Wild, Wild Podcast Season 6: episode 4 - TARZANA, THE WILD GIRL (1969)

For the final time, pack your mosquito spray and come with us into the fake jungles of Rome's film studios in search of a mythical white goddess who has the kind of sex appeal that even the animals can dig. Yes, it's Tarzana, the beautiful heiress whose parents died in the plane crash that left her alone in Kenya to survive and thrive, learning such essential jungle skills as how to swing on vines, how to direct elephants, and how to weave tiny thongs.

In the episode we discuss the lack of available interviews with star Ken Clark. I thought I had found some videos, but on post-episode examination it turns out these are interviews with British politician Ken Clarke. However, the fanzine European Trash Cinema did interview our Ken back in 1995. You can find part of that interview reproduced HERE. If you want to read the whole thing, the issue is currently for sale on eBay.

The only decent online coverage of Tarzana can be found on the blog Spinning Image.

We hope you have enjoyed this jungle-themed mini-season. We would love to hear from you if you have any favorite Jungle Girl films, or if you ever got lost in the jungle yourself and ended up befriending the animals or becoming a god to a local tribe. There seem to have been so many..... You can contact us on Twitter and Instagram or by email at wildwildpodcast@gmail.com. Please also remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice!

Wild, Wild Podcast Season 6 Ep. 3 - Samoa, the Jungle Girl (1968)

Come with us up river with Edwige Fenech and Roger Browne as we look for diamonds amongst the stock footage and become on a little more than speaking terms with Samoa, the only jungle girl in history to not actually live in a jungle. Yes, it's our penultimate episode in this jungle-flavored mini-season, and this one is a little different from what we've become accustomed to. But it's still great fun! Just don't pin all your affection on Clint. He'll let you down.

In the episode we discussed a great podcast interview with Roger Browne that was published a few years ago by Dorado Films. It is currently offline, but if we manage to locate a copy we will let you know.

There's not a lot out there written about the film, but we did locate two blog posts which are quite good, HERE and HERE.

We would love to hear from you if you have any favorite Jungle Girl films, or if you ever got lost in the jungle yourself and ended up befriending the animals or becoming a god to a local tribe. You can contact us on Twitter and Instagram or by email at wildwildpodcast@gmail.com. Please also remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice!

Video - SAMOA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE (1968)

For those following Adrian and I on our Wild, Wild Podcast journey through jungle girl films here is a YouTube LINK to the next one we will covering. It stars Edwidge Fenech which is more than enough to excite some potential viewers! 

Wild, Wild Podcast Season 6 Episode 1 - Gungala, the Black Panther Girl (1968)

Grab your pith helmet, machete, mosquito netting and come with us into the deepest, darkest, fakest-looking jungle in search of the lost heiress Gungala. Yes, we're back with a brand new mini-season, taking a look at the brief burst of Jungle Girl films to come out of Italy in 1968-1969. Gungala la pantera nuda is significant for a number of reasons; the first is of course the presence of Kitty Swan in the lead role, and the second is that it was Ruggero Deodato's first jungle movie. Give him another few years and he would become infamous for what he caught on camera in the jungles of South America. Here however it's Africa, although it's mostly the De Paolis sound stages in Rome. You will struggle to tell the difference - or not.

You can read all about Kitty Swan's terrible accident and miraculous recovery in THIS ARTICLE. Or if you just want to look at lots of photos of Kitty Swan THIS LINK has you covered.

We would love to hear from you if you have any favorite Jungle Girl films, or if you ever got lost in the jungle yourself and ended up befriending the animals or becoming a god to a local tribe we'd love to learn the story. You can contact us on Twitter and Instagram or by email at wildwildpodcast@gmail.com. Please also remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice!

Video - KING OF KONG ISLAND (1968)

Podcast on the way!

The Bloody Pit #148 - CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943)

We enter into one of the odder areas of the 1940’s Universal Horrors with CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943)! The few jungle girl movies made by the studio in the 40's can be seen as a slightly faltering bridge between the occasional jungle themed serials of the 1930’s, the Weissmuller Tarzan series and the rapid growth of such film and television tales in the 1950’s. By the time the Jungle Jim and Bomba films were Saturday matinee staples while Sheena and Ramar were also enticing young viewers at home it seemed that you couldn't swing a dead panther without hitting a jungle hero. These tales of wild animals, poachers and evil treasure hunters were perfect adventure fodder for young minds and if the star was a leopard skin clad Jungle Girl then you might even find a few adults tuning in for the action.

CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN is an interesting attempt to build a mad scientist horror film out of a lot of exciting circus footage. It is more effective than you might expect but the ratio of horror stuff to circus stuff is probably weighted in the wrong direction. Troy and I chew our popcorn while watching the spectacle! Deciding which parts work and which ones are very strange occupy most of our time but we discuss the cast and director with some detail too.  The film only gives us a short period of time with Acquanetta’s silent wild woman/gorilla character but the 1932 animal act footage is skillfully integrated into the film almost making you forget this is supposed to be a horror tale. Luckily, John Carradine is one of the smoothest mad scientists of all time so it’s a joy to watch him slither across the screen.

The show can be reached at thebloodypit@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments. We would love to hear from you and we do wonder who you would name as best Jungle Girl or most impressive Mad Scientist. Thank you for listening! 

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Pulp Covers - Jungle Tales!

With Spring just around the corner my thoughts turn to tales of warmer climes.

 

Beyond Naschy #33 - THE NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS (1974)

The Naschycast returns to the films of Amando De Ossorio for a romp through the jungle!

THE NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS (1974) a.k.a. The Night of the Witches follows a small group of researchers seeking to document the endangered species of a fictional country in Africa. They make camp near a (miniature) village and then learn from a native about the supernatural history of the area. Of course, we have been made aware of the odd rituals of ‘Bumbasa’ in a 1910 prologue showing the kidnapping, rape and beheading of a British lady on an altar that seemingly transforms her into a leopard demon! Or, at least, a fanged disembodied head that can turn and snarl at the camera! It’s a wild ride.

Troy and I hack our way through the jungle foliage to get a good look at this strange little film. As he had done with his Blind Dead movies Ossorio is clearly trying to create a new monster of his own design. But the leopard demons offer some technical hurdles that the writer/director’s usual low budget is often unable to jump. We discuss the various forms in which we see the creatures onscreen trying to decide which of them is most effective. Since these three forms are simply leopard stock footage, fake leopard heads partially hidden by leaves and female members of the cast running in slow motion through the jungle night it can be difficult to make a conclusive choice. And Ossorio throws in enough sex and blood to keep an exploitation audience distracted from the inherent silliness of the pieces of his narrative that don’t always work. But where does this film fall in the legacy of this legendary Spanish horror filmmaker? We share our opinions and hope to hear yours.

The podcast can be reached at naschycast@gmail.com where you can send your thoughts on this episode’s film or Amando De Ossorio’s career as a whole. We’d love to hear from you! And we end the show with a song from Nashville band Peachy - check them out! Thank you for listening and we’ll be back soon with more from the Golden Age of Spanish Horror.

Peachy BandCamp Page

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Lex Barker Tarzan Movie Posters

I'm finally getting around to watching the entire run of Barker's Tarzan films and wishing I had one of these amazing pieces for my wall! 

 

YouTube - KILMA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE (1975)

Here is the first section of the rare Spanish jungle girl movie by the director of THE WEREWOLF AND THE YETI (1975). Not sure if there will ever be a great release of this film so this might be your only chance. And Paul Naschy plays a hunter on a strange safari so that is well worth seeing! 

Jungle Movie Summer

I think that it's the heat that has me watching these movies. 

Yeah. 

The heat. That's it! 

Ki-Gor Pulp Magazine Covers

I'm back to reading my collection of the Ki-Gor pulp tales and decided to check out more of the magazine's covers. I wonder how many casual browsers would have been shocked to learn that Ki-Gor was the jungle man in the background of most of these paintings. The scantily clad lady placed front and center seems to somehow be the usual focus of attention. I can't imagine why. 

Rima The Jungle Girl!

I have a mild fascination with Jungle adventure tales that probably traces back to my childhood love of Tarzan. The Jungle Girl sub-set of these stories have become a special interest for me in the past several years leading me to track down the Sheena pulp tales and any other examples I can locate. Until just the other day I had somehow missed this one though.

