Movie Notes: Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze
0 stars
So-Bad-Its-Good Rating: –6 stars
Starring Ron Ely, Paul Gleason, William Lucking
Directed by Michael Anderson
Synopsis
Doc Savage (Ron Ely) and the Amazing Five travel to South America to battle the evil Captain Seas and fight the mysterious “green death.”
The Good
- There’s a core of a great action-adventure movie here, as it’s based on a popular series of pulp novels from the 1930s. The adventure is quite similar to James Bond or the Indiana Jones movies.
The Bad
- Pretty much everything else falls very short. The production values are poor, the acting sub-standard, and all else is only amusing from a campy perspective.
- The Amazing Five are old war buddies of Doc Savage. Just their names alone speak of a corny adventure: Major Thomas J. “Long Tom” Roberts, Colonel John “Renny” Renwick, Andrew Blodgett “Monk” Mayfair, William Harper “Johnny” Littlejohn, Generral Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks.
- All the characters are quite cartoony and maintain their goofy persona even when it’s totally inappropriate for the situation. Doc Savage is manly, tanned, and muscular, with a continually unbuttoning shirt. There’s an assassin running around the city in Native American gear (wouldn’t he be cold?). “Monk” of the Fabulous Five totes a pet pig at all times. Ultimately, the Fantastic Five prove rather useless in the larger scheme of things, leading one to wonder why Doc Savage, who seems able to handle everything on his own, even keeps them around.
- Many unintentionally funny moments: Captain Seas bursts into maniacal laughter at a party, inciting everyone to uncomfortably laugh along with him. The opening sequence displays a very strange polar Fortress Of Solitude with some cheesy narration explaining Doc Savage’s awesomeness like a late-night infomercial.
- Also quite head-slappingly hilarious are the simplistic solutions Doc Savage uses to escape sticky situations. A piece of fabric allows him to slide down an elevator shaft, an electric fan chases off the “green death,” and a Morse code message leads him to find a pathway hidden behind a bush that could have been easily found with a bit of searching. Oh, and then there’s that remote control airplane.
- For some reason (probably rights-related) the soundtrack consists of John Philip Sousa marches, the theme song being lyrics written to one of the melodies. This culminates in a ridiculously slapstick fist battle set to said music.
Conclusion
Mildly amusing from a so-bad-its-good perspective. Supposedly, producer George Pal had to shelve the sequel already in the works (Doc Savage: The Arch Enemy Of Evil) due to the poor box office reception for this installment. No surprise.
IMDB: Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze
Wikipedia: Doc Savage: the Man Of Bronze
The George Pal movie was short on budget, stars, quality, serious dialogue and acting. I’ve always felt actor Clint Walker had the build, size, hair for the Baumhofer Doc Savage portrayed on the old pulps and would’ve been far superior to Ron Ely as the star. I hope any new movie featuring Doc and the fabulous five will consider WWF wrestling star RANDY ORTON for the Doc character. He has the size, build, facial features and hair of the James BAMA image that was so successful for the Bantam paperback sales in the 60’s-70’s and the version most Americans today recognize.
George Pal is one of my favorite directors and it is sad that this mess was his last film. I wonder how much control he really had over it, it seems so out of character to his earlier works. When I watched this I hated the fact that the writers ttook what could have been a serious action adventure and made it tongue-in-cheek camp. But that was the trend of the 70s and since, not taking romantic heroism seriously anymoe. It would be great if someone would step forward and make a really great Doc Savage movie. Most people don’t know that many features of Superman were actually stolen from Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze (Superman the Man of Steel), etc. Doc’s hideout was called The Fortress of Solitude, and Superman just ripped it off! I guess an argument could be made that that’s the American Way.
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