BY RICH DREES
Spending
a good portion of my high school years devouring the paperback reprints of the
Doc Savage pulp novels of the 1930s and '40s, the George Pal-produced “Doc
Savage: The Man Of Bronze,†is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow. The film gets
just enough right to show tantalizing promise only to snatch that away with
what it gets wrong.
Summoned
back to his Manhattan skyscraper headquarters from his arctic retreat where he
was using the isolation to perform some experiments, scientist and adventurer
Clark “Doc†Savage Jr. meets with his five closest friends and adventuring
companions to be told that his father has died while in the small South
American country of Hildago. However, the reunion between Doc and his aides –
known as the Fabulous Five – is interrupted by an assassination attempt carried
out by a native from a South American tribe Doc can't identify. Surmising that
his father's death was not from natural causes, the group head to Hidalgo to
investigate. There they encounter the villainous Captain Seas (Paul Wexler),
who with government functionary Don Rubio Gorro (Bob Corso), is trying to steal
land that was granted to Doc's father by the leaders of the long lost Mayan
tribe, the Quetzamal. Doc, his aides and Mona, Don Rubio Gorro's truehearted
assistant, head inland to the Quetzamal's hidden village to stop Seas and
Gorro's attempt to steal the gold of the Quetzamal for themselves.
In
broad strokes, the script captures the globetrotting nature of many of the
early Doc pulp stories published by Street & Smith between 1933 and 1949.
The film's overall plot is taken directly from the first first Doc Savage yarn
published in March 1933, also titled “The Man Of Bronze.†But readers of the
old pulps will perhaps recognize that
writer Joe Morhaim and Pal have grafted onto the screenplay some elements from
a couple of other Savage stories, most notably “The Green Death†(November
1938), “The Mystic Mullah†(January 1935) and “Mystery Under The Sea†(February
1936).
The
film does sport a wonderful cast. Ron Ely is as probably as close to the pulps'
description of Doc Savage as Hollywood is likely to get, the visual of him
standing on the running-board of a touring car as it races through the streets
of Manhattan (or more accurately, Warner Brothers' New York City backlot) is an
image brought to life directly out of the pulps. And Ely plays the role with a
sincerity that at times feels as if it goes against the grain of the campy tone
director Michael Anderson is attempting. The casting for Doc's five aides are
all equally physically spot on. Those who did their teen years in the 1980s
will probably get a kick out of seeing Paul Gleason as one of Doc's aides a
full decade before he was tormenting teens at Saturday detention in “The
Breakfast Club.†Pam Hemsley as Mona appears much more wholesome here than she
would just a few years later as space vamp Princess Ardala on NBC's “Buck
Rogers In The 25th Century.†Horror fans may enjoy a rather atypical
appearance from future “The Hills Have Eyes†star Michael Berryman.
Pal
certainly lavished some money on the production, at least in spots. There is
some great location photography for both Doc's approach to his Fortress of
Solitude in the beginning of the film and when Doc and his aides are trekking
across South America to the Valley of the Vanished. Less convincing is the
set-bound look of the lost Quetzamal tribe's lost valley. (See the latest issue
of CinemaRetro for more on the making of the film.)
So
why did “Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze,†flop so hard when released? Perhaps it
was the wrong movie at the wrong time. The fall of Saigon and the end of the
Vietnam War was just a little over a month in the past when the film hit
theaters in June of 1975. The country was in a malaise and a movie wasn't going
to snap it out of its funk until “Star Wars†comes along in another two years.
It may also have been overshadowed by the release of “Jaws†the same month,
which sapped much of the oxygen out of the adventure film market To a cynical and war-weary nation, the film's
simplistic pre-Depression era idea of good guys and bad guys perhaps was seen
as naive, if not downright laughable. Moments when the film dips into camp –
such as the Doc's apparent need to slap his stylized logo on all his equipment
or Don Rubio Gorro's weird diaper and giant crib fetish – probably felt like a
way too late attempt to cash in on the campy Adam West “Batman†TV series which
had been off the air for years by this
time. Ultimately, tone is the biggest
thing that works against the film and it should be interesting to see how
writer/director Shane Black will handle it if his planned Doc Savage movie ever
gets out of development.
Warner
Archive’s new Blu-ray 1080p transfer from the film's original inter-positive does a
good job showcasing the cinematography of Fred J. Koenekamp , who was fresh off
his Academy Award-winning work on “The Towering Inferno.†The only extra
feature on the disc is a trailer, which shows some definite wear around the
edges.
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