Rima, The Jungle Girl is a character that was created (and killed!) in a 1904 novel called Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest. A film of the book was made in 1959 starring Audrey Hepburn in the Rima role - a fact that had me thinking I was accidentally reading information from a parody website! But, it's true. How have I missed this movie? And when can I finally catch it?

Anyway - in 1974 DC comics published seven issues of their Rima comic book and this prompted her inclusion in several episodes of The All New Super Friends Hour between 1977 and 1980. That means that, as a kid, I must have seen her in that show but completely managed to forget about the odd sight of a Jungle Girl running around with Wonder Woman and company.

So, the other day when I was looking through a dollar bargain bin at a comic shop I spotted the first issue of the DC series and impulsively grabbed it, of course. It seems to be an adaptation of the Green Mansions novel with excellent interior artwork from Nestor Redondo and a great cover from Joe Kubert. I will be searching for the other six issues to see what they did with the character other than adapt the source book. That there are still hidden little series like this lurking out there to be discovered really puts a smile on my face! 

The Bloody Pit #47 - CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980)

Here's a film to darken the days and blight the soul.

The cannibal sub-genre of exploitation films grew out of the Mondo movie genre. The Italian Mondo films were documentary in nature with a focus on taboo subjects that had often been considered too controversial for traditional narrative tales. By using the documentary format, exploitation filmmakers could show sexual acts, nudity, violence and even sprinkle in some racist content all while pretending to be educating it's audience. These movies were usually tasteless exercises in cruelty and caricatures of foreign cultures coupled with occasional sequences that were faked or staged for the camera. Of course, they were highly profitable but the genre waned quickly and by the mid-1970's Italian producers were on to other things.

Enter Ruggero Deodato. Having worked his way up through the Italian filmmaking system he had finally gotten into the director's chair and was hunting for a new project. In 1977 he had made one of the better jungle adventure films that had grown out of the success of Umberto Lenzi's MAN FROM DEEP RIVER (1972). Deodato's JUNGLE HOLOCAUST had upped the intensity of the earlier film and he decided to ratchet things up again for his new movie. He hit upon the idea of taking the cannibal tribe idea further than before and, inspired by terrorist activity in his home country, proceeded to make an unforgettably nasty piece of work that would, in turn, go on to inspire the found footage genre in the late 1990's. He's got a lot to answer for, huh?

When Adrian Smith asked me if I'd be interested in covering CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST for the podcast I immediately said yes. And then I started to have doubts! I was familiar with the film from having seen it almost twenty years before but I knew it as a difficult watch. Even though I owned a copy I had only ever rewatched the movie one time since my original viewing in the 1990's and had been disturbed enough by it on my second watch to consider getting rid of the disc. Was I really eager to see this harsh, mean-spirited film again? Would it still be able to worm it's way under my skin and bother me on the deep level it had so long ago? I guess I was going to find out!

Listen in as Adrian and I fight technology, discuss Deodato, praise Riz Ortolani, process this film's animal cruelty and generally try to keep a good attitude as we follow several stupid Americans into the Amazonian jungle. If you have any comments or questions about CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or anything else we touch on, please contact us at thebloodypit@gmail.com and we'll get right back to you. Thank you for downloading and listening to the show! 

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What I Watched in August

As someone on record as a big fan of MAN OF STEEL and the much derided BATMAN V SUPERMAN it's fair to assume that I was quite excited to see DC Comic's newest cinematic effort. I figure I had better enjoy this run of darker superhero films while they last because the general bitching about their more adult nature will eventually destroy them. Sadly it appears that the frantic worrying about this has already hit the series with SUICIDE SQUAD. I was extremely excited when I learned that David Ayer was making this film because his WWII tank film FURY was an unexpected surprise. Dark, realistic and unflinching in its treatment of it's characters it was as if the film was calculated to show the hidden truths underneath all those great war movies of the past. I hoped that Ayer was going to turn that creative eye toward superheroes and from what I can tell that is what he did. Then the second guessing happened and we end up with this.

