Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (1959)

You will not find the phrase, “Me Tarzan, you Jane” in this production, hell you won’t even find Jane in this 1959 Tarzan film produced by Sy Weintraub and as a fan of all things Tarzan I must say I couldn’t be happier. Gone is the Pidgin English speaking ape man and in his place is a complex and literary hero, as for the missing Jane well even Burroughs tried to kill her off back in 1919 in the story Tarzan the Terrible so I’ll let that slide. Clearly Weintraub understood that tying Tarzan down to just one blonde isn’t a necessarily good thing for continuing jungle adventures. Burroughs certainly felt the same way as after failing to kill her he constantly gave Tarzan amnesia, seriously he gets hit in the head a lot in those books, or found some other reason to separate Tarzan from Jane.
This outing was helmed by director John Guillermin who would of course raise to fame with The Towering Inferno, the 1976 King Kong remake and the laughably bad King Kong Lives. He did make one other Tarzan movie, Tarzan Goes to India, but it was nowhere near as good as Tarzan's Greatest Adventure.


In this movie Tarzan is played by Gordon Scott and as I mentioned this isn’t the stilted possibly brained damaged version as portrayed by most actors prior to this film. The Tarzan in the Burroughs books was man who became fluent in several languages and not just human ones, so seeing a thoughtful intelligent Tarzan as portrayed by Scott was a nice surprise. The only criticism I have of his version of the Ape Man is that he has a 1950s haircut and lives in a treehouse with Cheetah the only real two holdovers from the Johnny Weissmuller days.

 

“Cheetah, time to swing on over to the local jungle barber salon.”

The movie begins with a group of men sneaking into a native outpost to steal some explosives, two men are killed and colouring is found on one of the dead man’s hands confirming that it was white men disguised as natives. Also the dying utterance of the radio operator was the repeated word, “Slade.” This is a man that Tarzan has a history with so when the jungle drums call him to the scene he is quickly on the case. Tarzan believes that the perpetrators have taken a boat upstream even though there is nothing up there but dangerous jungle. When the local constable asks if Tarzan is going to stay for the burial services for the two dead men we get a glimpse of Tarzan’s views on religion.

 

“No, I need no sermon to tell me how I feel about Dr. Quarles.”

While at the outpost Tarzan meets Angie (Sara Shane) a bush pilot who is a bit cavalier about the deaths of the two men and as the movie goes on it’s her character that truly makes the journey.

 

“Death is never a pretty sight. We’ll see it again before the hunt is over.”

The villain of the piece is played by the great Anthony Quayle and his Slade is complex character who though a homicidal maniac is also clearly self-aware of his faults. When he finds out that Tarzan is on his trail he knows the danger they are in and almost relishes the thought of facing the Lord of the Jungle. Among his crew is O’Bannion played by pre-Bond Sean Connery, he’s a fun lovin drunkin lout who believes Tarzan is no threat to four armed men.

 

“I like my jungle men shaken not stirred.”

Also onboard is Toni (Scilla Gabel) Slade’s much put upon girlfriend, the boat’s pilot Dino (Al Mulock) who may have some series mother issues, and Kruger (Niall MacGinnis) a German and possible ex-Nazi. It seems that Slade knows the whereabouts of a diamond mine and with Kruger’s expertise with jewels the team hopes to become millionaires, if only they can survive Tarzan and each other. The group really doesn’t get along well and much of the body count is due to their own infighting and not Tarzan’s hunting skills.

 

“Don’t delude yourself that we’re four to one. Tarzan won’t come in the front door, you know.”

Most Tarzan films leave out the fact that archery was probably one of Tarzan’s greatest skills and served him well in many of his book adventures so seeing him sporting a bow and quiver in this film lifted my spirits. Sadly his accuracy with the bow and arrow in this film left a lot to be desired.

 

A jungle man and his accessories.

When Angie’s plane crashes after she joyfully buzzes Tarzan in his canoe she finds herself stuck with the Ape Man on this manhunt, and between almost getting eaten by a crocodile, shot at, threatened by a large snake, treed by a lion and captured by the villains she learns a thing or two about real danger.

 

Statistically speaking, it’s still the safest way to travel.

Slade becomes obsessed with the idea of killing Tarzan, laying several traps to take him out and almost gets him a few times as even Tarzan has no real defense against thrown dynamite, but when quicksand, the one arrow of Tarzan’s that doesn’t miss, a pit trap that gets one of their own, and inevitable betrayal winnows the bad guy’s side down to just Slade the fight becomes a brutal mano a mano.

