Tarzan the Ape Man (1981)

Tarzan the Ape Man was released in 1981. This is the notorious Bo Derek Tarzan movie. The one directed by her husband John Derek. Everybody knows this is a really bad movie because everyone says so. And film critics said so, so it must be true.

Personally I don’t care what everybody knows and I certainly don’t care what film critics think so I’m going to approach this one with an open mind.

Bo Derek burst onto the film scene with her role in Blake Edwards’ 10. It was bit part but she got all the attention. Right from the start critics were out to get her.

This was an attempt to do a slightly different sort of Tarzan movie. Tarzan enters the picture quite late.

In 1910 Jane Parker (Bo Derek) arrives in Africa to be reunited with her father. She has never met him. She knows him only by reputation. He is the legendary explorer James Parker (Richard Harris).

Jane insists on joining him on his latest expedition. He is hoping to discover the fabled Inland Sea, and perhaps there are other things he hopes to find.

Also accompanying him will be big game hunter and photographer Harry Holt (John Phillip Law).

While they’re camped deep in the jungle blood-curdling cries are heard in the night. It is the legendary Tarzan. No-one knows who or what Tarzan is. Some say he is a gigantic white ape. Some say he is a gigantic white man. Everyone fears him.

Jane is rather surprised when she meets Tarzan. He rescues her from a lion. She realises that he is only a man. She also notices that he is quite a man.

Having caught sight of Tarzan at last James Parker is convinced that this jungle man is appallingly dangerous.

Tarzan carries her off. This is what James Parker feared would happen. He has no doubt that Tarzan intends to make Jane his mate. James is determined not to let that happen.

There’s a weird kind of courtship taking place between Jane an Tarzan but other sinister things are afoot. A hostile tribe is tracking the expedition. It’s at this point that the movie becomes interestingly weird and slightly surreal and perhaps just a bit kinky.

As I watched this film I was trying to see what it was about Bo Derek’s performance that earned her so much critical derision. But I couldn’t see it. I think her performance is fine. There’s one moment, where Jane is watching Tarzan and it’s clear that she is, for the first time in her life, feeling the stirrings of sexual lust. Miss Derek really nails it. She gets the point across subtly and without being crass, and in a rather sweet good-natured way.

I was also trying to spot exactly what it was about about the job John Derek does as director here that made him the target of critical venom. Again I couldn’t see it. He does a perfectly fine job.

Richard Harris goes way over the top but you don’t hire Richard Harris if you want a low-key performance. This movie is very much a story of obsession. James Parker is an obsessed inspired madman. Which really was true of most of the real-life explorers of that age. Harris plays him as a larger-than-life character, which is as it should be.

There’s also a lot of emphasis on the father-daughter relationship. Initially she hates him. Gradually she falls under his spell. She starts to like the idea of having a remarkable man as a father.

And of course there’s the love story, which is handled nicely. Jane and Tarzan are like two nervous teenagers, strongly physically attracted to each other but too innocent to know what to do about it.

Some of the action scenes are edited in very odd ways. It is quite a weird movie at times but that aspect, along with the slight hints of perversity, make it in some ways quite close to the spirit of pre-WW2 pulp adventure fiction.

And course Miss Derek takes her clothes off.

This is a slightly oddball movie but I rather liked it, and I liked Bo Derek. I’m going to highly recommend it because that’s the crazy sort of guy I am.

And yes I agree that Tarzan and His Mate (1934) is still the best Tarzan movie.

Greystoke: Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)

As someone who is rather a fan of Tarzan I eventually had to get around to seeing the 1984 Greystoke: Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. This is an extraordinarily ambitious film and technically it’s extremely impressive. Sadly however it has to be considered to be not a total success. Part of the reason for its partial failure is its inordinate length - at 143 minutes it’s around 30 minutes longer than it needs to be. There’s just not enough substance to justify such a long film. There are however other reasons for its relative failure which we’ll get to later.

One thing that should be pointed out is that the name Tarzan is never mentioned in this movie. He is always referred to as John (his real name being John Clayton). For convenience I will however refer to him as Tarzan (which seems justified because the name does appear in the movie’s title).

It’s a kind of origin story. We not only get Tarzan’s childhood in the African jungle. The movie goes back even farther, to 1885 when Tarzan’s parents set out for Africa. Tarzan’s father is the son of the Earl of Greystoke and heir to the vast family estates.

We get Tarzan’s childhood in exhaustive detail. Too much detail in fact.

Tarzan’s first contact with civilisation comes when he rescues a Belgian explorer, Capitaine Phillippe D’Arnot (Ian Holm). Eventually D’Arnot figures out that Tarzan is the heir to the Greystoke title and estates and he persuades Tarzan to go to England to find his family and assume his destined position in society.

