shirt, jodhpurs and riding boots or Sherlock Holmes has his deerstalker hat and calabash pipe. These are as much trademark visuals as blue tights with a red cape and the letter S on the chest. Some of the city guard come in, led by the magistrate Demetrio, who tries to investigate in a relatively fair way. At least he doesn't settle for simply beating a confession out of the likely suspect, as the guard captain urges. It seems that the dead man had earlier received a big stone sarcophagus, round in shape and with its lid held on by copper bands. This was from Stygia and, if you've read much Conan, you know to watch out at Stygians bearing gifts. Stygia... the serpent god Set and his priests... a round sarcophagus that is now mysteriously open and empty... the story being titled "he God In the Bowl." Hey! I think I`ve got this figured out. But of course, by the time the characters in the story puzzle it up, there are hacked up bodies flying in all directions and Conan is in a true snit. I don't want to say this is unenjoyable. It's not the worst Conan story (that might be either "The Vale of Lost Women" or "The Slithering Shadow"), it's just a bit stodgy by Robert E Howard standards. If you had found it in a 1933 issue of WEIRD TALES (given that Wright had accepted it) it would have jumped out at you from the usual riff-raff on the pages. |
| 2:11 pm | N0 H01DS BARRED "No Holds Barred" Pretty good episode from November 1952. Wrestling has always been big on TV, come to think of it, it never went away for any length of time. But in the early 1950s it was HUGE. Of course there weren't many channels and not a lot of shows to choose from, but even so wrestling was the craze. So, at Perry White's office in the DAILY PLANET building, everyone is sitting around his TV set (it's a solid wood cabinet with a door that opens to reveal the tiny screen), not because they are wrestling fans in particular but because there is a racket going on they want to bust. A goon called "Bad Luck Brannigan" has crippled half a dozen wrestlers with something he calls The Paralyzer. I guess it's not listed as an illgeal move as the authorities don't just disqualify him and none of the injured wrestlers take him to court. Perry White has one of his brilliant ideas, he calls in a collegiate wrestling champion to get an informed opinion. The guy is so outraged at the perversion of a good clean sport that he challenges Brannigan to a match. What no one knows, though, is that the wrestling crooks have a secret weapon. This is Rama, evidently a Hindu in the country illegally somehow and waiting for the crooks to get him back to India. (Rama doesn't look or sound like an Indian to me, but what do I know, eh?) With his secret knowledge of weird pressure points, Rama has taught the Paralyzer to Brannigan and is giving him tips, despite his misgivings that the gang is going to keep him prisoner forever. Well, Clark Kent does some snooping and stumbles on the truth. A reporter with X-Ray vision and super-hearing, that's some combination. As Superman, he visits Rama and gets pointers that help the honest wrestler beat the snot out of Bad Luck Brannigan. Here comes the best part. The infuriated gangsters are torturing Rama to find out what happened. "Talk or we'll twist those arms right off!" the boss yells as Rama gets both arms twisted behind him. Then a door slams open and an angry voice says, "All right boys, the party's over!" The George Reeves Superman is no mild Boy Scout, he plows through the wrestlers and leaves them all over the floor. This was a big appeal of the Golden Age Superman. He was not so completely omnipotent that he could capture bad guys with clever tricky use of his powers; he was a crimefighter and he waded into them with his fists. Of course, I am watching this on a big screen TV by DVD, not on a teeny little set back in 1952, so I spot all sorts of things not apparent to original viewers. The stunt man filling in fo Reeves is painfully obvious today, but not necessarily visible back then. Like the occasional wire or cheesy prop, it`s part of the experience and you have to go with it. |
| 2:10 pm | THE INDESTRUCTIB1E MAN A secret medical experiment on a convict gives him steel hard skin and superhuman strength! He puts on a yellow silk shirt and metal headband and becomes Hero For Hire... well, not in this movie. He just runs around Los Angeles looking for revenge. THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN (1956) is pretty dismal. For one thing, it's really cheap and mostly told by voice-over narration from the police detective investigating the case. But an unexpected benefit from this is that the movie was not shot on a soundstage but mostly outside on real locations. So we get a little time capsule of seedy areas of LA back in the 1950s, which is kinda interesting for its own sake. Heres the setup. Charles "Butcher" Benton (Chaney) has been sold out by his pals after an armed car robbery in which he killed two guards. However, even though he is going to be executed, Benton takes the knowledge of what happened to the $600,000 with him. He also swears to get revenge. Benton does get to visit the gas chamber, but his lifeless hulk is then sneakily stolen by a semi-Mad Scientist and his mousy assistant. These are played by Robert Shayne and Joe Flynn, so now the movie is derailed a bit by the audience associating them with ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN and McHALE'S NAVY. Looking for a cancer cure, the scientist injects Benton's body with an experimental serum and then blasts a couple hundred volts through it. Sure enough, Benton comes back to life. Chaney throughout the film doesn't do much acting as such. The character is now mute, supposedly because the voltage has burned out his vocal chords but more likely because the star was having troubling remembering his lines by this date. He mostly looks grumpy and confused, and here he reacts to being unexpectedly resurrected as if he has been woken by a phone call from a drunken stupor. Anyway, the experiment has given his body dense cells and enhanced strength. Luke Cage time! No, he just wants to kill his former buddies and recover the loot. Benton strangles the scientist and assistant simultaneously, one with each hand, and goes on a lethargic rampage for the rest of the movie. It`s pretty standard crime melodrama after that, except that bullets don`t hurt the villain so he doesn`t need to get a gun for himself. We get long tedious exchanges between the smirking cop on the case and Benton`s stripper girlfriend, and we get way too many closeups of Chaney grimacing. Those watery, bloodshot eyes and WC Fields nose are supposed to be menacing but they`re just sad. Kids, dont be alcoholics. Eventually, things descend down into the sewers of LA where the police have prudently brought along a bazooka and flamethrower to deal with the bulletproof monster. After taking some damage, Benton ends up in a power plant where he gets a discharge (har!) and is lifeless again as the credits come up. INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN is not what you could call a good movie by any reasonable standard, even the rather slack ones I use for 1950s drive-in flicks. But it`s watchable and has some interesting shots of 1956 LA's sleazy side streets. And it gives a good look at Angels Flight in operation. This was a sort of trolley where two passenger cars went up and down a very steep hill. It's history now and not likely to ever return, but Angels Flight seems to be fondly remembered by those who knew it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_Fli |
| 2:08 pm | A F0RCE 0F 0NE Sheesh. I suppose your average mainstream moviegoer would find this intolerably bad and even I didn't care for it. But if you like martial art flicks, its a little slice of history. The main attraction is a series of fights (in and out of the ring) between Chuck Norris and Bill Superfoot Wallace. The rest is like sitting through yet another cheesy 1970s cop show from Quinn Martin. I don't expect Chuck Norris to have had any noticeable acting skills, especially this early in his career, but he has no presence either. He doesn't give off any emotional intensity, he is just uninvolved, standing there waiting for someone else to finish speaking so he can say his line. Norris reminds me of a B-movie cowboy star from the 1940s, which is okay as far as it goes, but he doesn`t go any further than that. Okay. The plot is some mess about police corruption and confiscated drugs disappearing, while this quasi-ninja dude with karate skills is killing people. Fair enough. The cops recognize that it takes one martial art maven to catch another, so they call in Matt Logan. (In his early movies, each Chuck Norris character had a bland WASPY kind of name like that, but it didn't matter because they were never fleshed out anyway.) This Logan is a karate champion and teacher, and he says, sure I'll help, because I HATE DRUGS that much! Much screen time is eaten up slowly until we finally get Norris and Bill Wallace in the ring together, which is what we have waiting to see from the start. I was tickled most by the 1979 ambience, with the gruesome clothing and porn star mustaches and big old metal cars and no computers or cell phones anywhere. It's like another planet. It was also good to see old favorites like Clu Gulager from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and Ron O'Neal from SUPERFLY again, but poor Jennifer O`Neill is mistreated by saddling her with a hideous hairstyle that sabotages her ethereal good looks. She is about as convincing as a tough cop as Billie Burke would be. Within a few years, Chuck Norris found his niche as a Commie Smasher, but his earliest movies were all over the place. If you haven't seen BREAKER! BREAKER! where he cleans up a corrupt town with the help of a CB truckers convoy, your jaw hasn't dropped hard enough yet. |
| 2:07 pm | DR BLOOD'S COFFIN (1961) DR BLOOD'S COFFIN (1961) Whoa, this is some crazy movie. It really should have been made around 1940, its premise is so implausible that by 1961 I'm sure audiences laughed out loud in theatres at the concept. But it does have some thrills and chills, and the climax features some decent Zombie Wrasslin'. What we're dealing with here is a brilliant (if completely deranged) medical researcher named Peter Blood. No, not the pirate. This bloke has had some success in resurrecting dead animals by transplanting the hearts of freshly killed animals into them. And of COURSE he wants to move on to experiment with human subjects, what Mad Scientist wouldn't? This rubs the medical board the wrong way and they run him out of Vienna with curses and shaking fists. Blood goes back to his home town in Cornwall, where he sets up his lab in a deserted tin mine. This Dr Blood is not the most prudent mastermind you will ever meet. As soon as he arrives in