4DK's five most read posts of 2015

My plans to revive the 4DK Annual Search Term Tweet-athon this year were scuttled by the fact that both Google Analytics and Blogger no longer provide a comprehensive accounting of search terms (boo!) However, while I am thus unable to let you in on some of the misbegotten notions that have lead the confused, booze-addled and horny to wash up on the shores of 4DK, I can tell you what those people who came to 4Dk intentionally were most often seeking out—and in most cases by using search terms that matched exactly the titles of the five films listed below.

5. Tarzan & King Kong (India, 1965)
It’s easy to imagine the excited pitter-pat in the heart of the expectant genre film fan upon first contemplating the title Tarzan & King Kong and all that it promises. It is also easy to imagine the crashing disappointment experienced by that same genre film fan upon discovering that the King Kong referred to in that title is nothing more than an obese Hungarian wrestler. Fans of Indian stunt film king Dara Singh will be further crestfallen to learn that, despite Dara’s prominence on the VCD cover, it is his little brother, Randhawa, who plays the titular hero.

Still, while Tarzan & King Kong might seem like it was carefully calibrated to smash movie nerd expectations, it is actually a very entertaining picture, thanks in large part to game performance from a cast of Indian B movie stalwarts like the great Bela Bose and a pre-stardom Mumtaz (who teaches Tarzan how to do the Twist) and an enthusiastic rolling out of a wide assortment of cheesy jungle movie perils. Nonetheless, I suspect that it is the promise, and not the reality, of that title that has led so many to come to my review of the film. And, true, while many of those readers may have come away disappointed, chances are that they were not as disappointed as those who came to it using the search term “Dara Singh and Mumtaz hot sex”.

4. Haseena Atom Bomb (Pakistan, 1990)
Given that a considerable portion of 4DK’s readers come from Pakistan, it should perhaps come as no surprise that three of the five films on this list are from that country. What is surprising to me is that, while I have also covered films from Pakistan’s Punjabi and Urdu speaking regions, it is only films from the country’s Pashto region that have placed in the top five. By way of explanation, let me say that Haseena Atom Bomb is something of a standard bearer for Pashto cinema. Are all Pashto films as jaw droppingly trashy as Haseena Atom Bomb is? No, they are not. But an awful lot of them are. My 2009 review of Haseena spent a number of years as 4DK’s most read post, and it is admittedly a little sad to see her knocked off her pedestal. Still, I think you will agree that her successor is a worthy one.

3. Teri Meherbaniyan (India, 1985)
My review of Teri Meherbaniyan started as a series of drunken tweets that were mostly for the benefit of my wife, who was laid up in the hospital at the time. I think these tweets succinctly communicated the WTF flavor of the Teri Meherbaniyan viewing experience, although the film ultimately demanded much more of me, with this review being the result. The onus of Teri Meherbaniyan’s utter uniqueness rests entirely on the narrow shoulders of one Brownie, The Wonder Dog, from whose perspective much of the story is told. And be forewarned that this is no Disney-esque tale of a loyal pup making his adorable way across the countryside to be reunited with his loving family. On the contrary, it is a bloody revenge tale rife with slasher movie beats and instances of hallucinatory canine PTSD. It is wholly deserving of its place in the top five, as it is a film that will truly change the way you look at movies and, as such, exactly the type of movie that gives 4DK its reason for being.

2. Adam Khor (Pakistan, 1991)
Another Pashto film, Adam Khor features a rampaging, sasquatch-like creature, a monkey riding a horse, and a dirt-encrusted Badar Munir rising up out of the ground like a hypertrophic dust bunny. As I noted in my 2011 review, it also contains everything that you’d expect from a Pashto film of its era, including “lots of throaty yelling, fat ladies in wet clothing dancing, and an abundance of loud gunfire and punching sound effects in places where none were manifestly called for.” It also holds a place of pride(?) in the history of Pakistani cult cinema for being the first in a wave of horror-themed Pashto action films that ultimately lead to…

