TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT

There's a certain prosaic pleasure to be found in watching an old Tarzan movie on a lazy Saturday afternoon, which is exactly what I found myself doing last weekend. TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT (1960) borrows only the name from the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel as the script (by writer/director Robert Day) is completely original.

Let's see what Tarzan boxes this film checks.

Cheetah? Yes, but only for a very few seconds of screen time, thankfully.

Jane? Alas, no, but her absence is compensated for in the form of two lovely ladies, Betta St. John and the stunningly beautiful Alexandra Stewart. Oh, and one of these lovelies gets eaten by a lioness (off camera), so the movie has that going for it.

Vine swinging? Yes, but only a few scenes and then only in the third act.

Tarzan jungle cry? Nope.

A decent Tarzan? Yes, Gordon Scott makes a perfectly suitable Lord of the Jungle in this, his fourth Tarzan film.

Filmed on location? Well, at least the exteriors were shot in Africa. The interiors were filmed in Great Britain.

A good bad guy? Yes and not one but two in the forms of veteran actor John Carradine and Jock Mahoney, who would take over the role of the Ape Man from Scott in the next Tarzan film, TARZAN GOES TO INDIA (1962).

The evil Banton crime family rob a jungle postal station and escape into the wilderness. Tarzan gives chase along with a British police officer. The officer is killed, Tarzan kills one of the Bantons, and captures oldest son Coy (Mahoney), while father Abel (Carradine) and his two other sons escape.

Tarzan decides to transport his captive to Kairobi to collect the reward money for the dead policeman's family. It's an arduous cross country trek made even more difficult when he's forced to include a group of civilians in the party. Ames (Lionel Jeffries) is a whinging git, all puffed up and incessantly squabbling with his wife, Fay (St. John), who is regularly making eyes at prisoner Coy. Also in the group are Tate (Earl Cameron), Conway (Charles Tingwell) and Lori (Stewart).

Tarzan and his unlikely fellow travelers are besieged by various perils along the way including wild animals, the ever-popular quicksand (what would a Tarzan movie be without quicksand?) and constant harassment by the Banton men. Tarzan and Coy finally duke it out in a well mounted fight scene that takes place among the rocks at the bottom of a waterfall.

There's nothing exceptional here but TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT does provide the requisite number of jungle adventure thrills that the durable Tarzan film series could always be counted on to deliver.

AND GOD CREATED WOMAN

"That woman was made to destroy men."

Tame by today's standards, Roger Vadim's 1956 erotic drama AND GOD CREATED WOMAN, caused quite a stir when it was first released. Especially in the United States where the controversial French film suffered heavy handed editing. There's no on screen nudity or intercourse (after all, this was 1956 )but the film is nonetheless packed with eroticism.

And that eroticism is contained mostly within the body of one Brigitte Bardot. Bare-footed, horny and smouldering with raw sex appeal, Bardot burns her way through every frame of this film (even the ones she doesn't appear in). Bardot had made other films prior to AND GOD but this was the film that put her on the map as an international sex symbol.

Bardot stars as Juliette, an 18 year-old orphan girl who longs for love but will settle for sex with a variety of suitors young and old. She's romanced by wealthy, older businessman Eric Carradine (Curt Jurgens). Carradine has plans to build a hotel and casino in a seaside French village but to do so, he must acquire a piece of property, a small shipyard, owned by three brothers and their widowed mother. The oldest son, Antoine (Christian Marquand), is attracted to Juliette but only for sex while his younger brother (and middle son) Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant), genuinely loves the confused girl and proposes marriage to her.

Juliette accepts his proposal and they marry but Juliette cannot change her ways and eventually has a one night stand with Antoine (who is now her brother-in-law).

Things come to a head in a tense sequence in a night club in which it looks like murder might be the solution to all of the narrative problems but death is averted and Michel and Juliette are together at the end of the film.

Beautifully shot by Armand Thirard, AND GOD CREATED WOMAN looks stunning in a new transfer for the Criterion Collection. The film is bursting with color, interesting characters and a complex moral dilemma. Director/writer Vadim and co-screen writer Raoul Levy, paint a vivid picture of a confused young woman who yearns for a simple, happy life but finds her dreams constantly thwarted.

AND GOD CREATED WOMAN stands as a compelling drama, made in a straight-forward, pre-New Wave style and the films' reputation as a sexed-up potboiler is unfair. There's a good movie to be enjoyed here along with Bardot's rise to super stardom.

Recommended.

