DOC SAVAGE: THE MAN OF BRONZE

   Film (1975). Warner Bros. Dir Michael Anderson, starring Ron Ely, Paul Wexler. Screenplay George PAL, Joseph Morheim based on "The Man of Bronze" (1933) by Kenneth ROBESON. 100 mins. Colour.

   There were 181 novels in DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE, and at one point producer George Pal announced that he hoped to film them all, but this, based on the first of them, was a flop. Muscular superscientist hero Doc fights with a villain over a fountain of liquid gold owned by a remote tribe in South America. The sf elements are very marginal. The film is treated in a joky manner reminiscent of the 1966-8 Batman tv series, but Anderson, who later made the disappointing LOGAN'S RUN (1976), is too ponderous a director to carry off this sort of camp nostalgia with flair. It was not until Steven SPIELBERG's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) that the ambience of the sf/adventure pulps was recreated with the right mixture of respect and amusement.

   PN/JB