The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)

This delightful film is my contribution to Tuesday’s Overlooked/Forgotten films and television meme over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom. Don't forget to check out the other fascinating entries over there.

Narrator: They must be the most contented people in the world. They have no crime, no punishment, no violence, no laws, no police, judges, rulers or bosses. They believe that the gods put only good and useful things on the earth for them to use.

The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa are the most contented people in the world, at least in the movie, till one hot savannah afternoon a Coke bottle carelessly tossed out of a passing airplane falls in the peaceful village of the San tribe with a gentle thud. Nothing is the same thereafter.

The villagers, especially the little children, begin to fight over the strange object — their first exposure to a world outside of their own primitive existence — to the extent that it proves injurious to their health, as one kid conks another kid on the head with the glass bottle. Ouch, that hurt!

Peace is shattered, egos clash, tempers flare, and fights break out as nearly every curious villager claims the bottle as his or her own. The innocent tribe has never seen disharmony among their people. Xi, a wise young Bushman played by Namibian San farmer N!xau, sees it too and realises what is happening. He confers with the village elders and decides to return the offending object to the gods — who must have sent it to spread discord among his people. 

Narrator: The one characteristic which really makes the Bushmen different from all the other races on earth is that they have no sense of ownership at all. Where they live, there's really nothing you CAN own: only trees and grass and animals. In fact, these Bushmen have never seen a stone or a rock in their lives. The hardest things they know are wood and bone. They live in a gentle world, where nothing is as hard as rock, steel or concrete.

The gods must be crazy or else why would they rain down glass bottles instead of stuff the Bushmen can use, share among themselves, and live in peace like before. Xi has no answers but he is determined to return the bottle to its divine owner. So, the next morning he sets out with the bottle in one hand and his bow and quiver in the other, but not before consoling his weeping son who doesn't want him to go, or probably doesn't want to see the mysterious object taken away.

 
Narrator: One day, something fell from the sky. Xi had never seen anything like this in his life. It looked like water, but it was harder than anything else in the world. He wondered why the gods had sent this thing down to the earth… It was the strangest and most beautiful thing they had ever seen, and they wondered why the gods had sent it. Pabo (a small boy) got his finger stuck in the thing, and the children thought he was very funny.

The Gods Must Be Crazy, directed by South African director Jamie Uys who gave us the documentary, Beautiful People, ranks in my list of funniest movies ever. The film is peppered with slapstick humour from the time the Coke bottle lands in the unsuspecting village till Xi finally manages to fling it over a cliff — his version of the edge of the world — and returns to his village.

Although the film revolves around Xi and his quest, it has at least two other sub-plots in the form of Andrew Steyn (Marius Weyers), a bumbling but well-meaning biologist who does a soft “yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay…” every time he fumbles and stumbles in the presence of Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo), a school teacher who has newly arrived in the area, and a band of guerrillas straight out of a comic strip. On his way to the edge of the world, Xi crosses paths with Steyn and his assistant M'pudi (Michael Thys), an old and grizzled mechanic, and helps them rescue Thompson and her pupils from the clutches of the  guerrillas led by fat slob Sam Boga (Louw Verwey). 

Released in 1980, The Gods Must Be Crazy has many comic moments…

Like the time when Xi picks up the bottle and flings it high into the air, pleading with the gods to take it back, but the bottle falls right back down and the Bushman takes evasive action just in time.

Or when Xi meets Steyn and M’pudi for the first time and insists they take back their bottle because it has caused enough strife in his village.

M'pudi: He talks about an evil thing (the evil thing being the Coke bottle).

Narrator: The hairy one (M'pudi) said, “We don't want the thing. You have to throw it away yourself.” Xi was very disappointed. He thought it was unfair of the gods to make him throw the thing off the Earth. In fact, he began to doubt if they really were gods.

Or, when Steyn, stranded in the forest with Thompson one night, runs for cover as a rhino, as is its wont, suddenly looms out of nowhere and stamps out the fire. Steyn, his pants down at the moment, makes a mad dash only to collide into Thompson who suspects the poor man of an ulterior motive. 

Narrator: The rhino is the self appointed fire prevention officer. When he sees a fire, he rushes in and stamps it out.

Or when Xi tries to drive Steyn’s jeep standing on the bonnet of the vehicle, his back to the road, so to say, as the clumsy biologist chases it, hops in, and brings it to a halt.

M'pudi: I'm teaching him how to drive, just for the hell of it. There's nothing else to do around here.

Or the time when Xi innocently picks up a rifle and points it at its real owner, a tribesman he meets on his way, and the latter runs for his life, prompting our Bushman to jump in the air and run for his own life as well. Xi runs for a while, stops, turns around, and wonders what scared the fellow off!

Or when Steyn roars past in his jeep and Xi sits bolt upright and looks around frantically.