THE SHADOW: THE COBRA & THE THIRD SHADOW

I finished reading THE SHADOW VOLUME 7 (Nostalgia Ventures, 2007) last night and as always, the two stories contained within were great Shadow adventures. This time, the stories are thematically linked in that The Shadow battles foes that have adopted his own crime fighting methods to their evil ends.

First up is THE COBRA (from April 1, 1934). In this thriller, a masked vigilante who calls himself The Cobra, is killing various New York crime bosses. He guns them down in cold blood and, since the men he's killing are all criminals, the hooded avenger becomes a bit of a hero to the police and the citizens of Manhattan. But The Shadow knows otherwise. The Cobra is, of course, merely killing off his competition while at the same time casting doubt upon The Shadow's modus operandi. Author Walter Gibson raises some interesting questions about the nature of vigilante justice but this being a thrill-a-page pulp novel, there's little room for more development and exploration of this moral conundrum. When The Cobra kills a bad guy, he's a bad guy. When The Shadow kills a bad guy, he's a good guy. It's that simple.

By the way, The Cobra's costume, which is shown in original spot illustrations, is pretty nifty and reminded me of two later creations by Jack Kirby of like-named villain. First up is this guy (who started off as a recurring Thor villain)



Next, is Kobra, the head of a secret worldwide criminal organization who had his own short lived DC comics series in the 1970s




Knowing that Jack Kirby was an avid reader of the pulps when he was young, I can't help but wonder if he read this Shadow novel and used the idea of a hooded villain with a cobra motif years later.

The second story, THE THIRD SHADOW (March 15, 1936) finds The Shadow doing battle with not one but two Shadow imposters who raid various Manhattan night clubs and gambling dens and pin the crimes on the real Dark Knight. One of the imposters meets his end about halfway through the novel but the idea of a fake Shadow is quickly picked up and carried on by another smarter, bigger criminal. The case comes to a thunderous climax in a bloody shootout that takes place in a hidden gambling den.

Both of these stories are first rate Shadow adventures. The packaging is superb, as always and veteran comic book artist Dick Ayers contributes a nice foreword about his career drawing The Ghost Rider (and other characters). All in all, this is another winner from Nostalgia Ventures.

 Thumbs up.

THE DEFECTOR

Shot on location in West Germany (and raise your hand if you remember when there were two Germanys ,West and East), and on a rather meager budget (which explains the tinny, echoey sound) THE DEFECTOR (1966) is a down-beat, grim Cold War spy thriller that trades action and suspense for character study, mood and atmosphere. As such, it's a perfect time capsule of that period in world history, an exploration of a time and place when the United States and the Soviet Union waged a subtle, low-key, but nonetheless deadly game.

Produced at a time when every American (and many foreign) studios were desperately trying to cash in on the the red hot spy film craze, THE DEFECTOR stars Montgomery Clift in what was sadly his last screen appearance. When a Russian physicist decides to defect to the West, he brings along a microfilm that contains top secret scientific material. CIA operative Adams (Roddy McDowell), recruits American scientist James Bower (Clift) to go across the Iron Curtain, meet the physicist and take possession of the film.

But when Bower arrives in East Germany, he finds that all is not what it seems. Bower is  immediately placed under surveillance by Peter Heinzmann (Hardy Kruger), a German scientist who admires Bower's work and has a connection to the defecting Russian, meets and romances a lovely young nurse, Frieda Hoffman (Macha Meril), and undergoes a night in a hotel room that is designed to subject him to psychedelic hallucinations (a neat idea that seems more at home in a Bond film and is only used once in the film). Bower soon learns that the Russian scientist has been killed and even though he does eventually gain the microfilm, the information contained within is worthless.

Bower now wants only to escape back to the west but Heinzmann wants him to defect to the east where he can continue his research and the two men can work together. Bower wants none of that and the third act is a tense race against time as Bower attempts to cross the border to freedom.

THE DEFECTOR was produced, written and directed by Raoul Levy (from a novel by Paul Thomas), who died before the film was released. It's a shame he never lived to see his work on the big screen. If you're looking for 007 thrills and chills, keep moving along. You won't find them here. But if you want an intelligent, well acted and compelling spy film, THE DEFECTOR fills the bill.

Thumbs up.

BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT

Crusading newspaper publisher Austin Spencer (Sidney Blackmer) is a strong anti-death penalty advocate. He believes that with only circumstantial evidence, gung-ho district attorney Jonathan Wilson (Shepperd Strudwick) can convict and sentence to death an innocent man.

