Study abroad

In these films the hero has a long way to go (such a long way to go). Heck, he even uses air currents to get there.

However -- unlike Christopher Cross's beloved anthem -- he "rides like the wind" not to ditch the girl and "be free again", but to win her heart and loins.

---

The Lost Jungle (1934)

Grade: D+

Now this was a weird one -- though once we discovered The Lost Jungle was actually an edited serial, things made a whole lot more sense. Even before we got into the thick of it, we knew something was up, as not every day does an animal troupe share top billing:

Yes, The Lost Jungle is an entry in that niche genre, "animal trainer as action hero". Have we seen more of these in the box? It feels like we must have, but 220+ movies later it's hard to be sure.

We don't know too much about Clyde Beatty, whose act seems to have become the template for all lion tamers and big cat performers. (He didn't originate the whole chair-as-defensive-weapon thing, but it became indelibly associated with him.)

Onscreen he's portrayed as a decent sort by the standards of the time. For one, he's a fervent supporter of animal welfare, willing to use fisticuffs against anyone who brutalizes his performers -- as we learn right away: when evil trainer Sharkey (Warner Richmond) brandishes a 2x4 and tells a tiger "Don't you start with me or I'll knock every tooth out of your head!", Beatty reminds him of the categorical imperative.

Beatty gets close-up shots, White Zombie-style, to signify the mesmeric power (animal magnetism?) that lurks in his eyes...



...though these days, it draws more attention to his hairstyle, whose meaning as a signifier has seen some changes in the last 85 years or so, from "manly man" (we guess) to "skate punk" to "Tom Villard". At least it keeps this jolly good Obergefella from being another IWGIH.

Of course you can't dedicate an entire feature, let alone a serial, to animal training and haircuts -- not even if you throw in a gang of gee-whiz kids ready to applaud Beatty's every move. Not even if one of them is Mickey Rooney!

So soon enough we get the MacGuffin, in the form of Beatty's girlfriend Ruth (Cecilia Parker). The two of them clearly love each other, no doubt bonding over their shared admiration for comically wide men's belts.

Even so Ruth, despairing of his obsession with the animals and failure to propose, decides to go on an expedition to the "South Seas" with her father (Edward LeSaint), a sea captain, and Professor Livingston (Crauford Kent). This expedition is in search of Kamor, a lost island that's allegedly the "real cradle of civilization" -- and the Professor will know it's the right place when he finds, we kid you not, "an island bearing the fauna of both Africa and Asia".

In other words: lions and tigers, in the same place. How conve-e-e-enient, as the Church Lady would say. That ol' lampshade got a real workout back then.

Back in the States, a heartbroken Clyde throws his all into a new, high-risk act that adds Ursidae to the mix. This gets his publicist pal Larry (Syd Saylor) a bit twitchy --

-- but despite Sharkey's meddling, things work out: this is a family film, after all, and could hardly bear a grisly ending for Clyde.

Condensing 12 chapters and four hours of footage into a single feature film isn't an easy task, and truth be told, the editors did a pretty good job of it. But there are inevitably weird corners in the narrative, threads that get dropped abruptly, and set-pieces that seem to have had a disproportionate amount of attention lavished upon them --

-- like Clyde's journey by dirigible in search of Ruth et al., who by this point have disappeared. Needle in a haystack, sure: but you'll never believe where he crash-lands!

Ultimately everything in The Lost Jungle is a pretext for Beatty's big-cat routines -- though apparently a couple chapters involved gorillas in some way, and we're not sorry to see those get left on the cutting-room floor.

While it doesn't end up making much sense, and the film suffers from a certain lack of charisma across the board, it has more than enough content to keep us from groaning too much as we watched.

---

Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960)
[aka La regina delle Amazzoni]

Grade: D-

Oh, great, just what the world needed: a "funny" peplum. Right from the start, the soundtrack makes it clear that something is askew in this one. A fumbled fanfare in the opening scene sets the tone:

Next comes a massive stadium fight, set to a hyperactive big-band jazz accompaniment, wherein Glaucus (Ed Fury) emerges as the last man standing.

Alas, his victory doesn't last, as his friend Pirro (Rod Taylor) sells him out to a couple visiting merchants. They offer to pay handsomely if he can convince Glaucus to join them aboard their ship full of strong men -- a task Pirro accomplishes by clocking him on the head (we guess, since it's not shown) in the aftermath of a massive, chicken-related bar fight.

Once Glaucus regains consciousness, he raises hell again, before Pirro sabotages the boat to convince him to calm down and go with the flow. Along the way Glaucus meets Sofo, the Egyptian, with whom he hits it off -- though Sofo clearly knows something he doesn't.

When the ship lands, the men's mission is revealed: to guard a huge cache of treasure against pirates, in exchange for a share of said treasure (allegedly obtained from natives ignorant of the value of gold). First, though, let's have some food and wine!

MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Derring-Do) would approve of this message, frequently seen in peplum: it never goes well when Hercules or his progeny get into the wine. And when a squadron of armed warriors arrives, things are looking grim for the unconscious big guy.

For these first fifteen minutes, Colossus and the Amazon Queen seems like a typical peplum at heart. Sure, the gods are absent and the tone is pointedly lighthearted (how could it not be with tubas and xylophones on the soundtrack?).

Still, we expected the usual fare -- even after the arrival of that most unwelcome of filmic abominations, an overdubbed talking parrot, who chides Glaucus as he wakes from his stupor: "Shameful! Athletes taking dope these days!"



Instead, though, we get a tired role-reversal sex comedy, as Glaucus et al. find themselves in the clutches of the Amazons, a society where women are warriors and men are worriers. Do you like tall skinny dudes in drag, chirping in effete voices about how they "just can't understand [why] I never seem to get my wash as dazzling as yours"? Does that prospect make you laugh your sides out? If so, this is the film for you.

For the rest of us, Colossus and the Amazon Queen doesn't really have a reason to exist. It's certain to offend some, and won't amuse the others, so who's left? People who like to watch sexually frustrated queens lounge around and drink wine? We suppose it's cheaper than doing the same thing at a Caribbean resort.

And now, since you're not depressed enough, have a screenshot of a couple of starved-looking bears tied up outside a cave. Score one for Mr. Beatty, who would never tolerate this.

But hey, at least the parrot almost gets it. Almost.

---

Laser Mission (1989)

Grade: C-

OK, first of all, check out this title card, which couldn't be more of its time if it tried. We only wish we could show you the way it "lasers" onto the screen.

Setting aside the question of how the hell a film from 1989 ended up on a Mill Creek set -- is it licensed? Public domain? Was it even possible to screw up your copyright in 1989? -- the first thing that caught our eye about Laser Mission was the presence of Brandon Lee.

Thanks to some combination of half-remembered advertising for The Crow and a couple viewings of his father's films, we had the impression Brandon was some sort of 1990s emo kid, perennially brooding and fey, like Edward Scissorhands meets Robert Smith meets that international student who dresses like an anime character.

Well, not exactly:

There is a dash of Depp in there, sure, as well as his father who (how did we not know this?) had a significant amount of European ancestry. But we were reminded above all of the strong-jawed presence of Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell -- maybe with a dash of Hwil Hweaton in there too, especially around the eyes (and certain line readings). Plus, of course, dude is jacked.

Laser Mission is quintessential late-1980s straight-to-video trash, and Lee is determined to have a hell of a lot of fun making it. Unfortunately, he doesn't get much in the way of good lines: when he falls through a ceiling and lands on someone's dinner table, he notes how he "just dropped in to say bon appetit!", if that gives you a sense of the caliber of writing we're dealing with here.

The other "name" actor is Ernest Borgnine, who sports a threadbare Russian accent, doesn't get much screen time, and seems happy just to be there. That said, if you'd told us there was also a cameo by Michael J. Fox --

-- we might have believed you.

The makers of Laser Mission seem to have taken "cheap name recognition" as their watchword, as they hired David Knopfler -- the other Dire Strait -- to compose the music, but apparently didn't pay him for more than one song.

So if you somehow fail to pick up on what Lee's character Michael Gold does for a living, the soundtrack is happy to fill you in, as almost anytime there's music in Laser Mission, you've got Knopfler's strained, Señor Cardgage-esque voice, chuntering away:

He's a mercenary man
Mercenary man
Mercenary man
Yeah, mercenary man

It's another earworm, but only through sheer repetition, from opening credits to ending credits. We even hear the little, faux-flamenco nylon-string guitar interlude multiple times.

The MacGuffin in Laser Mission is a huge diamond that can be used to build a superweapon, and if your brain hasn't been taken over by "Mercenary man..." you can probably guess why Borgnine has a Russian accent, and why Gold's pursuing him. Like many MMs, Gold is a master of disguise, transforming himself into Latin American stereotypes on a moment's notice:

He soon joins forces with Alissa (Debi Monahan), an animal sanctuary worker who's unexpectedly competent with firearms and vehicles -- a fact not lost on Gold, who asks the natural question: "You carry a gun and you're not afraid to use it. You can outdrive the best of them...Who are you and who are you working for?"

The response he gets -- "I'm hot, I'm tired, I'm hungry and I'm thirsty and I'm walking around in these high heels all day and I have blisters on my feet!" -- is petulant and defensive. Hardly the reply of a secret agent, right? (Right?)

But the bad feelings don't last, and their brief love scene later on (oh, c'mon, that's hardly a spoiler) is, blessedly, one of the few times we hear music other than "Mercenary Man" in this film.

Gold's merry chase takes him to Cuba -- where he nearly gets guillotined -- and ultimately to the fictional African country of Kabango, which we presume to be a stand-in for Angola. Logically enough most of Laser Mission was filmed right next door, in Namibia and South Africa. This leads to some absurd scenes in which Michael and Alissa get dumped in (we're guessing) the Namib desert without food or water --

-- and somehow manage to amble their way to safety. One can only imagine the smell, especially since, as we assume you've noticed, Alissa wears the same blue dress from start to finish.

Comic relief is provided by a wacky pair of conscripts, Manuel (Pierre Knoesen) and Roberta (Maureen Lahoud), who stay on Gold's trail throughout the film but never quite seem to want to pull the trigger. Roberta also has a seriously revealing wet T-shirt scene, leaving us to wonder whether Monahan refused and Lahoud was drafted to fulfill the first half of the T&A requirement.

What's left to say? The bad guys are evil, the hero invulnerable, and the actual Africans are relegated to cannon fodder status or, at best, given brief cameos (including Ken Gampu of The Gods Must Be Crazy, as a concierge who bitterly complains about freeloading foreigners).

It's all what you'd expect, doesn't make that much sense, and we can only hope Brandon Lee had a great time in Namibia, since he didn't get much time to begin with. Who would've thought Ernest Borgnine would outlive him by nearly two decades?

Men as men should be

When Embassy Pictures decided to import 14 assorted peplum films from Italy, add dubbing and narration in English, and sell the whole package to American TV as "The Sons of Hercules", they came up with one hell of an earworm to bookend the whole thing. Check it out:

The mighty sons of Hercules
Once thundered through the years
These men of steel could never feel
The curse of a coward's fears

The mighty sons of Hercules
Were men as men should be
They burned with dreams,
Then turned their dreams into history

A hundred giants brave and bold
They ruled the world in days of old

The mighty sons of Hercules
Were men as men should be
They took the world
And shook the world
The sons of Hercules!

Seriously, we walked around randomly singing this tune for days afterward. Well done, Ted Lehrman and Leonard Whitcup, even if you sorta rhymed "dreams" with "dreams".

It turns out that we've already encountered two of the films Embassy repackaged, namely Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules -- back in 2009 (!!!) -- and, far more recently, Goliath and the Dragon. However Mill Creek used theatrical prints for those, so we didn't get Lehrman and Whitcup's delightful tune until now.

In any event the three films below bring our Sons of Hercules total to five, though unlike our recent Gamera reviews, we have no plans to track down the remaining nine: we go the extra mile for giant turtles, but not giant sandals. Or swords. (Oh, be quiet, Rajah.)

---

Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules (1961)
[aka Maciste, l'uomo più forte del mondo]

Grade: C+

Is this the best peplum movie we've seen so far? It certainly has some of the strongest production values, with huge, expansive sets and wonderfully goofy costume design.

It's also got Val from HR, who always tells you about her kids and questionable politics before signing off on your paperwork. (Get a couple drinks in her and maybe she'll have a thing or two to say about black people, too -- but who are you going to complain to? HR?)

Speaking of folks of African descent, Hercules Jr. aka Maciste (Mark Forest) gets a companion early on when he saves Bangor (Paul Wynter) from being sacrificed by the Mole Men. Sadly, Herc was unable to rescue his brothers Portland, Caribou, and Bar Harbor.

And speaking of the titular Mole Men, the title isn't an example of sex discrimination, as it's only males that we see with the distinctive white skin, white hair, and amazing headgear. No surprise that they're deathly vulnerable to the rays of the sun, though if it weren't for a very prominent death scene in the film's opening, the bad day-for-night cinematography might leave you confused about the details.

In fact all the women we meet seem to be captives from the surface, like Princess Saliura/Salirah (Raffaella Carrà), or the interesting-looking Tulac (Gloria Hendy) who knows Bangor from the way-back.

Gloria's sister Janine is also in the cast as a harp-playing handmaiden; in real life, the two of them spent some time in Italian cinema before apparently becoming successful antiques dealers.

The one non-captive woman we meet is Queen Halis Mojab (Moira Orfei), a cruel and remote monarch who likes to wear outfits that look like leftovers from a high-end musical. How is it (one wonders) that the queen of the Mole Men doesn't have the complexion of the men? Is it just that women in these movies need to be "hot", and fright wigs and white pancake makeup don't do the trick for most of us?

We won't claim Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules isn't predictable; we were able to call certain lines outright from the script before that happened -- not that it's a feat of intuition to know the Queen will say "Who are those two [men]?" as soon as Maciste and Bangor pop into her view. After all, like George Eads, queens have needs.

But despite being on the longer side by box standards, Mole Men trots along nicely for the most part, and those sweet, sweet production values certainly help...

...even if they make some off-the-wall choices -- no, scratch that, because they make some off-the-wall choices.

OK, maybe there was one scene too many with Mark Forest straining mightily against some obstacle or other, but that's the Superman problem: how do you generate suspense when you know the strong man always wins?

Actually, the strong man seriously screws up at one point, though he shrugs off the dozens of deaths that result. Wasn't his fault, after all. And now, have a comically oversized novelty gong:

---

Son of Hercules: The Land of Darkness (1964)
[aka Hercules the Invincible; Ercole l'invincibile]

Grade: C-

Hey, déjà vu, because this is damn near the same plot as Mole Men. We've got the civilization that lives underground (but keeps horses), enslaves its neighbors, and wears funny costumes. We've got the evil, power-hungry queen with a penchant for disguise, the youthful princess she intends to sacrifice -- and a lot more bad day-for-night cinematography.

And of course we've got the usual clichés that come with the territory, like the ceremonial execution that doubles as a test of strength -- and when our Herculean offspring Argolese (Dan Vadis) unexpectedly rises to the challenge, well, that really gets Queen Etel (Carla Calò) all hot and bothered:

But despite being a bit shorter, Land of Darkness isn't as much fun as Mole Men. Many parts that didn't have a parallel in Mole Men still felt like a rehash, as in the "sack the village" scene that differed little from a similar scene in Fire Monsters (though without the red underwear). And giant wheels are in fashion, it seems.

Argolese's early battle against the dragon also felt recycled, for good reason: apparently Embassy chose to replace all the creature shots with footage from the 1958 film Hercules. If the dragon in Ercole l'invincibile was particularly laughable, maybe it was the right call, but we can only speculate.

Instead of a muscular hunk as his second, this son of Hercules has a middle-aged poltroon, Babar (Mario De Simone, mysteriously uncredited on IMDb). At first we feared endless scenes of "comic" relief, but after some cowering and chicken-eating, Babar soon rises to the occasion and pulls his weight, to our pleasant surprise.

In fact we had more of a problem with Argolese himself, as Dan Vadis just didn't have the right look for the part. His weird beard is distracting, his jaw is more Ron Perlman than Buzz Lightyear, and his physique is chiseled yet somehow mooby.

