If there’s one thing the Italian film industry was great at in the second half of the 20th century, it was leaping with abandon into every single bankable genre made exploitable by a big American hit. Jaws? Star Wars? Dawn of the Dead? (Hey, Dario Argento was actually involved in that one!) Ten more just like it, immediatamente! There are Italian knock-offs in multiple genres: shark movies, space films, zombie romps, etc. And when a certain whip-wielding archaeologist debuted in 1981, it wasn’t long before there were plenty of treasure-hunting clones. Just look at director Antonio Margheriti’s “Indiana Jonesploitation” trilogy, which “borrowed” many elements from the first film in the Lucasfilm franchise, 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Severin Films – purveyors of archival-quality physical home video releases for a wide range of cult genre gems – now presents a box set of Margheriti’s Raiders rip-offs in 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray. This is a visual quality that none of these films were ever meant to achieve; they look beautiful. It’s also a wonderfully complete experience as far as dubbing and subtitle options, with both original Italian and English dubs, and captioning for all options. With all of that, and bonus features included with each film, Antonio Margheriti & The Jungles of Doom: His ‘80s Adventure Films is the way to experience this triple slice of Italian-style schlock.
The “Trilogy” As a Whole
Margheriti’s trilogy comprises three films: The Hunters of the Golden Cobra (1982), The Ark of the Sun God (1984), and Jungle Raiders (1985). Before we look at each movie individually, let’s cover some common ground (and remember, these films aren’t actually connected narratively; it’s just a thematic trilogy). First, no matter what flaws these films have, they’re all trying really hard. They make superb use of exotic, evocative locations; utilize charming and pretty damn effective model sequences for airplane and car chase thrills; and remain largely “family friendly” (Jungle Raiders may be just a bit more violent than the other two). They also all have enthusiastically sung, often nonsensical Bond-like songs that play over the opening and/or end credits. You can often feel the leads in each of these movies having fun together, and that goes a long way to smoothing over the rougher patches.
The films share a lot of cast and crew members; our most obvious visual throughline is Margheriti regular and close friend Luciano Pigozzi, who appears in all of them. The only overall negative is that some of the English captioning is unfortunately a bit dodgy. The most egregious examples are on Hunters, which features mistakes like river “rapids” being called “rappers,” and the words “hearken” and “desecrator” written as “Arcan” (what?) and “desiccator.” If you’d like me to edit the subtitles before future releases, Severin, I am available for a reasonable fee; the rest of your work, however, is excellent.
On to each movie, with a little breakdown of key elements, references, and bonus features:
The Hunters of the Golden Cobra (1982)
It’s the Philippines in 1945 (not that the film does a lot to convince us of the year beyond a few uniforms and planes), and American Bob Jackson (NZ actor David Warbeck) and Brit David Franks (Brit John Steiner) face competitors around every corner as they go on a quest to find a possibly supernatural gold snake. Warbeck may be great at pulling faces, but he doesn’t quite have Harrison Ford’s roguish charm. There’s a bit too much shaky handheld camerawork, attempts at humor don’t quite click, the story doesn’t build the stakes very well, and the movie also lacks a musical score that can pump you up like John Williams’ Raiders compositions.
There’s also some problematic if predictable infantilizing of indigenous people, and we really get next to no real background or development in our main characters, but the movie did surprise me by not revealing one particular character as a villain. An inventive use of lighted gelatin makes for a pretty good lava cavern, Almanta Suska does a nice job doing double duty as twins Julie and April, and there’s a fun bus-based action sequence. Ultimately, this is the least of the three movies in this box… but that’s not bad.