It’s obvious from the start that Tarzan will have difficulty fitting in. He’s fond of his father, the Earl of Greystoke (Ralph Richardson), but he is aware that he will always remain an outcast. He keeps reverting to ape-like behaviour. Tarzan wants to go home to his jungle but he is persuaded that he has a duty to his family to remain in Britain. The only member of the Greystoke household who is nice to him is the earl’s American niece Jane Porter (Andie MacDowell).

There’s a potential romantic triangle between Tarzan, Jane and the wicked Lord Charles Esker (James Fox) but it isn’t developed. There’s one love scene between Tarzan and Jane but it falls rather flat and is absurdly tame. Which is a pity, because it means we never really understand why Jane would consider giving up her society life to be with Tarzan. We expect a bit of passion but we don’t get it. The whole Jane sub-plot just doesn’t work.

This movie is very definitely not in the spirit of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The movie takes the position that Tarzan’s only home can be the jungle and that the wickedness of English civilisation will destroy him. Burroughs was much more nuanced. His original Tarzan is a man caught between two worlds but capable, up to a point at least, of dealing with the civilised world.

Of course the message of the movie is that the jungle is good and civilisation (especially the English variety) is evil. Apes are good. Englishmen are evil. It’s notable that that there are only two European characters who are sympathetic. One is Belgian and the other is American. Every Englishman in the movie is either a buffoon or a comic-strip villain. This weakens the movie’s central theme.

I can see what this movie was trying to achieve. Early on it tries to give us a vivid picture of the complex social and family life of the apes. When you listen to the audio commentary where the differences between the various ape characters are explained it all makes sense but I doubt if the average viewer would have picked up on most of this stuff. And if your movie includes scenes that only work when the director explains them to you then this has to be accounted a failure. All it really does is contribute to the movie’s excessive length.

It’s a movie that aims at an epic feel, and I can admire that, but the real focus should have been on Tarzan’s dilemma - a man trapped between two worlds. The movie is sometimes in danger of collapsing under its own weight.

One of this movie’s many problems is that it takes itself so seriously. This is a Tarzan movie with no adventure, no fun and no humour. The danger of such an excessively serious approach is that the movie can end up becoming unintentionally ridiculous, which happens at times.

It’s hard to judge Christopher Lambert’s performance as Tarzan. He was clearly giving the performance the director wanted but on occasion it becomes unintentionally silly. Eric Langlois who plays Tarzan at age 12 actually gives a more effective performance.

Ralph Richardson gives one of his standard English Eccentric performances. James Fox is embarrassingly bad as yet another villainous Englishman. Ian Holm tries hard. Andie MacDowell makes a very insipid Jane. It’s difficult not to compare her dull performance with the lively sexy sparkling performances of Maureen O’Sullivan in the early 30s Tarzan movies such as Tarzan and His Mate.

Technically this movie is a stunning achievement. There is of course no CGI. The apes are guys in ape suits but Rick Baker and the rest of the special effects crew really do manage to make them convincingly life-like. Glass paintings are used extensively. The jungle scenes are a mix of studio and location work and look great. This movie is a fine example of the superiority of good old school special effects over CGI.

What this movie desperately needed was some brutal editing. There are too many scenes that are there because they look cool even though they’re unnecessary and slow the film down. Scenes like that belong on the cutting room floor.

Overall this movie is too long, too slow, too dull, too self-indulgent and includes too much heavy-handed messaging. It’s clear that director Hugh Hudson had zero feel for the source material. It’s obvious that Robert Towne (the original screenwriter who wisely had his name removed from the credits) had some good ideas. What was needed was a much better director. It is visually spectacular but I’m not sure I could seriously recommend it.

Romancing the Stone (1984)

Romancing the Stone was part of the 80s mini-craze for lighthearted adventure movies in exotic settings, a craze kicked off by Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Diane Thomas wrote the screenplay and it was not just her first screenplay but apparently her first real attempt at writing. There’s not much chance of a first-time screenplay getting picked up by a major studio but somehow Michael Douglas got to read it and fell in love with it. At the time Douglas was concentrating on his career as a producer and he knew he just had to produce this movie.

Then came another stroke of good luck. He could not persuade any actor to take the lead role so he was forced to play the role himself. Of course he turned out to be perfect and this movie established him as a very major star.

Getting Kathleen Turner as his co-star was a definite bonus. Hiring Robert Zemeckis to direct proved to be a smart choice.

Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) is a romance novelist. It’s clear that she writes adventure romances in which the heroine always end up with a dashing, brave handsome hero.

Now she gets involved in an adventure of her own. Her sister is being held hostage in Colombia. The kidnappers don’t want money. They want a map that is in her possession. It is a treasure map. Joan will have to deliver the map to her sister’s captors.

She arrives in Colombia and everything goes wrong. It’s bad enough being up against ruthless kidnappers but she is also up against an evil secret police chief. Everybody wants the treasure (which turns out to be a gigantic priceless emerald).

Joan quickly finds herself in big big trouble and she is stranded in the jungle. Luckily a rescuer appears just in time. His name is Jack Colton (Michael Douglas).