To prove his theory, Spencer convinces his future son-in-law and novelist Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews), to allow himself to be framed for the murder of burlesque dancer Patty Gray. The police have no actual suspects and Spencer and Garrett plan to scrupulously document every clue they plant. The end game is the arrest, trial, conviction and, ultimately, death sentence for Garrett. But don't worry, Spencer will spring his evidence at the last minute, exonerating Garrett and showing Wilson to be a too-ready to convict prosecutor.

It's a simple scheme, right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

This being a Fritz Lang directed film noir, plenty can and does go wrong. Garrett is convicted and sentenced to death but Spencer dies in a fiery car accident (which also destroys his evidence) and now it's a race against time to save an innocent man from the electric chair. But a third act twist (that I didn't see coming), changes everything.

BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT (1956) was the last American film legendary director Fritz Lang made before returning to Europe. Produced at RKO, it's an efficient little thriller with a twisty screenplay by Douglas Morrow. Noir icon Andrews is very good as the doomed, innocent man and Blackmer, Arthur Franz, and Edward Binns all provide solid support. On the distaff side of the ledger, Joan Fontaine brings Garrett's conflicted fiance, Susan, to vivid life while Barbara Nichols adds sass and brass to her role as dance hall girl Dolly.

Crisply shot by William Snyder, BEYOND shows a master of the genre operating with a smooth, assured authority. It's a crazy plot but Lang and company do a great job of selling it, resulting in a suspenseful, hard-hitting film noir.

Recommended.

THE COMEDY OF TERRORS

When it comes to horror films, I like my frights delivered straight with no chaser. I prefer pure horror films than those that leaven the shocks with laughs. Humorous horror films are more often than not overdone, over-the-top affairs that grate on your nerves more than provide either laughs or shocks. For instance, I find Frank Capra's ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944), while generally a crowd pleaser, to be a shrill, manic movie that annoys more than entertains.

That said, I do recognize the deep vein of sly humor that runs throughout James Whale's masterpiece BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) (my all-time favorite horror film, by the way), and I have laughed heartily when viewing ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) (the last hurrah of the classic Universal monsters), THE GHOST AND MR CHICKEN (1966) (starring one of my all-time favorite comic actors, Don Knotts) and Mel Brooks's hysterical send-up YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974).

Which brings us to THE COMEDY OF TERRORS (1964), I film I had never seen until a few days ago. On the surface, it looks like another Roger Corman directed adaptation of some obscure Edgar Alan Poe story but the film owes nothing to either Corman or Poe. It's directed by genre auteur Jacques Tourneur from an original screenplay by Richard Matheson. There's a great Lex Baxter score, sharp cinematography by Floyd Crosby and nice period art direction by Daniel Haller. All of that behind-the-scenes talent supports a cast of horror icons including Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone.

Price and Lorre star as owners of an impovershed funeral home in late 19th century New England. They own only one coffin (which is recycled after each "burial" by dumping the corpse into the grave) and are about to be foreclosed on by their landlord, Basil Rathbone. Price has taken over the business from the original owner, a dottering and deaf Karloff, by marrying Karloff's daughter, the busty Joyce Jameson. Price hates his wife while Lorre admires her horrendous singing talent (and her other "charms").

Price hits upon the idea of killing people to provide income for the business but when his first murder provides no money he decides to kill two birds with one stone by targeting landlord Rathbone. The trouble is, Rathbone proves awfully difficult to kill due to a tendency to lapse into the occasional cataleptic state (which resembles death), only to revive later. Everything comes to a "comedy of errors" climax in which Karloff gets the last laugh while Lorre (surprisingly) gets the girl.

It's clear from the very beginning that all of the leads are having a ton of fun playing for laughs rather than frights. And, surprisingly enough, they all acquit themselves quite well, with each of the leads earning some well deserved chuckles from this otherwise purist viewer.

You won't bust a gut laughing while watching THE COMEDY OF TERRORS but it does provide some genuine laughs and, at the very least, should put a smile on your face while watching these beloved icons of horror have a ball trying to kill each other.

DYNAMITE DOC

Cover artist supreme Alex Ross channeled the great Jim Steranko for the cover of DOC SAVAGE: THE MAN OF BRONZE OMNIBUS VOL. 1 from Dynamite Comics (2014). The Omnibus is a handsome trade paperback that reprints the eight issue DOC SAVAGE series along with the one-shot DOC SAVAGE 2014 ANNUAL. I scored this beauty at a comic book shop in Oklahoma City on our recent trip. The store was having a Back-To-School sale with everything in the store 20% off. I couldn't resist and I popped on this one instantly (along with several other treasures I hope to blog about).