Cornwall, people start to disappear and the police naturally are suspicious. To complicate matters a bit more, Blood's father is the local MD and has an attractive nurse, Linda. Her husband has been dead for a year, and she is adjusting enough that she feels a few warm tingly sparks fly with the handsome young doctor. Well, inevitably Linda catches Dr Blood paralyzing a hobo with curare so he can pluck the heart out and see if it revives a cadaver. She objects to this, understandably. One big drawback to this technique is that the heart has to be really fresh, in fact taken from a living being, and you don't find such things conveniently at hand too often. Blood is okay with this, because he has that Lionel Atwill/George Zucco ethic that the lives of ordinary riff-raff are expendable if it means prolonging the lives of great men like, well, themselves. But it adds a really frightening aspect as we see the victims having their hearts removed while they are paralyzed and unable to move except their horrified eyes. Dr Blood is so peeved at Linda rejecting his experiments (and his smooching) that he goes and digs up her late husband Steve for the great experiment. It would be pretty funny if the transplant didn't work but what kind of horror movie would that give us? The revived Steve is a fairly unsavory sight, Linda is less than ecstatic at the whole situation and things just don`t work out. As Dr Blood, Kieron Moore does the usual ranting and raving. I could not remember where I had seen him before, until I looked it up. He was the big galoot who tried to punch it out with Sean Connery (of all people) in DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE. He makes a good Mad Scientist because he plays against the usual stereotype.. he's tall, in good shape and not bad-looking. Hazel Court plays the nurse. Because I first saw her in Roger Corman films like THE RAVEN and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, I expect her to be a scheming villainess now and I had trouble accepting her as an imperiled damsel. She just seems too tough minded to be a victim, it's like seeing Charles Bronson as a wimp. Eh, this is not a great classic you will want to watch over and over, but it`s a decent old fashioned horror film with a spooky finale. |
| 2:05 pm | SHE DEM0NS SHE DEMONS (1958) Gah. This CAN'T be the real premise. There is a small volcanic island not listed on any charts yet it's used by the US military for bombing practice (then how can it be unknown, eh?). But it's close enough to Florida that a motor launch can be blown there by Hurricane Emily. Wait, that must be a mistake. No. Anyway, four people survive the shipwreck and start to squabble. The real pain in the neck is spoiled heiress Jerrie Turner, who is such a cardboard Pampered Brat that she would seem unrealistic on a GILLIGAN'S ISLAND episode. ("Where's my powder blue cashmere shortie?" she demands after the shipwreck. "You might have saved me a pair of toreodor pants!") Jerrie is played by Irish McCalla, Sheena herself and an awesome sight if a limited actor. Putting up with her petulance is Fred and his pal Sammy. They were investigating the disappearance of thirty women from an island in the area and reports of animal-faced She Demons. Well, yeah, I think those two items might stir public curiosity enough that someone would want to know more. I don't know how to summarize this so it makes sense but here goes. There are a handful of surviving Nazis, in full SS uniform and everything, hanging out on this island. Their leader is a Mad Scientist named Herr Osler. He has tapped the thermal energy of the volcano to power his equipment, a neat trick for 1958. Osler's wife was horribly disfigured and walks around with her face all bandaged up, and he experiments to restore her beauty. Haven't we seen this before a dozen times? There is also a troupe of beautiful women in rather nice animal-skin bikinis and they ARE the horrible She Demons with scabby skin and long fangs. Sometimes. Herr Osler makes them into monsters but the process doesn't last and they return to normal, at which time they enjoy doing a lame lame 1950s lounge dance routine in a clearing for some incomprehensible reason. Somehow their make-up reappears and their hair gets styled again, too. Very mysterious. You see, Osler is drawing something he calls Character X from the women and injecting it his wife in an attempt to reprettify her. I guess it's related to DNA or genetic material somehow. Evidently, this leaves a gap in the victims which he fills with Character X from animals. If you say so. It goes on like this is for awhile, our heroes are captured and escape, there is a fist fight or two, the She Demons claw a Nazi into confetti and sure enough, just when you can't stay awake any longer, the Air Force bombers blow up the volcano and start an eruption that finishes everything. Whew. The dialogue is the worst part of this dog. It is so forced and artificial it reminds me of bad pulps. Fred asks Herr Osler to spare Jerrie from his experiments, "if there's any sense of decency left in that wormridden body of yours." Very tactful. Sammy is played by Victor Sen Young with a certain snappy insolence. A lot of his remarks point out that he is aware of being Chinese ("Great Confucius' Ghost! Look at that!"). The best moment is when Herr Osler has Jerrie decked up in his wife's black dress and is trying to seduce her with some champagne. He goes to embrace her and I swear he gets within an inch of grabbing her right boob before she clocks him good with the champagne bottle. Serves him right. |