 

Who of course wins in the end is never in question.

What is fascinating about this movie is how Angie handles all this; she stoically marches along with Tarzan on this hunt never complaining, when Tarzan is injured she sneaks aboard the villain’s boat to get penicillin, but at the end when Tarzan is off to confront Slade she takes the boat and leaves.  She had seen enough death and sees no need witness anymore.   Though the film ends with Tarzan triumphant it is also Tarzan alone as he watchers her boat disappear into the distance.  This is not how your typical Tarzan story ends and that is what makes this a great one.

This is easily one of my favorite Tarzan films; there is not one cast member that doesn’t given an excellent performance with Quale a real standout with his twisted portrayal of Slade. Though the film was shot in Africa sadly most of the animals are from stock film libraries and are not well integrated into the movie but this doesn’t do much to harm what is really a taught jungle thriller.

 

f you are a fan of Tarzan this is a must see film, don’t Cheetah yourself out of seeing it.

Raise the Titanic (1980) - Review

Clive Cussler is an author of over 50 books, many of which have made it on the New York Times bestsellers list, but when it comes to translating them well to movies it’s not gone so well. Dirk Pitt, the hero of most of Cussler’s sea adventures, seems a natural candidate for a film franchise but to date, there have been only two films and both of those flopped. Why hasn’t this popular book series turned into an ocean-going Bond franchise? Well, today we will look at Raise the Titanic the first attempt at bringing a Clive Cussler book to the big screen and see where things went wrong.

 

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink,” This quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" sums up the first problem with the movie Raise the Titanic which would be that any movie that deals with water, especially saltwater won't be rather hard to swallow. Movies set on the sea or about the sea have always been notoriously hard to make, the elements are just not all that kind to movie makers and when you compound that with shooting things underwater you are just asking for trouble, case in point The Abyss and Waterworld as the filmmakers behind those watery epics certainly learned all there is to know about sea problems. The trick, of course, is in having a good story to make the journey worth the effort, unfortunately, with Raise the Titanic that journey resulted in a rather dull movie.

 

Jason Robards lectures us on The Titanic.

The very name of the ship Titanic captures the imaginations of people all over the world, so right off the bat you have a hook into your audience, and then you tell them you are not only going to find this most famous of all wrecks but are going to raise her as well. How awesome is that? You'd pretty much have to go out of your way to muck up a great premise like that, well, producer Lew Grade and director Jerry Jameson did just that.

 

"Don't worry guys I'll make enough money for all of us."

The story centers around the United States government developing a defence program called “The Sicilian Project” which had one small problem which was the fact that it needed a powerful fuel source that could only be provided by an extremely rare mineral called byzanium. When government agents discover that the only place on Earth that has this mineral was located happened to be on an island off the coast of the Soviet Union they sent a mineralogist to find it. Unfortunately, he discovered that it had already been mined way back in 1912 but we soon find out that half a ton of it was loaded aboard the RMS Titanic and thus our hopes for world peace lay at the bottom of the ocean.

 

I think someone left the tub running.

The head of “The Sicilian Project” was Dr. Gene Seagram (David Selby) who with the aid of Admiral Sandecker (Jason Robards) and Dirk Pitt (Richard Jordan) they would try their damnedest to get the byzanium before the Russians do. The strangest decision the filmmakers decide on here is that of making Gene Seagram the nominal lead in this movie and not Dirk Pitt, which is just odd considering the book Raise the Titanic was a "Dirk Pitt Adventure" so sidelining your hero for the bulk of the movie your is a strange and stupid choice.

 

This is not my idea of Dirk Pitt.

Instead of us following action-hero Dirk Pitt, while he off uncovering nefarious plots and spies, we get scenes of Dr. Seagram with his reporter girlfriend, Dana Archibald (Anne Archer), and dealing with his jealousy over the fact that she lived with Pitt years ago. *yawn* In the book Dana is a marine archeologist and is integral to finding and raising of the Titanic while in the movie she is a love interest that disappears halfway through the film never to be seen again.  Now, there is one actor who stands out as being just perfect for his part and that would be Sir Alec Guinness who plays a survivor of the sinking and is the one who gives our heroes a vital clue, his performance adds warmth and gravitas to the movie and once he is off-screen he is greatly missed.