Narrator: One day, a very noisy animal rushed past where Xi was sleeping. It left very peculiar tracks, as if two enormous snakes had slithered past.

Or when the driver of the jeep carrying the guerrilla chief and his men brakes suddenly and one of the insurgents riding in the back is thrown clear from the vehicle.

Nearly every scene in The Gods Must Be Crazy is funny and evokes instant laughter and where it doesn’t, Xi livens it up with his innocent smile and candour. He is a cute little fellow whose life has turned upside-down because of modern man’s disregard for him and his people and their way of life — simple yet fulfilling. The clash of civilisations is obvious: Xi wants his happy little world to be left alone and he wants no part of yours — you can keep it as long as you dump your Coke bottles elsewhere.

 
Note: The quotes from the film have been sourced from IMDb.

Adolf Hitler in comic-books

You look for one thing, you find something else. I was surfing the internet for some out-of-print books when I came across a comic-book I had never seen before — Daredevil Battles Hitler. Daredevil? Why not Superman? Or Captain America? They would be first choice. Then, I thought, if the Fuhrer can fight The Man Without Fear, he might have also fought the other superheroes. Of course, he has! And that includes The Man of Steel and The First Avenger. So imagine my delight when I found as many as sixteen comic-books featuring Hitler on the covers. Naturally, Adolf is at the receiving end in all the comics. Heel Hitler!

I am sure there are more Hitler comics in cyberspace but these will do for now.

'They drew First Blood, not me.'

 
First Blood is my contribution to Tuesday’s Overlooked/Forgotten films and television meme over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom. Don't forget to check out the other entries there.

“You don't seem to want to accept the fact you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands. A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke. In Vietnam, his job was to dispose of enemy personnel. To kill! Period! Win by attrition. Well, Rambo was the best.”
— Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna) in First Blood (1982)

Pride before fall. Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy) learns the hard way as he and his pride fall right through the skylight of his deserted police station and land at John Rambo's feet.

If only Teasle had listened to Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) early in the 93-minute run First Blood, he could have easily salvaged some of his pride and saved his small town from arson and destruction.

The sheriff doesn't — not when one of his men and two dogs are killed and five others are injured or even when the Vietnam hero ambushes him with his deadly knife. Rambo, his face grim and grimy, warns, "I could have killed 'em all, I could kill you. In town you're the law, out here it's me. Don't push it. Don't push it or I'll give you a war you won't believe. Let it go. Let it go..." (For Rambo, that was a mouthful, I thought.)

But Teasle doesn't let go. He is a stubborn fellow. The State Patrol and the National Guard are finally summoned to ferret out Rambo from the woods.

Sheriff Teasle tells John Rambo to get out of his town.

 
If only the sheriff had left Rambo alone from the beginning. But Teasle who doesn't like "drifters" in his peaceful town drives him to the outskirts of the town where he shows him the way to Portland so he can go and have a bite to eat.

Rambo is equally stubborn. He might have lost it in Vietnam but he knows his rights, at least the right to meet an old friend or have a bite in the town whose sheriff has just expelled him. He walks back but not for long. Teasle, who sees him walking back in his rear-view mirror, swerves his patrol car around sharply and brings Rambo in.

If only Teasle had ignored the Green Beret's return and not taken him to his police station where his men, particularly nasty cop Deputy Sergeant Arthur Gault (Jack Starrett), taunt him and beat him till he likens his treatment to torture he braved in Vietnam, loses it, and beats the crap out of the cops before fleeing on a bike.

The sheriff follows Rambo in dogged pursuit, all the way to the woods, but this time he calls for backup that comprises six men, two dogs and a chopper with trigger-happy Sergeant Gault in it. Together, the hunting party enters the woods but all the men, except for Teasle, fall prey to party-pooper Rambo's guerrilla tactics. Gault falls out of the chopper which serves him right for taking potshots at an unarmed civilian trying to climb down the sheer face of a cliff with bare hands. (You feel giddy looking down from where Rambo is hanging.)

Teasle and his men are trained in boy scouts, not guerrilla warfare. He and his men report to the sick bay at base camp where they have a surprise visitor. "Who the hell are you?" the sheriff barks as Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna) approaches his tent. 

Sheriff Teasle gets a earful from Colonel Trautman.

"I came to get my boy...," the colonel replies. "I recruited him. I trained him. I commanded him for three years in Vietnam. I'd say that makes him mine."

If only Teasle had backed down after Rambo's former boss tells him wryly, "I don't think you understand. I didn't come to rescue Rambo from you. I came here to rescue you from him."

But the sheriff is a stubborn fellow. He goes after Rambo with a 200-strong posse and Colonel Trautman's parting words, advising him to take "a good supply of body bags" with him, ringing in his ears. (Poor Teasle, he's done for.)

