Dr Hermes Reviews - DOC SAVAGE 1937

Back to 1936

"So, Doc...you wanted to show us your new invention, something called a bungee cord?"

LAND OF LONG JUJU (Aug 16, 2001) From January 1937, this is pretty bad. Written by Laurence Donovan, the basic idea is serviceable and there could have been a memorable villain in the Shimba. However, Donovan's style is dense and inaccessible; his writing doesn't pull you into the story, eager to turn the next page. Instead, it almost forces you back away from the book. Probably many readers of adventure stories who first picked up the pulp or the Bantam reprint of this story must have wondered why so many people were Doc Savage fans. The storyline follows the basic two-part structure of most Doc novels. First, in New York, we get hints as to what's going on, with clashing groups of two different African tribes running around Manhattan and Long Island. Then, Doc and his crew head for the unfortunately named Kokoland, where the dying King Udu is defending his throne against an army of mercenaries. Unfortunately, the pace drags and there is no clear progress from event to event. It's an effort to keep reading. A pity, too, because sub-Saharan Africa was the settting of too few Doc adventures. Pat joins Doc and four of his team (Long Tom gives this mess a miss) appear but they're acting strange. Now, these heroes are usually given pretty broad, clear-cut personalities. This is pulp fiction, after all. But even those obvious characterizations aren't quiite captured here. As one example, Doc and his crew are leaving the Hidalgo Trading Company warehouse in the Flying Wing. Attacking African warriors set fire to the interior of the hangar with flaming arrows (!), killing at least one of the hangar support crew (And just who are they, anyway?). Driving away the attackers, Doc uses the powerful exhaust of the Wing to blow out the fire. The wind is strong enough to knock down the front wall, hurling some of the men inside off their feet. And then Doc just flies away, without seeing if any off his staff have been hurt or making sure the man hit by the arrow was dead. Not like the Doc I know! On the other hand, Renny has a great, revealing line. Faced with torture and death, he's only annoyed. "He had a railroad to build." It's really startling that Johnny, the world's foremost archaeologist and geologist apparently believes in the Great Flood of Noah. He remarks that 'it seems the deluge never reached the heights of the Kilimanjaro.' And then there's Pat, hiding for an extended period of time behind an occupied coffin (ewww...), huddled together with the oily Count Cardoti. (And he later asks Pat to marry him! Just what went on behind that coffin, Patricia?) The flying Wing itself is one of the more interesting things in this book. A gas-filled dirigible equipped with jet propulsion, it makes quite an impression. At night, its triangular display of lights, silently rising straight up and then taking off at high speed, reminds me irresistbly of those UFOs that featured so prominently in THE X-FILES. The Africa of LAND OF LONG JUJU has a great many inexplicable features. Piranha, for one. Then there are the Papa Loi and Maman Loi enacting full-scale voodoo ceremonies. Why are Masai warriors using blowguns? And how is that an African medicine man (not called a 'witch doctor' here) happens to speak Mayan? Just where is this Kokoland supposed to be, anyway? The Brazilian area of Africa? The Shimba has the potential to have been a notable villain but not much is done with him. Like Mo-Gwei from METEOR MENACE, he's a European posing as a native. Disguised in a lion head and hide (like Hercules), the Shimba is supposed to be a title given only to someone who has killed a man-eating lion with a spear. On the cover of the Bantam reprint, he is shown as a rather ordinary African warrior with a bushy lion-mane head-dress and a long pin through his nose. And can ANYBODY please tell me what those two things behind him are supposed to be?! They look sort of like tall versions of Cousin Itt from the Addams family!

THE DERRICK DEVIL (June 7, 2001) From February 1937. Lester Dent had a real burst of creativity this time. He throws out half a dozen ideas that another writer would have gotten an entire novel out of, and he keeps surprises coming. Even a veteran fan will smile at the unexpected twists this story takes. After reading some of the drab 1940s books, this one really hit the spot. There's panic in the oil fields around Tulsa, Oklahama as grotesque red amoeboid creatures have been killing workers and digesting the bodies, leaving only clothes behind in a caustic slime. Everyone thinks the jelly-like monsters have been relesased from deep beneath the earth by the drilling.This is more than twenty years before the sci-fi drive-in classic THE BLOB is filmed, but that exactly what these red devils resemble. And there's no obvious hoax either, as Doc and the reader see the things clearly and the gruesome deaths are visible. The Man of Bronze makes one of his best entrances at the beginning of the story. A thug on an airplane blackjacks a girl he intends to abduct. He gets parachutes, sees she's not completely stunned and draws back his weapon....then he screams in agony, because Doc Savage has seized him in a bone-breaking grip. Doc is in his physical prime here, right at the upper levels of human abilities. He jumps six thugs and lays them out. (We learn that in childhood his training had included fighting multiple opponents, always bigger than himself. It's a wonder he didn't turn out completly twisted.) He hits one guard, spins and hits another one and then catches both men before they can drop. Yet he's not infallible or invincible. He has to retreat in some situations and gets caught flat-footed planting something in a getaway car. My favorite moment is when Doc locates a villain after finding the man's broken eyeglasses. It's always enjoyable to see our boy outsmarting everyone around him. This is a little bit of a spoiler but it's not a major plot element. Crooks are holding hostages in an old inoperable submarine that has been moored at the bottom of a river under a houseboat. Wearing a bulletproof clear helmet and full armor, Doc goes to the rescue. Dent keeps coming up with ideas like this, which he tosses in as casual throwaway gags. For a change, Johnny gets most of the time on stage in this story. He goes undercover, seems flustered by the luscious Vida Carlaw (holding her hand "not in an entirely fatherly manner"), and forms an instant dislike for one of the suspects. Johnny is usually the mildest of the five aides and it's funny to see him drop his big words because someone irritates him. This adventure has an unusually high body count, too. There are two feuding criminal gangs, one of which is involved with the red devils, and there are some firefights that leave bodies all over the place. A gangster shoots one worker at a speakeasy, causing another one to have a fatal heart attack watching it, and the gunman thinks this is hilarious. These are the sort of killers that Doc's college seems to be the answer to. In the middle of the rollercoaster of chases and escapes, a bystander gets shot trying to get some information to Doc, who he admires from reading the papers. Doc tells the fatally wounded young man he has been a big help and stays with him as he dies. Lester Dent never uses a lot of pathos; he's most effective when he understates the most touching moments.

THE MENTAL WIZARD (June 16, 2001) From March 1937, this is a solid example of classic Doc Savage. The story has clarity and momentum, building from a puzzling mystery to suspenseful climax. Lester Dent shows the confidence he has in his creations by the creative little details he throws in as the action unfolds. Even though the basic storyline involves enhanced mental powers (including telepathy and illusion-casting), there are none of those awkward, hard to believe moments found in some other books in the series. There is an effective two page prologue which sets the mood, detailing all the explorers and missionaries who have vanished into the headwaters of the Amazons. "What is there in that particular jungle which has kept so many men from coming back?" SPOILER ALERT So be warned. But not much of a spoiler, since the cover and back blurb of the Bantam reprint give it mostly away. This is one of the lost races stories. Before King Tut-Ankh-Amen, the Pharoah Klantic discovered the secret of enhancing human mental ability to an extent that reading minds, controlling others and casting realistic illusions became possible. Feeling that people would abuse this power, he took a small group of followers and sailed into the unknown, ending up in South America. Now thousands of years later, his descendants live inside a hollow statue of the Pharoah, a mile long, lying on its back in thre jungle. Any outsiders who discover them are kept prisoners. And of course, some one does escape, bringing the daughter of the ruler with him. The girl named 'Z' has a cloud of hair which has had each strand coated in gold. Although at genius level, her real importance is in her power to influence the minds of others. She can make people see snakes that aren't there or make people look right at her and not see her. (Hey, Kent Allard,did you ever visit Klantic?) Z can also directly cause emotional changes in people. A wonderful moment is when all of the aides begin to think how wonderful she is, only to realize that she's trying to manipulate Doc's emotions and they're just catching the fringes of her power. When Renny says the girl is lovable and even Long Tom thinks she's sweet, you know something is wrong. Doc glances up to see them all "gazing with mooning eyes at the girl." It's a scary thought but it's also hilarious to visualize. Doc specifically says that the hypnotism he uses, which he 'spent months in India and elsewhere' learning, is a well understood phsychological procedure but what this girl practices is something new and way beyond his ability. I seem to recall in other adventures that telepathy was also treated as if it was real, not a hoax of some kind. There's a heartless soldier of fortune named Amber O'Neel, who tends to call himself 'The Liberator' and he with his gang of native thugs are trying to locate Klantic to find the secret for their own purposes. They join with a would-be usurper named Aug, so there's no shortage of menace here. Since Z's father, the ruler Ki, has her powers to a greater extent and since outsiders are forbidden to leave the secret outpost, Doc and the boys are in trouble no matter who wins. One of the things I enjoy most about Dent's writing is how he makes Doc's amazing abilities seem reasonable. Doc can watch from a distance and tell what the crooks are saying by reading their lips but it's not easy and when they're speaking a foreign language, he really has to concentrate. Later, Doc can follow a conversation in ancient Egyptian but "with great difficulty" since most of the pronunciation was conjecture and proved to be wrong. The inducing of paralysis by manipulating nerve centers is used here but Doc worries about doing it because it's tricky. "Overdoing it might be fatal. He had never had an accident, but he was always careful." We also learn that people paralyzed this way will often hold the same thought until released. My only misgiving about THE MENTAL WIZARD is that all five aides are along for the ride but don't get to do much. It just happens that way. Aside from that, this is a fine example of what fans means by a vintage Doc Savage adventure. It's unusual in that it takes place entirely in Colombia and up the Amazon, with no scenes in New York City. The cover to the Bantam paperback is by James Bama, rendered with his famous meticulous detail and solid figures. Doc is shown standing sideways to the reader, gazing at the huge head of the Klantic statue. It's not quite in my top ten list of covers, mostly because there is no feeling of danger or menace...but it's certainly well done.

