Jungle Master (1972)
"Karzan, il favoloso uomo della jungla" (original title)

One of the tragedies of modern times is the loss of the good old Sunday afternoon movie matinée slots on local television programming that back in the glory days of the 1970s would be filled with schlocky B grade movie material like Hammer horror films, low budget Spaghetti Westerns, Charlie Chan movies, and Tarzan adventures. I still recall a neighbor who would simply not be available on certain Sundays because a couple of Tarzan movies would be playing. The natural appeal of the film series is simple to grasp, and once you get down to it the dumber the stories the more enjoyable the film. Just make sure the elephants stampede at some point, include a fight with an alligator or snake, and make sure that Jane is cute enough to help us forgive the intrusion on the adventure.

The Italians & Spaniards made their own "unauthorized" versions of Tarzan of course, slightly altering the name of the character to stuff like "Tarzak", "Zan", "Zambo" and "Karzan", each just slightly different enough to avoid a lawsuit but still evocative of the original Edgar Rice Bourroughs character. Johnny Kissmuller Jr. (is that name for real?) makes a suitably adenoidal vine-swinger, jabbering in mock jungal speak & displaying abdominal muscles in abundance. What is curious is that Karzan does not feature too heavily in this Karzan movie, which concerns itself more with various scenes of stupid Ugly Europeans stumbling around the jungles of darkest Kenya shooting babbling, spear-chucking native types who are apparently too stupid to simply ask the whiteskins "Wassap?" KARZAN is toned-down Jungal Trash, an idiom name that I coined to refer to movies where white skinned caucazoids go to teeming exotic locales & have all sorts of fascinating adventures while the natives carry the luggage. Or, as Spaghetti Western director Miles Deem portrays them, as pop up targets for a somewhat disturbing turkey shoot as they gun down the local populace without ever stopping to reload their pistols. I put the body count in this movie at about 175 dead natives, a plot detail that is appropriately glossed over by concern for one of the European leads who twists his ankle at one point. I mean fun is fun, but if the poor slob can't go nightclub dancing after the safari it doesn't matter how many poor native tribespeople are killed.

What is even more mind-boggling is that this roaming My Lai Massacre Safari Special is supposed to be a family film, complete with a cute chimp & a sexy blond jungal babe for Karzak to make kissy-kissy faces with -- The film's erotic high point comes when Karzak and Sheila the Jungal Hottie kidnap the dark haired Euro Babe from the safari party and take her back to their "Gilligan's Island" inspired tree house. The scene where Sheila drinks coconut milk which suggestively splatters onto her bared, suntanned midriff is just slack jawed enough to not qualify as overtly Freudian in nature, though I at least was disappointed when the dark haired Euro babe merely ate the banana that Sheila gives her. A real opportunity for some jungle smut was wasted, but again it's a family film so Sheila has to lick the coconut milk away herself while Tarzak is outside clowning around with a monkey. Talk about needing to re-evaluate one's priorities.

For a Miles Deem movie it's actually surprisingly polished, though the way the closing "The End" is shown demonstrates Mr. Deem's remarkable ability to shoot a movie dirt cheap, or rather sand cheap. The conclusion of the story is actually laughable, but then again the whole movie is sort of just half there, existing as little more than a way to absorb 83 minutes of your life as painlessly as possible. I kind of like it but then again I had a hangover and stuff like this is better than grinding up aspirins into Coca Cola. Look for KARZAN on a new DVD release by Retromedia struck from an admirably worn Techniscope print on a double bill with one of those sleazy Italian jungle girl movies. Bring your own coconut milk.

4/10: "Relaxingly stupid" is the two word summary I would use.