1. Da Khwar Lasme Spogmay (Pakistan, 1997)
Given it appeals less to academic types than it does to couch barnacles like myself who can’t be troubled to bring even a rudimentary understanding of a film’s native language to its appreciation, Da Khwar Lasme Spogmay is mostly known on these shores as Cat Beast. I think that its wide cult appeal is due to the fact that, while it is to a large extent an almost frighteningly idiosyncratic foreign horror film, it is also something of a superhero fantasy. Director/star Shehnaz Begum’s Hulk-like transformation into a squalling cat monster is even more gratifying for the fact that she is doing so in order to maul to death a cartoonish assortment of glowering rapists and sex perverts—making for a film that is less I Spit on Your Grave than it is I Bury My Poop on Your Grave. Such is the demand for this insane oddity that I have not only covered it on 4DK, but also on the most recent episode of the Infernal Brains, the podcast that I co-host with Tars Tarkas. Of course, I am not the only person to have written about it; it has been widely covered elsewhere on the internet, and often with as much or more insight than I brought to the task--which makes me that much more grateful that my take on it has become such a reader favorite.

Dara (Pakistan, 1968)

It’s hard to believe that, back in 2010, I spent an entire month watching nothing but jungle adventure movies. This especially because I do not particularly care for jungle adventure movies. You see, readers? Such is the mania that my love for you inspires.

My main take-away from that couch-bound safari of mine was the overwhelming evidence that, of all of the internationally recognized pop culture icons, from Superman to James Bond, the one that the most countries want to lay claim to is Tarzan. Thus we have competing versions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Jungle Lord from corners of the globe as far flung as Israel, Indonesia, Egypt and India, to name a few. The trouble is that, rather than simply speaking for itself, that knowledge made me feel duty bound to report to you on whatever new cultural permutation of Johnny Loincloth I stumbled across. Which brings me to Dara, which is doomed -- despite its halfhearted attempts at subterfuge -- to become forever known among you as “Pakistani Tarzan”. (Just ask Turkish Star Wars, whose continued cries of "I have my own name, dammit!" continue to go unheeded.)

Dara is a product of Pakistan’s mainstream, Urdu language film industry based in Lahore – otherwise known as “Lollywood”. That is why it does not, like every Punjabi language Pakistani film I’ve reviewed, star either Sultan Rahi or, like every Pashto language Pakistani film I’ve reviewed, Badar Munir. Who it does star is Nasarullah Butt, a bodybuilder who served simultaneously as both Mr. Asia and Mr. Pakistan from 1954 to 1965 and who is here making his film debut.

Now, if you think that naming Nasarullah Butt’s debut film Dara might constitute a none-too-subtle attempt to create positive associations with a certain other South Asian athlete turned action star, you could be forgiven. Indeed, Butt, besides being of a similar body type, shares with Indian stunt film king Dara Singh -- who, by the way, also played Tarzan -- the signature move of picking up his opponents and twirling them overhead before using them as human missiles. That is, of course, not to deny Butt his own claims to star quality. He is possessed of both brutal good looks and a winning smile and, while perhaps no Olivier, commands the screen with a certain brand of raw charisma.

That Charisma comes in handy, because Dara’s Pakistani Tarzan, named Dara, follows the grand tradition of the majority of movie Tarzans in being dumb as shit. This, of course, does not prevent him from being sexual catnip to every attractive woman who finds herself within pheromone range, of which Dara offers an impressive number. For starters, there is the film’s version of Jane, named Seema (Rani), who, I'm pleased to announce, follows in a grand tradition of South Asian B movie heroines in packing a pistol which she is by no means afraid to use. Next comes jungle girl Sonya, whom Dara repeatedly rescues from the rapey designs of a man whom I will just refer to as Mustache, who is the unscrupulous (and rapey… did I mention rapey?) partner of Seema’s fortune hunter father.

And finally, of course, there is an evil jungle princess (Aliya) who is determined to have the ape man as her own personal boy toy. Unfortunately, like so many jungle princesses before her, she has a nearly Aspergian grasp of the intricacies of courtship. It turns out that tying your love interest and all of his friends to stakes and then singing at them is not the surefire way to spark a lasting romance.

 If that is not a classic "Bitch, please" look that Dara is sporting, I don't know what is.