| Saturday, August 6th, 2011 | |
| 8:30 am | You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It’s just common sense. |
| Monday, February 28th, 2011 | |
| 3:02 pm | DEADLIER THAN THE MALE Great stuff. If you ever wished there had been one more Sean Connery 007 movie back in the 1960s, this should really satisfy. In fact, it could be enjoyed as the way the Bond films could have gone; Richard Johnson was director Terence Young's initial choice for the role.The trouble starts when executives start dying in highly suspicious ways and insurance investigator Hugh Drummon (Richard Johnson) is assigned to find out what the heck is going on. It seems there are two gorgeous women who are also cold-blooded professional assassins. Elke Sommer is Irma, the stern no-nonsense blonde and Sylva Koscina is Penelope, the more uninhibited and larcenous of the team. The two characters are a delight and really carry the movie. Irma is exasperated by Penelope's habit of stealing anything that catches her eye, including Irma's wardrobe and jewelry, and they are constantly snipping at each other. ("Penelope, one of these days your light-fingered habits are going to get you into deep trouble," Irma sighs. And they do, with a vengeance.)Behind Irma and Penelope is the sinister figure of Carl Peterson (Nigel Greene, fine as always). Of course, this is not the Carl Peterson of the original books anymore than Johnson is the genuine "Bulldog" Drummond of Sapper's novels. Like Ralph Byrd's Dick Tracy, they're new characters who happen to have the same names and you might as well just go with it. So we get Drummond checking Peterson out, the usual polite bantering chit-chat between hero and villain (who both know what the other is up to) but who are just so well-bred they remain gentlemen even when ready to kill each other. It builds up to a chess game played on a huge board with seven-foot tall metal pieces which move according to instructions on walki-talkies.Richard Johnson does a solid job as Drummond. If he had been tapped to play 007, maybe the James Bond franchise would not have been the huge smash it was (Johnson is smooth and believable, but he doesn't have Sean Connery's screen presence as few actors do). DEADLIER THAN THE MALE has some good comic relief with Drummond's young cousin who gets in over his head, some well-done fight, and the irresistable look of the 1960s with clothing and street scenes. Even the theme song is neat, sung by the Walker Brothers of "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore." |
| Friday, January 28th, 2011 | |
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| Friday, December 31st, 2010 | |
| 4:00 pm | This is ridiculous and over-the-top, but in the best way. It's got a plot right out of pulps like THE SPIDER or OPERATOR# 5, the acting is flat and the special effects cheesy. There are white actors with a little eyelid make-up playing Chinese, a female geologist who has to be restrained from walking right onto lava, a Dragon Lady who hypnotizes people by waving a little hand-held fan in circles at them, just one goofy thing after another. But at least it's not boring. BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH is at least entertaining and fun to sit through. I wonder if it was meant to be shown as a made-for-TV movie. Scenes transitions have that blurring lights from THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. and sometimes a scene fades out as if intended for a commercial break. And, frankly, the whole thing has very much the look and sound of 1960s TV. Adding to the surreal feeling is that the cast is British putting on American accents which don't sound quite right.Okay, here's the premise. A renegade Chinese general has organized his own private army and has gained control of a stockpile of nuclear bombs. Using laser-beam boring machines, he has been dilling tunnels (wait for it) under the Pacific ocean to form a network beneath the United States. His idea is to fire off nuclear warheads under major American cities and take over the ruined country. Opposing him is a mere handful of US Marines led by Kerwin Matthews (from SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD) and Viviane Ventura (who has just the oddest voice and accent, in a good way). Let the sneaking around and shooting and disarming bombs in sweaty close-ups begin. |
| Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | |
| 11:23 pm | HEY THERE! Hey there! I'm using this space to archive my reviews for the moment, just as a back-up. Right now my two main sites are DR HERMES REVIEWS http://community.webtv.net/drhermes/DRH Then there's my ongoing LiveJournal site, Retro-Scans. http://dr-hermes.livejournal.com As its name hint, this is mostly scans (with commentary) of pulp art, old paperbacks and comics, ads and stills from obscure movies and pictures of Babes of Yore. As well as anything that strikes my fancy to be honest. Updated everyday, except when I just have to get some sleep. Feel free to leave a comment at Retro-Scans or e-mail me at drhermes@webtv.net. See ya! |
| Friday, October 9th, 2009 | |
