Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar: Edgar Rice Burroughs – Review

In Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar we find our favorite ape man wandering around Africa with amnesia. This will not be the last time Tarzan suffers from this malady as it certainly makes it easier to explain his absence from Jane, “Wife, what wife?”  Also of note is that in this fifth installment of the Tarzan series, published in 1916 in the pages of All-Story Cavalier Weekly, Burroughs has moved from the serialized continuity he had with the first three books and settled down to making more standalone adventures, though some continuity between books will remain.   Jane is still a key character here but unlike the later books the aforementioned amnesia allows Tarzan a little more freedom from marital bliss. And don’t ask me what happened to Korak The Son of Tarzan as he’s not even given a mention in this book. I guess we can assume he moved back to London so he could show Meriem the sights.

In Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar we are first introduced to Lieutenant Albert Werper, a Belgian officer who instead of being court-martialed for various infractions, family connections spare him this, was sent to an outpost in the Congo. Werper does not like this direction his life has taken and after a little brooding he ends up killing his commanding officer. To escape the firing squad Werper runs off into the jungle where he meets up with Achmet Zek, an Arab raider that is not a fan of Tarzan (this because Tarzan tends to stop villainous acts in his part of Africa), and they decide to team-up to kidnap Jane for ransom. This seems only slightly less idiotic than people who try and kidnap Lois Lane. In fact they only succeed in the kidnapping because Werper was able to infiltrate the Clayton household in the guise of a white hunter and while there he learns that Tarzan is planning a trip to the lost city of Opar to get some more gold (some kind of financial calamity having wiped out their fortune), and this allows Achmet Zek and his men to hit the homestead while Tarzan and many of the Waziri warriors are away.

Now having overheard Tarzan talking of the fabulous riches of Opar Werper decides to follow Tarzan and the Waziri so that he can learn the location and then return later with Achmet Zek and his men so they themselves can rob the vaults of Opar. Things do not go exactly according to plan. After carrying out a hundred ingots of gold from the vaults an earthquake strikes and this is where the amnesia comes into play. Tarzan is hit in the head from falling debris and loses all memory of his life beyond his early days of living with the apes. The Waziri try and dig out their master but after uncovering several of their own dead they come to the conclusion that Tarzan must be dead as well, but of course he is quite alive and now wandering around the dark corridors of Opar, and this is also where he comes across the titular jewels (which he thinks of as just pretty pebbles). Unfortunately for poor Werper he was also trapped by the Earthquake and while trying to escape is captured by the Atlantean priests. Soon he finds himself tied to the altar of the Flaming God and about to be sacrificed by the High Priestess La, but Lady Luck decides to make an appearance (she makes many appearances in the Tarzan books) for just as the knife is about to come down and remove his heart a lion enters the chamber and proceeds to tear apart the priests. Before the lion has a chance to munch on either Werper or La the mighty Tarzan makes an entrance and he spears the lion. La, who had swooned at the approach of the lion, awakes, spots Tarzan and proceeds to profess her undying love for the ape man. And who can blame her?  It's not like she has many marital options in Opar.

The High Priestess La is one of my favorite reoccurring characters. She is at once a villain of the series but also a tragic figure. She has lived her entire life amongst ugly ape-like priests who she will one day have to mate with. A godlike Tarzan is certainly a better option than that. He had spurned her advances in The Return of Tarzan because even though Jane and he had not officially hooked up he was still in love with her, but now even with amnesia Tarzan still cannot say “Yes” to the beautiful La. So somewhere in his subconscious he must still remember his true love and thus is able to turn down this appealing offer of La’s. Yet even after being spurned again La can’t seem to shake the love she has for this jungle god. After Werper and Tarzan escape Opar they are followed by an enraged La and her gnarled ape-like minions and they are captured. Tarzan once again finds himself under the knife of the High Priestess who at the last minute still offers Tarzan life if he will just chose her as his mate. He says no. You got to give Tarzan props for his sticktuitiveness.

Lady Luck makes another appearance this time in the form of Tantor who is currently suffer from some form of animal sexual insanity (Elephants in heat are apparently very dangerous even to Tarzan). Despite La’s actions Tarzan can’t stand the idea of her dead beneath the feet of Tantor and he rescues her while the elephant stomps the hell out of her priests. He even brokers a peace between her and her disgruntled priests (they are kind of upset at her constantly wanting Tarzan over them), and sends them all back to Opar. Here is a nice excerpt that sums up Edgar Rice Burroughs’  view of the high priestess La quite well...

“A strange anomaly was La of Opar – a creature of circumstance torn from conflicting emotions. Now the cruel and bloodthirsty creature of a heartless god and again a melting woman filled with compassion and tenderness. Sometimes the incarnation of jealousy and revenge and sometimes a sobbing maiden, generous and forgiving; at once a virgin and a wanton; but always a woman. Such was La.”

