Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze

Does drag a bit but never entirely loses me, always managing to throw in something so absurd it reels me right back in. Apparently fans hated the Sousa soundtrack but for me it completely makes the movie. And the pig is named Habeus Corpus for Christ's sake.

This has 60s Batman levels of camp but here it felt more try-hard than fun. Honestly, the soundtrack and sound effects were the final straw that killed this for me.

I've never read any of the stories but I'm sure this film's Batman '66 Lets Point Out How Silly This Material Is approach is a bad one. Granted, Savage seems hard to adapt for a modern audience given that he's a pure Mary Sue (did he train himself to be bulletproof?) & he has 5(!) unnecessary helpers. Luckily, Ely does take his role seriously & the film does take the (thankfully many) action sequences seriously enough to make this a diverting PRE-Star Wars efx Indiana Jones style adventure.

A masterpiece of camp. Cheesy, corny, beautiful camp! The Sousa score has absolutely no subtlety whatsoever, so the film has constant action scenes with marching band (or, for no discernible reason, La Cucaracha) blaring throughout. I didn't approve of the changes to Renny, Long Tom, or especially Monk, but they still work within the overall camp of the film. Best of all, Paul Wexler plays a Christopher Lee-ish villain with cheesiness that makes the film. Just an incredibly funny, silly film.

With Ely perfectly cast and a plot that follows the first Doc novel rather closely, this should have been better. Unfortunately Lorenzo Semple, hot off the success of TV's BATMAN, camped up the script, and the low budget takes its toll, and I'll never, ever forgive them for what they did to Monk and Ham.

A few laughs.