I liked First Blood, directed by Ted Kotcheff, the first time I watched it soon after it was released in 1982. I liked it again when I saw it for the umpteenth time yesterday.

John Rambo — Vietnam vet, Green Beret and Congressional Medal of Honour — is all very impressive but for me the movie is not so much about one man's war against a small town's police force as it is about one man's acting that stands out above all — Brian Dennehy.

Since I have never been to America, I don't know what real small-town sheriffs are like. I have only read about them in books and seen them in films. But if I were to make a guess, I think they might be a bit like Sheriff Teasle — proud, fearless, loyal, and stubborn — even if somewhat unreasonable and intolerant at times.

Dennehy brings all those qualities to his sheriff's role as well as a handful of mixed emotions, jumping from one to the other with ease. For instance, he's got this angry and befuddled look on his face, both at the same time, as Rambo goes on the rampage and Trautman instructs him to diffuse the situation. In another scene, he looks totally lost and probably wouldn't have minded a little help from mama. In the final scene on the roof, just before falling through the skylight, Teasle, rifle in hand, scampers from one end of the terrace to the other trying to spot Rambo in the arson night. I thought he looked like a little kid with a toy gun playing cops and robbers with friends.

Dennehy is convincing as the bigoted Sheriff Teasle because he is a very gifted and a natural actor. It's a role that fits him perfectly. His body of work is enormous and I have decided to watch some of his earlier films and television series. My first Brian Dennehy film was Ron Howard's Oscar-winning Cocoon (1985) where he plays Walter, an alien who leads a group of aliens to earth, on an unusual mission.

So then, here's a question: If not Brian Dennehy in First Blood, then who? My choice would be Gene Hackman. I can see the similarities. Can you?

An early 20th century comic-book

 
One of the amazing things about copyright-free material on the internet, or material available under Creative Commons License to put it correctly, is what you stumble upon — the surprise factor. For instance, browsing through Internet Archive I came across an early 20th century comic-book series I’d neither heard of nor read before —  Smilin’ Ed’s Buster Brown Comics.

Tracing its origins on the internet, I found that Buster Brown was originally a comic strip character created in 1902 by renowned cartoonist Richard Felton Outcault, who was associated with the famous Brown Shoe Company. The comic strips revolved around Buster Brown, an impish young boy, his sister Mary Jane, and his American Pit Bull Terrier, Tige, a talking dog.

Later, Smilin’ Ed McConnell, the well-known host of the children's radio and television series, Smilin' Ed's Gang, and Buster Brown came together to launch Smilin' Ed's Buster Brown Gang on the airwaves. By then, the comic strip had faded from public memory and it wasn’t long before the character “was merely the trademark symbol for a shoe company.”

Incidentally, the Brown Shoe Company came into the picture much later though people associated its Brown Shoe with the Buster Brown character. The shoe company offered in-store Buster Brown comics that were written by Hobart Donavan, who wrote all the three stories in the comic-book featured here.

I might be sketchy with the history behind Buster Brown, the comic strip and the radio show, and so I invite readers with better knowledge to fill in the gaping blanks.

The three Smilin’ Ed’s Buster Brown Comics turned out to be a delightful set of stories with colour illustrations that resemble some of the early comic-books, notably Classics Illustrated. All the stories revolve around young lads who go on adventures to prove to their fathers and mentors that they are more men than boys, that they have grown up, and that they can stand shoulder to shoulder alongside adults.

 
The first story in the comic titled Pirate’s Gold is set in 1697 and is about Laddy Whickett, a small boy from London, who gets a job as a cabin boy on His Majesty’s Ship City of Calcutta. On board the ship, Captain Reddy (judging by the name, he would be an Indian from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh) places Laddy under the charge of his first mate Jamie Fitzroy. As the story unfolds, Laddy helps Fitzroy recapture the ship from pirates disguised as crewmen on the ship. His Majesty’s Navy rewards Laddy for "his courage, his wit and his nerve" by appointing him as midshipman in the navy. 

The second story, Little Rabbit’s Warpath, is about Little Rabbit, the son of a Sioux chief, who warns his village about an impending attack by the apaches that enables his father to launch a surprise assault on the enemy and defeat them. As a reward, he is given a new title — Little Fox. No more hunting rabbits for the little lad. In this story, too, Little Rabbit is mentored by Fighting Hawk, a young brave warrior from his village. 

In the third story, titled Cobra Man, Billy and Bunny, the young son and daughter of an American gentleman, help their father’s old friend, the Maharaja of Maripan, expose a plot by the cobra gang, led by the king’s stepbrother, to take over the kingdom. As in the previous stories, Billy and Bunny find a loyal friend in Maru, a big soldier and the king’s trusted lieutenant.

