Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze
Doc Savage is the original superhero.
- Score
- 2
Aside from good period detail, the film is a camp disaster that insults the original superhero.
By Tym Stevens
Doc Savage is the original superhero. He summed up all the antecedents—Robin Hood, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Tarzan, Zorro, The Shadow—into the modern synthesis, the self-made genius and athlete with the fantastic lairs, devices, cars, sidekicks, abilities, and style. Taking the character's precis from his Pulp mag editors, Lester Dent defined him (under the house name, Kenneth Robeson) across almost all of his 181 adventures from 1933 to 1949, charting international exploits that all pulp, adventure strip, comic superheroes, and paperback adventurers would spring from afterward. Clark Savage, the Man of Bronze in his arctic Fortress of Solitude, is as much the template for the Man of Steel as Wylie's "Gladiator." Like Howard's Conan, Lovecraft's Cthulhu, Gibson's Shadow, and Burroughs' Tarzan and John Carter pulp stories, Doc Savage too thrilled a new generation with the '60s paperback reprints. Doc was re-designed with the stunning covers of painter James Bama, just as Conan was by Frazetta. The counterculture fandom inspired by these pulp dreams and illustrative visions created the fanzines, conventions, and the New Relevancy of comics when they took over in the early '70s, bringing all of these pulp heroes into comics with them. Hollywood responded to all this populist momentum by defaulting to their vision of superheroes: camp. In the wake of the Batman TV show, screen creators were incapable of taking comics as a serious adult medium, resorting to self-conscious hamminess for a presumed kids market. Thus, the 1975 film takes its great potential—producer George Pal, star Ron Ely ("Tarzan"), and some remarkably faithful versions of the team and vehicles and settings—and reflexively stomps it stupid like clods mugging clever. Even forgotten, the movie is a wrong that never wanes. But quality endures. It's because of Doc Savage the original superhero that we have the Fortress of Solitude, James Bond and Blofeld, the Baxter Building, Doc Sampson, Race Bannon on "Jonny Quest," The Vision's widows peak, Raiders of The Lost Ark, Buckaroo Banzai, The Rocketeer, Big Trouble in Little China, Lara Croft, Tom Strong, and Doc Brass in "Planetary."