Doc Savage arrive!

I love Doc Savage stories. I won't pretend to have read all 180+ of them, anyone who has is probably obsessive, but I have read 15 or so, and will probably read at least that many more in the future. The stories are well paced, engaging and Lester Dent tried to pass on some new bit of "information" in each, most likely the topic he had studied up on in order to write the next monthly installment of Doc's magazine. In one story you learn a bit about blimps, something about Cairo in the next, then the Bermuda Triangle, and so on until you decide you have read enough Doc books for one lifetime. It was a good formula and Lester Dent made it work with this character for longer than any person could have expected. It was a real accomplishment.

The other element of charm contained in the Doc books are the characters. They are likable enough, but there is more to it than that. They are pure and good. Too pure, and too perfect, that is completely true. And Doc himself always took purity and perfection to the nth degree. But since the books were written in an earnest voice this quality came across as refreshing, perhaps even a bit inspirational. Each book I laugh a few times at the ridiculous feats Doc accomplishes due to his meticulous mental and physical training. His unblemished virtue brings out the same a few times. The thing is, it all works in the books because Dent was not winking at his readers. He obviously knew he was writing ridiculous material and creating impossible characters, but he sold it straight, and so while it can bring a smile to your face, it does not produce scorn or embarrassment. It is a world and people you want to be a part of, not mock.

I wrote the above to give those people who watch the Doc Savage movie more of a sense of how the movie got Savage wrong. There is quite a bit in the movie that works, and it is fun at points, and I think Ely is well cast, but too often it violates the essential spirit of Dent's books by refusing to give the audience the option of taking the characters or the adventure seriously. If the film went for "over the top" instead of "goof ball" in a few scenes I suspect it all would have worked. "Worked" at least well enough to let Doc Savage fans feel like they had seen the heroes they knew on the screen, and well enough to let the rest of the viewers feel they had seen an honest attempt at a retro-action serial. Instead we have a movie that we can probably best describe as a curiosity carrying more than a whiff of missed potential, but one ultimately defined by its poor choices.

If you are not a Doc purist, the movie is not horrible. One always wishes for more than such a bottom line.

The 1930's was the heyday of Tarzan, the Lone Ranger, the Shadow, the Spider, the Green Hornet, Captain Midnight, Gene Autry, Flash Gordon, and eventually Superman and Batman. A great pantheon of pop culture heroes flourished in pulp magazines, comic strips, radio shows, and movie serials.

The 1960's gave us Adam West as Batman, Derek Flint, Maxwell Smart, 007, and many other hero spoofs(not to mention the theater then unfolding in the socio-political realms); the concept of the hero emerged from this period battered and shaken.

The early 1970's saw the emergence of a new type of rather angry anti-hero: Dirty Harry, Shaft, Billy Jack, Superfly, etc.

Producer George Pal had accurately predicted the sci-fi craze of the 1950's, and so he produced the first picture of that cycle as well as producing the classic and best versions of 'War of the Worlds' and 'The Time Machine'. George Pal correctly understood that by the mid-1970's the collective unconscious of America was hungry for a return of the old school hero, 1930's style.

George Pal knew that to make an adventure of this sort with a hero like Doc Savage that you had to somehow acknowledge the absurdity of it all. Unfortunately, while Indiana Jones and the Rocketeer gave the audience the equivalent of a knowing wink, Doc Savage's director stopped just an inch short of having Doc Savage slip on a banana peel. This film, then, is an uneasy mix of authentic 1930's style pulp magazine adventure and ham-fisted attempts at camp.

The single worst thing in this film is the soundtrack, a creative but ultimately dreadful batch of John Phillip Sousa marches, including a custom Doc Savage lyric, which is especially loathsome. It is indeed fortunate that a good many parts of this film managed to escape this score.

Negatives aside, this film will be mildly enjoyable to fans of pulp magazines, old comics, radio and serial heroes, etc. Fans of Doc Savage should be mollified by the many elements of the source material which were faithfully realized, and that compared to more recent super-hero flicks, the writers took relatively few liberties. Overall, the cast is pretty good, and Ron Ely looks exactly like the vision of Doc Savage on the covers of the original pulps. I think he pulls off the role pretty well. And there are old style cars, airplanes, clothes, and fight scenes, so it's a pretty fun ride.

George Pal might have missed the mark here, but not by much. Just a year after this film came 'Star Wars,' which was basically a retooling of the old Flash Gordon serials. In 1978 came 'Superman, the Movie.' Two years after that came the 1st Indiana Jones flick, set smack dab in the 1930's, just like Doc Savage. All of these latter productions, however, benefited by taking their source material or inspiration just a little bit more seriously than Pal did.