But what of Jane you ask? Well Achmet Zek attacks the Clayton homestead and despite the valiant stand of the remaining Waziri she is captured. In this book Jane is still much a “damsel in distress” character but occasionally we will get a glimpse of her badass self that she will later become. During this attack Jane does not cower behind her husband’s warriors but stands on the veranda firing round after round from her rifle at the horde or Arab raiders. Unfortunately the brave Waziri are outnumbered and one by one they fall, and Jane’s badass image is tarnished a tad when she ends the fight by swooning. Women tend to swoon a lot in books by Burroughs.

 The remainder of the book could be considered a game of musical chairs as characters are constantly running around the jungle searching to kill one another, rescue each other, or escape the clutches of one or the other. Jane escapes and is re-captured several times, by more than one villain, before eventually being reunited with Tarzan. Werper spends most of his time trying to figure out how to get the jewels of Opar away from Tarzan and then to keep the knowledge of their existence away from Achmet Zek. Brain addled Tarzan spends much of his time trying to track down Werper for stealing his “pretty pebbles” and chasing after men or apes who steal this “blonde woman” who holds some strange attraction to him.

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar begins the formula that will pretty much carry itself throughout the series with but a few exceptions, and as formulas go it is a good one. Lost cities, villainous bastards, beautiful woman and a hero with muscles of iron, what’s not to love?

The Last Witch Hunter (2015) – Review

It’s no secret that Vin Diesel is a fan of the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons, which is seriously cool, so it’s no surprise to learn that Mister Diesel would produce a movie based on one of his D&D characters, and to be fair what gamer wouldn’t love to see one of his D&D characters brought to life? I just wish he’d picked a more interesting one for this production.

 

Beware spoilers lurk in the caverns below.

The story opens with a bunch of warriors, who look like they are auditioning for season three of Vikings, and are led by a priest and a badass witch hunter named Kaulder (Vin Diesel) across a desolate winter landscape. They arrive at an enormous evil looking tree that we learn is the source of The Black Plague, and it is up to this band of heroes to enter it so they can kill the one behind this horrible act. The Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht) is of course the one responsible for the plague, and the resulting deaths of Kaulder’s wife and child, so before anyone can even say "She turned me into a newt," they rush in with swords flashing.  Now a group of mortal men from the middle ages against a being of immensely powerful dark magic may not seem like a fair fight, but they did bring Vin Diesel.

 As the band of warriors enter the caverns of the Witch Queen things immediately go from bad to worse as one by one the men are attacked and turned into monsters themselves. Kaulder is able to fight his way through to the Witch Queen because he has a flaming sword (not sure how medieval blacksmiths pulled this off), but just as he is about to end the Witch Queen’s reign of terror she curses him with immortality.

 Yeah, I’m not sure just how good an idea the cursing of a badass witch hunter is. Sure it's later revealed that she linked her own immortality with his so that someday she could return but this also results in 800 years of Kaulder kicking the shit out of evil witches. I'm betting there are a lot of witches out there who’d wished she’d just taken one for the team and died. Given a closer look her plan is even dumber than it first appears as it hinges on the priest that came with Kaulder to notice the still beating heart of the “dead” witch and that it is somehow tied to the very burnt but surprisingly not dead Kaulder. I’m not sure what Dark Age priest would pick up a beating heart from the withered corpse of a witch and think, “We should totally save this for later.”

 This is all from a flashback we get towards the end of the movie where Kaulder finds out that the organization called The Axe and Cross, which he has been working for all these centuries in his endless war against witches, have had the Witch Queen's heart hidden all these years without telling him. Sure if they had destroyed the heart good ole Kaulder would have died as well and they’d have lost their best fighter, but at the time the priest held up that beating heart Kaulder was basically a burnt skeleton screaming in agony. So severing the connection would have seemed like the merciful thing to do at the time. They certainly had no idea he’d heal up and become an immortal fighter for Truth, Justice and the Catholic Way.

 After the opening the movie then jumps those 800 years into the future where we see Kaulder still keeping dangerous magic in its place. Over that time period he has had a series of priests named Dolan (named after the one who entered the original Plague Tree with him), and they’ve spent their time playing the part of Alfred to Kaulder’s Batman, which would explain why they cast Michael Caine to play one of them. After serving at Kaulder’s side for fifty years Dolan the 36th is retiring and to be replaced by Dolan the 37th (Elijah Wood), but before he can enjoy even one day of retirement he is tortured and cursed by an evil witch named Belial (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson). Belial is one of the film’s key failures as not only does he look like a low rent Russian mobster but he never once comes across as scary or even remotely a threat to Vin Diesel’s Kaulder.

