There are so many cool things about Doc Savage, where do you start? Here's a brief checklist:
- He's super strong
- And super smart.
- He's got his own crew - "The Fabulous Five" - who are all really good at different stuff and who will follow him anywhere.
- He lives on the top of the Empire State Building.
- And owns a submarine, a blimp, a helicopter and a superfast car.
- He designed a "super machine pistol" that fires "mercy bullets" that don't kill bad guys, just knock them out so they can be sent to a sanitarium upstate to be rehabilitated.
- He had a Fortress of Solitude decades before Superman knew it was cool.
And in 1975, he had a movie. I never saw it, though I was a huge Doc fan, having been introduced to Marvel Comics' black-and-white Doc Savage magazine the same year. The movie never came to my town and never seemed to turn up on TV. I had to make-do with my Marvel mags and the Bantam paperback reprints of Doc's pulp adventures. Thankfully, those were around everywhere.
My Dad told me he'd read some Doc pulps as a kid, but my search for any remaining copies in my grandfather's attic was in vain. It wasn't until years later that I saw any of the real pulps in person.
Now, of course, everything is available anytime, everywhere. Doc's novels have been republished as two-fers by Nostalgia Ventures and Sanctum Books and Will Murphy is writing a series of new Doc books published by Altus Press. There's also continued talk of a new Doc movie, possibly starring Christopher Hemsworth, who'd be great.
The first film is available on DVD and streaming on Amazon Prime, but I still haven't watched it. Maybe I know that grown-up me will disappoint child-me by finding it ludicrous. Someday.
In the meantime, here's an array of pics from the film and other Doc-focused memorabilia.
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| The Doc Savage pulps were a key inspiration for Superman, Batman and other Golden Age comics heroes |
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| Doc Savage creator Lester Dent a.k.a. Kenneth Robeson |
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| The first Doc Savage pulp adventure, adapted for the 1975 movie |
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| The Bantam paperback version of Man of Bronze |
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| Former TV Tarzan Ron Ely as Doc Savage in the 1975 film |
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| Doc Savage and his Fabulous Five |
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| Doc art by Jim Steranko, a super-Savage fan |
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| Steranko's Super Graphics publishing house created a Doc fan club, the Brotherhood of Bronze, in the 1970s |
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| I loved the Doc black-and-white mag published by Marvel |
The 1975 movie is very much in the campy vein of the 1960s Batman TV series. Ron Ely was a good Doc, and the movie has some good moments (the opening chase between Doc and a sniper atop a skyscraper is pretty good). Overall, though, the weaknesses are too much: a mocking tone, ineffectual villains, and a cheapness in production value that takes you out of the experience.
ReplyDeleteHopefully the rumors will pan out and there will be a new Doc movie with Chris Hemsworth. I hear it's being written and directed by Shane Black, who wrote "Lethal Weapon" and directed "Iron Man 3", so that might be the Doc movie I've been waiting for.