4/5 Stars
June 1975. Summer and its rising heat and humidity is arriving in the upstate New York town where I live. The radio at the house next door is playing Pilot’s ‘It’s Magic’. Also in heavy rotation is a song called ‘The Hustle’ by Van McCoy; it’s supposed to be getting a lot of attention in places called discotheques, where wealthy people go to dance and consume frou-frou drinks.
On the shelves at the drug store on Harry L. Drive in Johnson City is a Marvel magazine designed to cash in on the upcoming movie ‘Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze’. Since I’m a big fan of Doc, and the Bantam books are still coming out on a regular basis, well, I shell out my hard-earned dollar and grab it.
The first half of the magazine is taken up with a black and white comic titled ‘The Doom on Thunder Island’, illustrated by John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga and written by Doug Moench.
It’s a well-written story (although there are a bit too many speech balloons for comfort) and, freed from the constraints of the Comics Code, more gritty and violent than a color comic book counterpart would be. The story starts in suitably ‘apocalyptic’ fashion as a NYC skyscraper is reduced to rubble by a mysterious lightning bolt. Doc and the Fabulous Five are recruited to investigate, and wind up dealing with a psychotic genius on his island redoubt.
The larger page size allowed by the magazine format also gives Buscema – one of Marvel’s more talented artists in that era- more freedom to compose the panels in a fashion designed to highlight some great action sequences. The Fabulous Five are integrated in the story and serve as more than simple window-dressing, and there’s even a few panels devoted to yet another squabble between Monk and Ham. There’s also a bit of pathos invested in a sub-plot that borrows a theme from ‘The Island of Dr. Moreau’.
All in all, ‘Thunder Island’ is a very competent adventure and it’s too bad the magazine was a one-shot (Stan Lee was constantly tinkering with releasing various incarnations of b & w comic magazines throughout the 70s in a single-minded effort to encroach on James Warren’s territory – the one area of comic publishing Marvel never really succeeded in dominating).
The rest of the magazine is devoted to a text article (‘The Man Who Shot Doc Savage !’) in which George Pal is interviewed about the upcoming movie; it features some stills of Ron Ely as Doc; stills of the supporting cast; and some stills of various sets and production locales. In the interviews Pal comes across as articulate and well-versed in ‘Doc ‘ lore.
Unfortunately, when I actually did see the feature film ‘Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze’ later that summer, it was a real disappointment. The special effects were cheap and unconvincing, there was a surfeit of static, dialogue-heavy sequences in order to cover up the deficiencies of a too-low budget, and the entire production was steeped in a winking, ‘this-is-corny-as hell- but –we love –it’ attitude.
In his book ‘James Bama: American Realist’ (2006; page 111) author Brian Kane cites a fanzine interview conducted with Ron Ely by Tahir Bhatti, in which Ely stated his belief that a new team of executives installed at Warner Bros. deliberately under-budgeted the production, in order to ensure the film would be a flop. This was presumably a strategy to discredit their predecessors at the studio, and to demonstrate how badly things were being handled at Warner.
I must confess some skepticism at this theory; the fact of the matter was that Pal, and director Michael Anderson, show every evidence of having sought to create a jokey, ‘campy’ picture that tried and failed to leverage the Nostalgia craze then gripping popular culture. Whether a massive increase in the film's budget could have resulted in a memorable film is doubtful. Indeed, it was not until ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ was released some six years later that Spielberg and Lucas demonstrated how to make a film that referenced the thirties in a clever way, without sliding into parody.
Note: post updated on February 2, 2009 to include corrections, provided by B. M. Kane, regarding the 'Doc Savage' movie and Ely's thoughts on its production difficulties
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