| 11:03 pm | TARZAN AND THE "FOREIGN LEGION" (Oct 23, 2002) Written in 1944 but not published until 1947 (and with no magazine serialization), this was the last Tarzan book by Edgar Rice Burroughs, penned only a few years before his death. It`s also one of the very best in the entire series. Stationed as a war correspondent in Hawaii, Burroughs broke with tradition in many ways with this book. Where the preceding dozen novels had become increasingly repetitious and predictable, here there are real surprises. The writing style is crisp, wry, with sharper pacing and neater characterizaton than had been seen in years. With this last book, Burroughs seemed to take a fresh look at his most famous creation and see him from a different angle. TARZAN AND THE "FOREIGN LEGION" is set on the country-sized island of Sumatra, where the Japanese forces have been terrorizing the natives and massacring the Dutch colonists. On an American bomber doing recon work, our hero is shot down and finds himself stranded abruptly on Sumatra with a handful of Amrican aviators, soon joined by a succulent blonde teenager. On one level, the storyline is the basic plot that had served Burroughs well for many years. Take Tarzan and a few friends, set up some vicious enemies, throw in some bystanders who could go either way, and mix them all in a junlgle full of natural dangers and wild beasts. There`s not exactly a plot as much as there is a succession of escapes and captures, battles and journeys, with good luck and complete disaster taking turns. But against the basic action-filled narrative line, Burroughs sets the characters interacting with each other in new and insightful ways. He also loved to match up couples who were obviously meant to get together and then make them suffer as they had misunderstandings and tiffs, and he loved to juggle a large cast with wildly differing motivations, but here he does all this more smoothly and convincingly than ever before. Most significant is that this book reveals many of Tarzan`s secrets and shows him in sharper definition. For the first third of the book, he is known to the other characters (and referred to by the narrator) as Colonel Clayton of the RAF. Obviously, readers know his true identity but it`s still a stunning moment where it`s revealed. Tarzan drops naked from a tree onto a tiger about to kill his friends and he slays the enormous cat with his knife (as he has done so many times before). Then he lets loose a horrifying nonhuman victory cry and glares at his friends, lost for a moment in his animal nature. They`re frightened and uncertain, until he shakes if off and almost literally turns back into Clayton. It`s a terrific moment, one of the most impressive scenes in the series and it would hit audiences hard if it were put on the screen. To cap it off, one of the survivors suddenly recognizes him. ("John Clayton," he said, "Lord Greystoke --- Tarzan of the Apes!"), leading a slightly dim comrade to ask, "Is dat Johnny Weismuller?" Later in the story, when his identity is being challenged, a guerilla fighter says, "And there`s the scar on his forehead that he got in his fight with the gorilla when he was a boy." This is surprising and amusing. The genuine Tarzan knows of all the books and Hollywood movies about him, which in some strange way makes him seem more real. As good as the book is, it does have a few drawbacks. For one thing, whiles Burroughs obviously did some serious research, he has the orang-utans acting like his typical Mangani apes from back in Africa... challenging Tarzan to a death duel, carrying off a nubile young lady for some intended cohabitation. All of this goes way against what we know now about these primates, but that has to be overlooked. And Tarzan seems pretty casual about tackling tigers; it always seemed more impressive when his fights with big cats were desperate, risky last resorts instead of "oh well, another tiger to kill." Actually, it would have been interesting (considering tigers are bigger and faster than lions) if Tarzan had found himself with his hands full. [I have since been informed that the tigers of Sumatra are in fact considerably smaller than the big equivalent cats of India. If you spot any similar factual mistakes or dumb typo errors in these pages, please e-mail me.] (I personally have always been irritated by Burrough`s way of idealizing animals into pure incarnations of virtue and constantly putting humans down, but I seem to be the only one annoyed by this practice.) Also, remembering how Burroughs later apologized for his vicious anti-German speeches in earlier books like TARZAN THE UNTAMED, it`s a little sad to find him twenty years later, once again going on about the sub-human "monkeymen" Japanese and how a righteous hatred against the enemy is a noble thing. (The young heroine says, "I have not killed a man, I have killed a Jap." with her face lit up with "a divine light of exaltation.") But it was 1944 and you have to put yourself in the mindset of that year to see why a writer would say that. There are other points worth noting. Tarzan here relates how he has not aged, seeming to be in his twenties while actually in his sixties. He tells the story of the grateful witch doctor who gave him the voodoo treatment years ago and he also mentions the more recent Kavuru drug which he and his family share. But Tarzan is realistic enough to realize he`ll inevitably die one way or another. ("Death has many tricks up his sleeve beside old age. One may outplay him for a while, but he always wins in the end.") From that brief scene, Philip Jose Farmer was inspired to tell his own stories of the Apeman, and of the pastiche