Yet it is just possible that Seema is even more hormonally addled by Dara’s meaty proximity than is the Princess, as evidenced by a dream sequence that takes place at the film’s midpoint, when Tarzan… I mean Dara… has been presumed dead after a fall from a silly looking miniature bridge. Here Seema awakens in a fog enshrouded netherworld, surrounded by, not just Dara, but a whole host of loincloth clad muscle boys, all perched and flexing atop individual pedestals. She is inspired to song.

Without subtitles, it’s impossible for me to say with any certainty what Seema is singing. But, were I to guess, I would say that it’s an early precursor to Diana Ross’ 80s hit “I Want Muscle”. Long exposure to a well-oiled, mostly naked muscleman has, in his absence, driven Seema into a kind of erotomania that only a small army of such men can now satisfy. Here, as so often before, a Tarzan movie has revealed itself to be really all about unbridled female lust, and this scene, being so close to the heart of the matter, is undeniably Dara’s main attraction.

The funny thing about all of these variously provenanced Tarzan movies -- be they your Daras, your Zimbos, or your Zambos -- is how much they are really just Tarzan movies, with their specific cultural contexts providing very little in the way of detours from the usual formula. As an audience, this reduces us to less engaged spectators than detached observers, waiting in dull eyed resignation for the rolling out of the inevitable.

For starters, there is the standard roll call of boilerplate jungle perils (lions and bears and snakes, oh my!) and the stock footage used to realize them.

(Sorry, fans of quicksand and spiky pits; those two seem to have been either overlooked or ended up on the cutting room floor.)

And then there is the "lost" treasure, which, once found, drives those finding it into a googly eyed lather of cartoonish greed…

…from which skullduggery and backstabbing follows, delivering with them the simplistic rebuke to modernity and “so called” civilization (can we really say who the true savages are? CAN WE?) that we’ve all been waiting for.

Of course, along with the hoary, Dara also boasts those standard Tarzan elements that are every bit as welcome as they are predictable. There are, for instance, silly costumes, such as the Leopardman outfits worn by the evil princess’s guards.

There is also a monkey. Here he is a Capuchin rather than the standard issue chimp, but he nonetheless acquits himself impressively in the field of simian screen heroics. There is one scene where he escapes from the captivity in which he and Dara are being held by the princess’s guards and races for help. Despite the obvious animal cruelty involved, I have to admit that I found the sight of the little guy hauling ass through the jungle with both hands tied behind his back pretty rousing. I am a horrible person.

In the hands of director Aslam Dar, Dara’s virtually surprise-free cocktail of luddism, female libido and pulp histrionics is well mixed, with more than a few stylish touches. This may in fact be the most noirish of the wannabe Tarzans, featuring shadowy deep focus shots and a surfeit of moody lighting. Of course, nothing too radical, mind you. This is Tarzan, after all, and it’s unlikely that Pakistani audiences in 1968 were any more prepared than American ones would have been for the kind of dark reboots of beloved heroes that are all too common today. No, no matter how jungly the perils, our movie must end on a shot of a smiling Tarzan and Jane -- or, in this case, Dara and Seema -- riding off into the sunset on an elephant. And here it comes.

Zambo, King of the Jungle (Italy, 1974)

 

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that we’re condemned to periodically bow at the altar of Tarzan, so ubiquitous are his representations in world cinema. In the past, I’ve focused a lot on Tarzan type films from the developing world, which seem to often enfold anxieties about encroaching modernity and urbanization. In today’s case, however, we’re dealing with a Tarzan type film from Europe, which means that, while it pays some lip service to those concepts, it’s basically just about how awesome white people are.

The white person in the spotlight in Zambo, King of the Jungle is the immensely likable American born actor and stuntman Brad Harris, who fans of European genre cinema well know was quite prodigiously employed in the Italian film industry of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Here Brad is a few years past wrapping up the enjoyable Kommissar X Europsy series, but still looks impressively buff and light on his feet. In fact, in his rough-cut leather tunic and conspicuous pants-less-ness, Harris seems to be making a bit of a return to the Peplum roles that first brought him fame in the 60s.

