Her Majesty the Queen of the Jungle is unavailable—she's gone hunting today.
Several years ago we talked about the lost world adventure Luana la figlia delle foresta vergine and showed you its Italian poster. Today we’re showing you the much cooler U.S. promo, which was painted by Frank Frazetta, one of the kings of fantasy art. His work was used for numerous promos, but this is one of our favorites. It wasn’t made specifically for the movie. It was adapted from one of his many earlier pieces, below. You can see a little more Frazetta here, as well as here, where we talked about the novelization of the movie.
She's tougher than Tarzan, meaner than Sheena, and lustier than Gungala.
You can look at this cover and correctly assume that we’ve shared it because it was painted by Frank Frazetta, considered by many to be the master of sword and sorcery art. It’s a beautiful piece, rightly famous. Alan Dean Foster is a master too. He isn’t what you’d call a significant author in the sense that he’s produced lauded original material, but he may be the king of movie novelizations. Amongst his output: The Black Hole, Clash of the Titans, Outland, Starman, Pale Rider, and The Chronicles of Riddick, as well as novelized series based on Star Wars, Star Trek, and Alien.
We love Foster for his Star Wars sequel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which came out before The Empire Strikes Back (notice we don’t bother with that Episode nonsense) and followed Luke and Leia—not siblings in Foster’s universe—as they adventured on strange worlds and discovered their love for each other. We still think the film series should have followed Foster’s lead, but whatever.
His Luana is a novelization of the 1968 movie of the same name starring Mei Chen Chalais, which we talked about a while back. Sometimes novelizations are published before the film, sometimes after. Foster published Luana six years after the film in 1974 for reasons that are obscure. It was among his first published books. While template for a novelization is provided by the filmmakers, the author is who gives it color and life.
Foster fulfills that duty with obvious relish, mining literary and cinematic antecedents like Tarzan, Tarzana, Gungala, Sheena, Shuna, and Ka-Zar for familiar tropes. A kilometer long pit filled with army ants? A lion and panther, both larger than any ever seen before, working in tandem with a huge chimp? A pitched battle between blowgun wielding Tanzanian tribesmen and an expedition of white explorers? A secret city of solid gold buildings? As lost world tales go, by standing on the shoulders of his predecessors, Foster crafts something better than average. And far better than the movie too.
My designer told me it would be a daring dress but this is a little ridiculous.
Vietnamese actress Mei Chen, aka Mei Chen Chalais, tries on a dress and immediately realizes her designer got her request for a plunging neckline confused. Chen isn’t well known today, but she’ll always have a place in our hearts for her lost world film Luana. And this crazy dress. The photo is from 1968 and first appeared in the magazine Girl Illustrated.
One good swing deserves another, and since we screenedTarzana, sesso selvaggio, we thought we’d check out another Italian female Tarzan movie, 1968’s Luana la figlia della foresta vergine. Basically, a man who disappeared into the African jungle many years ago is sought by the daughter he left back in civilization. The father had taken a second wife who bore him a second daughter. Unbeknownst to the first daughter, her father and his new wife died, and the second daughter grew up in the jungle alone, befriended by birds, primates, and an assortment of big cats. So the first daughter leads a jungle expedition and ends up stumbling upon a half sister that spends her time swinging on vines from water hole to water hole.
Describing the premise of this movie was probably more trouble than it was worth. All we really needed to say is that it’s a film that features hot French actress actress Evi Mirandi and hot Vietnamese actress Mey Chen, aka Mei Chen Chalais, who has no lines at all but looks great running around in a loincloth. She also knows the jungle well enough to avoid the carnivorous flowers, something that—crucially—can’t be said of others. The rest is unimportant. The poster art above is interesting, we think. It’s signed, illegibly, and nobody has yet determined who the artist was. Someone in Italy needs to work that out. We’ll just wait here trying to decide whether Luana la figlia della foresta vergine was actually any good. It premiered today in 1968.
The New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret U.S. Department of Defense history of the country’s political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers reveal that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, and that four presidential administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had deliberately misled the public regarding their intentions toward Vietnam.
1978—Son of Sam Goes to Prison
David Berkowitz, the New York City serial killer known as Son of Sam, is sentenced to 365 years in prison for six killings. Berkowitz had acquired his nickname from letters addressed to the NYPD and columnist Jimmy Breslin. He is eventually caught when a chain of events beginning with a parking ticket leads to his car being searched and police discovering ammunition and maps of crime scenes.
1963—Buddhist Monk Immolates Himself
In South Vietnam, Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burns to death after dousing himself with gasoline and lighting a match. He does it to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the Ngô Đình Diệm led government, choosing a busy Saigon intersection for his protest. An image of the monk being consumed by flames as he sits crosslegged on the pavement, shot by Malcolm Browne, wins a Pulitzer Prize and becomes one of the most shocking and recognizable photos ever published.
1935—AA Founded
In New York City, Dr. Robert Smith and William Griffith Wilson, who were both recovering alcoholics, establish the organization Alcoholics Anonymous, which pioneers a 12-step rehabilitation program that is so helpful and popular it eventually spreads to every corner of the globe.
1973—John Paul Getty III Is Kidnapped
John Paul Getty III, grandson of billionaire oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy. The elder Getty ignores a ransom demand for $17 million, thinking it is a joke. When John Paul’s ear later arrives in the mail along with a note promising further mutilation, he negotiates the ransom down to $2.9 million, which he pays only on the condition that John Paul repay him at four percent interest. Getty’s kidnappers are never caught.
Swapping literature was a major subset of midcentury publishing. Ten years ago we shared a good-sized collection of swapping paperbacks from assorted authors.
