Historically-speaking,
the science fiction and fantasy cinema has battled high camp -- a form of art notable because of its
exaggerated or over-the-top attributes -- for over five
decades.
That
long battle is definitively lost in Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze
(1975), a tongue-in-cheek film adaptation of the pulp magazine hero (or
superhero) created by Henry W. Ralston and story editor John L. Nanovi (with
additional material from Lester Dent) in
the 1930s.
The
seventies movie from producer George Pal (1908 – 1980) and director Michael
Anderson brazenly makes a mockery of the titular hero’s world, his missions,
and even his patriotic belief system.
That the film is poorly paced, and looks more like a TV pilot rather
than a full-fledged motion picture only adds to a laundry list of problems.
First
some background on high camp: when camp is discussed as a mode of expression,
what is really being debated is a sense of authorial or creative distance. When a film is overtly campy, the author or
authors (since film is a collaborative art form…) have made the deliberate
decision to stand back and observe the property being adapted from a dramatic
and in fact, critical distance. They find the subject matter humorous, or
worthy of ribbing, and have adapted by that belief as a guiding principle.
Notably
not all creative “standing back” need result in a campy or tongue-in-cheek approach,
and instead can help a film function admirably as pastiche or homage. In movies like Star Wars (1977), Raiders
of the Lost Ark (1981) and even Scream (1996), there is a sense of
knowing humor at work, but a campy tone is not the result.
In
short, then, the camp approach represents sort of the furthest artistic distance a creator can imagine him or herself
from his or her material. Worse, that great
distance often seems to emerge from a place of genuine contempt; from a sense that the adapter is better than or superior
to the material being adapted…and thus boasts the right/responsibility to mock
said property.
Although
Dino De Laurentiis’s King Kong (1976) and Flash
Gordon (1980) are often offered up on a platter as Exhibits A and B for
“campy” style big-budget science fiction or fantasy films, those examples don’t
actually fit the bill very well.
Rather,
close viewing suggests that Kong and Flash boast
self-reflexive qualities and a sense of humor, but nonetheless boast a sense of
closeness to the material at hand. In
both films, in other words, the viewer gets close enough to feel invested in the characters and their
stories, despite the interjection of humor, self-reflexive commentary or rampant
post-modernism. When King Kong is gunned
down by helicopters…the audience mourns.
And when Flash’s theme song by Queen kicks in and he takes the fight to
Ming the Merciless, we feel roused to cheer at his victory. We may laugh at jokes in the films, but we
aren’t so far – distance-wise - that we can’t invest in the action
However,
a true “camp” film negates such sense of meaning or identification, and instead
portrays a world that is good only for a laugh, no matter the production
values, no matter the efforts of the actors, director, or other talents.
Doc
Savage: Man of Bronze
is such a campy film, one that, post-Watergate, adopts a contemptuous approach
to anyone in authority, and, in facts, makes heroism itself seem ridiculous and
unbelievable. There are ample reasons
for this approach, at this time in American history, but those reasons don’t
mean that the approach is right for the Doc Savage character. After all, who can honestly invest in a hero
who is so perfect, so square, so beautiful that the twinkle in his eye is
literal…added as a special effect?
Although
many critics also mistakenly term Superman: The Movie (1978) campy
that film revolutionized superhero filmmaking because it took the hero’s world,
his powers, and his relationships seriously.
Certainly, there was goofy humor in the last third of the film, but that
humor was never permitted to undercut the dignity of Superman, or minimize the
threats that he faced, or to mock his heroic journey.
Again,
Doc
Savage represents the precise opposite approach. The film plays exceedingly like a two-hour
put-down of superhero tropes and ideas, and wants its audience only to laugh at
a character that actually proved highly influential in the World War II Era. The result is a film that might well be
termed a disaster.
"Let us be considerate of our country, our fellow citizens and our associates in everything we say and do..."
International
hero Doc Savage (Ron Ely) and his team of The Fabulous Five return to New York
City only to face a deadly assassination attempt upon receiving the news of the
death of Savage’s father.
After
dispatching the assassin, Savage decides to fly to Hidalgo to investigate his
father’s death. He and his Fabulous Five
are soon involved in a race with the nefarious Captain Seas (Paul Wexler) to take
possession of a secret South American valley, one where gold literally
bubbles-up out of the ground…
"Have No Fear: Doc Savage is Here!"
With
a little knowledge of history, one can certainly understand why Doc
Savage: The Man of Bronze was created in full campy mode.
In 1975, the United States was reeling from
the Watergate Scandal, the resignation of President Nixon, the Energy Crisis,
and the ignominious end of American involvement in Vietnam. The Establishment had rather egregiously
failed the country, one might argue, and so superheroes – scions of authority, essentially – were not to be taken seriously. You can see this quality of culture play out
in the press’s treatment of President Gerald Ford. An accomplished athlete who carried his
University of Michigan football team to national titles in 1932 and 1933, Ford
was transformed, almost overnight, into a clumsy buffoon by the pop culture. It
was easier to parse Ford by his pratfalls than by his prowess.
High
camp had also begun to creep into the popular James Bond series as Roger Moore assumed
the 007 role from Sean Connery, in efforts like Live and Let Die (1972)
and The
Man with the Golden Gun (1974).