However, it must be said that the duties Harris’s Zambo undertakes as King of the Jungle seem less action oriented than one might hope, and more of the bureaucratic nature one might expect from an actual monarch, or mayor even. In lieu of swinging on vines and hollering at elephants, a lot of his time is spent pantslessly settling the natives' petty disputes and tending to their healthcare needs. Of course, there do come those moments when he has to beat up upon marauding white slavers and rampaging gorilla suits, and, at those moments, Harris flings himself into the action with his characteristic verve. It’s just a shame he doesn’t do so more often.

 

Harris starts out the film as George Ryan, the son of a wealthy (I’m assuming) South African family who has been wrongly convicted of murder, having taken the rap for a no good dame. In transit by train to a prison located deep in the jungle, he and a fellow prisoner make a break for it and disappear into the dense foliage. His companion soon dies after eating poison flora, and George is subsequently captured and caged by a tribe of natives.

And at this point, having shown us as much as it cares to of the origins of Zambo, Zambo the movie then proceeds to tell us the rest in the form of an extravagantly half-assed verbal information dump disguised as dialog between two characters that we’ve just been introduced to. This basically boils down to one saying to the other, “Did you hear about that prisoner that escaped? Seems he got captured by some natives who later made him their leader. Further seems they now call him Zambo, King of the Jungle.” And the other replying, “We’ll don’t that beat all”, or some such.

Meanwhile, a quite obviously unscrupulous hunter by the name of Juanez (Raf Baldassarre) is hired as a guide by Professor Woodworth (Attilio Dottesio) and his requisite comely niece Grace (Gisela Hahn). The Woodworths want Juanez to help them find Zambo, because it is only Zambo, they believe, who can guide them through the uncharted jungle in which they hope to find the fabled lost city that is the true object of their expedition. Little do they know, however, that Juanez has already accepted the job of hunting down and killing Zambo from craven representatives of The Man who fear that he will lead a native revolt.

When these explorers finally come upon Zambo, he gives them the standard line about how life among the so-called "savages" is less savage than it is in the so-called "civilized" world, and that he is hence happy to trade the former for the latter. Yet, in so calling it, Zambo seems to be overlooking just how responsible his civilized upbringing is for the sweet deal that he has with the natives. To call the depiction of these natives “child-like” would be charitable. And it seems that Zambo’s introduction of isopropyl alcohol, which the natives call “magic water”, has been the primary impetus for them to so wholeheartedly hand over their autonomy to him.

Furthermore, even Zambo’s most off-the-cuff expressions of enlightened Western thinking strike these grinning primitives as bolts of pure revelation from on high. At one point, when asked to settle a dispute involving an arranged marriage, Zambo basically says that arranged marriages are stupid and that consenting adults should be allowed to marry whomever they want. And with that, the tribe abolishes arranged marriage on the spot. Yay! (Seriously, the natives all raise their spears and say “Yay”.)

Zambo, quite surprisingly, was actually filmed on location in Tanzania and Uganda, a circumstance that allows for camerawork that is a bit more sweeping and scenic than that seen in your standard set bound and stock footage dependent jungle potboiler. Of course, a less workmanlike director than Bitto Albertini might have made more of this, but those of us who have walked the Tarzan trail so many times before will take what we can get. That said, the plane tickets to Africa seem to have been where the production expenses stopped, as what there is of Zambo above the dirt it treads on is fairly impoverished looking. Once the lost city is discovered, its exterior is established by having the characters point off-screen and verbally describe it, and once we’re within its walls, the cardboard sets used to represent its interiors are best left both unseen and undescribed.

Nonetheless, once the pins are all in place, Zambo hits all the expected beats: Grace, right on cue, falls hard for Zambo’s earthy charms; the lost city’s riches inspire a wave of greed on the part of the city folk; and, in a rousing climax, Zambo calls upon the beasts of the jungle to exact justice upon the dastardly Juanez. This last bit doesn’t quite makes sense, since it’s not clear why Zambo, having only been in the jungle a few years at most, would have achieved dominion over all of its animals. It’s not like they, like the natives, would be as easily swayed by the healing properties of rubbing alcohol, after all. In any case, the film concludes with enough loose ends dangling to suggest that a sequel was planned. It doesn’t appear that one was ever made, though, which is a good thing.

Tarzan comes to Bali

2010 was a year of highlights here at 4DK, and certainly the lowest was Jungle Adventure Month. Over the course of that harrowing thirty days of wrestling rabid chimps and swatting at tsi tsi flies, I checked in with versions of Tarzan from corners of the world as far flung as Israel, Mexico, Egypt, and India –- two in the latter case: one chaste and one nasty!

Of course, as much as I may have hoped otherwise, I knew that I was not done surveying the various international incarnations of the famed ape man. After all, how could any national cinema lay claim to legitimacy without its own version of Tarzan? That’s like not having your own James Bond, or Superman, or… or Darna.

Fortunately, my latest stop on the Tarzan tour takes me to Indonesia, so at least we’re guaranteed a lot of action and gore, and hopefully some Southeast Asian mysticism realized by way of lots of gooey practical effects. So let’s go!

1989’s Tarzan Raja Rimba looks even more promising for the fact that it stars the great Barry Prima, and was helmed by the director of the riotous Virgins From Hell, Ackyl Anwari. This was the first of two turns by Prima in the Tarzan role, the second being in the following year’s Tarzan Penunggu Harta Karun directed by M. Agnar Romli.

In the grand tradition of Tarzan films, Tarzan Raja Rimba shows our hero coming up against destructive forces from the civilized world, in this case a corrupt logging crew that is chainsaw-ing its way through the Indonesian rainforest like there’s no tomorrow. Of course, while this is a Tarzan film in name, it is, more importantly, a Barry Prima film, and so we get a version of Tarzan who gorily kung fus people to death. Yay! Tarzan’s favorite method of dispatch is to toss an opponent onto a convenient bamboo spike or pointy tree limb, but the logging aspect of the story also provides a generous supply of nasty hardware to further the carnage, including a band saw which Tarzan tests against the villain’s neck during the climactic fight.

Much like the many Indian takes on the Tarzan story, Tarzan Raja Rimba puts an emphasis on the irresistible sexual pull that Tarzan exerts upon any woman in his orbit. Early in the film, Karina, a female member of the logging team, is shown tossing restlessly in her bed, consumed by thoughts of the muscled jungle man. (And, after all, this is Barry Prima we’re talking about –- and he does look amazing in his loincloth and little leopard skin boots –- so who can blame her?) Later, she somehow falls afoul of her crooked colleagues and is forced to flee the camp. The expected menu of jungle perils follows, and she is ultimately driven into the protective arms of Tarzan. However, Prima’s Tarzan is not the thick-skulled, unwitting sexual catalyst that we see in, say, the Zimbo movies, but is rather played by the star as being articulate, authoritative, and not a little bit arrogant.

While making some concessions to the film’s tropical setting (when Tarzan forages for Karina, he returns with watermelon), Tarzan Raja Rimba still manages to deliver on at least the minimum of those ingredients that are internationally agreed upon as constituting a Tarzan movie. The most notable change in this regard is that, rather than an ape, Tarzan’s faithful animal companion is instead a bear –- and a bear played by a man in a very obvious bear costume, at that. (In fact, I think we may be seeing here an early appearance by the Masturbating Bear, back in the days before he succumbed to compulsive onanism). This bear leads the climactic elephant charge upon the villain’s camp at the movie’s conclusion, and also gruesomely mauls to death one of the female bad guys. At least, I think that’s what he’s doing.

Still, if you put these Burroughsian –- or Weismullarian? -- trappings aside, Tarzan Raja Rimba is pretty much indistinguishable from one of Prima’s Jaka Sembung movies, though sadly one without all the mystical flying around and modular body parts. There’s the “tournament” style scene, where Prima’s martial arts skills are tested against a towering, carnivalesque goon in the bad guys’ employ, who seems to have been hanging around in the wings for just that purpose. And then of course there is the requisite tableau of martyrdom in which Prima is chained and abused before dramatically freeing himself to wreak havoc upon his oppressors. All of this, in sum, means that, if you are a Prima fan –- as I most certainly am –- this will probably be the best Tarzan movie you’ve ever seen.