He’s not quite the kind of hero you’d find in one of Joan’s books. He’s dashing and brave but he’s cynical and entirely untrustworthy. He is in fact a bit of a scoundrel. He doesn’t rescue damsels in distress unless they can pay cash for his services. Joan disapproves of him and doesn’t trust him but she has no choice.

All sorts of dangers and mayhem and narrow escapes follow. Joan and Jack get some help from a friendly cocaine dealer who happens to be a huge fan of Joan’s novels.

Joan and Jack get chased all over the countryside, they fall off cliffs, are swept away by waterfalls, they have to dodge hungry alligators and they get shot at. They get shot at a lot. The action doesn’t let up. I’m not a fan of Robert Zemeckis as a director but this is the sort of thing he could do well.

Michael Douglas seems to be relishing the opportunity to play a non-intense role as a loveable rogue. We believe Jack as a scoundrel but he has real charm and we can see why a girl like Joan would be swept off her feet by him. And Douglas does the hardbitten action hero stuff well. A fine performance.

Douglas’s old buddy Danny de Vito is great fun as one of the kidnappers.

Kathleen Turner is terrific. Joan starts out very demure and very mousey and very nervous. She gradually becomes more confident and glamorous, as you’d expect since she’s now met a handsome hero. Turner is charming and amusing and very very likeable.

The best thing about this movie is the overall concept. Joan writes adventure romances. Suddenly it’s as if she’s living one of her books, and at the end she does in fact turn her real-life adventure into a bestselling romance novel. This is most definitely not one of those movies in which we’re told at the end that it was all a dream. This adventure does happen to Joan. But of course this is a movie and movies are make believe. So it’s like we’re in an alternative reality which is just like an adventure romance novel. We don’t care that the story is far-fetched. That just adds to the fun and the romance.

No-one watching this movie will care in the least about the emerald. We care about the romance between Joan and Jack. We don’t care who gets the emerald as long as these two find love together.

There’s mayhem but no graphic violence. There’s one very very tame bedroom scene. This is a movie aimed squarely at family audiences and I have no problem with such movie as long as they’re as enjoyable as this one.

It’s a wildly romantic movie but it has enough action and adventure (and humour) to ensure that every viewer is satisfied.

This is just such a fun feelgood movie. Highly recommended.

Trader Horn (1931)

MGM’s Trader Horn was the first major feature film (as distinct from documentary film) shot on location in Africa. It cost a fortune to make but was a major box-office hit. It’s a kind of jungle girl adventure film.

It was based (loosely) on the memoirs of the real Trader Horn, Alfred Aloysius Horn, a celebrated ivory trader.

In the movie the middle-aged Trader Horn (Harry Carey) is introducing the son of his late partner to the like of a trader in Africa. The young man is named Peru (Duncan Renaldo).

They encounter a famed woman missionary, Edith Trent (played by Harry Carey’s wife Olive). Edith has been searching for twenty years for her daughter Nina, carried off as an infant in a native raid. She believes she now has a fair idea where her daughter might be found. It means travelling into very dangerous country indeed. She extracts a promise from Horn - if she is killed he will continue the search for Nina.

Soon afterwards Edith is killed, and Horn is determined to keep his promise. Horn, Peru and Horn’s gun bearer Rencharo set off to find Nina.

They find Nina (played by Edwina Booth). She has been raised by an isolated tribe that has had no contact with Europeans. The tribe worship Nina as a kind of goddess. Horn, Peru and Rencharo are captured and are about to be sacrificed but Nina decides she can’t let that happen. Accompanied by Nina they make their escape in a canoe but the tribe is in hot pursuit. The second half of the movie is an extended chase through the wilds of Africa.

Nina is blonde, gorgeous and sexy and both Horn and Peru fall for her charms. So we have a classic romantic triangle setup.

The acting is a mixed bag. Harry Carey is pretty good. Edwina Booth is perfectly adequate and manages to look like a very glamorous jungle girl. Duncan Renaldo’s performance on the other hand is excruciatingly awful and irritating.

The making of the film was not without its problems. Two members of the crew were killed during the location shooting in Africa (according to one story a cameraman was eaten by a crocodile). Edwina Booth became very ill. There were problems with the sound recording and as a result some scenes had to be reshot in the studio. It was an incredibly ambitious movie. It has to be said that the location shooting is very impressive. Some additional scenes were shot in Mexico.

This was long before the age of television nature documentaries but in the 1920s and 30s documentary films shot in exotic places were hugely popular. The director of Trader Horn, W.S. Van Dyke, had actually made such films.

Trader Horn ends up being a cross between an adventure story and a travelogue. The travelogue elements slow the movie down (and at just over two hours this movie is much too long) but audiences at the time were entranced by the location shooting.

The pacing is a real problem. There’s nothing wrong with the plot, it’s a standard jungle girl story which hadn’t yet become a cliché, but there’s just not enough plot to stretch out for two hours.