 To undue the curse Kaulder gets help from Chloe (Rose Leslie) a witch who owns a bar and specializes in magic mind altering spells. He needs her abilities to unlock the memories of his “first death” and much of the film is the two of them trying to pull this off while Belial tries to stop them. Basically it’s a side quest to pad out the film’s running time. Eventually there is a showdown beneath the church owned by The Axe and Cross where Kaulder will face off against a resurrected Witch Queen, and it’s just painfully dull. The fight between the two comes across like a video game boss level fight if you were playing it on the easy setting.

 Directed by Breck Eisner, and written by Cory Goodman, The Last Witch Hunter is guilty of one of the greatest crimes that can be leveled at an action/horror film and that would be the crime of being boring. I’ve seen more magical threats in episode of Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch. The action sequences are uninteresting and the CGI for the magical attacks aren’t even on par with an average episode of Supernatural. Vin seems to be trying here but everyone else looks to be wishing they were anywhere else. Oscar winning actor and Hollywood legend Michael Caine is clearly in “Boat Payment Theatre” mode, and Elijah Wood just seems lost and confused in any scene he appears in.

 This is one of those films that you know they were hoping to hit franchise gold with, but alas that was not to be.  The only claim to fame The Last Witch Hunter has is that it beat Jem and the Holograms on its opening weekend (a feat in itself still more daunting than the Witch Queen we got here). If you are big fan of Vin Diesel it may be worth checking out, but if you want to see a good witch hunting movie I suggest giving Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters a spin.

My Science Project (1985) – Review

In the 50s science fiction movies featured pipe smoking scientist devising ways to get to other planets while square jawed heroes battled aliens and atomic enlarged insects but in the 80s teenagers took over the genre. High school kids were creating life with Weird Science, traveling Back to the Future with a borrowed DeLorean, and almost starting World War III by playing Wargames on their computer. Those were great times to be a kid. Today we will look back at one of these 80s teen-sci-fi flicks that’s not as well remembered as the others, and that film is...

 Strangely enough this 80s science fiction comedy begins in the late 50s as an alien spacecraft has crashed to Earth and the United States government has sequestered the wreckage in what I’m assuming is Hanger 18 in Area 51. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Robert Beer) is brought in to see the craft and is told that the alien crew had died in the crash and but a team of scientist are currently studying the ship’s engine. Eisenhower’s immediate reaction is, “Get rid of it.” And the ship is destroyed by a laser canon the scientists happened to have lying around. I know Eisenhower was afraid of the whole idea of the “military–industrial complex” but ordering the Air Force scientists to destroy proof of alien life, not to mention the possible advancement in technology, seems rather odd even by Cold War paranoia standards.

 

And when did we get alien ship destroying laser technology?

The movie than jumps to 1985 where we meet our hero Michael Harlan (John Stockwell), a high school senior who is more interested in cars than girls which results in his current girlfriend breaking up with him. But being dumped by his girlfriend for failing the Cosmo-romanti-scope test is the least of his problems because if he doesn’t hand in an awesome science project he will not graduate. Enter Ellie Sawyer (Danielle von Zerneck), a bookworm who is afraid of graduating high school as the class spinster. She asks Harlan out on a date and he agrees, but unfortunately for her the date involves breaking into an Air Force salvage yard to find something for his science project.

 

Who says romance is dead?

While wandering around the junkyard Harlan falls into a government fallout shelter and discovers the film’s science MacGuffin. He finds what looks like one of those plasma globes you can buy at Spencer’s Gifts but of course it’s the engine to the alien spacecraft from the film's opening scene. With the help of his best friend, and comic relief, Vince Latello (Fisher Stevens) he polishes up the device and powers it up. They are shocked to say the least when the gizmo turns out to generate a time warp field that not only makes an Egyptian suddenly vase materialize but moves the two of them a couple hours into the future.

 

Is it just me or does that look like a Romulan cloaking device?

The two knuckleheads, along with Ellie, show the device to Bob Roberts (Dennis Hopper), their science teacher and resident ex-hippie who is clearly Hopper just channeling his characters from Apocalypse Now and Easy Rider. When the gizmo drains the power from a battery Bob plugs it into an electrical outlet causing the device to go into high gear. Bob spouts a bunch of scientific gibberish and then in the midst of contemplating the wonders of the universe he vanishes in a flash of purple light. Harlan is unable to disconnect the alien device from the outlet so their only option is to destroy a power line tower and black out the town. Yeah, that sounds logical. They break into Harlan’s family hardware store to steal some dynamite, accidentally dropping Bob’s peace sign necklace that Vince had picked up for some reason, and they then race to get ahead of the alien energy before it can get out of town.

