The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), directed by Michael Anderson

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "The Bronze", by Queens of the Stone Age

      Years before the world knew the names Superman or Batman, people sought their heroes in the form of the pulps: cheap paperback books packed with all manner of genre stories, from the weird fiction of H.P. Lovecraft to the ham-fisted action of Mickey Spillane, and everything else that struggling authors thought might help pay the rent. Of this forgotten age of literature, there are few characters that were as popular or as successful as Doc Savage, The Man of Bronze. Created by Henry Ralston and John Nanovic and primarily written by Lester Dent under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson for the Street & Smith publishing company in 1933, Clark ‘Doc’ Savage Jr. was the very model of modern major adventurer; Not only was he a perfect physical specimen thanks a special exercise regiment, but he was also a scientific genius of ust about every discipline you could think of, capable of building technology that surpassed that of your typical 1930s crowd. Along with his five quirky associates -- chemist Andrew ‘Monk’ Mayfair, lawyer Theodore ‘Ham’ Brooks, construction engineer John ‘Renny’ Renwick, electrical engineer Thomas ‘Long Tom’ Roberts, and archeologist/geologist William ‘Johnny’ Littlejohn, Doc would travel across the globe, foiling the plots of wicked men and defending justice wherever it was threatened. Also performing experimental brain surgery on prisoners in order to modify their personalities and behaviors without their consent on multiple occasions, but hey, it was 1933. Give it a few years and it turns out people could do even more heinous shit to each other.

      Savage’s star would eventually fade with the rise of superheros and television, but as the 1970’s wore on suddenly there came an interest in reviving The Man of Bronze for then-modern audiences. Award-winning science fiction writer and mythographer par excellence Phillip Josè Farmer wrote a fictional biography of the man, as he would do for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ legendary creation Tarzan, entitled “Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life”. Marvel Comics even gave him two series: A short-lived run with Marvel proper, and then later on an equally short-lived run through their imprint Curtis Magazines, which was the original home of the Savage Sword of Conan. If that had been the end of the matter, a book here and there, some comics, then perhaps Doc would have been okay. Not as big as he once was, but still novel enough that it’d be a treat whenever he finally got that spotlight again. Like a professional wrestler coming out of retirement for one last match.

      So they made a movie instead, obviously.

      Released in 1975, directed by Michael Anderson (Logan’s Run) and written by Joe Morhaim and George Pal, who was also the producer. The year is 1936 and Doc Savage has returned from his Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic (yes, they literally call it the Fortress of Solitude) to learn that his father, Clark ‘Dad’ Savage Snr., has died in the South American country of Hidalgo from some tropical disease. Which is immediately shown to be suspect when someone tries to put a bullet through Doc’s brain and later destroys Dad Savage’s documents. Doc and the Fabulous Five set out for Hidalgo to learn the truth, which is exactly what resident evil business tycoon Captain Seas didn’t want to happen, although he didn’t exactly try all that hard. What could the secret of Hidalgo be, that Captain Seas is willing to kill for it, and that Dad Savage could die because of it? That’s what The Man of Bronze intends to find out.

      ...Hoo boy, trying to write this review has been a chore to get through, not only because there was a several hour long power outage at my home during it, but because trying to find the right words to describe my feelings has been an ongoing struggle. I’ll give it my best to explain:

      A while back I was reading a collection of film criticism by the late novelist Harlan Ellison, and I recall him giving one of his infamous verbal beatdowns to the Mike Hodges’ 1980 adaptation of Flash Gordon, essentially calling it a besmirchment of a once great character. While I don’t follow Mr. Ellison’s opinion lockstep by any means, he eviscerated several movies back in the day for reasons that still baffle me, but during this particular instance I could see where he was coming from. Flash Gordon is, after all, a silly movie. The characters were dumb, the art design was gaudy, the special effects seem dated even for the era, and the only thing that people actually remember about the movie is the soundtrack by Queen and Brian Blessed. It’s a good thing movies based on comics slowly started to improve after this, otherwise MCU fans would be crying in their Cheerios.

      Here’s the thing about Flash Gordon though, and if Ellison were still alive he’d probably rip me a new one over it: It was fun. As silly as it was, it embraced the weirdness of the concept and took it seriously. You might have thought it was stupid, but it never insulted your intelligence as it sucked the life from your soul like Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. A movie meant to be an origin story, to reintroduce the concept to then-modern audiences, but almost immediately descends into such awful attempts at campy humor that it’s like watching Adam West’s Batman hang himself. ‘Oh look, this minor antagonist sleeps in a giant baby crib for some reason!’ ‘Wowwee, this waiter thought Doc and the Fabulous Five were going to order alcoholic beverages, but they actually ordered nonalcoholic beverages!’ ‘Try to hold the guffaws in when the final battle between Seas and Savage is the same shitty gag repeated five or six times in a row!’ Just remembering the scenes as I write this article is pissing me off a bit, like if you could punch a movie in the mouth I’d take a swing at it. I mean what have I got to lose, right? I’ve already been through 140 minutes of cinematic waterboarding, a fight would be a nice change of pace.