heroes Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban. The rest of the cast is drawn well, if a bit broadly in the WW II multi-ethnic tradition, and the dialogue has a more natural ring to it than in most of the earlier books. The Americans admit they`re scared when facing execution, talk about what war does to people and the nature of hatred, and they all develop emotionally as the story goes on. In addition to the American aviators of different ethnic and educational backgrounds, there are the toughened Dutch resistance fighters, the heroic young Corrie Van der Meer and the intriguing Sarina, a pirate Eurasian woman descended from headhunters but who sees the light and tries to do the right thing. These people make up the "Foreign Legion", no relation to the famous French Foreign Legion and therefore a bit of a misleading title. |
| 11:03 pm | TARZAN AND THE CASTAWAYS (Feb 27, 2004) From 1941, this first appeared in three parts in the August and September issues of ARGOSY WEEKLY as THE QUEST OF TARZAN (not a particularly relevant title, come to think of it). In 1964, Canaveral Press published an edition from Burroughs' original manuscript, now titled TARZAN AND THE CASTAWAYS, in which form it is most easily found. (Included are two short stories from that period, "Tarzan and the Champion" and "Tarzan and the Jungle Murders".) Actually, TARZAN AND THE CASTAWAYS is pretty good, if not spectacular. While there`s nothing wildly new about it, the story does throw the familiar ingredients together in a new kettle and stirs them up a bit more. Away from Africa for once, the Apeman finds himself on a large island in the Pacific, babysitting a handful of survivors of yet another shipwreck. That`s not enough. Okay, there are also a half dozen thugs (a cliched German and Arab and Russian) skulking about and desperately eager to cause trouble, as well as twenty vicious Lascars (any Lascars out there? How do you feel about the way you were portrayed in pulp fiction?). Still not enough gasoline on the fire. Okay, throw in a cargo of wild beasts from the ship that otherwise would never be found within thousands of miles of the island... some elephants, tigers and lions, even two lovable orangutans. (Tarzan frees these critters from the sinking ship because they are noble creatures whose lives are precious, but you notice he draws the line at snakes and lets those varmints die.) No, no, no. We need a lost civilization. What hasn`t been used so far...hmmm. A Mayan outpost! Yes, this is the city of Uxmal, founded by emigrants from Yucatan hundreds of years ago. This means we can throw a weak minded king and an insincere high priest into the plot, as well as a saucy young maiden snatched right off the sacrificial altar before the knife can do some impromptu cardiac surgery on her. Now we`re ready. The story falls neatly into two halves. First, we have a suspenseful shipboard melodrama, where a German brute named Schmidt has taken over the ship SAIGON (the genuine captain is bedridden with fever). Schmidt is terrifying some European passengers who only want to get home alive. Remember after WWI, when Burroughs started throwing in an occasional good German? Well, with a new war starting up, the heinous Hun is back,as nasty as before. Actually, there are only two or three halfway likeable people in the entire cast.... and two of them are decent only because the formula demands a young couple fall in love and go through some misunderstandings. (Burroughs reminds me of Robert E. Howard in that regard, most of the characters in both writers` stories are unlikeable scoundrels always on the edge of turning on each other. Howard would just as soon skip including the young lovers, though, as just being that mushy stuff.) The oppressive German has a naked wildman in a cage which he has purchased from a venial Arab who captured the guy. He plans to exhibit the growling savage in a sideshow back in Berlin, eating raw meat and drawing in the rubes. Of COURSE it`s Tarzan. Be serious. Lord Greystoke has suffered another severe concussion, which has left him temporarily unable to speak or comprehend ohers` speech. As soon as this corrects itself, he promptly gets creased across the noggin with a bullet, knocking him unconscious for a while. Considering how many traumatic head injuries Tarzan has survived, it`s amazing he doesn`t walk around in circles all the time, twitching and laughing for no reason. The shipboard sequence does have some clever moments. At one point, Tarzan amuses himself by letting the passengers think he is actually eating the dead captain. What a card. Of course, since we never do see the captain (who is described as being deathly ill and never mentioned after the shipwreck, you have to wonder just where the villains got all that raw meat they were giving the Apeman.... waste not, want not.) The big storm that endangers the ship, the daring escape by our hero as he bends the iron bars of his cage enough to get out, and the mutiny against the tyrannical German who has usurped command, are all presented briskly and vividly. Once our menagerie both human and beast are castaway on the uncharted island of Uxmal, things settle down into a much more typical exploit for the Apeman. There`s friction between the bad guys (who just will NOT stay in their own camp) and much badmouthing of our naked hero by a rather dim and unreasonable old dowager. Then, of course the Mayans turn up and Tarzan is on a familiar