Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze

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

I started reading the Bantam paperbacks in 1968 as a boy in England. They are a tremendous read and for years they promised, '..And there's a feature motion picture and a television series in his future' and for years I waited, only to be disappointed by this far too camped up film version. If they wanted to be amusing they only needed to treat it seriously, the far fetched aspects would have made strangers laugh and fans overjoyed. As for casting, Ron Ely's okay but Clint Walker would have been my choice (certainly when I started reading the books anyway) as for the 'Monk' in this movie, casting is appalling, the fellow is fat, Monk was like ' a good looking gorilla' and therefore an Ernest Borgnine, Bob Hoskins look-a-like would have been more suitable. No mention of Ham ever having a moustache in the books, but Renny was good casting. Having said that, like other commentators I usually watch the first half-hour and the last ten minutes which are set in period New York and do retain the flavour of the books. The rest of it is sadly clap-trap. And why in the film 'Rocketeer' did they substitute Howard Hughes for Doc Savage (as it is Doc who appears in the graphic novel) that might just have rekindled his cinematic career.

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.

Michael Anderson, the director, did some fine movies, but stumbled badly here, and the sometimes cliché-ridden script didn't help matters. The huge problem with this movie is that a lack of respect was shown for the character of Doc Savage and his chums. No movie about a superhero can succeed if the filmmakers seem to snicker and jeer at their own lead character! The approach to Doc was much like the approach to "Batman" in the 1960's TV series--making the hero appear silly, not heroic. Amazingly, Ron Ely nearly makes the film work, despite the wrongheaded direction.

It's similar to how filmmakers, trying to cash in on James Bond, didn't understand that the magic of Bond movies was, they took themselves seriously. The humor was not aimed at the story being told. The Matt Helm movies didn't take themselves seriously, and neither could audiences. Doc Savage could have been a classic! Making it a farce is an example of what not to do with a superhero!

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.