THE TERROR IN THE NAVY (March 18, 2004)    This April 1937 adventure is pretty good, your basic middle range Doc Savage story. It has some epic scenes of destruction, a lot of nice interaction between the regulars (including Pat, who gets to shoot down a balloon full of crooks from her own airplane), and a cute glimpse of Doc being tempted by a heartbreaker and having to fight his natural impulses. Unfortunately, I thought the ending was a bit of a letdown and the villain(s) were not impressive. SPOILERS AGAIN..... Now, if you`re a Doc Savage fan and have read your share of the bronze man`s books, then you know the basic formula calls for a lot of hoaxes and misled perceptions. The hulking scaly monster turns out to be a guy in a rubber suit, the strange flaming dragon in the sky is actually a heatseeking missile and so on. In Doc`s universe, there is a reasonable explanation for anything seemingly supernatural and you can count on our hero to figure it out. (Except for UP FROM EARTH`S CENTER but that`s the joker in the deck.) I like this Scooby Doo sort of philosophy well enough, but there are times when the hoax revealed at the end is less believable than the weird phenomena it explains. In this book, when we learn what the mysterious Thing is that has been sinking a dozen US battleships and dragging planes down out of the sky, my reaction was, "Oh, come ON! You mean that`s all?" Just speaking personally, I would have been happier if the mastermind had actually discovered some sort of supermagnetic ray that could whirl destroyers around. Look at REPEL.... a great Doc Savage story.  Be that as it may, for most of the book, the US Navy is facing some inexplicable force which is sinking four or five battleships a night. An embittered inventor called August Atlanta Braun claims his new device is behind all the destruction, but he`s willing to sell his destructo gadget for a hundred million dollars. If the US armed forces don`t feel like paying that much, well it is 1937 and Germany might be interested..... The Navy promptly summons Doc Savage to save the nation (again) but in fact the man of bronze is already up to his corded neck in the case, having been drawn in by a typical plea for help from someone who was killed before he could reach Doc personally. (Just once, I would like to see somebody get to Doc in time, deliver the message about whatever dire menace is on the loose, and then get away safely.)   All five aides climb aboard for this case, but unfortunately every time two are rescued, another two get captured. At one point, Doc yanks open a tiny cabin on a submarine and "not only Monk came tumbling out but also Ham, Renny, Johnny, Long Tom and Pat" as well as another man and woman tangled up in the case. Did the villains jam them in there with a broomstick or something?   For one of the first times in the series, Doc`s stoic emotionless facade starts to slip a bit. A shady lady (who might be a spy or a double agent, I forget) named India Allison is all over him. Now, as you might expect, India would qualify for Playmate of the Year if there had been such a thing in 1937 (even Johnny gets warmed up when he looks at her, and he "felt younger than he had in years"). But what really gets Doc uneasy is that she is such a clingy type. She latches onto his arm with both hands every time she sees him and simply will not let go. For once, the bronze man gets flustered and starts paying a bit too much attention to just how gorgeous this doll really is. Maybe it`s why it seems to take him so long to get anywhere on this case. (He sure seems meek and distracted when negotiating with Braun over the megagizmo.)  Pat gets a bit catty over this and she almost starts a brawl with India. Not only does Pat not warm up to most women in the stories, she definitely tries to keep them at a distance from her cousin and his friends; she`s as much of a fourteen year old as they are.  It`s a treat to see the creative gadgets in use again. None of the other Kenneth Robesons had Lester Dent`s flair for coming up with wild gizmos that seemed plausible and useful, yet at the same time were startling. (Come to think of it, maybe Joel Hodgson could create some new Doc devices; his Invention Exchanges on MST3K sure had the same playful ingenuity.)  My favorite gadget this time is shown as Doc finds himself jumping out of a plane which has had its wings fall off, only to find his parachute has been slashed. Drat! Doc struggles out of his coat and yanks open a small filmy parachute of "fabrikoid", stronger and thinner than silk, which he was wearing over his shirt It works but just barely; the bronze man hits the water harder than he would like and floats on the surface, "not entirely knocked out but also not enthusiastic about immediate activity."   Here is a trick Dent uses to make Doc`s gadgets more believable. They seldom work perfectly, sometimes they don`t really do the trick well enough to be reliable as conventional methods. By pointing out their shortcomings, he makes them much more credible than if they were miraculously perfect.   We should also note that Chemistry is not five feet tall in this story, but instead comes up to about Monk`s knees. Now, Lester Dent was The Man when it comes to writing Doc Savage and he could describe the pet as he saw fit. But I sort of like the way Harold A. Davis had Chemistry as a two-fisted crimefighting ape who could pass for Monk if dressed in appropriate clothes. The slight undertones of screwball comedy in these stories always appealed me as nice breaks in all the destruction and mayhem (a good example in this book, Doc is sitting under a canvas in a submarine to eavesdrop on some crooks and one of them sits down on his lap without realizing it).