game again... saving maidens from being sacrificed, leaping over walls and racing to the rescue, even killing a lion with only a knife. (The only lion for thousand of miles in any direction, and sure enough the Apeman drops down from a tree to wrestle it and then stab it in the heart.) Because the story is considerably shorter than the typical Tarzan book, there is none of the padding where three parties chase each other back and forth. In fact, the book moves briskly and suddenly finishes up with a startling bloodbath that drops most of the bad guys dead in the dust with little fuss. Our hero survives a rather mild trial by ordeal that any reasonably fit lifeguard could manage. The castaways are rescued so promptly after the plot has been resolved you might think a ship has been waiting just offshore, the captain watching through binoculars until he got his cue. ("Looks like Greystoke`s got the girl. Now the Mayans are praising him as a god. All right, let`s go in and pick them up.") By this time, Burroughs' writing style is streamlined and breezy, very modern. He obviously did some research on the Maya but doesn`t clog the narrative with too much detail. The story shows some signs it wasn`t polished much; a tribe of cannibals on the island are mentioned but never appear, and the ending just rears up abruptly. There are some interesting little bits of business. When asked if he is an Englishman, the Apeman replies, "My father and mother were English"... not quite the same thing. When a cute little Mayan heartbreaker throws herself brazenly at Tarzan, he turns her down with no explanation. It`s a writing dilemma. Tarzan is after all still married to Jane, who cannot be killed betwen books because the fans won`t allow it. But if Burroughs dislikes Lady Greystoke and doesn`t want to mention her, then he has a problem explaining why our hero rejects the several stunning wenches who fling themselves at his brawny bod. |
| 11:01 pm | "Tarzan and the Champion" (Jan 20, 2003) From April 1940, where it appeared in BLUE BOOK magazine, this is a minor story in the Tarzan saga. It has some good points, but it also misses some great possibilities. What we`re dealing with here is an American heavyweight boxing champion who has taken it into his head to travel through Africa and shoot hundreds of wild animals for trophies. Not only does he come up against Tarzan, who takes a dim view of the whole proceedings, but there are also some particularly unpleasant cannibals in the area, so things don`t go well for the boxer and his manager. Part of the problem with this story is that "One Punch" Mullargan is such a cardboard character, an incredibly ignorant brute who never really comes to life. His limited intelligence and careless habits with his fists are quickly tedious, and his stereotyped New York slang is supposed to be amusing but is only tiresome. Also, I know Tarzan is strong and quick bordering on the superhuman, but it might have been more interesting if Mullargan had put up a good fight in their inevitable duel. Warch old newreels of Joe Louis in action and you can see how someone like that could give even the Apeman a hard time. Mullargan does show signs of being redeemable. After Tarzan chastises him for shooting dozens of zebra (with a machine gun, no less), the boxer struggles with the idea and eventually apologizes, saying that he never thought about animals having feelings. To his credit, Tarzan takes this belated apology into account. Also, when Mullargan`s manager is captured, the champ doesn`t escape but turns back in a hopeless attempt to rescue him. This impresses the Apeman. ("...self-sacrificing heroism is not a common characteristic of wild beasts. It belongs almost exclusively to man, marking the more courageous among them. It was an attribute that Tarzan could understand and admire.") This is one of the rare times when Burroughs has something nice to say about people, and it`s worth noting. The best part of the story is actually the menace of the Babanos, a tribe of canibals who relish their diet. ("They eat human flesh because they like it, because they prefer it to any other food...they hunt man as other men hunt game animals, and they are hated and feared throughout the territory they raid.") The Babanos are genuinely scary, and they provide Tarzan with a worthwhile challenge that every hero needs to show his mettle. The Babango prepare their victims by first breaking the prisoners` arms and legs in several places and then letting them soak in the river for a few days to make them tender. (I`m pretty sure I saw Rachael Ray doing this on 30 MINUTE MEALS on the Food Channel, or maybe it was the Two Fat Ladies. Anyway...) Contrasting with the Babangos are the Waziri, who are their usual stalwart, noble selves. The porters in the safari recognize the Waziri as great warriors, whom they do not have to fear. I always thought the Tarzan movies would have benefitted from having the impressive Muviro and his tribe in the action more. Finally, as brief as this story is, Tarzan manages to find an opportunity to drop down on a lion, then wrestle with it and stab it to death. Was there ANY Tarzan book where he didn`t kill at least one lion? (Even on Sumatra, in TARZAN AND "THE FOREIGN LEGION" he sent a tiger or two to their afterlife.) |