      Which isn’t to say that you can’t play around with the source material from time to time, but this movie feels more like a segment from The Kentucky Fried Movie stretched across an hour and a half. Doc Savage is constantly treated as this amazingly charismatic guy, going so far as to add in really obvious eye twinkle effects, despite the fact that he’s got about as much personality as warm mayonnaise. The Fabulous Five come across as less trained soldiers and peers of Savage and more a quintet of bumbling sycophants who can accomplish pretty much nothing on their own except being captured. Captain Seas looks like if your high school music teacher became a Bond villain, and is about as effective an antagonist as that would be too. There’s never a real sense of danger for the protagonists, they spend more time in traveling montages then they do overcoming obstacles, and the ‘mystery’ that kick starts this whole sad affair can be sussed out by the first act. You go into this film wondering just what it was about this character that so fascinated people years before, and what this movie tells you is that Doc Savage is vapid nonsense that looks as cheap as the paper it was printed on, and that it was better off in that bygone era where people were apparently stupid enough to think it was worth reading. Which is not the sentiment you want people to have if you’re planning on a sequel.

      Then there’s the music, the fucking music. Soaring outside the bounds of common sense, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze decides against a traditional orchestra score in favor of the works of John Philip Sousa, complete with a needlessly expository and clunky theme song. An idea that could work once, in order to replicate the feel of an old-time radio show, but then of course it keeps getting shoved in everywhere. Any sense of tension, any sense of emotional depth is crushed under the feet of the least subtle man in music history as he stumbles across the scene like a drunken bull to the tunes, and the movie devolves into total farce. If John Williams’ Superman score evokes feelings of triumphant joy and courage, The Man of Bronze evokes memories of awkward days in the school marching band. Really gets you in the mood for an adventure, huh?

      Unsurprisingly, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (Except He Doesn’t Even Have a Tan) does not get the recommendation. Don’t take my vitriol as a sign that this is some prime rifftrax fodder either, as the work it would take to make fun of it is more attention than it really deserves. If you want to see the concept done better, try Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, another movie which I liked and Harlan Ellison hated (probably because it does rip off Savage a lot). Or perhaps you could read Alan Moore’s Tom Strong series, which also borrows heavily from Doc. Or you could just wait for that new Doc Savage movie that’s in development, the one that’s supposed to have Dwayne Johnson in the title role. Even if it never ends up going into production, you’ll still have more fun waiting for that movie than watching this movie. And if I were saying this live, this is where I would drop the mic.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: A Boy and His Dog (1975), directed by L.Q. Jones

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Dogs", by Pink Floyd

     If there was ever a science fiction writer that could be considered ‘underrated’, I guess that title would go to Harlan Ellison. This is an author with dozens and dozens of credits to his name after all, a contemporary of such literary giants as Ray Bradbury, Philip Jose Farmer and Larry Niven, and editor of some of the best anthologies of the genre (“Dangerous Visions” and its sequel), and yet it seems like you never see the same amount of praise given to Ellison as you do for Bradbury and those others. Was it his irascible personality that is to blame? His unwillingness to take shit from people and jump through the hoops of acceptance that has lead to his cold reception in modern times? I can’t say for certain, but I’m sure Ellison doesn’t really give a shit.

     While Ellison has been fairly successful in the world of television, having written for The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and several other series, the same can’t be said for the world of film. Unless you count the time James Cameron plagiarized him, that is. Whether you attribute it to his infamously abrasive personality making studio’s unwilling to work with him, or his distaste for the Hollywood system making him unwilling to work with them, but you just don’t see many Ellison works make it off the printed page (which might also be a part of why he’s become relatively obscure, actually). In fact there’s only one movie that I know of that is a direct adaptation of one of Harlan Ellison’s work, 1975’s A Boy and His Dog, based on the 1969 novella by the same name. The fact that it is the only one may or may not be a warning sign.

     The year is 2024. In the wake of World War IV, the major cities of the world have been turned to ashes, destroyed by waves of atomic fire. Humanity, or at least what’s left of it, struggle to survive in the harsh, unforgiving desert that the world has become. Some fall together into tribes of a sort, struggling to survive off of canned food and what little foraging there is to be. Others become raiders, using guns and violence to take whatever it is they want, whether it’s food, women or plain ol’ regular power. Some people just become a sort of postmodern nomad, getting food where they can, killing when they need to, and living lives free of the trappings and social mores that once made up civilization as we know.

     In the dusty ruins that was once the American Southwest, a boy (Vic, otherwise known as Albert, as vulgar and sex-crazed as any other teenager his age) and his dog (Blood, who just so happens to be telepathic and incredibly intelligent, especially about history prior to the war)are two such nomads, hunting down food and women and searching for that patch of unspoiled paradise that always seem to exist in these post-apocalyptic scenarios. Sometimes getting exactly what you want isn’t always the best thing however, and when Vic and Blood actually end up tracking down a woman, it sets off a chain of events that could end up being very unpleasant for everyone involved. As if it wasn’t unpleasant enough as it is.

     As interesting as parts of A Boy and His Dog are, the scenes with the underground society for example, it doesn’t really change the fact that as a whole it’s just kind of boring. I don’t know how it was in the original novella, I’m sure it works out fine, but in visual form you’re getting a lot of movie where there’s just nothing really going on. What are we really getting out of the ‘Vic and Blood watch raiders dig a hole’ scene? Or the ‘Vic watches vintage porno for 10 minutes’ sequence. Was the director afraid he didn’t have enough material to work with or something, so he decided to stretch things out as much as possible? I mean, the movie isn’t exactly as action-packed or as violent as you’d expect a post-apocalyptic America to be, at least not until the end, so maybe the hope was to push the movie based on the setting and the message, rather than what actually goes on in said movie. Much like fellow cult 70s sci-film and Marathon entrant Westworld in that respect, a movie that only really gets interesting when most of it is over. A movie that was also written by a celebrated science fiction author by the by, “Jurassic Park”-creator Michael Crichton, and one that featured a killer robot much like The Terminator, which was the film that James Cameron allegedly plagiarized Harlan Ellison to create. Coincidence? Probably.

     Anyway the name of the movie is A Boy and His Dog, and the titular boy and dog have some pretty good chemistry together, so in that case the movie succeeds. However, aside from the parts in the underground society, which seem almost dreamlike in the way it just shows up and fades away, I can’t really think of a reason to recommend this one. If you’re looking for some post-apocalyptic adventures, just go watch Fury Road instead. Or play some Fallout. You won’t get to see Miami Vice star Don Johnson attempt to rape a girl at gunpoint, but then you’ll probably be a lot better off.

Coonskin (1975), directed by Ralph Bakshi

Moving away from hyper-violent kung-fu, movies, we're dipping into the crazy world of independent cartoons. Strap yourselves into your metaphorical chairs ladies and non-ladies.

Trailer
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Appropriate Tune: "Ghost Riders In The Sky", by Scatman Crothers

     Beginning an entry is always the hardest part of the whole thing. At first, I had hoped that over time the process of writing would become easier, words and ideas would flow much more readily, or at least smoothly. It hasn’t, I guess because in the end I’m never not going to think of myself as a useless fucking loser, so every time I see a completed entry all I’ll see is stunted, ugly horseshit. It was bad enough to chase away my few Russian readers, even though I was so happy to find out that citizens of a country I was so fascinated by were reading my puny, stupid blog. I’ve already been told that I’m expecting too much too quickly, and I admit that I am, but it’s little consolation to a man who needs to know someone gives a damn about whether he’s alive or dead. Yeah, it’s fucking stupid, who would have ever guessed?

     I have a great deal of respect for Ralph Bakshi taking animation and treating it as legitimate method of serious filmmaking, rather than the standard Disney spectacle. Despite that respect, I can’t say I’ve had a great track record with his films that I’ve seen. Fritz the Cat, the first animated movie to get an X-rating, looks great for an independent film and sounds it like it should be good but my interest in watching it always peters out around 25 minutes. American Pop is likewise an interesting premise, one that I actually got hyped for reading the little blurb that comes on internet videos nowadays, not to mention an impressive design, but overall I was disappointed in how the music was used and how it was presented in the movie (how Bob Seeger, a man whose creative peak was in the 1970s, the voice of the 1980s is beyond me). I also own The Lord of the Rings on VHS, Bakshi’s interpretation of the Tolkien fantasy epic, but I don’t really remember anything about it. I think there were dwarves and wizards in it, but don’t take my word for it.

     So with that sterling run of “interesting premise, interesting animation, poor execution”, the next logical step would obviously be to watch yet another Bakshi movie? I’ve heard good things about the post-Fritz movies he put out in the mid 70s, so I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. This time around, it’s Coonskin, released in 1975 and Bakshi’s third ever feature-length film. And we ain’t talking about raccoons or Daniel Boone this time around kiddies.

     How do I fucking write this entry? The story begins as all stories do I guess, which is vaguely. Randy (Philip Thomas), a young black man, has been imprisoned for a charge we never learn, but presumably has something to do with the melanin content of his skin. Randy, along with fellow inmate/escapee Pappy (Scat Man Crothers), manage to sneak out to the outside wall of the prison, just close enough that the guards are unable to see them as they make their rounds. The plan is to wait until night as the guards are asleep, when Randy’s friends Samson (motherfucking Barry White y’all) and the Preacher (Charles Gordone) drive up to the prison at top speed in a bad ass car, Randy and Pappy climb in, and they’re home free. When Samson and the Preacher get held up by a roadblock and take much longer than the plan called for, Randy begins to get anxious, he’s focused on getting out of prison so much that he’s ready to just run for it, which would surely mean his death to the high-powered weaponry of the guards. To distract the agitated youth from the absence of his friends, Pappy decides to tell a story of three friends, much like Randy, Samson, and the Preacher. Their names: Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear, and Preacher Fox.

     In terms of framing devices, Coonskin’s is passable if a bit vague, but the main selling point of the film is the animated portion. The story of Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear and Preacher Fox, a rags-to-riches style tale in the organized crime racket of hrlem, is done in traditional hand-drawn animation overlaid over live footage and still photography. A weird effect, probably one of the only times I’ll ever connect a movie to Pete’s Dragon, but it’s done in a way that actually gives a sense of reality to a story about anthropomorphic animals killing cops. Which seems to be a regular theme in Bakshi movies, utilizing the relative freedom of animation to show and create bizarre situations, while still keeping a sense of realism when it comes to characters and character interactions. It does get weird at times, as his films tend to do, but all the breaks seem to be either as perhaps a literal example of Pappy’s aggrandized storytelling or to illustrate Bakshi’s grander message for this film. Even when it gets weird or ‘cartoony’ though, they feel as if they have lives and goals outside of what we see in the film. Which is usual the sign of well-written characters, or at least it is to some dumb asshole like me.

     I mentioned that when referring to the title Coonskin that I wasn’t referring to raccoons or Daniel Boone, and I meant it. This might be the most openly provocative movie that I have seen in a while, and I have a fondness for Troma films, which strives to place naked breasts in every movie they make or distribute. The film hits you with it right at the start, with Scat Man Crothers, voice of the lovable characters such as Hong Kong Phooey and the Autobot Jazz, singing a song called “Ah’m a Nigger Man”. A song written by Ralph Bakshi himself, who is very much not black or African at all. Perhaps it’s because I am product of the tail-end of the 20th century, and so for me such direct racial imagery has been relegated to the horrible jokes of the distinctly southern minded people I have known in my life and the comments of any and all youtube video comments, that I was more affected by it than the audience in 1975 might have been. Scat Man puts on a fine performance though, so it’s all good.

     Coonskin is also the source for some of the most offensive visual caricatures of african-americans since the days of the minstrel show. Even though most of the of film’s characters are pretty offensive to look at, some downright gruesome (homosexuals and transvestites get it bad), none of those others tend to be as grossly stereotypical as those portraying black people. And in this case they really are black people, pitch black spindly fuckers with giant red lips, looking like someone decided to dip the Slenderman in tar or some shit. Occasionally they’re represented by animals, in the case of our protagonists, and the women look like someone glued a megaphone to their face. In general, utterly alien to what we think a human should look like, which is actually what I think Bakshi’s intention might have been all along. That there was still a great divide in the perceptions of black culture around that time, those past remnants of minstrel shows and lynchings and monkey jokes, that blacks and whites had to view themselves as wholly different and foreign to each other. I wouldn’t say that this is a film that celebrates the ‘black experience’ either, as it doesn’t try to glorify the crippling despair, poverty and racism that was/is present in Harlem and the South at the time, instead showing folks just surviving, through their wits or friendship or what have you. Which makes it more representative of the ‘black experience’ then whoever the fuck does that in their films, I suppose. Tyler Perry, maybe.

     There’s a sort of running gag in the movie where a disheveled, tiny black man is attempting to get with Miss America, a blond-haired, big breasted white woman dressed completely in red, white and blue, only to be tricked and brutally rebuffed every time. The intent of the scene is pretty on the nose, but I think the power of it lies in the fact that you see it happen, and it you get that visceral physical reaction to it happening. I think it’s the power of animation that allows us convey these messages in ways that can be be more direct, and yet because of the inherent expressionism of the genre doesn’t lose any of its artistic merit. It works for me, essentially, and if a film works for you then it has succeeded as a film.

     If you ever wanted to see the sleek, 70’s response to Song of the South, then you’ve stopped at the right place. If you’re interested in non-Disney Western animation, Ralph Bakshi is going to be the second name you’re likely going to hear after Don Bluth, this is going to be one of his works that you’re going to directed towards. It’s more than something colorful to look at, and it lends itself to analysis and introspection, so give it a watch if you like to do that sort of stuff. Then watch Mighty Mouse, because who doesn’t love Mighty Mouse?

     Nobody. I just answered my own question there. Nobody.

Result: Recommended