Does it have any pre-code elements? Not many, but Edwina Booth’s costume is pretty revealing and would have caused problems with the Production Code after 1934.

There was another Trader Horn movie, with a totally different plot, made in 1973.

The 1931 Trader Horn has some truly spectacular visual moments and it is a jungle girl movie and I love jungle girl movies. Just don’t expect it to reflect the social attitudes of 2023. It has some entertaining moments but it’s so very slow that it’s difficult to recommend.

The transfer on the Warner Archive DVD is acceptable.

Kongo (1932)

One of the more lurid pre-code movie genres was the lust in the jungle movie, and the sleaziest and most over-the-top of these movies was Kongo, made (surprisingly) by MGM in 1932. It was directed by William J. Cowen and was a remake of the 1928 Tod Browning-directed Lon Chaney vehicle West of Zanzibar.

Flint (Walter Huston) uses stage magic tricks to convince the local tribes that he possesses immensely strong ju-ju. They regard him as a god, quite literally. He has created an 80 mile wide personal empire and controls the ivory trade in this zone.

The local tribe burns its dead on funeral pyres. When a man dies his wife (or if he doesn’t have a wife his daughter will do) is burned alive with him. Which will later become a vital plot point.

Flint is confined to a wheelchair and he has spent years planning his revenge on the man who stole his wife and smashed his spine leaving him a cripple. Flint’s personal retinue comprises the sleazy Hogan, an alcoholic cook and a cheerful Portuguese prostitute named Tula (Lupe Velez).

And two years earlier there was another addition to Flint’s human menagerie, Ann Whitehall (Virginia Bruce). Flint lured the innocent girl from a convent and put her in a brothel in Zanzibar until her spirit was broken. Now she’s ill and despairing. This was Flint’s revenge on Ann’s father.

Then a doctor named Kingsland (Conrad Nagel) turns up. Kingsland falls for Ann. He hopes to cure her after which they will escape together.

Flint’s plans for his final revenge are coming to fruition and then comes the major plot twist that changes everything.

The more I see of Walter Huston the more I’m convinced that he was the greatest of all male pre-code stars. He plays Flint as a force of nature and as a man whose obsession with revenge has turned him into an insane tyrant. In this movie he gives a totally crazed performance which is exactly what is required. Flint is a madman and he’s capable of extraordinary cruelty but he’s fascinating and horrifying at the same time.

Huston had played the role on stage before the Lon Chaney movie was made so his performance really is the original.

Virginia Bruce as Ann veers between hysteria and despair and her performance works too.

Lupe Velez is great fun.

Conrad Nagel gives a terrible performance which, perversely, works. This is the kind of movie in which conventional good acting would be ludicrously out of place. In fact none of the performances could be described as good acting in any conventional sense.

Does this movie contain any characteristic pre-code content? Well for starters there’s alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, white slavery, sadomasochism and human sacrifice. That should be enough to be going on with.

While it’s set in Africa don’t expect any expansive shots of herds of antelope or lions or anything like. It was shot on a sound stage on just a couple of sets and it’s incredibly claustrophobic.

Kongo is a totally mad depraved movie but it’s inspired madness and pre-code movies don’t come any more outrageous than this one. Nothing about the movie is good in a conventional sense but it works anyway. Highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD release looks fine. Everything looks grimy and sweaty and scuzzy which is as it should be.

If you just can’t get enough of pre-code jungle sleaze I also highly recommend White Woman (1933).

Panther Girl of the Kongo (1955)

Panther Girl of the Kongo was the second last serial made by Republic Pictures. Republic always made terrific serials so it will be interesting to see how this late entry stacks up.

It’s a jungle girl adventure so that’s a good start. And it features giant bugs. Not what you expect in a Republic jungle adventure serial but this was 1955 and giant bugs were all the rage.

Jean Evans is a photographer in the jungles of the Congo. She is known as the Panther Girl, after an encounter with a killer panther. She swings from tree to tree and rides an elephant but oddly enough we don’t really get an explanation as to how she became a jungle girl. And she certainly doesn’t seem like a woman brought up in the jungle.

This was 1955 and audiences were getting a bit sensitive about hunting so Jean does all her shooting with a camera.

She gets some film footage of something very strange - a crawfish wandering about the jungle. A very very large crawfish. It’s the size of a lion.

Jean enlists the help of Larry, a formidable hunter and an old Africa hand.

As well as giant bugs there is of course a guy in a gorilla suit.

Those giant bugs are not a product of nature but why would anyone want to create gigantic crawfish in the middle of Africa? It turns out that the bugs are part of a plan to frighten off the natives. A mad scientist named Morgan has discovered diamonds but he can’t mine them unless he can persuade the local tribe, the Utangas, to leave the area.

The scientist has two goons working for him, Cass and Rand. The claw monsters should frighten off the Utangas but Cass and Rand now have the job of frightening off Jean and Larry. That will require a different approach. Morgan doesn’t want Jean and Larry killed but if that proves to be necessary it doesn’t worry him too much.