And on television, the most popular superhero program, TV’s Batman
(1966 - 1968) had also operated in a
campy mode
But,
what films like Doc Savage fail to do, rather egregiously, is take a beloved
character on his or her own terms,
and present his hero to an audience by those terms. Instead of taking the effort to showcase and
describe why Doc Savage’s world exists as it does in the pulps, the film wants
only to showcase a world that easily mocked.
The message that is transmitted, and which, generously, might be
interpreted as unintentional is simply: this
whole superhero world is silly, and if you like it, there’s something silly
about you too.
In
some sense, Doc Savage is a reminder of how good the British
Pellucidar/Caprona movies of Kevin Connor are.
Their special effects may be poor by today’s standard, but the movies
take themselves and their world seriously.
You can see that everyone involved is generally working to thrill the
audience, not to prove to the audience how silly the movie’s concepts are.
Alas,
camp worms its way into virtually every aspect of Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. An early scene depicts Savage pulling an
assassin’s bullet out of a hole in his apartment wall, and knowing instantly
the caliber and the make of the weapon from which it was fired. In other words, he is so perfect (a scholar,
philosopher, inventor, and surgeon…) that his skill looks effortless…and therefore
funny.
Yet
the pulp origins of the character make plain the fact that Doc Savage achieved
his knowledge through hard work, and rigorous training. When you only see the end result in the movie,
his intelligence and know-how is mocked and made a punch-line. The movie-makers didn’t need to do it this
way. Savage could have undertaken an
investigation, but it’s funnier just to make him all-knowing, to exaggerate his
admirable qualities as a character.
Another
example of how camp undercuts and mocks the heroes of the film occurs later in
the action. Doc and his team of merry
men (The Fabulous Five) are invited aboard the antagonist’s yacht for a dinner
party. While
the bad guy, Captain Seas, and his henchmen drink alcohol, Savage and his men
drink only…milk. Again, this touch is so ludicrous when made
manifest on screen that it only succeeds in stating, again, the essential
“silliness” of the Doc Savage mythos.
Worse, Batman had done this joke, and better, in its 1966
premiere. So the milk joke isn’t even original.
Perhaps
the campies aspect of the film involves the atrocious soundtrack. The movie is scored to the work of John
Phillip Sousa (1854 – 1932), the “American March King.” Rightly or wrongly, Sousa’s marches have
become synonymous with Americana, Fourth of July parades and firework displays,
with the very archetype of patriotism itself. To score Savage’s silly
adventures to this kind of stereotypical “American” march is to say,
essentially, that one is mocking that value.
I
have nothing against mocking patriotism, if that’s your game. I can’t pass judgment on that or you. For me as a film critic, the question comes
back to, again, the sense of distance created by the adapters, and whether that
distance serves the interest of the
character being adapted. In the case
of Doc Savage, I would say that it
rather definitively does not serve the character. The choice of soundtrack music essentially
turns all action scenes -- no matter how brilliantly vetted in terms of stunts
and visuals -- into nothing more than grotesque, unfunny parody.
Why
do I feel that the character Savage is not well-served by this approach? Consider that all five of Savage’s “merry
men” are important, philosophically not in terms of raw strength or athleticism,
or even super powers.
Indeed,
one is a legal genius, one is a chemist, one is a globe-hopping engineer, one
is an archaeologist and one is an electrical wizard. Throw in Savage -- both a man of action and also a surgeon, for example – and consider
the group’s original context: post-World War I.
These
men survived the first technological war in human history, but a war – like all
war – spawned by irrationality and passion.
Their quality or importance as characters arises from the fact they are
a modern, rational group of adventures, dependent on science, the law,
medicine, and other intellectual ideas…not emotions or super abilities. In 1975, the world certainly could have used
such an example; the idea that being a superhero meant rationality and intelligence. But the movie completely fails to deliver on
the original meaning of the characters it depicts. Instead, Doc Savage makes a mockery of these
avatars of reason, and fails to note why, as a team, they represent something,
anything of importance.
Some
of the camp touches in Doc Savage are also downright
baffling, rather than funny. One villain sleeps in what appears to be a giant
cradle, and is rocked to sleep. The
movie never establishes a reason -- even
a camp one -- for this preference.
Although
it is great to see Pamela Hensley -- Buck Rogers’ Princess Ardala -- in
the film, I can think of almost no reason for anyone to re-visit Doc
Savage. Who, precisely is this
film made for? Fans of the pulps would
be horrified at the tone of the material, and those who didn’t know the
character before the film certainly would not come away from the film liking
him.
In
1984, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai successfully captured what
was funny about characters like Doc, while at the same time functioning as an
earnest adventure. Indeed, though I
often complain about all the doom and gloom superhero movies of today, and what
a boring drag they are, they are, as I have often written, a valid response to
the era of Camp.
What
is needed for the genre now, I think, is some kind of judicious middle
ground. The humorless, joyless,
mechanical, special-effects laden superhero movies of today are a drag on the
soul (and the patience), and yet I am so
glad to be rid of the mocking humiliation of high camp.
At
either extreme -- camp or angst -- the superhero film formula proves almost immediately
tiring and unworkable, it often seems.