 

"Have you tried using The Force to raise it?"

Now comes the next big problem with this movie and that would be the underwater action, which is greatly due to the fact that it is incredibly difficult to make action underwater realistic and or exciting. It's possible you can do one or the other but doing both is a bit of a trick. If you find scenes of submersible slowly combing the seafloor looking for a sunken ship fascinating then this could be the film for you but the rest of us watching this thing will be left bored out of our collective bloody minds. I would bet a mathematician could come up with a formula showing the percentage of underwater footage in a movie is in direct comparison to how successful it is, I bet an extra half hour of Bill Paxton puttering around in his sub in James Cameron’s Titanic could have resulted in a flop instead of a mega-hit, but hey, that’s just my theory.

 

Slow and murky wins the race.

Well, eventually our “heroes” find the Titanic and plans to raise it go into action; they will fill the hull with foam thus forcing the water out of the ship, then they would attach buoyancy tanks and then with a few well-placed explosive charges they'd rock the ship free and float it to the surface. Sadly, accidents will happen and one of the submersibles is trapped on the deck of the Titanic and the only way to save them is to raise the ship in a matter of hours instead of the weeks that were scheduled. That they accomplish this with almost no problem tells me their schedule was for shit.

 

"Did anyone pack a caulking gun?"

Science Note: When the submersible develops a leak at the depth of 12,000 feet we are told they have only six hours to live before running out of air, but in reality, they should have died instantly. The pressure at that depth would have caused the sub to implode immediately upon springing a leak.

I will say one positive thing, at that is the sequence of the great ocean liner rising out of the depths and bursting to the surfaces is damn impressive. A beautiful fifty-foot model was built to achieve this and it does look like money well spent, sadly it was too long of a slog with uninteresting characters for this payoff to be worth it.

There is very little action in this film and at almost two hours it could certainly have used a bit of action injection to help keep us awake. Sure, at one point we are told a hurricane is on the way, which is apparently supposed to add tension, but then it never shows up so that was a wash, and then when the Navy ships that were providing support for the operation being called away on a distress call, which allows the Russians to pop aboard the Titanic and demand that they hand the ship over to them or else they'd see it sunk to the bottom with all hands on deck. Pitt in full smug mode makes one quick call and we see a nuclear attack submarine surface and a couple of F-16 fighter jets fly over.

 

“Take that, Ruskies!”

So now that any chance of action has been thwarted it’s time to go into the cargo hold and find us some byzanium, but gasp, the safe in the hold is full of boxes of gravel. This depresses Seagram to no end but Sandecker says it may be for the best because the byzanium may have ended being used not for defence but to make a bigger bomb. This enrages Seagram and he asks, “Then  why in god's name did you okay this mission?” A very valid question that is answered in the stupidest way possible, “If someone was going to make a byzanium bomb I wanted it to be us.” Yeah, that sounds about right.  Later Pitt informs Seagram that the last words of the agent who went down with the ship leads him to believe that the byzanium is actually buried in a cemetery in Sotheby England, and this turns out to be the case but because of the threat of a byzanium bomb is too much for Seagram he decides to leave the stuff buried where it is and thus making this whole movie pointless.

 

Do you think anybody in the audience is still awake?

The Book's Ending: Seagram has a mental breakdown after it's discovered that the byzanium was not aboard the Titanic, but once Pitt figures out where it’s buried he and Sandecker retrieve it and do a successful test of the Sicilian Project.  Why the filmmakers decided on a depressing "Fuck it, let's just leave it there" ending is beyond me, especially when the books ending was much more palatable.

 

"He's the king of the world!"

Producer Lew Grade is famously quoted as saying, “It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic than raise the Titanic” but as it cost over $40 million dollars to make the film and took in only $7 million at the box office I think he was screwed either way. It’s simply not that good of a movie and an even worse adaptation. So what I'm saying is, go read the book.