Most episodes are taken up by various attempts by Rand and Cass to get Jean and Larry out of the way. Jean and Larry slowly (very slowly) piece the puzzle together and discover what Morgan is up to.

If you compare Panther Girl of the Kongo to an earlier top-notch Republic jungle girl serial like Jungle Girl or Perils of Nyoko it’s obvious that there’s been a bit of a decline in quality. Of course many of those earlier serials were directed by William Witney, the master of the serial format. Panther Girl of the Kongo doesn’t have the superb cliffhangers that Witney always provided. The cliffhangers here are quite OK but they just lack Witney’s flair.

The plot also tends to keep covering the same ground. Cass and Rand keep trying to ambush Jean and Larry and they keep failing.

Serials are often accused of repetitiveness. That’s a valid criticism of some of the lesser serials although it’s much less of a problem in the really good serials. Panther Girl of the Kongo is not in the top rank and you do sometimes get the feeling that the action scenes are falling into an overly familiar pattern. They’re very well-staged, but a bit more variety would have helped. A major problem with these very late examples of the form is that budgets were very very tight indeed and it’s not easy to come up with lots of varied and exciting action scenes when you have no money to work with.

Director Franklin Adreon does a competent job within the budgetary constraints he had to cope with.

Morgan is a reasonable villain. He’s motivated more by straightforward greed rather than the more grandiose things that usually appeal to mad scientists (like world domination). He probably needed to be a bit more overtly villainous.

One amusing feature is that there’s not a single person in the story who can actually shoot. The good guys and the bad guys fire hundreds if no thousands of rounds at one another with remarkably disappointing results. You expect the bad guys to be poor shots (the bad guys have to be lousy shots in these kinds of stories but Larry is a top big game hunter and Jean is a jungle girl who has spent her life in the wilds so it’s a bit surprising that they’re lousy shots as well.

Phyllis Coates as Jean makes a reasonably acceptable heroine. Myron Healey as Larry is OK as a fairly stock-standard hero.

There was a strict dress code for jungle girls. Their skirts had to be very short. Jean wears some very very short skirts. When she’s in her hut she looks like a typical 1950s American housewife but as soon as he heads for the jungle she dons her sexy jungle girl outfit.

In my personal view the way to enjoy a serial is to watch no more than one episode per day. If you fall for the temptation to binge-watch then they can seem to be repetitive. In the case of Panther Girl of the Kongo it’s probably even better to space out your viewing a bit more - maybe one episode every couple of days.

If you’re new to the world of movie serials then Panther Girl of the Kongo is not a great place to start. It’s not too bad but there are much much better serials to start with - Jungle Girl (1941) and Perils of Nyoka (1942) are superb jungle girl serials. Spy Smasher (1942) is perhaps the best serial ever made. Daredevils of the Red Circle (1939) is almost as good. Drums of Fu Manchu (1940) is very very good also.

Panther Girl of the Kongo is worth seeing if you’re already a hardcore serial fan.

Olive Films released this one on Blu-Ray and it looks terrific.

Perils of Nyoka (1942 serial)

Perils of Nyoka (later retitled Nyoka and the Tigermen) is a 15-part 1942 Republic serial. Most of Republic’s serials were very good but this one was directed by William Witney which means it’s very very good indeed. No-one was better at directing serials than Witney.

The character of Nyoka the Jungle Girl had first appeared in another very good Republic serial made a year earlier, Jungle Girl. In that serial Nyoka was played by Frances Gifford but for Perils of Nyoka she was replaced by Kay Aldridge.

The opening episode presents us with everything we could possibly hope for in a serial. There’s an exotic setting, there’s a quest for a lost treasure, there’s a crucial papyrus which tells where the treasure is to be found, there’s a beautiful glamorous evil queen (the Arab Queen Vultura) and there’s a guy in a gorilla suit. And then we meet the heroine and she’s cute and feisty.

The prize in this case is not just treasure, but medical secrets from the ancient world which could rid humanity of some of its most feared diseases. So we have the bad guys motivated by old-fashioned greed while the good guys are motivated by the desire to benefit the whole of humanity.

Finding the location of these secrets naturally involves endless complications. You have to get hold of that ancient papyrus. You have to find an inscription but the inscription is no good without the papyrus.

Only one living soul has the knowledge to translate the papyrus, an eminent scholar who has disappeared.

Or maybe there is one other person who could translate the papyrus - the missing scholar’s daughter. That daughter is of course Nyoka.

There’s plenty of potential for betrayals - some of the good guys might not be good guys after all. And the bad guys might well be prepared to double-cross each other.

As you would expect Nyoka manages to get herself captured a number of times, and threatened with torture and death. She spends quite a bit of time tied up or imprisoned. Nyoka however is by no means a helpless heroine. She can put up a pretty good fight when she needs to. She’s very handy with a gun and if she doesn’t have a gun she’ll still fight like a tigress. She’s the the type of heroine who is likely to faint when faced with danger.

