I believe I only saw this George Pal production only once on TV as a kid, but it's one that I remember kind of making my head explode at the time and for whatever reason has always stuck with me. I'm not familiar with the young adult book series about the barrel-chested, super-genius, adventure and his team, The Fabulous Five (one of whom is played by a young Paul Gleason, best known as the jerk principal in "The Breakfast Club"), who are all experts in their fields. Watching the film now as an adult it's super corny, but still a whole lot of fun. The film is going for a Saturday matinée serial type of feel (i.e. Flash Gordon or The Perils of Pauline), which I'd say the underrated Disney film "The Rocketeer" got pitch perfect, though this film doesn't nail it quite as well. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" mined similar source material, but abandoned the knowing light hearted camp and took the film to a new level of high adventure, but "Doc Savage" wanted to be that family friendly film that was knowingly comic book-like. "Doc Savage" crosses the fine line between light camp and just plain silly too often (the grown man in the crib was just dumb). Still, I was really entertained by the movie and loved the vivid photography, the fun George Pal special effects, and was also tickled at seeing how similar Doc and his team were to Buckaroo Banzai and his team (which made me like "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" even more). You also get a weirdly young Michael Berryman as a prim and proper top hat wearing coroner with a British accent. Filled with tommy guns, vintage yachts, period cars, iconic skyscrapers, and lot of fun action, I quite enjoyed re- watching this childhood favorite.
Review of Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze
