Doc Savage: The Man
of Bronze
Director: Michael Anderson
Year: 1975
Rating: 1.0
I had heard how bad this film was but nothing could have prepared me for
this travesty. It should have been tried before the Geneva War Crime Tribunal
for crimes against humanity. Every aspect of this movie is so brain draingingly
bad. Now if it had just been some goofy newly created film for kids I could
understand, but this is Doc Savage - a character from a series of books that
many of us have very fond recollections of from our long lost youth. Back
in my teenage days I devoured Doc Savage books - they felt fantastical and
heroic with Doc and his five cohorts taking on villains all over the planet.
I outgrew Doc Savage books at some point but always feel a mild happiness
thinking about him - though in truth I picked up a $2 book of Doc Savage
and the Saragasso Ogre a few months back and could not really get into it
- I am so much older now I suppose.
This film just makes cheesy fun of all the Doc Savage books and its fans
in the way they did with super hero films back then - all smirk and winks
at a supposed stupid audience that doesn't know better. The makers of the
film are so lazy and bored that they use John Philip Sousa music as the soundtrack.
Well fools are they as the zillion dollar super hero film industry now proves
- people take their super heroes seriously and want them treated as such.
To this generation they are literary figures of importance and not to be
trifled with. At the end of this film there is a note about a sequel coming
but fortunately the United Nations stepped in and stopped it. On IMDB it
seems that a new Doc Savage is in the works starring Duane Johnson - it seems
like a natural fit - it certainly can't be worse. Or can it?