She’s not quite a kickass action heroine in the modern sense. This serial doesn’t pretend that a rather petite female can throw huge guys around or punch out guys who weigh three times what she weighs. Nyoka fights like a girl, and I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. Not at all. Nyoka knows that if there’s a fight she cannot rely on speed and strength so she relies instead on being resourceful and quick-witted. If one of the bad guys has one of the good guys on the ground a girl can always sneak up and bash the bad guy over the head with a vase or anything else that’s handy. When there’s a fight Nyoka doesn’t cower in a corner. She circles about looking for opportunities to help.

And of course she has Fang to help her. Fang is her dog. Fang is brave and loyal and super-intelligent.

Speaking of cute animals there’s also an adorable pet monkey. Everyone likes cute animals so this serial has them.

More than anything else what distinguishes a really good serial from a lesser one is the quality of the cliffhangers. In a lesser serial the cliffhangers can tend to be obvious and repetitive. In the best serials the cliffhangers are clever, imaginative and unpredictable. No-one ever did cliffhangers with more style and ingenuity than William Witney. He’ll never give you the same cliffhanger twice.

Kay Aldridge as Nyoka is the perfect heroine. She’s as cute as a button, she’s smart, she’s brave, she’s sexy (in a wholesome good girl way), she’s likeable, she’s feisty but she’s also totally feminine.

Lorna Gray as Vultura is the perfect villainess. She’s cunning and ruthless and cruel and she’s sexy (in an unwholesome bad girl way).

Charles Middleton (better known as Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials) as Cassib makes a fine henchman for Vultura.

Clayton Moore as Larry Grayson is a solid hero. He’s not just a square-jawed action hero. He’s smart and likeable.

There’s non-stop action and the action scenes are expertly staged.

For those who like that sort of thing there’s the opportunity to see the beautiful heroine tied up. She gets tied up a lot.

With a sexy good girl pitted against a sexy bad girl you might be wondering if you’re going to get to see a decent cat-fight between the two of them. Well have no fears. You will get your cat-fight.

In some serials you will get one or sometimes even two episodes almost entirely made up of clips from earlier episodes. It was a good way to save money but these recap episodes are always boring and irritating. Thankfully there’s none of that nonsense in Perils of Nyoka. There are also no episodes that can be dismissed as mere filler episodes. Every episode advances the plot and has its share of suspense and excitement.

My personal view is that the way to get the most out of a serial is to resist the temptation to binge-watch. If you limit yourself to watching one episode per day you’ll have more fun.

Perils of Nyoka has been released on Blu-Ray by Grapevine Video. When you see the opening credits sequence you get that awful sinking feeling that this is going to be another cruddy unrestored release but don’t panic. It’s only that brief opening credits sequence that has problems. Apart from that the transfer is quite lovely. Image quality is very sharp, contrast is excellent and there’s no print damage. It looks like somebody has actually spent the money for a high quality restoration. Either that or somebody has somehow managed to find the original negative in pristine condition and the odds against that are pretty high.

Perils of Nyoka is a top-grade serial and it’s consistently entertaining. It contains absolutely everything you could want in a serial and all the ingredients are blended perfectly. Very highly recommended.

Other great William Witney-directed Republic serials I’ve reviewed - Daredevils of the Red Circle (1939) and Spy Smasher (1942). The latter may be the finest serial ever made.

White Savage (1943)

White Savage (also released as White Captive) is included in the new three-movie Kino Lorber Maria Montez Blu-Ray set. When this movie was released Maria Montez was at the height of her popularity.

Montez, daughter of a Spanish diplomat, had a brief but spectacular Hollywood career in the mid-1940s. Her movies were mostly lightweight adventure/romances in exotic settings but they were just what the movie-going public wanted.

You have to remember that until the 1960s overseas travel was hopelessly out of the reach of most ordinary people. The only way they ever got to see exotic places was on the movie screen, and naturally they adored movies that offered them a glimpse of places they would never get to see in real life. Of course what they got to see was a Hollywood fantasy version of faraway places but audiences didn’t mind.

White Savage takes place in a setting that is pure Hollywood. It’s a group of islands. This imaginary island chain could be in the Caribbean, in the Pacific or in the Indian Ocean. The culture is a mishmash of just about every island culture imaginable.

The islands are ruled by Princess Tahia (Montez). She does a pretty good job. Her people are happy. There are however some lies in the ointment. The first is her worthless spoilt kid brother Tamara (Turhan Bey). His gambling threatens the survival of this island paradise since he’s prepared to gamble away the deeds to the most important island.

The second threat comes from Miller (Thomas Gomez). He wants Tahia but mostly he wants what is at the bottom of the Sacred Pool on Temple Island - a fabulous treasure in gold and jewels.

Shark fisherman Kaloe (Jon Hall) has a problem as well. He wants the shark fishing rights to the waters surrounding the Temple Island and the princess refuses to grant him those rights.

