All posts by Michael May

Action

Tarzan and the Great River (1967)

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Tarzan and the Valley of Gold wasn’t the last Tarzan movie to be influenced by the ’60s James Bond phenomenon. Coming two years later, the series’ next entry, Tarzan and the Great River, also stars Mike Henry and opens with a groovy spy feel, but adds The African Queen and Apocalypse Now to its mix. The latter wouldn’t come along for another 12 years, so it’s probably more accurate to cite Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Either way, Tarzan takes a trip up a mysterious river to confront the mad, god-like ruler of a deadly cult. His ride is on a boat owned by Charlie Allnut-lookalike Sam Bishop (comedian Jan Murray) and his boy sidekick Pepe (Manuel Padilla Jr., who was also in Valley of Gold, but as a different character). There’s also a nurse (Diana Millay from TV’s Dark Shadows) who’s trying to get some medicine to a remote village that’s under attack by a jaguar cult and its leader, Barcuna (Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson).

The Great River isn’t as over-the-top and sexy as Valley of Gold, but that’s what makes it so endearing. It has a different feel from its predecessor, mostly focused on the relationships between the travelers and their various reasons for going up river. There’s a great final battle between Tarzan and Barcuna, but what sticks with you is the movie’s humor and charm.

Boys may sleep with Valley of Gold, but they marry Great River. —Michael May

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Action

Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966)  

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The poster for Tarzan and the Valley of Gold shows Tarzan taking out a helicopter with bolas made from hand grenades. Since this actually happens in the movie, it is a perfectly acceptable thing to put on a poster. It is not, however, the most awesome thing to happen in it. That would be in the first 10 minutes, when Tarzan kills a henchman with an 8-foot bottle of Coke.

In the ’60s, the franchise ran out of ways to have white people plunder the jungle so Tarzan could stop them. Actually, they ran out of new ways to tell that story in the ’40s; it just took them another 20 years to do something about it. And it took Sean Connery to show them how.

The popularity of the James Bond movies created countless rip-offs and spoofs, but none more awesome than the 007-influenced Tarzan films, especially the ones starring former pro linebacker Mike Henry, in which a dapper, literate Tarzan visited the jungles of the world, making friends and fighting crime. Valley of Gold was the first of such films and opens with him arriving in Mexico, suited up, and met at the airport by villainous goons à la Dr. No.

It’s a short trip from there to giant beverages, grenade bolas, forming a tracking team of wild animals, discovering a lost civilization, and swinging through the trees to a tune that would make Austin Powers jealous. —Michael May

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Comedy

Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948)  

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Anyone going to Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid expecting William Powell to be anything like he was in The Thin Man is going to be disappointed. For one thing: He’s sober. Sadder than that: He sure ain’t married to Nora Charles.
 
His wife, Polly (Irene Hervey), doesn’t start out so bad, but she quickly starts to pick on him for turning 50, giving him backhanded compliments like how she doesn’t have to worry about his leaving her now. Little does she know Powell’s no peach, either. He mopes around for most of the film, but that would be okay if not for how he deals with it.

When he accidentally snags a mermaid (Ann Blyth) while fishing, he kidnaps her and takes her back to live in his lavishly deep fish pond right under his wife’s nose. Polly suspects something’s up, but she thinks he’s having an affair with a local hussy. Not that Polly has a lot of moral ground to stand on, since she’s been having secret lunches with the village cad.
 
It’s a depressing marriage you can’t really blame poor Powell for wanting out of, but it’s weird and creepy that he picks a mute, childlike (albeit heartbreakingly beautiful) mermaid to cheat with. When he seduces her by teaching her to kiss, it’s more Humbert Humbert than Captain Kirk. Although he goes back to Polly at the end — mermaids don’t have vaginas — you can’t help feeling that nobody gets a happy ending in this one.  —Michael May

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006)  

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I’m as surprised as anyone to learn that there are levels of “quality” to the movies Syfy plays, but compared to the kind of stuff Syfy usually presents, Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep is Casablanca. Make no mistake: It’s B-movie trash with a CGI squid that Nintendo would be ashamed to put in a DS game, but it does have a couple of things going for it.
 
First of all, it’s not a horror movie. The title wants you to believe differently, but it’s actually an adventure film with Victoria Pratt and a couple of interns looking for sunken treasure that’s guarded by a mythological sea monster. Oh crap. I hope I didn’t raise anyone’s expectations there. This isn’t even Tomb Raider quality, but I was just so happy not to spend two hours watching CGI tentacles take down drunken teenagers, that the ridiculous treasure-hunting plot felt original.
 
Something else it has going for it are the leads. Maybe I’m just still in love with her from Cleopatra 2525, but I find Victoria Pratt extremely watchable and the best part of any movie she’s in. And yeah, Charlie O’Connell constantly reminds me that he’s not Jerry, but he’s still plenty charming.
 
That’s about it for the good stuff. The rich, Greek villain is a mustache-twirling cartoon, and there are all kinds of ridiculous holes in the plot. It’s just that when you’re expecting a big plate of chum, even Long John Silver’s tastes pretty good. —Michael May

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Leviathan (1989)  

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You might think 10 years is a long time to wait before ripping off a wildly successful movie like Alien, but Leviathan was released only three years after the even more wildly successful Aliens, so while the concept wasn’t fresh, it was at least fresh on people’s minds.

One of a half-dozen underwater sci-fi thrillers released in 1989, Leviathan takes place in an undersea mining facility where the crew’s been living for three months. Toward the end of their shift, they discover a derelict vessel whose crew was destroyed by an unusual, dare-we-say-“alien” life form. One of the miners accidentally brings it back on board their ship, hidden inside his body until it’s ready to pop out and terrorize the rest of the crew who are stuck there because the company they work for knows more about all this than they’re letting on.
 
Leviathan does have some significant, although superficial-to-the-story differences from Alien, however. H.R. Giger famously designed the creature in Alien; Leviathan’s beast was created by the great Stan Winston, who unfortunately wasn’t doing his best work here. The early stages of the monster look cool, like a killer eel or something, but as it matures, it turns into an asymmetrical version of the Creature from the Black Lagoon-type character from Mad Monster Party.
 
A better difference from Alien is Leviathan’s cast. The movie is watchable mostly for the gorgeous Amanda Pays and her irresistible accent (and underwear), but also because it has Robocop, Col. Trautman, Winston from Ghostbusters, Marv from Home Alone and Callie’s dad from Grey’s Anatomy trying to fight a fish-man. When I think about it that way, it’s actually kind of awesome. —Michael May

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