All in all, an entertaining comic-book.

Illustrations: Creative Commons License/www.archive.org

JUKE BOX

Billie Jean by Michael Jackson

Take the beat out of Michael Jackson's songs and there's very little left to listen to. But there's one Jackson song that has remained a favourite with me since his 1982 album Thriller introduced it  —  Billie Jean. I'm willing to ignore his voice for this particular number which has pretty good lyrics and music too. After all these years I still enjoy listening to Thriller and Beat It and I still marvel at how the crotch-grabbing pop sensation beat Elvis Presley's record — beat, beat, beat... 

Phantom battles prehistoric creatures

 
Phantom – the Ghost Who walks, Man Who Cannot Die and Guardian of the Eastern Dark – and Mandrake the Magician – who never reveals the secret of his magic because, well, magicians never tell – have fought all kinds of weird foes – man and animal, beast and alien. In these two covers, Phantom and Mandrake find themselves cornered by strange prehistoric creatures.

 
Phantom tames his Yeti-like foe and transports him to Eden, his very own island zoo where his other animals, both herbivores and carnivores, live in perfect harmony – the former feeding on grass and the latter feeding on fish. The prehistoric ape is called Hzz who later finds a mate named Hrz and they raise a family.

In another comic-book, Phantom captures and trains a stegosaurus and brings him to Eden where the creature takes an immediate liking to Hzz. Together, they guard the Phantom’s beautiful isle.

 
The Phantom of these stories belongs to our generation, the 20th century. Reality, step aside.

Three disaster flicks

It's Tuesday and it's time for yet another edition of Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom.

This week I don't have a review of an overlooked or forgotten film, because I didn't get the time to watch any over the weekend. Now that's not entirely true: I did see a major portion of The Rosary Murders (1987) where the 6'4" Canadian actor Donald Sutherland plays Father Robert Koesler, a priest who hears the confession of a serial killer with a penchant for killing priests and nuns, and can't go to the cops because he is bound by the seal of confession. The movie is based on the novel by William X. Kienzle and is written by Kienzle, Elmore Leonard, and Fred Walton.

Last Tuesday, I had to dig into memory to write about Irreconcilable Differences starring Ryan O'Neal, Shelley Long and a little girl called Drew Barrymore.

This morning I dug again, with a pickaxe and a shovel, and managed to come up with three disaster movies I'd seen and liked in the early eighties. All three films were based on thriller novels, released in the seventies, had a fabulous cast, and were big hits. I have vague recollections of these films. Here they are...

In The Poseidon Adventure (1972), the ever-charming Gene Hackman plays Reverend Frank Scott who steers a motley group of people to safety after their passenger ship, way past its prime, is hit by a tidal wave and turns turtle.

"I said I was gonna get everybody out of here and goddamit I'm gonna do it!" the Reverend shouts.

In the end, I think, there are only six survivors but Reverend Scott is not one of them. I guess he wasn't counting himself.

My vague recollection of The Poseidon Adventure is the tidal wave as it approaches the ill-fated ship on a dark-and-grey night. On the bridge, the captain barks orders to turn the ship around but it's too late. It's not F1, you know.

The movie, based on a book by Paul Gallico and directed by Ronald Neame, also stars Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Carol Lynley, Roddy McDowall, Stella Stevens, Shelley Winters, Pamela Sue Martin, and Leslie Nielsen. 

My second disaster movie is The Towering Inferno (1974) in which a 138-storey glitzy skyscraper in San Francisco erupts into flames on the night of its star-studded opening. The fire is apparently caused by faulty wiring. Fire chief Mike O'Hallorhan (Steve McQueen) and building architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) team up to save lives.

The memorable cast also includes William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire (can you believe that!), Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, O.J. Simpson (can you really believe that!), and the two Roberts, Vaughn and Wagner.

The only memory I have of this film is Newman's character which runs in and out of the building and up and down an elevator or something like that.

Directed by John Guillermin, The Towering Inferno is adapted from the novels of Richard Martin Stern (The Tower) and Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson (The Glass Inferno).

 
I now come to my last disaster flick, Airport 77, which was one of three films inspired by Arthur Hailey’s 1968 novel Airport. The other two were Airport 75 and The Concorde…Airport 79.

Directed by Jerry Jameson, Airport 77 is the story of a hijacked luxury airliner that lands under water, in the Bermuda Triangle. Where else? How to bring up the plane in one piece and rescue the passengers as a whole is the focal point of this movie.

The 747 is piloted by Capt. Don Gallagher (Jack Lemmon) and the rest of the cast includes Lee Grant, Olivia de Havilland (61 at the time, 96 now), Joseph Cotton, James Stewart (he was 69 then), George Kennedy, Christopher Lee, and Kathleen Quinlan.

Not much of a memory, I know.