But since 'Doc Savage,' more1930's throwback films have flopped than succeeded, at least commercially: 'The Legend of the Lone Ranger,' 'The Phantom,' 'The Rocketeer,' 'The Shadow,' and 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.' All of these were big budget affairs. For some reason, certain persons amongst us are irresistibly drawn to that long lost decade, when imagination populated the world with mythic heroes. Too bad these heroes usually remain one step beyond our reach.

Out of the 30s came a number of superheroes, some of which are still with us, e.g., Batman, Superman, etc. The comics still have their followers and collectors. If I'd saved all my funnybooks from that era, I no doubt would be a wealthy man today, but I didn't and am not at all wealthy. However, the 30s was also the time of pulp heroes, e.g., the Saint, and Doc Savage. I remember seeing the paperbacks (called pocketbooks back then) with Doc Savage on the cover, usually draped in a torn shirt, showing his hyperdeveloped upper body and sculpted hair, his face in a contorted grimace suggesting pain or constipation. I never read any of the books and in fact, was living in South America when this film was released. In fact, it was a crazy friend and fellow colleague anthropologist who touted the film to me and got me curious. So, when it showed up on the late show, I watched it with interest. Ron Ely was an excellent choice for the title role. He had been a TV Tarzan (one of the better ones, BTW) and handled the action quite well. The story? Well, high adventure, whatever that means. Sadly, the thrills of the 30s do not always play well into the present day. They certainly didn't back in the late 70s when I saw this film. It was fun, entertaining but not particularly memorable. The good guys were good and the villain was villainous. Good triumphed but not without a struggle. What more can I say? There have been some schlock films which play on this theme. Some suffer from terrible writing, some from terrible acting and direction-- some from both. This film comes out a bit better than average in my estimation. Fun to watch but like yesterday's Chinese blue plate special, not very memory-provoking.

This film is wrong in so many ways. It was done on the cheap, the script is bad, the dialogue is horrid, the action non-existant, the acting a travesty, and the music was completely out of place.

The film is loosely based around the first Doc Savage adventure, but makes a mess out of every element. As adventure, it is boring; as camp, it isn't funny. Ron Ely is physically imposing, but has little charisma and no acting talent. There are some fine actors in the roles of Doc's assistants, but their parts are so badly written. Ham and Monk, the comic highlights of the pulps, don't even make a fifth-rate Oscar and Felix.

The Sousa music is fine for a concert or marching band, but doesn't fit an adventure story. A nice John Williams score, ala Indiana Jones would have been far better.

Doc Savage was one of the best of the pulp adventure heroes. Sure, the stories were formulaic, but anything put out on a monthly basis for so long is going to be. There was still a great amount of imagination and character in those stories. There are none of these things in this movie.

Forget this film. Go down to your favorite used book store and hunt up "The Man of Bronze", "The Fortress of Solitude", "The Devil Ghengis" or any other the numerous other Doc Savage books. The James Bama covers alone are worth it.

I saw this movie when I was 15 and fell in love with it. Sure, it was campy but so much fun. I was so enthralled by the concept and the characters that I went out and read every one of the novels by Lester Dent (Kenneth Roberson). I am also still upset that they never made a sequel.

Now it's time for a new Doc Savage film! But, anyone who makes it needs to consider the following:

1. The 70s film -- while I enjoyed it very much -- was a spoof like the 60s Batman TV show. A new film should ignore it totally and start from scratch. It needs to be fun and excited -- NOT a cartoon like the original.

2. Keep it in the same 30's time period of the books like they did with the recent King Kong film. A modern version would be a disgrace.

3. MOST IMPORTANT: Do not -- I repeat, do NOT hire a muscle bound, pump freak like the Rock, as some people have suggested, to play Doc. A few years ago Arnold Schwarzenegger was up or the part of Doc Savage and thank God they dropped the project! His participation would have been a joke and an insult to the character -- and us. Remember that the Doc character was NEVER a pumped up balloon like Ah-nold and the Rock. Like Batman (in the comics, not the films), he was in excellent shape, but NOT pumped up. Doc was also a genius, and in no way, shape, or form, would ANYONE accept Arnold, the Rock or any other WWF reject or athletic pseudo-celeb as a genius. Take a look at Ron Ely in the 70's film. He was perfect for the role at that time and an actor today needs to have the same physical look he had -- AND look intelligent.

Otherwise don't waste your time -- or ours.

JK