The Lad and the Lion: Edgar Rice Burroughs - Book Review

The Lad and the Lion is an interesting book as it not only tells the adventures stories of a young man with a lion but a parallel story about a small European country struggling with revolution, but strangely neither story has much impact on the other. Written in 1914 and first appearing as a three part serial in All-Story Weekly The Lad and the Lion is also noteworthy for being the first Burroughs story to be adapted to the screen.
The story begins in a troubled European country, in the world of Burroughs there are no untroubled European countries, a king is murdered and Michael, the young heir to the throne, is hustled out of the country to save his life. Things go even worse for poor Michael as the boat he is on is wrecked by a storm and he finds himself bobbing along in rough seas until he is “rescued” by a crazed epileptic deaf mute who lives aboard a derelict tramp steamer. Having been hit in the head in the head during the storm Michael has amnesia and with no knowledge of his past, language or pretty much anything about the world he settles into this new life as slave to this demented man. The only thing that makes his life bearable is that also on board this ship is a young lion and the two becomes friends, their growing hatred of the man who beats them daily is a great bonding element. After years of spent drifting the trio becomes a duo when the deaf mute goes berserk and almost kills Michael but is stopped when the lion, now full grown, breaks out of his cage and kills the crazed coot. The boat eventually runs aground on the shores of North Africa and Michael and the lion finally escape their long captivity at sea. As the young man still has no recollection of anything the two just wander around together hunting and basically hanging out like two awesome bros. Two pals with nothing but time on their hands, that is until the opposite sex enters the picture.

Meanwhile back in Europeland the new king isn’t very well liked, the revolutionaries who put him on the throne are having buyer’s remorse, and the fact that Prince Ferdinand, the new heir to the throne, is even a worse twit than his father gets the revolutionaries plotting again. The stuff in Europe is very hard to get through and as the book is structured with Michael’s story on even numbered chapters and the kingdom on odd numbered chapters so that you are constantly yanked away from the cool stuff with the lad and his lion, you know the characters the book is titled after, to go to back to the boring stuff of Prince Ferdinand and more pointless conspiracies. Structurally it’s an interesting idea unfortunately it really doesn’t work because we never really get a payoff. Michael and Ferdinand never meet; there is no cool confrontation between the rightful heir and the twit usurper. There is a kind of cool stinger at the end but it’s only good for a chuckle and not enough to justify the countless pages of the boring life of Prince Ferdinand and his dalliances with the gardener’s daughter. We just don’t care.

What would you most like to read about?  Would you prefer adventures of a young man with his ever loyal lion friend as they run across Bedouin bandits, a beautiful daughter of a sheik, jealous rivals, and even a nice lioness to round things off or story about a callous jerk who cares not for his people but just getting in the pants of the gardener’s daughter and spending the taxpayers money on a boat? Yeah, not a tough call.

The half of the book that takes place in Africa is great; Michael meets and falls in love with a beautiful Arabic woman who is daughter to a powerful sheik, there are kidnappings and betrayals, the standard misunderstandings and declarations of love that one expects in a Burroughs book and it is all adventure gold, but then it is constantly interrupted by the second plot line with the annoying Prince Ferdinand which if any reader out there cares about I’d certainly like to hear from them to find out why.

This book could have been equal to some of the better Tarzan books because the story elements that take place in Africa are fun but unfortunately they are seriously hamstrung by the alternate plotline  with the kingdom stuff. It’s not a long book and if you find yourself skimming over the stuff with Ferdinand you will mostly likely get a kick out of The Lad and the Lion.

The Many Faces of The Incredible Hulk

A lot has happened to everyone’s favorite gamma irradiated emerald giant over the years, hell he wasn’t even always green, and he’s seen many incarnations from the small screen to the big screen, so let us take a brief stroll through the many versions of The Incredible Hulk.

In 1962 Marvel’s creative giants Stan Lee and Jack Kirby brought the world The Incredible Hulk a story owing much to Lee’s love of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and as Ben Grimm’s orange monstrous form in Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four comic was so very popular why not make a comic starring a monster? Thus we get the story of scientist Bruce Banner caught in the blast of a gamma bomb of his own invention and now tormented by the raging beast within.

In the Hulk’s first appearance he was a gray skinned behemoth but due to quality of the paper at the time as well as the inks used the Hulk’s pigment varied too much from panel to panel, so after seeing the first issue Lee decided to make Hulk’s skin green. Years later the gray skin would return when in a run of comics by Peter David were the Hulk took on the name Joe Fixit. As Las Vegas enforcer he was a more intelligent version of the Hulk but definitely more morally ambiguous and more in keeping with the Mr. Hyde personality type than his earlier savage Frankenstein persona.

 

Joe Fixit.

Marvel was quick to capitalize on the popularity of the character and so licensed the Hulk to a Canadian/American co-production for a television show called “The Marvel Super Heroes” where each half hour show was broken into 7 minute segments dealing with either Captain America, The Sub Mariner, Iron Man, The Mighty Thor, and the ever lovin Hulk! The animation for this show was extremely limited even for television cartoons of the time.