He confronts the princess. Naturally (this being that sort of movie) they clash at first but there is also a strong physical attraction between them. The princess thinks Kaloe is insufferable but rather hunky. He thinks she’s arrogant and headstrong but totally gorgeous.

We know that love is going to blossom between these two but the evil machinations of Miller put some major obstacles in their way. Miller will stop at nothing, not even murder, to get that treasure.

The screenplay (by Richard Brooks) is pretty predictable but this is a fluffy feelgood movie so that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the film (shot in Technicolor) looks exquisite and has the right mixture of adventure, romance and humour.

Maria Montez was very good at playing princesses and she’s a sympathetic heroine. Her acting range was limited but movies such as this were well within her capabilities. All she really needed to do was to be beautiful, glamorous, exotic, fiery and passionate and she had no difficulty whatsoever doing just that.

Jon Hall is a fine conventional hero, perhaps a bit of a rough diamond but with a good heart. Turhan Bey does well as the wretched loser Tamara. Sabu plays Kaloe’s good-natured but occasionally exasperating young friend Orano.

Thomas Gomez is a good villain - sinister enough but not too sinister (this is a lighthearted movie). Sidney Toler plays Wong. He’s the island’s notary public, lawyer, detective and doctor and in fact performs just about every possible function. Toler plays him exactly the way he played Charlie Chan, which is OK because he was a great Charlie Chan and his performance is a delight.

Maria Montez’s movies for Universal are occasionally described as B-movies but they’re actually A-pictures, albeit modesty budgeted ones. No movie shot in Technicolor in the mid-40s can be described as a B-picture. Universal spent enough money on the film to give it a suitably lush feel. Universal knew they really couldn’t go far wrong when they teamed Maria Montez, Jon Hallo and Sabu and they teamed them frequently.

Kino Lorber have provided a superb transfer. All three movies come on a single disc which is no problem since the running times for each film are around the hour-and-quarter mark.

Movies don’t come much more lightweight than White Savage but it’s romantic and it’s fun. Great escapist fare, highly recommended.

I've reviewed other Maria Montez movies - Arabian Nights (1942) and Siren of Atlantis (1949), both of which are even better.

Santiago (1956)

Santiago is a 1956 Warner Brothers adventure movie starring Alan Ladd. It has a pretty poor reputation. Whether it’s really that bad remains to be seen.

The movie is set in 1898 with the Cuban revolution against the Spanish providing the historical background. Cash Adams (Ladd) is a former US Army officer who was dishonourably discharged. He now makes his living as a gun runner. He’s being paid to deliver a consignment of guns to Tampa where Cuban revolutionaries will be waiting with $100,000 for him.

The job is much more complicated than he expected. Firstly he and his men are attacked by hijackers before they even reach Tampa and then he discovers that the deal has been changed - he has to deliver the guns all the way to Cuba. The Cubans do agree to double his price which is some consolation.

The guns have to be loaded on board an old paddle-wheel riverboat which will take them (along with Cash Adams and his confederates) to Haiti, then on to Cuba.

I don’t claim to know much about nautical matters but I have to say that the riverboat really doesn’t look like it would last five minutes in the open sea.

The second complication is that the riverboat will be taking a second consignment of guns, along with rival gun runner Clay Pike (Lloyd Nolan) and his cohorts. Cash and Pike have hated each other for years so neither man is happy with this development.

There’s yet another complication - they have to deliver a Cuban revolutionary to Cuba as well. The revolutionary is the young and beautiful Doña Isabella (Rossana Podestà).

The riverboat has to run the gauntlet of Spanish gunboats and then when they reach the Cuban coast they run into yet another obstacle - a Spanish artillery position that they will have to find a way to neutralise.

As you might expect Cash Adams and Pike clash numerous times during the voyage, culminating in a couple of all-in fist-fights. Their clashes have something to do with their pasts but also quite a bit to do with the fact that they both take a shine to Doña Isabella.

And new obstacles just keep on appearing. The gun runners start to wonder just how much they’re going to have to go through to get their money, and whether they’ll live to collect it.

Alan Ladd is pretty good as Cash Adams, a somewhat tortured soul. He’s tortured by shame about the ignominious end to his military career. And while he claims that now he cares only about money we get the distinct impression that he’s not entirely comfortable with his new career as a gun runner. In fact we get the impression that he might be a man in search of redemption.

Lloyd Nolan is of course marvellous as the thoroughly amoral Pike. Rossana Podestà may have been a bit miscast here but she’s OK. Chill Wills is fun as the riverboat captain who seems to have spent the whole of an adventurous life on the losing side. I liked Paul Fix as Cash’s old army buddy Trasker.

Gordon Douglas directed. Douglas had a varied career which included some pretty interesting movies including a couple of very good private eye thrillers with Frank Sinatra (Tony Rome and The Lady in Cement), the spy spoof In Like Flint and the sci-fi classic Them! Martin Rackin wrote the screenplay (his other credits include the underrated noirish crime thriller A Dangerous Profession).