But, as always when buying any Dynamite Comics products, the cover is usually the best thing about the book. I once heard someone say that Dynamite was more interested in selling covers (witness the multitudes of variant covers), than actual comics. I've been burned many times by buying a Dynamite Comic because of the cover, only to be sadly disappointed by the thin story and mediocre art contained within. And with Alex Ross providing the covers for this run of Doc Savage comics, the bar was certainly raised high. Good lord, can you imagine an entire Doc Savage comic book series illustrated by Ross?! My head would explode.

Of all of the various comic book iterations of Doc and the Fabulous Five (plus Pat) that have been published over the years, my favorite remains the stories in Marvel's DOC SAVAGE black and white magazine from the 1970s. Those stories by Doug Moench, John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga, are all top notch adventures that perfectly capture the spirit of the era in which Doc best belongs: the past.

Because when it comes to Doc stories, I'm a bit of a purist. I strongly believe that the character and his adventures work best in the decades of the '30s and '40s. There have been numerous attempts to update Doc Savage by bringing him and his crew into contemporary modern times. DC comics used this approach with mixed results in the '80s. It takes a really good writer to be able to pull this stunt off convincingly and make me believe and care that Doc is still around in the 21st Century.

I'm here to tell you that writer Chris Robinson does exactly that in this epic Doc Savage adventure that begins in 1933 and ends in 1924. The narrative involves a threat faced by Doc and the Five in the early days of his career, a threat that comes back to menace the entire world in 2014. In between, we're treated to various iterations of the Savage team. Renny, Long Tom and Johnny drop out fairly soon, leaving an aged Monk and Ham to continue the fight alongside new team mates. Pat is along for the ride, the beneficiary of an immortality serum discovered by Doc. Over the years the team gets replaced and updated with all new characters fighting beside Doc and an aged Pat at the end.

There are multiple threats that must be faced and defeated but for the first time, Doc experiences a sliver of doubt as to his capabilities for saving the world. He also comes under attack for his "Crime College", that mysterious facility in upstate New York where Doc operates on criminals' brains, turning them into useful, productive members of society. The philosophical questions caused by this practice are brought under scrutiny and serve as a problematic point that places Doc and his foundation under intense public scrutiny and questioning of his motives.

Roberson handles all of this extremely well, mixing slam bang action with thoughtful explorations of morality with Doc, of course, ultimately standing tall and triumphant at the end of the story. And for once, the art in a Dynamite Comic is good throughout. Bilquis Evely does a fine job of depicting Doc and his team mates in clean, clear artwork and solid storytelling. While it would have been a visual feast to see Alex Ross on the interiors as well as the covers, Evely more than holds his own here.

In short, this is one of the better Doc Savage comic book stories I've ever read. Buy it for the Ross cover but read it and savor it for the terrific story by Roberson and Evely. Oh, and don't overlook the back up story from the 2014 ANNUAL. It's a strong stand-alone adventure by Shannon Eric Denton and Roberto Castro. Throw in a variant cover gallery (hey, it's Dynamite Comics!), and you have one first rate package of pure pulp thrills.

Thumbs up.

THE BLACK SCORPION

In 1957, Willis O'Brien, the godfather of stop-motion animation special effects, the man who gave us the silent classic THE LOST WORLD (1925) and the immortal KING KONG (1933) (among others), was near the end of his career. After THE BLACK SCORPION, O'Brien would work on only three more films: THE GIANT BEHEMOTH (1959), THE LOST WORLD (1960) and IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963).

But while O'Brien, the master, was in the twilight of his career in the late 1950s, his student, protege and heir to the throne, Ray Harryhausen, was in ascendancy. In 1957, Harryhausen made 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH, his last black and white film before turning to the wonders of color cinematography for 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD in 1958, the beginning of a string of classic sf and fantasy films that lasted until 1980.

It's hard not to compare the two films that O'Brien and Harryhausen made in 1957. While I consider 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH the better film, BLACK SCORPION is a fine little giant-monsters-on-the-loose movie. SCORPION closely follows the narrative beats of THEM! (1954) (also produced by Warner Brothers) but while the giant ants in THEM! were giant, mechanical contraptions, O'Brien uses stop-motion animation to bring to life a score of scorpions, a spider creature and a bizarre worm monster.

Filmed largely on location in Mexico, SCORPION follows the team of Dr. Hank Scott (Richard Denning) and Dr. Arturo Ramos (Carlos Rivas), as they investigate the aftermath of a massive volcanic eruption and subsequent earthquakes. The volcano has opened a passageway to the surface, allowing the giant scorpions that live in a vast underground cavern access to above ground food sources, including cattle and humans. The two doctors encounter local rancher Teresa Alvarez (the smoking hot Mara Corday) and soon discover the horror that roams the countryside.