 1966 Cartoon Series

“David Banner is believed to be dead, and he must let the world think that he is dead, until he can find a way to control the raging spirit that dwells within him.” This opening narration for the live action television series set the tone for this show that was a huge ratings hit for CBS and would run for five years as well as a few made for TV movies.

Limited by what a live action television budget could allow we never got to see this Hulk (Lou Ferrigno) tossing tanks around or leaping hundreds of miles in a single bound but what we did get was an hour long drama much in the vein of The Fugitive with David Banner (Bill Bixby) on the run from a hounding reporter and a death he was not responsible for. Seeing green painted Ferrigno take on protection racketeers and abusive husbands may have been a bit of a letdown for the fans of the comic but the pathos and warmth of the late great Bill Bixby is what made this show such a hit.  Note: Producers nixed the name Bruce Banner in favor of David Banner because Bruce seemed too gay at the time.

 

Definitely a step up in animation quality.

From the 80s to 2010 the Hulk appeared in various animated forms; The Incredible Hulk (1982) only ran 13 episodes and was aired as part of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, in 1996 The Incredible Hulk was voiced by Lou Ferrigno with Neal McDonough voicing Doctor Banner. Then in 1997 they changed the shows name to The Incredible Hulk and She-Hulk which added Hulk’s cousin and also had the Hulk appear in his gray incarnation and was voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson. Then in 2010 The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes aired which gave us one of the better versions of the Hulk (Fred Tatasciore) but that show was too good so it was cancelled after just two seasons.

 

“Hulk smash puny ratings!”

Of course Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno were not going to be the only live action attempt at this Marvel character so in 2003 director Ang Lee brought the world his interpretation of the…HULK.  Artfully done and with much style Ang Lee created a Hulk that would divide audiences and fans of the Hulk alike.

 

Eric Bana proves it’s not easy being green.

The problem in this film was that Ang Lee thought we needed an hour origin story before seeing any cool Hulk action, he was wrong. Now he isn’t the only director guilty of wasting screen time on hero origins stories when most of the world knows them by heart, but in his case it was just so ponderously slow going that at times I started to lose interest, and I personally just didn’t care much for Eric Bana’s David Banner (Note: Apparently still hiding from the name Bruce) and as lovely as Jennifer Connelly is her Betty Ross was your standard damsel in distress but compounded with the fact that she kept ratting her boyfriend out to the military thus making her poor girlfriend material. Speaking of the military we at least have one good thing to say about this movie and that is Sam Elliot, his Thunderbolt Ross pretty much nailed the character from the comic while also giving a bit more humanity to him.

 

Sam Elliot is Thunderbolt Ross.

Memo to producers of Hulk movies: Do not end your comic book action blockbuster with the Hulk having an existential battle with a cloud.  It’s one thing to saddle us with a overlong origin story but to have the final showdown be an almost unintelligible mess is just a dick move.  I love Ang Lee but he may have been the wrong choice for this project, but then again there are worse choices
Enter Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk (2008) which starred an angst ridden Edward Nortonas Bruce Banner who must do battle with Tim Roth who will turn into The Abomination and help tear up Harlem/Toronto. This film was kind of a reboot I like as it didn’t waste time giving as another long origin story we just find out how he became the Hulk in a quick flashback, sadly that is the only real positive thing I can say about this version of the Hulk. I think Edward Norton is a fine actor but he was terrible miscast as Banner here and the CGI for his green alter ego wasn’t anything to write home about. We did get a better smack down action finale this time out but the whole thing seemed kind of on the cheap. Worst offence was in the casting of William Hurt as Thunderbolt Ross as he was just terrrribbbble! The producers should have taken a page from the Bond movies which kept the same actor for M over multiple movies even if the actor playing Bond kept changing and brought back Sam Elliot as General Ross.  As this films Betty Ross we get Liv Tyler who’s portrayal of the torn girlfriend is forgettable verging on coma inducing. It’s a shame that this film has the Robert Downey Jr.. cameo thus making it part of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe.

 

Avengers Assemble!