All the right ingredients are here. The story is pretty decent. The setting is unusual and interesting (even though we know that the crew never left the studio backlot). The two lead actors are very good. The film was shot widescreen and in Warnercolor and it looks terrific. So what went wrong? Well, to be honest not all that much did go wrong. It’s really not such a bad movie. Its poor reputation may stem from the perception that with all those desirable ingredients it should have been a classic adventure thriller when in fact it’s a merely competent one.

What’s interesting is that rather than idealists fighting for a good cause what we have here are bad men fighting (rather reluctantly) for a good cause.

The Warner Archive presentation is extremely good with a fine anamorphic transfer.

Santiago isn’t that bad. It doesn’t quite catch fire the way it should but it looks great. It’s worth seeing if you’re an Alan Ladd or a Lloyd Nolan fan. It’s not one of the adventure classics but it’s reasonable entertainment.

Jungle Siren (1942)

Jungle Siren is a jungle adventure movie released by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) in 1942. Since it’s a PRC release and was made by Sigmund Neufeld Productions you know it’s going to be an ultra-low budget production, probably shot in a few days. But there are ultra-low budget movies that are boring and tedious and there are ultra-low budget movies that are great fun. On the whole Jungle Siren falls into the great fun category.

Jungle Siren stars Buster Crabbe and strip-tease legend Ann Corio and I’ll have more to say about them later.

Two Americans are helping the Free French to build an airfield in Africa. Captain Gary Hart (Buster Crabbe) and Sergeant Mike Jenkins (Paul Bryar) soon discover that there are people who don’t want that airfield built. The chief of one of the local tribes, Chief Selangi, is one of those people but the chief is actually in the pay of sinister Nazi agent George Lukas.

The two Americans do have an ally but she’s quite a handful. She is Kuhlaya (Ann Corio) and she is a wild jungle girl. She is however not quite a female Tarzan. We find out very early on that she can read and write. Her parents were missionaries. They were killed, and she has reason to believe that it was Chief Selangi who killed them. She has been raised partly by the alcoholic Dr Thomas Harrigan and partly by a local tribe.

Kuhlaya is beautiful and she’s basically a nice girl, apart from her habit of killing people she doesn’t approve of. She’s not civilised but not entirely uncivilised. She’s your classic jungle girl, caught between two cultures, but she’s as deadly as she is beautiful.
And she is a bit of an unguided missile. She’s also heavily into the concept of revenge.

She’s not the only beautiful dangerous female the two American boys have to deal with. There’s also Lukas’s wife Anna (Evelyn Wahl). Anna may or may not be a loyal Nazi but she’s definitely man-crazy. She takes one look at Captain Hart and she wants him. She wants him real bad.

Of course you know that there are going to be multiple attempts to kill Captain Hart and Sergeant Jenkins. And of course you know that either Captain Hart will fall for Kuhlaya or she will fall for him. In this case it’s Kuhlaya who falls first. For her it’s lust at first sight (she thinks he’s an absolute hunk) but lust can turn pretty easily into love. And Captain Hart is not exactly immune to her savage charms. She’s like a wild animal but she’s also all woman.

Director Sam Newfield (Sigmund Neufeld’s brother) was a B-movie specialist who could be relied upon to handle zero budgets and absurdly short shooting schedules. Get it right the first time because there ain’t gonna be any retakes. His movies were rarely masterpieces but some were remarkably entertaining. He understood pacing. You can get away with low budgets and laughable production values if you make sure that there’s always something happening.

Buster Crabbe was extremely good at playing likeable heroes and with his background in serials he would have had no problem working on tight schedules. He wasn’t the world’s greatest actor but he had personality and he had charisma. He also had the kind of looks that women went for in a big way. This movie has Ann Corio to provide eye candy for male audience members and Buster Crabbe provides the eye candy for the ladies (who were undoubtedly pleased whenever he took off his shirt).

And then there’s Ann Corio. Miss Corio wasn’t just a stripper, she was one of the most famous strippers of the era, and one of the most luscious. She made a handful of very low-budget movies in the 40s. As an actress she’s actually reasonable competent (more than adequate for a movie such as this) but it isn’t great acting that is required of her here. What she needs is presence (and as a burlesque queen she had that). She needs to be sexy (no problem at all). And she needs to convince us that Kuhlaya is good-hearted but also wild and dangerous and passionate and jealous. She does that pretty well. Overall her performance works just fine.

If you want to see Jungle Siren you only choices are going to be public domain releases. I saw the Sinister Cinema version. Sound quality is dodgy (plenty of hiss) but the dialogue is always clearly understandable. Image quality is actually very good. On the whole it’s a perfect acceptable release.

Jungle Siren is a typical low-budget jungle adventure but Buster Crabbe and Ann Corio are enough to make it worth seeing. I’m recommending this one.