 

Does this make sense to anyone?

Why do they have to get ahead of the alien energy force? Destroying any of the electrical towers would cut the town off from the outside world thus robbing the device of any more power, so why do they have to get ahead of it? Now if we go with the idea that if the device even momentarily gets access to the States energy grid it will reach end of the world capabilities just exactly how does our group of yahoos intend to stop it in time? They had to exit the high school, go to the hardware store, get the dynamite and then race out of town to get ahead of the energy. When they manage to get ahead of it one has to ask, "Just how slow is this alien energy traveling?" Did it stop for coffee while they were stealing the dynamite? We see that Harlan has to engage his cars “Blowers” to get the car going fast enough to get ahead of the energy but then they have time to duct tape several bundles of dynamite to an electrical tower when we clearly saw that they were no more than a few hundred feet ahead of the oncoming energy. I know continuity isn’t an important thing for teen comedies but the writer of this movie clearly didn’t care enough to make this scene even remotely plausible.

 

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

When Harlan gets home from their successful explosive venture he finds Detective Isadore Nulty (Richard Masur) in his bedroom waiting for him. Harlan and Vince are taken into police custody where we see them get printed and photographed. This shows that the writer of this movie is as familiar with police procedures as he is with science, as in not at all. The police believe the explosives were taken from the Harlan family hardware store, Bob’s peace sign necklace was found at the scene, and Bob is missing and witnesses place Harlan and Vince at the high school where Bob was last known to be. All good reasons for bringing them in for questioning but certainly not enough to book them, all they have is circumstantial evidence and most of that points at the missing Bob.

 Fisher Steven later charged with crimes against taste for his performance in Short Circuit.

Before being carted off to jail Harlan was able to call Ellie and ask her to go to the school and get the device as that would somehow clear them of all charges, but unfortunately when she gets to the school she finds Sherman (Raphael Sbarge), the chief nerd of the school, all ready there.  Sherman has been harboring a crush on Ellie, to the point of hiring jocks to harass Harlan, and he hopes the trouble Harlan is currently in will pave the way for his shot at Ellie. While studying the device Sherman is impressed with this it’s time warp capabilities so he plugs it back into the outlet.
Wait what, how is this thing unplugged? Our trio had to dynamite an electrical tower because they were unable to disconnect it, so why isn't still plugged in? Once the local utility works got the power up and running the device should have kicked back into gear and then we wouldn't have needed obnoxious nerd guy to do it. Irregardless this creates a massive time warp over the school and we can finally get to the good stuff.

 

It was stuff like this that got me kicked out of science class.

Lucky for Harlan and Vince this causes a city wide blackout allowing them to escape the incredibly inept police department and rush over to the high school. There they encounter Sherman and learn that Ellie is still inside. Now this is the point of the movie that we've all been waiting for, three high school kids venturing into a building where time and space are in complete flux. Harlan, Vince and Sherman must do battle with a Neanderthal, a Roman gladiator, the Viet Cong, and laser toting post-apocalyptic mutants. Now as cool as those encounters are, and their ability to take on such foes in hand to hand combat is impressive, nothing tops what happens when they have to flee the mutants by cutting through the gym.

 

“Is that the sound of thunder or me shitting in my pants?”

Eventually they make it to the science class to rescue Ellie, and Harlan is able to turn off the device. Excuse me, he does what? What was the point of committing several major felonies to cut off the gizmo’s power supply if Harlan could have just flipped the off switch? Sure Harlan is momentarily sucked into the time warp but then he comes right back as does Bob who we learn was given a trip through the sixties and allowed to revisit Woodstock. So as endings go this was rather anti-climactic and puts our idiot heroes in an even worse light, and even worse is that they get off scot-free while poor Bob is taken into custody for blowing up the electrical tower. That’s your happy ending?

 

“Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.”

Sure Harlan learns that maybe hanging out with girls is more fun than working under a car but that’s a lot of death and destruction to learn that life lesson, a lesson that most guys figure out about the same time they learn that girls don’t have cooties.
Aside from the weak ass ending, which includes Harlan returning the alien gizmo to the fallout shelter for possible sequels, this movie is rather fun with some nice nods to earlier science fiction films and televisionsshows; Vince is from Brooklyn and is clearly modeled off of the “Brooklyn Guy” comic relief character that appears in countless space adventure films of the fifties, Harlan’s dad is seen watching the George Pal’s The Time Machine, and Vince refers to Sherman as “Boy Sherman” clearly a reference to the animated time travelling duo of Mister Peabody and his Boy Sherman.

Though the film was critically panned it does hold enough entertainment value that I’m able to recommend it to fans of the genre, most of the characters are quite likable, even the nerdy Sherman is given a moment to shine, and if the low budget effects work is barely passable at times the stop-motion T-Rex fight is quite good and makes up for a lot. So if some night you are perusing Netflix and come across My Science Project check it out, there is worse ways to kill ninety minutes.

The Son of Tarzan: Edgar Rice Burroughs – Book Review

News Flash! Tarzan and Jane actually had sex. Sure this is something we all assume they did (how else were they passing all that time in their treehouse?), but the MGM movies of the 30s and 40s couldn’t obviously show us steamy jungle love so we just had to assume what went on in the dark. Yet in 1939 MGM released Tarzan Finds a Son where Jane and Tarzan find a little baby in a crashed plane who they adopt. So sex luckily averted.

Now back in 1915 Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote The Son of Tarzan and though we never got any explicit sex scenes between Jane and Tarzan it is clear in this fourth book that Jack Clayton is their biological son. Though unlike the MGM movies, where it kind of looks like Jane and her ape lover are living in sin, the books make it clear that Jane and Tarzan are married.

The Son of Tarzan begins with the return of the villainous Alexis Paulvitch who escaped death in the The Beasts of Tarzan by running off into the jungle while is partner was being eaten by a leopard, but unfortunately Paulvitch almost immediately ran into a local tribe that he and his partner Rokoff had not treated to fairly. So Paulvitch spends ten years as a captive of this tribe of cannibals who decided to spend years torturing him instead of eating him. Eventually he either escapes or is freed and is found by the crew of “Marjorie W” and while laying over at a nearby island they come across Akut, the ape friend of Tarzan. Akut is looking for Tarzan and examines all the faces of the crew which he then joins for the voyage back to London to continue his search for his master.

While in London the tutor of Jack Clayton, the Son of Tarzan, is not having it easy as his young charge is more interested in reading about jungle adventures and pretending to be an ape than he is in studying. Young Jack has no knowledge of his father’s jungle life, Jane even forbids him going to the zoo, so we are not sure just exactly where Jack got this love for the wild. Even Tarzan mentions to Jane that his jungle history is not hereditary but the author seems to write this book as if it were. When Jack hears of a super intelligent ape at a London music hall he sneaks out of the house, Jane had refused his request to see the act, and ends up befriending the ape who of course turns out to be Akut. Now Paulvitch is still in possession of the ape and when he learns that Jack is the son of his most hated enemy he plans his revenge, but his plan is sadly moronic as it entails killing Jack and framing the ape. All that happens is that Akut leaps to his friend’s aid and tears out Paulvitch’s throat. This plan would never have worked because even if he succeeded in killing the boy Tarzan could have asked the ape what actually happened and then Tarzan would have then murdered the hell out of Paulvitch. So unless this was a murder suicide plan it was poorly planned.

Now ten year old boys are not brilliant thinkers so Jack decides that he and Akut must flee to Africa to escape his friend from being put down for killing Paulvitch, and with him disguising Akut as his wheelchair bound grandmother they somehow pull it off. This first quarter of the novel is the least credulous. Not only do we have Jack Clayton inexplicably being a lover of jungle adventure but while spending afternoons visiting Akut at Paulvitch’s apartment he managed to learn to speak with the ape. Lost outposts of Atlantis I can buy but a small boy learning to speak the language of the apes in a matter of days is ridiculous. Burroughs clearly wants to make a second Tarzan but this origin story has more holes than cheese grater.

When the two finally get to Africa a thief tries to rob and kill Jack and thus Akut must once again come to rescue and he kill the intruder, and once again Jack decides to flee instead explaining to the authorities what actually happened. This I can understand as he’s just a stupid kid who has lived a rather sheltered life, and the glimpses we get of Jane we find out that she has done her best to make sure her son never gets jungle fever, so some of this is on her as forbidding a kid something is almost a sure fire way to make them want it. After a few nights in the very inhospitable jungle Jack realizes that his parents are probably a bit destroyed by their missing son, but when he tries to return to civilization he encounters natives who upon seeing a naked white boy trying to talk to their women and children they chase after him with spears. From this he concludes that all blacks are evil. Later he tries to contact white men in a safari but these turn out to be villainous ivory poachers who immediately fire upon the boy when he appears in their path. Jack decides to give up on mankind all together and he an Akut attempt to join a tribe of Great Apes, but this goes poorly as the newly elected king ape chases them away. Disgusted with everybody Jack decides that he and Akut are just fine by themselves, now going by the ape name Korak which means killer the boy and the ape strike out on their own. So like his father before him he spends his days running through the treetops while occasionally harassing the local natives.