Marvel’s The Avengers (2012) finally brings us a big screen Hulk we can all get behind, director and ubernerd Joss Whedon’s casting of Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner was inspired for he brought back some of warmth and humor we got back in the 70s with Bill Bixby. The CGI motion capture work in this film was incredibly well down and the fights Hulk gets into were brilliantly orchestrated and fun. Practically everyone in the audience bust a gut laughing when Hulk growled, “Puny god” after giving Loki the beating of his life.

There are apparently no plans to give this incarnation of The Incredible Hulk his own standalone movie which is a shame because any film that could give us more screen time with Ruffalo’s Banner is something I’d be all for, but until then I’ll be happy with him taking on Hulkbuster armor and cosmic threats with his pals.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) - Review

Going by the cinema today all ghosts are trying to possess you, drive you mad, or drag you to hell if not all three. This was not always the case. In 1945 author Josephine Leslie under the pseudonym of R. A. Dick penned a beautiful story about a widow and a ghost and their bitter sweet relationship over the years, and even before it saw a North American distribution its film rights were optioned by 20th Century Fox.


The Ghost and Mrs. Muir follows Mrs. Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) a young widow and mother of daughter Anna (Natalie Wood) as she decides to strike out on her own, much to the consternation of her in-laws. Lucy Muir is a strong and independent woman who clearly hasn’t enjoyed her year of mourning in the house of her mother in law and sister in law so after a brief argument she, along with her daughter Anna and Martha their housekeeper (Edna Best), they leave for the lovely seaside town of Whitecliff.

 

The ever radiant Gene Tierney.

Her only income is from shares from a gold mine owned by her late husband and as the dividends from these shares are not much she needs to find a very affordable place. Lucky for her rent on haunted cottages are low. The rental agent tries to dissuade her from seeing the place but she insists and when eerie laughter chases them both out it seems at first that he may have been right. Of course Mrs. Muir is made of sterner stuff than that and she quickly decides that Gull Cottage will suit her just fine.  Ghost and all.

 

Who wouldn’t be okay with a ghost like this?

Now this is the first instance when I thought, “Don’t you have a daughter to think about?” You may be cool with roaring laughter out of the dark but what of your little girl? This leads to my one and only criticism of the film and that is in the character of Anna, though sweetly played by a young  Natalie Wood she is constantly forgotten by the screenplay. Anna is more a roommate you hardly see than a daughter. When Mrs. Muir finally comes face to face with the ghost of Captain Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison) they quickly come to an arrangement that he will refrain from haunting anywhere in the house but the master bedroom, where it just so happens she sleeps of course, and that Anna is too young to see ghosts so Captain Gregg will not contact her. Thus Anna vanishes from the bulk of the film.

Anna seen here praying her mother doesn’t forget she exists.

Things seem great and Lucy finds herself becoming quite fond of the Captain despite his coarse language and penchant for watching her undress, but then storm clouds appear on the horizon in the form of the gold mine drying up. Her in-laws show up to take her back to London because she can no longer support herself or her daughter, but Captain Gregg implores Lucy to turn them down assuring her that he will think of something. She does and Captain Gregg throws the two busybodies out of the house.

 

Ghost Writer.

Captain Gregg’s brilliant plan is that he will narrate to Lucy his life story and that it will be published as “The unvarnished life of a seaman.” Writing takes time so Lucy is forced to sell her jewels so that they can eat and Daniel vows to chase of any solicitors that try and kick them out for not paying rent. This is a definitely a brilliant plan. The only real hurdle now is getting a publisher to read it as women authors are looked down upon for the most part. Enter Miles Fairley (George Sanders).

 

Smooth talking George Sanders.

Mr. Fairley is an author who writes children’s books under the pen name “Uncle Neddie” and he is immediately captivated by Mrs. Muir as one would because Gene Tierney is exotically beautiful and one can’t help but be entranced by her. He lets Lucy have his appointment with the publisher who is at first wants nothing to do with her manuscript but when he does eventually read it he falls in love with the book. It looks like smooth sailing.

 

Until jealousy rears it’s ugly head.

Unfortunately Captain Gregg doesn’t like the cut of Fairley’s jib and tells Lucy that he is a “Perfumed parlor snake.” Now earlier Daniel told Lucy that there can be no relationship between a ghost and the living and that a woman as young and as beautiful as she should be out meeting people and falling in love, so this apparent jealousy over Miles Fairley has her confused. Eventually the tensions gets worse as Lucy and Miles become closer.  Eventually a final argument between Daniel and Lucy over her dating habits leads to the ghost exiting her life. Captain Gregg stands over a sleeping Lucy and with whatever ghost mojo he has makes her believe that he has been nothing but a dream and that she in fact wrote the book on her own.