While Tarzan Raja Rimba is relatively straight-faced, films like Ismail Yassin’s Tarzan and Tin Tan, el Hombre Lobo have shown us that interpretations of Tarzan from non-English speaking countries are just as likely to be satirical as they are reverent, and furthermore -- as with the Zimbo movies -- there is often a very fine line between the two. It’s hard to imagine that filmmakers of color -- especially those from countries that had seen white colonial rule –- didn’t encounter difficulties in uncritically addressing the idea of this white interloper, god-like in his physical perfection, who proves himself capable of outdoing indigenous people even at their own indigenousness. (I mean, really, what are Dances With Wolves and Avatar, at their core, other than simply the Tarzan fantasy in different drag?) Given that, one might expect to find at least a little ambivalence in their depictions of our loincloth clad friend.

And, indeed, reverence is about the last thing you can expect from 1976’s Tarsan Pensiunan. Directed by the prolific Lilik Sudjio -- who also gave us Neraka Lembah Tengorak, Darna Ajaib, and the Suzzanna fronted horror classic Queen of Black Magic –- the film is a vehicle for popular Indonesian comedian and singer Benyamin Sueb. Sueb, a member of Jakarta’s Betawi ethnic group, made close to fifty low budget films in the brief period between 1970 and 1978, many of them spoofing Western archetypes from the distinct cultural perspective of the Betawis.

Now, I’d love to tell you what Tarsan Pensiunan is about, but I’m afraid it resisted my entry as vigorously as Tarzan Raja Rimba, with all of its familiar tropes, welcomed it. And given that there is little likelihood that it might ever make the transition beyond unsubtitled Southeast Asian market VCDs, I imagine that it will stay that way. Sadly, the film’s humor is overwhelmingly dialog-based, and its attitude toward pacing and narrative so relaxed that I had to wonder how big a role pot plays in Betawi culture. I couldn’t even tell you for sure whether Benyamin Sueb was meant to be playing Tarzan or simply someone who thought he was Tarzan.

What I did manage to figure out –- I think –- was that Sueb’s character, who repeatedly refers to himself in the third person as “Tarzan”, was having trouble adjusting to the civilized life back in Jakarta. The film’s title apparently translates as “Retired Tarzan”, and I had to wonder, based on the way it’s pronounced in the film, if the word “Pensiunan” was simply an Indo-friendly phonetic spelling of the word “pension”. In any case, what we have for a good part of the film is Sueb –- who wears the same outfit of tee-shirt and striped boxers throughout –- puttering around aimlessly and driving the two (I think) relatives he’s living with crazy.

Eventually, he makes his way back to the wild, where he shows himself to be not very apt at swinging on vines, then has a run in with a couple of hunters/poachers and the female estate owner who employs them. Eventually the film ambles back to Jakarta, where it spends a lot of time on Sueb himself ambling about with a friend of his who has taken to wearing an ape costume. They do a fake trick monkey act to defraud spectators, and then go to a public park and scare passers-by. Occasionally Sueb sings one of his songs, which tend to be rather unremarkable but inoffensive fusion-y rock numbers. The film is over two hours long.

Eventually it occurred to me that, just as Tarzan Raja Rimba is more of a Barry Prima film than a Tarzan film, Tarsan Pensiunan is really just all about Benyamin Sueb. Not that I can say for sure, mind you, but the movie appears to be mining absurdity from the spectacle of the low key Sueb basically going around being himself while half-heartedly pretending to be Tarzan. In other words, if this movie could be said to be about Tarzan at all, there’s such a yawning ironic distance between him and any of the characters we see on screen that his presence is vestigial at best.

Both of the above described movies point once again to the astonishing elasticity of the whole Tarzan concept. And I think the only conclusions you can draw from that are either that that concept is so sturdily anchored within popular culture that it can stand up to any punishment thrown at it, or that, instead, Tarzan is as semiotically naked as he is naked naked, and can mean whatever whose wearing his skin at the moment wants him to. If I found Tarzan more interesting than the things that Indonesian, Egyptian, Indian and Mexican filmmakers did with him, I might devote more thought to that. But, to be honest, if it weren’t for films like these, I’d never give the dumb brute a second thought. Back to civilization!