It took almost 40 years for Hollywood to make a movie from Kenneth Robeson’s Doc Savage book series. This popular pulp hero had everything an adventure loving kid could ask for, exotic locales, dastardly villains and a motley crew of sidekicks covering every eventuality. It’s too bad Hollywood screwed it up. Doc Savage: Man of Bronze was produced by George Pal, the special effects master behind When Worlds Collide, War Of the Worlds and The Time Machine, and while those movies had some comic relief, they still had a healthy respect for the source material. Although ex-Tarzan Ron Ely is perfect as Doc, Pal and director Michael Anderson turn a straight-ahead adventure story into a camp comedy without laughs, excitement or characters we care about. The end result is a great-looking (they did get the period down) but empty failure. There has been talk about a new Doc Savage movie for years but I think this one scared Hollywood away.
4/10
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