 

Sleeping Beauty.

Not surprisingly Lucy shortly finds out that Miles is married with children and that he has done this sort of thing before. Heartbroken she retreats to Gull Cottage where she and Martha spend their years alone as Anna (remember her, the daughter?) has gone off to college and to eventually marries. Finally on a dark night, old and grey haired Lucy retires to her room with a glass of milk, provided by the ever faithful Martha, and she passes quietly away. Captain Gregg appears and lifts the youthful spirit of Lucy Muir out of her chair and the two walk off together into the afterlife.

 

*sniff*

I have seen this movie a half dozen times and I tear up at that ending every damn time. This is a story about two souls perfect for each other but who unfortunately meet when it’s too late for one of them. Gene Tierney’s Lucy Muir is a complex and interesting character; she is strong, willful and could easily be called an early feminist, but her Achilles heel is romance. She married her first husband after reading a romance novel and then one kiss in the garden later she was “In love.” Early in the film Captain Gregg calls her out on not ever being in love with her late husband and she can’t deny it. Then she falls for the oily charm of Miles Fairley when it’s clear that his romantic patter is just a game, one he has played before. It’s the acting skills of Gene Tierney that make us love Mrs. Muir despite her faults, so we just sit back waiting for the time when she can be with Daniel, her true soul mate.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was made during the heyday of the studio system and with the great Joseph L. Mankiewicz at the helm, as well as being scored by music master Bernard Herrmann it is no surprise this movie turned out as good as it did. The chemistry between Tierney and Harrison makes this one of my all-time favorite love stories, that it is about a ghost as well just makes it a bonus.

The Cave Girl: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Men of great deeds and action who, with noble purposes at heart, let none stand in their way as their mighty physiques carve a path to victory; this best describes your standard Edgar Rice Burroughs protagonist and is what really sets The Cave Girl apart from most of Burroughs’s books as the hero of this story does not start out all that heroic. Originally published as two stories; the first entitled “The Cave Girl” saw print in 1913 in the magazine All-Story and its sequel entitled “The Cave Man” was printed 1917 in the pages of All-Story Weekly and the tale of hapless Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones is a fascinating departure for Burroughs…well a little departure.

Our story begins on the storm swept beach of a jungle island where Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones finds himself after being swept overboard during a storm. Due to his failing health, and advice from his doctor, he took an ocean voyage in the hopes of turning around his lifelong ill health. Things did not go as planned. Now poor Waldo isn’t your typical castaway of romantic fiction, no this gentleman is of Boston Blue Blood and hasn’t worked a day in his life, spending most his time nose buried in books of esoteric learning and nothing with much practical application. Also Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones is a coward. These are not ideal characteristic for survival in a danger infested jungle.

Yet Waldo does survive, even though he spends his first days cowering in fear and racked by his ever persistent cough. Then one day, eyes red from crying, he reaches the end of his emotional tether and chargers screaming into the jungle hoping that the dark figure that was been spying on him will end his pitiful existence. Its then that Waldo discovers that the inhabitants of the island are Neanderthalic throwbacks to a bygone age. With luck, and a little help from a beautiful cave girl, Waldo survives his first encounter with the cruel and brutal savages. Later he learns that the girl, Nadara, believes Waldo to be great hero because he openly slept on the beach without fear of the great panther Nagoola (he of course had no idea he was in danger from local wildlife) and misinterpreted his panicked screaming charge of terror for war cries. It’s Nadara’s woodcraft and knowledge of the island that keeps Waldo alive but when he finds out that she is bringing him back to her village so that he can kill the two fearsome cavemen, who rule her people through savage brutality, he balks and makes a run for it.

As I said this is not your typical Burroughs protagonist; Waldo is a weak, sniveling coward that lets a sweet primitive girl believe him to be some great badass when he is quite the opposite, and then ditches her when things get scary. But this is of course a pulp adventure story so Waldo will eventually step up and do the right thing. Living on his own Waldo quickly finds himself feeling physically better than he has even been in his life and with his cough is gone he proceeds to start a physical regimen that will get him into shape that will allow him to return to Nadara and somehow make his earlier cowardice right.