The big difference between this book and the preceding three novels is that much of this book deals with a secondary character, almost with equal time as the title character. Now Jane does take up a good portion of  The Beasts of Tarzan but the love interest in The Son of Tarzan exceeds that by quite a wide margin, and is also a more fascinating and complicated character than Jane has been thus far. It’s in chapter five that we are introduced to Meriem, little girl who is kidnapped by the cruel Sheik Amor ben Khatour. A French Foreign Legion officer had seen to the hanging of the Sheik’s nephew, who was a notorious desert marauder, and for revenge the Sheik kidnap the officer’s child to raise as his own. The little girl is routinely beaten by Mabuno, who is kind of her evil nanny, and mentally and physically tortured by her abductor “father” Sheik Khatour. Meriem is not broken by the horrible life she is forced to suffer through, she instead gives all the love she wishes she had to an ugly doll named Geeka. She pours her heart and soul out to this little doll which will break the heart of most readers. Of course it’s only a matter of time before her and Korak cross paths.

 Though stronger than most men Korak is still just a young boy and when he does rescue Meriem from the Sheik they become like brother and sister not young lovers. At first Meriem is terrified of this new life of jungle survival, but soon she becomes accustomed to it, even to the point of being able to travel through the trees as good as Korak does. As years pass these two kids grow up at different rates of maturity and events will shift each of their perspectives of the other, but love is something neither of them fully understand. This section of the book is leaps and bounds better than the relationship we got between Tarzan and Jane. In Tarzan of the Apes it is clear that Jane’s attraction was first purely physical and that a woman of High Society would actually marry a man who was a savage as the animals he lived with was always a bit of a stretch. But in the case of Korak and Merriam their relationship is allowed to grow organically over time and though there will be circumstances that will alter aspects of this, mostly the belief that one or the other is dead, there is no doubt that they will end up together.

The book does have its fair share of villains; Sheik Amor ben Khatour who originally kidnapped Meriem, we have Kovodu a native chieftain who captures Meriam when he goes after Korak and Akut as a reprisal for all their raids, and then there is the two Swedes Carl Jenssen and Sven Malbihn, the ivory poachers who had chased off young Korak, they return and try and snatch Meriem for the reward her real father offers. Unfortunately Meriem’s beauty has one of the Swedes thinking more of rape than he is reward.  And it's not just lascivious Swedes that endanger Meriem's virtue as she meets Hon. Morison Baynes, a British aristocrat who promises to show her the world but really wants to get into her pants.

This story is mostly about Korak and Meriem but it is no surprise that Tarzan and Jane do show up eventually, and it is in this book that we learn that Tarzan aka John Clayton Lord Greystoke, has a massive estate in Africa. He enforces his own laws concerning hunting and the treatment of the natives. Safaris have to ask him permission before big game hunting in Tarzan’s territory, and heaven help them if they poach ivory or treat their native bearers properly. The weakest character unfortunately is Jane; she is relegated to the role of the disapproving housewife who wanted to keep her son far from the world that spawned her husband. In later books Jane will a become badass jungle warrior in her own right but their is no evidence of that here.  In fact Meriem becomes almost an equal to Korak in jungle craft and tree running skills which should really shame Jane.

 Will the fair maid Meriem ever be re-united with her real father? Will she see Korak as anything other than a fearless big brother? Can these two survive when so many people are out to kill, capture or rape them? What has Tarzan and Jane been doing all these years? These questions and more are all answered in The Son of Tarzan making it a fantastic read for fans of the genre, and only the clunky beginning keeps this from being one of Burroughs’s best books.

The Wave (2015) - Review

Norway is a gorgeous country, what with its magnificent mountains and beautiful fjords I’ve always assumed more people didn’t live there because of the danger of being eaten by trolls, but it turns out being wiped out by a tsunami is the real threat to life in limb for many Norwegians. It’s this very threat that is the centerpiece of director Roar Uthaug film The Wave (Bølgen) and not only is it a fantastic disaster film it is also an excellent character piece with some of the finest acting I’ve seen in this genre or any other.

Apparently Norway is prone to rockslides and this film is based on a rockslide tsunami incident which destroyed a Norwegian town on 7 April 1934, killing 40 people. This film’s protagonist is geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) who is leaving his job monitoring the activity of his mountain to take what we assume is a more lucrative job with an oil company, but on his last day he becomes concerned with some strange readings that he thinks could be signs of a large part of the mountain breaking off. His co-workers unwilling to give too much credence to his warnings and certainly don’t want to make an official warning as that could harm the local tourist trade. That there is movie cliché number one: The ignored hero.

From Jaws to Dante’s Peak films of this type always love to have our hero fighting against the establishment, and then of course be proven right as the problem swims up and bites them in the ass or in this case rushes at them in a three hundred foot wall of water. What offsets the numerous disaster clichés that populate this film is the amazing cast that Uthaug has assembled. Joner is fantastic as the beleaguered geologist as is Ane Dahl Torp who plays his wife Idun. Their relationship has that same type of realistic heart to it that we got with Martin and Ellen Brody in Spielberg’s Jaws. Kristian has his head stuck in the mountain while his more pragmatic wife is under the sink fixing the plumbing, but when the shit hits the fan these two can handle anything. Sadly one of those things they have to handle is movie cliché number two: The idiot teenage son.

When the wave strikes Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) skateboarding around the basement of the hotel his mom works at, and because he is listening to music through his headphones he doesn’t hear the tsunami warning sirens. This results in his mom and two other guests not getting on the evacuation bus so that they can go back into the hotel and look for him. I don’t want to get any further into spoilers as the movie does have some really nice surprising moments and most of them are not based on the effects spectacle of a disaster movie but are character based.

When disaster strikes Kristian is with his young daughter Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande) while his wife is at the hotel with their son in the village proper, which is of course right in the path of the wave, and it’s Kristian’s fight to get his daughter to safety and find his wife and son that makes up the second half of the movie. You will be at the edge of your seat as these people you have grown to care about race for their lives against nature’s engine of destruction. I enjoyed Duane Johnson in San Andreas but at no point in that film did feel any of our main characters was in danger. It was more a superhero film than a disaster movie. While in The Wave its nail-biting moment after nail-biting moment with charters that are completely believable.

Note: Both San Andreas and The Wave have that over used scene of someone giving CPR to a person who clearly should be dead but they keep trying even after someone tells to stop that it’s too late, and then of course that person suddenly is alive and coughing up water. It was effective back in1989 with James Cameron’s The Abyss but it’s one clichéd scene that needs to be retired.

Though this film does have the tropes and clichés of its brethren it still manages to be an exhilarating feast of action as well as emotion while also providing visual spectacles for a fraction of the budget of its Hollywood contemporaries. That’s something to be proud of because as he not only nails what fans of the genre wants he also populates it with intelligent characters we can honestly root for.

Note: This is Norway’s first foray into the disaster genre and after watching The Wave and 2012’s South Korean disaster flick The Tower I hope we get more and more countries stepping up to the plate to show Hollywood how it can be done and done well.

Hook’s Revenge by Heidi Schulz: Book Review

Do you like pirates? Does the thought of having a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas appeal to you? 12-year-old Jocelyn Hook certainly feels that way, though she has a huge advantage over the rest of us when it comes to achieving that goal being she is the daughter of the infamous Captain Hook.

Unfortunately Jocelyn was orphaned very young and was left to be raised by her grandfather, a man who insisted she grow up to be a fine lady. This is not a goal Jocelyn has any interest in. After terrorizing numerous nannies and tutors she is shuffled off to a girl’s finishing school where her first true battles in life begin, and where she also meets her first true friend, but it’s not until she gets a letter from the late Captain James Hook asking her to avenge his death (the tic-toc croc finally got him) that the adventure she always dreamed of can begin.

We’ve seen several incarnations of the Peter Pan story that James Barrie originally penned at the turn of the century, the 1953 Disney version is often a child’s first exposure to the story of the boy who would never grow up, and there have also been several prequels to the story ranging from the abysmal film Pan to the rather good book series Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, but we haven’t seen much in the way of sequels to this classic tale. Steven Spielberg took a crack at it with his 1991 film Hook which dealt with the idea of Peter Pan growing up (I am not a fan of this movie as it pretty much missed all that makes Peter Pan such a great and tragic character), and there was a forgettable Disney animated sequel in 2002 called Return to Neverland, but now we have Hook’s Revenge by Heidi Schulz; a fun and rousing adventure story with the simple premise, “What if Captain Hook had a daughter?”

When a giant raven brings Jocelyn to Neverland this is her big chance to have the adventure she always dreamed about, and maybe make her lost father proud. Of course reality and fantasy collide in interesting ways as Jocelyn finds that pirating isn’t as easy she thought it would be, especially when the crew she gets is even less experienced than she is. One of the crew is called “One Armed Jack” who clearly just has one of his perfectly good arms stuck behind his back so as to seem more piratey. Another of Jocelyn's crew has two eye patches because if "one patch is fearsome, two patches is doubly so." With this crew of misfits, along with her father’s old bosun’s mate Mister Smee, she sets sail track down the tic-toc croc. Hilarity ensues.

