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 first assembly of the League of Nations, the multi-governmental organization formed as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, is held in Geneva, Switzerland. The League begins to fall apart less than fifteen years later when Germany withdraws. By the onset of World War II it is clear that the League has failed completely.
1959—Clutter Murders Take Place
Four members of the Herbert Clutter Family are murdered at their farm outside Holcomb, Kansas by Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith. The events would be used by author Truman Capote for his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, which is considered a pioneering work of true crime writing. The book is later adapted into a film starring Robert Blake.
1940—Fantasia Premieres
Walt Disney’s animated film Fantasia, which features eight animated segments set to classical music, is first seen by the public in New York City at the Broadway Theatre. Though appreciated by critics, the movie fails to make a profit due to World War II cutting off European revenues. However it remains popular and is re-released several times, including in 1963 when, with the approval of Walt Disney himself, certain racially insulting scenes were removed. Today Fantasia is considered one of Disney’s greatest achievements and an essential experience for movie lovers.
1912—Missing Explorer Robert Scott Found
British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his men are found frozen to death on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, where they had been pinned down and immobilized by bad weather, hunger and fatigue. Scott’s expedition, known as the Terra Nova expedition, had attempted to be the first to reach the South Pole only to be devastated upon finding that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them there by five weeks. Scott wrote in his diary: “The worst has happened. All the day dreams must go. Great God! This is an awful place.”
1933—Nessie Spotted for First Time
Hugh Gray takes the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster while walking back from church along the shore of the Loch near the town of Foyers. Only one photo came out, but of all the images of the monster, this one is considered by believers to be the most authentic.
1969—My Lai Massacre Revealed
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai massacre, which had occurred in Vietnam more than a year-and-a-half earlier but been covered up by military officials. That day, U.S. soldiers killed between 350 and 500 unarmed civilians, including women, the elderly, and infants. The event devastated America’s image internationally and galvanized the U.S. anti-war movement. For Hersh’s efforts he received a Pulitzer Prize.