The biggest annoyance, though, was the chumbly wumbly bear that pops up in the first act and shambles behind the characters for a while. Then he attacks Argolese for no reason, has his life spared, wanders off...and never shows up again. The filmmakers squandered a perfect opportunity to bring him back at the end and have him off a bad guy or two, but instead, we get Chekhov's bear, hanging on the wall and never fired: a rookie mistake.

Yet another issue: this print of Land of Darkness was edited to make two one-hour episodes -- which would inevitably involve a lot of repetition -- and then "un-edited" (whether by Mill Creek or someone else) with awkward results, including a couple of hard cuts. We were warned, since the opener bills itself as "Part I", but it's still bizarre when, at around the 50 minute mark, the narration suddenly kicks in again...and we get a spoiler-heavy montage of the last third of the plot, before continuing with the movie! I guess Part II must have rehashed one hell of a lot of Part I, since we were well over half done with the film by then.

Anyway, complaints aside, there were enough fun characters, neat surprises (like opening a silly dance number with buff male dancers), silly outfits, and attractive sets to make Land of Darkness an OK watch. It's not great, but compared to some of the painful specimens on this box, "not great" is pretty decent.

Oddly, some of the spoilers for Part II looked better than the actual scenes in context, as Mill Creek's print gets blown out in the closing minutes for whatever reason. Also, is there some sort of anamorphic widescreen going on? The default 4:3 looked squeezed and narrow, but when we told VLC to use 16:9, things clicked. It's important to view Dan Vadis's nipples in the right aspect ratio, after all.

---

Devil in the Desert Against the Son of Hercules (1964)
[aka Anthar the Invincible; The Slave Merchants; Soraya, Queen of the Desert; etc.]

Grade: n/a

This is a funny one, as it isn't actually on our box set! From what we understand, Devil in the Desert Against the Son of Hercules was one of four films removed from 50 Sci-Fi Classics after its initial release, along with Robot Monster, Zontar: The Thing From Venus, and Battle of the Worlds. Those were also three of the first movies we reviewed for this project, which isn't a coincidence: as we waited for our box set to be delivered, in the meantime we sought out what we knew we'd be missing.

Logical, then, that we'd review the fourth film sooner or later, right? But Devil in the Desert has had to wait nearly a decade to get its due...and sadly, we're not actually going to do a proper review, as it didn't really get our full attention. Maybe it was peplum fatigue; maybe it was knowing the film didn't "really" count as part of the 250-pack; or maybe it was the disappointment of finding out that the titular devil wasn't a whirling tornado, or even a red-painted muscleman à la Henry Rollins in "Liar", but just this guy:

Now Zontar, Robot Monster, and that movie with Claude Rains and space intestines in a cave? They all legitimately belong on a 50 Sci-Fi Classics box set. And at least Mole Men and Land of Darkness are films where the hero fights a dragon, explores a subterranean civilization, or otherwise investigates the fantastic and supernormal.

But Devil in the Desert is...just your average Arabian adventure. Precisely where isn't specified, though it was filmed in Algeria. OK, at one point Anthar does fight a rhinoceros for some reason (presumably credit card-related):

Otherwise it's all camels, tents, harems, and sand, with no business being on a science fiction box set or a horror box set. True, one could say the same of Hercules and the Masked Rider, but that one replaced a film duplicated elsewhere on the 250-pack (which is why there's so much peplum in this last leg: six dupes in 50 Sci-Fi Classics got swapped out for five sword-and-sandal movies).

So Mill Creek probably made a wise move in cutting this one, even if they only did it for copyright reasons -- and apparently, they reinstated Devil in the Desert when they reissued 50 Sci-Fi Classics back in 2009, so those reasons can't have been too pressing.

We haven't seen Mill Creek's version, but we're guessing it looks like the ass-quality prints commonly found online. We started out with a YouTube download whose image was so unstable that, mid-viewing, we changed over to a much better widescreen copy from Archive.org that was much better (though the colors were still washed-out, and the sound rather strident).

Though Devil in the Desert left us yawning, it has some ambitious set pieces and seems to be well-regarded among peplum fans, and apparently a high-quality DVD was released in PAL territories under the Anthar l'invincibile title. It's nice to know a clean copy exists -- who knows, maybe we'll see it someday and change our minds.

But then again, without a male chorus singing of "men as men should be", how could it compare?