One of the charming elements of this book is the narrator who clearly hates children and is begrudgingly telling this story, "I don't care for children, in general, but if you'll back up a bit and try not to breathe on me, I might be persuaded to tell you the whole tale," but it’s the spunky Jocelyn that will grab you heart and have you flying through the pages to see how she will figure her way out of one predicament after another.

Now one may wonder, “What about Peter Pan?” and he does appear in this story, but more as am uninvited guest who Jocelyn finds to be completely irritating and useless. Many people don’t know or forget that Peter Pan’s ability to not "grow up" hinges on his inability to remember much beyond the moment he is in. This Neverland Amnesia, as Heidi Schulz calls it, is what allows Peter to remain young at heart for it is our memories and experiences that make us grow emotionally. This is why I’ve always considered Peter Pan to be a tragic figure and something the author of this book nails perfectly. I’d certainly rather hang out with Jocelyn and her oddball friends than Peter and his Lost Boys.

The book's target audience is middle school kids, but anyone in the mood for a good laugh will get a kick out of this story, for if you are the type of person who likes narcissistic mermaids, cannibals hung up on dinner etiquette, titanic struggles with the most fearsome clock based monster ever created, all led by a spunky heroine, than you should check out Hook’s Revenge. I simply loved it.

 

Note: This book also has some great illustrations by John Hendrix

The Beasts of Tarzan: Edgar Rice Burroughs – Book Review

What could be more terrifying than having your child snatched by your archenemy? Well in this third installment Edgar Rice Burroughs tackles that terrifying prospect.  Originally appearing in the pages of All-Story Cavalier magazine in 1914 The Beasts of Tarzan continues the amazing adventures of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, or as most know him, Tarzan of the Apes. In the previous installment, The Return of Tarzan, we saw our ape man finally tying the knot with Jane Porter, and in the intervening time the happy couple gave birth to a beautiful baby boy they name Jack.

Immediately we have trouble in paradise as Tarzan learns from his friend D’Arnot that the villainous Nicholas Rokoff has escaped prison, fearing for the safety of his wife and child Tarzan races home, but he is too late. The child has been kidnapped. Tarzan and Jane receive a phone telling the ape man to come to the Dover docks, no police, and his son will be returned to him. The caller claims to be an associate of Rokoff’s but who wants no part in a kidnapping. That this is clearly a trap does not occur to Tarzan, who races off into the night to make the rendezvous, but Jane, once given time think, realizes it is probably a trap and she races off into the night to help her husband. The end result is that they are both captured and taken aboard the Steamer Kincaid.

Tarzan is marooned on a small island off the coast of Africa with but a note detailing Rokoff’s dastardly plan. The note informs Tarzan that his infant son will be given to a group of cannibals to be raised as one of their own, and it is only Tarzan’s belief that Jane is safe in London that gives the ape man any solace. Meanwhile Jane, having been held captive in a different part of the ship, has gained the sympathy of the Kincaid’s Swedish chef (no relation to the one on the Muppet Show), and with his aid is able to escape the ship.

Back on the island Tarzan is forced to kill the leader of a group of apes, not wanting to be king of the apes of this group he tells the second in command, Akut, who he had also saved from a leopard, that he can remain king if he will stand by Tarzan’s side in any ensuing battles. Later Tarzan frees a leopard that was pinned by a fallen tree, the cat follows him around and eventually they share prey together. Thus Tarzan has gathered a menagerie of killer beasts for his eventually war against Rokoff
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The Beasts of Tarzan is loaded with thrilling action, brutal battle, and daring escapes as Tarzan and friends make their way to the coast, stealing a war canoe from some natives, even adding one of the locals to his crew, and then fighting their way through hostile jungles to find Jane and his son. The story jumps back and forth between Jane and Tarzan’s stories, a device used in many of the books, until the hero and heroine are finally reunited and the dastardly Rokoff finally meets his messy end at the jaws of Tarzan’s leopard friend. The last act of the book is really the only weak part, once Jane and company are together, having seized the Kincaid and its remaining crew, the ship is sunk by Rokoff’s compatriot Alexis Paulvitch, and they find themselves marooned once again on that small island. Then they encounter a group of mutineers that have anchored themselves off this selfsame island, and hijinks ensue. This last section seems really tacked on and completely unnecessary, and most likely added to make this book length.

But what of the poor baby, did they rescue little Jack? Well the Swede helped Jane and the baby off the boat but it turns out that the baby Rokoff brought aboard was not the child of Jane and Tarzan; someone had pulled a switch back in England and the baby Jane is lugging around is not her own. That she doesn’t take a minute to look into her child’s face until deep in the jungle is probably the most unbelievable part of this story. Needless to say there are happy endings all round, well except for Rokoff, and Tarzan is once again triumphant.