With the new name of Thandor, meaning Brave One, Waldo starts to turn things around and becomes the hero he never thought he would be. He fights and kills many of the cave dwellers as well as the deadly panther, and soon the name Thandor becomes one to be reckoned with.
So The Cave Girl is kind of like Robinson Crusoe and his Girl Friday only Waldo was in much worse starting position than what Mister Crusoe was in. This is a fun and entertaining read as we make the heroes journey along with Waldo and his lovely cave girl; filled with headhunters, pirates and earthquakes The Cave Girl earns a top spot on in the Burroughs archives.

Constantine (2014) Pilot

It’s been many years since John Constantine first wandered into the pages of Alan Moore’s run of Swamp Thing and to eventually become the longest running Vertigo title and certainly one of the most popular. His take no shit from any tosser of demon attitude as well as his very questionable moral standings has made him easily the most interesting characters to appear in comic books and no small reason for his popularity. In 2005 Warner Brothers brought Constantine to the big screen but instead of a smart ass Britt working the occult side of London England we were saddled with Keanu Reeves fighting demons in Los Angles, though not a terrible movie it certainly was a little disheartening to fans of the comic.

Flash forward to 2014 and another attempt to bring Constantine to life only this time to the small screen. Shows like Supernatural and American Horror Story have proven there is a market for horror on television and that the only danger is on how far the show runners are willing or able to go. As a network show there are definite limitations so you’re not going to see the gore and sexuality of say something like you get in an episode of Penny Dreadful, but already in the pilot we see that this Constantine is pretty watered down even by regular television standards.

The pilot was directed by Neil Marshall so that gave us some hope but as David Goyer is also attached as one of the writers that hope faded rather quickly. The show opens with John Constantine (Matt Ryan) having committed himself to a hospital for the mentally ill for the apparent purpose of having the medical field prove to him that demons don’t exist. You see something really bad went down resulting in a young girl being yanked down to hell were her soul is now damned forever and I guess Constantine would rather think himself crazy than culpable. This is pretty idiotic. Not that a hero with a tortured has dark past that he wants to forget, no that is pretty standard stuff, but burying your head in the sand via nuthouse is just stupid. It makes Constantine out to be either a coward or stupid…or both.

Just as he is settling into group therapy he is yanked out of retirement by a possessed patient, a woman possessed by the soul of dead friend of Constantine’s. It seems this dead friend has a daughter that is in danger; a nasty demon from the inner circle of Hell is after her.

 

“Noooooooooooo!”

She is of course in the United States so good all John Constantine must cross the Atlantic and save the Network a bundle on shooting locations. The damsel in question is Liv Aberdine (Lucy Griffiths) and our introduction to her is watching her pull a can of pepper spray on Constantine after she was almost swallowed by a fiery sink hole. Yeah it’s a stupid as it sounds, you see while leaving work her car starts acting up before dying completely, then the power goes out in the parking lot, next the ground begins to cracking open and then suddenly collapsing into a huge fiery pit and that is when Constantine shows up in a cab and her reaction is to aim a can of pepper spray at him as if he could somehow be responsible for these events. This is classic lazy screenwriting 101. False conflict is not dramatic Mister Goyer, it’s just lame.

 

“I find dead people.”

So it seems that Liv has inherited some of her father’s abilities and with a magical pendant in hand she can see that dead and because of this some high ranking demon wants her dead. With the help of cabbie an apparently immortal Chas Chandler (Charles Halford) Constantine must do battle with the forces of Hell all the while being harassed by the angel Manny (Harold Perrineau) who wants Constantine’s’ help in the coming apocalypse. Is it me or is Manny a really stupid name for an angel?

 

“I’m the angel on your shoulder.”

So that’s the set-up for the show, will helping the angels fight the legions of Hell save John’s soul which apparently got damned for his failure to save the little girl? Will Liv use her abilities as a scrivener to help in Constantine’s fight? Will the show’s producers allow John Constantine to light up a cigarette or are we stuck watching him constantly play with his fucking lighter? Will any or all of these questions be answered before this show is cancelled? Answer: Doubtful.

 

“Flame on!”

Now the show isn’t without merit, Matt Ryan does a fine job with the script given, the look of the show is decent and the effects around the magic side of things are excellent, if only it all just didn’t seem so tepid. John Constantine is suppose to be a right bastard and this show has given us a Diet Coke version of him with a clichéd backstory and uninteresting supporting cast. Of course this is just the pilot so who knows maybe they’ll turn it around before it joins the ranks of the damned.

Constantine (2014)