| 11:00 pm | "Tarzan andf the Jungle Murders" (March 18, 2005) Phew. This is awful. "Tarzan and the Jungle Murders" appeared in the June 1940 issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES and was later collected with two other stories into the book TARZAN AND THE CASTAWAYS. It's really unrewarding material. According to Irwin Porges' book EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS: THE MAN WHO CREATED TARZAN, the original manuscript had the Apeman show up late in the story and was only identified as the Stranger (as if this nearly-naked bronzed giant in Africa in an Edgar Rice Burroughs yarn would be tough for readers to identify). Leo Margulies had one of his editors rewrite the story so that Tarzan appears from the start, and evidently this revision was extensive, uninspired and clumsy. (I would like to see what the Burroughs version was like, if it still exists somewhere.) Here's an attempt to show the Apeman as an amateur detective. Well, why not? Burroughs normally showed Tarzan as shrewd, well-read and very observant. He should be as good at sleuthing as any other amateur, if not better. The Apeman also possesses an ability matched only by Doc Savage among his pulp peers, an enhanced sense of smell. Tarzan can not only tell by a lion's body odor whether the animal is hungry or full, he can recognize scents too faint for the average person to detect even when pointed out to him. All just dandy, but this story doesn't use the super-nose power fairly. There's something here that's impossible for me to forgive in a mystery. I don't mind if the all-important clue is casually dropped in the middle of a distracting action scene or dismissed by one of the characters as unlikely, as long as it is presented to the readers early enough to give us a chance to use it. When, at the literal tail-end of the story, Tarzan explains who the murderer is by describing physical characteristics which were never mentioned before....! That's when the book goes sailing across the room to knock over a lamp and I have to retrieve it, grumbling under my breath. Also, Tarzan sniffs a glove left at the first murder scene. Okay, we realize that he can therefore recognize the owner if he should meet him. But to give the reader a sporting chance, Tarzan should mutter something like "sulphur", so that we can keep an eye out for a suspect lighting matches with his thumbnail. Give us something to work with, Burroughs! (Since the glove's scent lets Tarzan identify the killer immediately at first meeting, the other deductions our boy works out must be for the benefit of the other characters.) Aside from the fact that the mystery angle is lame, the story falls flat as jungle action as well. Tarzan finds two crashed planes, and he reconstructs what happened. This part isn't too badly done, as the Apeman realizes the dead pilot in the first plane has a bullet hole in the throat, left of the larynx, at a downward angle. Therefore, he could only have been shot from another plane. Tarzan finds two men had survived the crash and sets out to track them down. It turns out two nearby safaris have merged for expediency, and they are made up of a typical Burroughs steamy mixture of a noble British lady, an arrogant and abusive guide, two men in love with the same maiden, a spy or two involved in the theft of some plans for a weapon vitally important to the upcoming war, all that lurid tangle of lust and greed we've seen in many Tarzan stories before. This unhappy group has just been joined by two dishevelled and half-starved men who wandered out of the jungle (gee, could they possibly be the two men from the downed airplane?! Hmmm....) The Apeman turns up only to be blamed for a stabbing murder which has just happened in the camp, and then there's a second death which is also attempted to be laid on him (but he has an alibi). Finally, the motley crew assemble in the Resident Commissioner's bungalow for the big revelations. This is Colonel Gerald Giles-Burton of the Bangali government, by a remarkable coincidence the father of one of the murder victims. (Bangali? Say, you don't think this Colonel is part of the Jungle Patrol and he knows a man with a mask and a skull ring, do you?) Tarzan doesn't quite recap all the events and then point his finger and say, "You - are - murderer!" with a Chinese accent, but he does explain who is really hiding under what name, and who did the killings. But, as noted above, he basically is pulling clues out of his loincloth that weren't available before. That's not how the game is played, old boy. In case the crime-solving part of the story isn't enough to satisfy Tarzan fans, there's an interruption in the storyline as the Apeman is captured by unapologetic cannibals and has to summon a herd of elephants to rescue him. This is told in such a drab and uninspired style that it reads more like an outline than the finished story. So many other details seem odd or out of synch with the established Tarzan canon that I would guess there's as much of that anonymous editor's wordage in this story as Burroughs', maybe more. At this point, all I have left to re-read in the series is TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD MEN (a lukewarm potboiler), JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN (some interesting and offbeat short stories of our hero's youth) and the first book itself, TARZAN OF THE APES (I'll be using the HIGH ADVENTURE reprint of the original 1912 magazine edition). And I have to say, "Tarzan and the Jungle Murders" looks like it will rank as the absolute lowest point of the entire saga. |