SCORPION contains three nicely staged set pieces. There's a lengthy sequence in the cavern involving the scorpions (including the really big one), the spider and worms. Later, the scorpions attack a passenger train and finally, the sole remaining scorpion battles tanks and helicopters in a Mexico City soccer stadium before being dispatched by Dr. Scott.

Budgetary restrictions reveal themselves throughout the film. Footage is recycled several times and flopped to make the monsters move from right to left, then left to right. There's a giant scorpion head dripping scorpion saliva and drool, that is seen repeatedly. It's horribly ineffective and downright comic. And during the climax, when the scorpion is rampaging through the streets of Mexico City, instead of inserting stop-motion footage, the scorpion is depicted as a solid black (sometimes transparent) travelling matte. It's a totally unconvincing effect. But when O'Brien has the room, the time and the money to strut his stuff, the results are pure magic.

While watching the film, I was struck by the idea that if there had been a Doc Savage film or television series produced in the late '50s, Richard Denning would have made a good Doc. He wasn't big and muscle bound but he had the blond hair and chiseled features and wears Savage-style shirts throughout the film. Hell, Mara Corday would have made a great Monja.

THE BLACK SCORPION is a solid little giant monster movie, a great way to pass the time on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

 

"WHEN THE MONSTER IS DEAD..."

Released on a double bill with THE WASP WOMAN in 1959, BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE is a better-than-it-has-to-be little horror film. I'm not here to make an argument that it's an overlooked masterpiece in need of rediscovery and re-evaluation. It's not that good. Nonetheless, it is an interesting and effective little chiller that has some good things going for it.

Two things going against it however are the tinny, echo-y sound and an absolutely horrible musical score by Alexander Laszlo. But the pluses outweigh those negatives, the pluses being a quirky screenplay by Charles B. Griffith (who most likely wrote the entire script in a matter of days, if not hours), nice South Dakota locations, decent cinematography by Andrew M. Costikyan, an interesting cast and solid, if unspectacular direction by first time director Monte Hellman.

BEAST is part heist/caper film, part weird monster thriller, a mash-up that, surprisingly, works well. A gang of small time crooks, led by Alexander Ward (Richard Dreyfuss look-alike Frank Wolff who went to star in numerous Spaghetti Westerns in Italy including Sergio Leone's masterpiece ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969)), plot to steal some of the gold bars kept in a local bank. The plan is to set off an explosion in an abandoned mine as a diversion, rob the bank, hike on cross country skis to a remote cabin and eventually get picked up by a getaway plane. Local ski-instructor (and owner of that remote cabin) Gil Jackson (Chris Cuomo look-alike Michael Forest), is hired to serve as guide for the mob. The mob consists of Marty Jones (Frank's cousin, Richard Sinatra), goofus Byron Smith (Wally Campo) and bad-girl trying to go straight Gypsy (Sheila Noonan).

The mine explosion awakens/sets free (it's never made clear exactly) the titular beast who begins stalking the gang, picking them off one by one. But instead of out-and-out killing its' victims, the beast cocoons their still conscious bodies in an enormous cavern where it proceeds to suck their blood (a similar plot point found in THE GIANT LEECHES (1959) and Ridley Scott's classic ALIEN (1979)).

The monster is never clearly seen in it's entirety but it's a weirdly effective creation, designed, built and brought to life by Chris Robinson. Things come to a climax in the aforementioned cave (a real, honest-to-goodness cavern, not the tunnels of Bronson Canyon doubling as a "cave"). where the monster is killed by flare guns. The monster is dead and the movie is over.

Produced by Roger Corman's brother Gene, BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE is a fun little horror film. The most notable aspect of the film is the directorial debut of Monte Hellman, a Corman buddy who went on to have a decidedly checkered film career. Hellman never achieved mainstream acceptance and status but he earned indie credit among film fans for such quirky, offbeat, and diverse fare as FLIGHT TO FURY (1964), BACK DOOR TO HELL (1964), RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND (1966), THE SHOOTING (1966), TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971), COCKFIGHTER (1974), THE GREATEST (1977), CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 (1978), IGUANA (1988), SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 3 (1988), TRAPPED ASHES (2006) and ROAD TO NOWHERE (2010). Hellman also served as executive producer on the cult classic RESERVOIR DOGS (1992). 

Thumbs up.