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Retromedia Entertainment’s “Italian Jungle Collection” DVD features two European
bush adventures patterned after Hollywood’s hugely successful Tarzan franchise.
Edgar Rice Burroughs published his first Tarzan novel in 1912 and there were nine
Tarzan films in the silent era alone. The heroic character didn’t become a going
cinematic concern until Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Johnny Weissmuller vehicles of the
1930s and 40s. Over the next few decades, the King of the Apes’ loincloth would
pass to a number of actors and athletes, among them Buster Crabbe, Herman Brix,
Lex Barker, Denny Miller, Gordon Scott, Jock Mahoney, Mike Henry and Ron Ely. It
was inevitable that Italy, having exhausted the sundry possibilities of such shirtless
Greco-Roman titans as Hercules, Maciste, Ursus, Samson and Goliath, would want to
give the more cost effective Tarzan game a go.
A co-production of Italy and West Germany, Luana (Luana la figlia delle
foresta vergine, 1968) stars Netherlands-born actor Glenn Saxson, who had
played the title roles in Umberto Lenzi’s Kriminal (1966) and Alberto de
Martino’s Django Shoots First (Django spara per primo, 1966). Sporting a
two-day growth of beard, Saxson rocks a pre-Indiana Jones world-weary grubbiness
as explorer George Barrett, a self-professed beachcomber and “friend to all and
none” hired by beautiful Isobel Donovan (Evi Marandi, of Mario Bava’s Planet of
the Vampires). The expedition to find the remains of Isobel’s scientist father,
whose plane went down fifteen years earlier in the jungles of Darkest Africa while
searching for a rare plant, is joined by the late Derek Donovan’s business partner,
Norman Albright (Pietro Tordi), who has designs on the plant that are less than
scientific. As bad luck plagues the expedition, Barrett finds himself falling for Isobel,
whose wears a charm bracelet identical to one he had seen on a mysterious jungle
girl who once saved him from certain death.
Luana commits the cardinal sin of giving away too much information early
on and having very little to fill its interminable second act. It’s no mystery that Isobel
and the tree-swinging Luana (Mei Chen, from Jean Rollin’s Rape of the
Vampire) will turn out to be half sisters or that Albright will be revealed as a
world class bastard with no regard for human life. The bulk of the film is taken up
with safari stock footage while the principals tramp around about a potted jungle
constructed within a corner of a cramped studio soundstage. Interest picks up a bit
when the elusive plant turns out to be a monstrously proportioned man-eater (think
the love child of Audrey II and Caltiki the Immortal Monster) but the wrong villain
gets swallowed too early and the actual denouement (a dive on the submerged
wreckage of Donovan’s airplane) is anticlimactic. Mei Chen may not be a very
compelling “daughter of the virgin forest” but Evi Marandi does get a couple of
near-nude scenes that surely made male moviegoers stand up and take notice forty
years ago.
Although the keepcase for this all-region “flipper” DVD claims the presentation of
Luana is full frame (1.33:1), the transfer is actually letterboxed closer to
1.66:1. The image is slightly better than bootleg quality, and on par for most
Retromedia releases. Colors are never vibrant but as long as viewers don’t have
their hearts set on verdant jungle greens, the image is serviceable – especially for a
forgotten film with a very narrow appeal. The monaural English dub is the only
soundtrack option (even Luana’s chimp companion sounds like he was revoiced by
the English Language Dubber’s Association).
A hardbodied non-entity named Johnny Kissmuller, Jr. is Karzan, Jungle
Lord (Karzan, il favoloso uomo della jungla, 1972) but doesn’t turn up
until the thing is more than halfway over. The bulk of this tedious trek across the
Serengheti is taken up with an expedition to find a specimen of “white ape”
glimpsed on a remote plateau – a safari underwritten by titled scientist Lord Carter
(Roger Browne, also on hand for Guido Malatesta’s similar Samoa, Queen of the
Jungle) and guided by avaricious explorer Captain Fox (former Italian matinee
idol Ettore Manni). Also along for the ride are photojournalist Steve Wood (Jerry
Ross) and the dark-eyed Dr. Monica Cromwell (Melù Valente), who finds the
washboard-abbed Karzan far less favoloso than his slinky treehousemate
Shiran (Simonetta Vitelli, daughter of director Demofilo Fidani). When Carter et
al grab Shiran as a specimen and beat it back to civilization, Lord Karzan gives
chase, enduring a gauntlet of jungle predators to recapture his lady love.
Karzan, Jungle Lord benefits from greater location photography and less
reliance on studio interiors, giving the production a slightly more expensive feel.
The hunting party is also given an interesting delineation between those in it for the
thrill of the hunt and those out to serve science and humanity; the risibly verbose
dialogue seems to be a commentary on the superficial over-refinement of civilized
characters whom we suspect will soon prove to be baser than the jungle dwellers
they track. Frustratingly, Karzan never really makes good on the promise of
this stylistic choice, dropping character development for asides of rote slaughter
(African aboriginals pop up as foot-stomping, ooga-booga-spouting shooting gallery
targets) and lame comic relief (at least we think Karzan’s battle with an
Italian stuntman in a gorilla suit is supposed to be funny). Suspicions that all of the
above was written by monkeys is actually confirmed by the film’s closing shot.
Karzan, Jungle Lord is presented in its intended Techniscope aspect ration
of 2.35:1. The image is somewhat soft but reasonably colorful and the mono English
soundtrack, while hardly robust, is at least noise-free. Retromedia’s “rumble in the
jungle” (“3 Hours of Savage Thrills”) double feature is attractively packaged, with
some cool Frazetta-style cover art carried over to the very spare menu screens.
While each feature is chaptered, no chapter list is included and there are no extras.
For more information about The Italian Jungle Collection, visit Image Home Entertainment.
To order The Italian Jungle Collection, go to
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by Richard Harland Smith
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