The first 45 minutes are a chopped up mess that shows that too many bosses were allowed in the editor's room. The film has a lot of story to tell us but it's as if there was no final choice made on exactly how to present things. The tales of the various characters get thrown into a blender and almost randomly shown to us through a series of flashbacks. That eventually makes it difficult to know when what we are witnessing is actually happening. It feels like the filmmakers had no confidence that we'd have the patience for all this character stuff and so contrived to just spasm-edit it all into an info dump. That was a mistake. A second error was the slash editing of rock tunes into the soundtrack almost randomly. Just as I started to get a handle on what the hell was going on suddenly another everybody-knows-this-one rock song blared out of the screen telling me I should smile now. No, no, no, no! I realize that the film is trying to use each song as an identifier for each character but it does not work that way. One might have been effective, maybe even two but when you get to three we all get it and we're looking for the mute button.

But..... once the plot begins to move, we know the villains of the piece, the Joker's plan to grab Harley comes together and all Hell breaks loose I enjoyed the rest of the film. In fact, if there is ever a re-edit of this thing that gives us more of the character introductions, smoothes out the choppy editing and gets us into the rhythm of the story faster it might be a damned good movie instead of an OK effort robbed of it's possible glory. You can see the dark, funny beauty of the original vision peeking out from around the corners where it was shoved. Stop second guessing a film  - once it's made leave it alone!

My original plan was to get drunk and then go see INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE (2016). The film had finally appeared (for a single week) at the $2 theater and I could think of few things more fun than an inebriated viewing of a Roland Emmerich film. He and his team of talent-negative morons have never mastered the fine art of making good or even passable films so you always know the movie will suck in surprising ways. The first INDEPENDENCE DAY is still my benchmark for awful science fiction scriptwriting. I remember watching that mess on the big screen and wondering just how such a stupid script could be green lit for millions of dollars. It was so dumb I suspected it had been written by a third grader who rushed though the project to get out onto the playground. But it got made and made a zillion dollars so now we have this crap - an even dumber retread of the same idiotic idea only new! It is, of course, loud and packed with explosions none of which have any weight or relevance. Every plot point is telegraphed, every surprise obvious, every situation clichéd and all the dialog is pedantic. The film is dull, stupid and insulting. When I hear people bitching about big summer blockbusters THIS is what I picture and I like big summer blockbusters. Can't someone make Emmerich stop? Please. I wish I had actually followed my plan and gotten drunk. 

I had no real interest in seeing this new version of THE JUNGLE BOOK (2016) but I'm glad I checked it out. It's a sharp and often touching retelling of the classic tale with state of the art CGI bringing the animals to life quite well. The bright, detailed visualization of the jungle is gorgeous always capable of seeming both welcoming and dangerous. The young actor playing Mowgli is good and the entire tale feels well paced with little wasted narrative that isn't built into the story effectively. All the voice work is excellent and they even managed to work in the greatest Disney song of all time (in my grinning opinion) The Bare Necessities! Good job on every count. 

THE LIST 

THE BEES (1978) - 2 (rewatch)

BEACH PARTY (1963) - 4 (silly AIP musical comedy)

SUICIDE SQUAD  (2016) - 6 (first half's a mess but it finally finds its feet)

EMBRYO (1976) - 6 (interesting science fiction tale with Rock Hudson)

PASSPORT TO  SUEZ (1943) - 6 (solid Lone Wolf film that steals several plot elements from CASABLANCA)

SANTO VS. DR. DEATH (1973) - 8

DEPALMA (2016) - 7 (not so much a documentary as a feature length interview)

THE 'BURBS (1989) - 6 (rewatch)

BLACK TORMENT (1964)- 6 (solid gothic mystery)

CRY_WOLF (2005) - 7 (rewatch) (solid murder mystery with a great end scene)

A CANDLE FOR THE DEVIL (1973)- 7 (rewatch)

THE TRIAL OF SERGEANT RUTLEDGE (1960) - 6 (solid late period John Ford western)

KISS KISS, KILL KILL (1966) - 7 (fun Euro-spy adventure)

DARK ALIBI (1946) - 5 (not bad Charlie Chan mystery)

INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE (2016)- 2 (worse than the original?)

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (2016) - 9 (ultimate edition)

THE PHANTOM OF PARIS (1931)- 6 (good Gaston Leroux adaptation)

BLACK SABBATH (1963) - 9 (rewatch of the Italian version)

THE JUNGLE BOOK (2016) - 8

DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933) - 7 (amusing but too light)

FIRST MAN INTO SPACE (1959) - 5

THE OUTSIDER (2013) - 8 (documentary about Antonio Margheriti)