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In 1981, Italian genre specialist Antonio Margheriti saw Steven Spielberg‘s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” for the first time; depending on who’s telling the story, it was either while Margheriti was visiting Los Angeles on business or at the Venice Film Festival. Either way, the movie’s effect on Margheriti was undeniable and inspired swift action — four months after he saw and loved “Raiders,” the director was on location in the Philippines shooting “The Hunters of the Golden Cobra,” an homage to Spielberg’s adventure that kicked off a whole series of “Indiana Jonesploitation” movies in Italy, three of which would be directed by Margheriti.
Those three Margheriti takes on Indiana Jones — “Hunters of the Golden Cobra” (1982), “The Ark of the Sun God” (1984), and “Jungle Raiders” (1985) — have been lovingly remastered by the exploitation enthusiasts at Severin and collected in the label’s new 4K UHD and Blu-ray boxed set “Antonio Margheriti & the Jungles of Doom: His ’80s Adventure Films.” The collection includes not only new scans from the original camera negatives but also several hours of interviews and visual essays that provide essential context for these movies, both within Italian genre cinema and Margheriti’s filmography.
The Jonesploitation movies are in keeping with Margheriti’s general modus operandi for most of his career, which was to ride the crest of whatever trend was successful in the moment and feed the audience’s appetite for more. He wasn’t an original thinker, but he was a craftsman of incredible range and flexibility who moved back and forth between horror, westerns, giallo, sci-fi, and whatever other genre happened to be in vogue at the time.
In fact, the Jonesploitation trilogy grew out of Margheriti’s riff on an entirely different genre: the late-1970s Vietnam War movie. After the success of “The Deer Hunter,” “Coming Home,” and “Apocalypse Now,” Margheriti headed to the Philippines to make “The Last Hunter,” the first European combat film set in Vietnam rather than World War II or earlier wars. Margheriti’s reason for choosing the Philippines as a location was simple: Francis Ford Coppola had shot “Apocalypse Now” there, and Margheriti moved in on the still-standing sets Coppola had left behind and used them to get maximum production value for his rip-off.
Margheriti loved shooting in the Philippines, and he also loved shooting with actor David Warbeck (Lucio Fulci’s “The Beyond”), who would smoothly slide from “The Last Hunter” into a role as a Harrison Ford facsimile in “Golden Cobra.” Warbeck and John Steiner play a pair of World War II veterans on the trail of a supernatural relic (the Golden Cobra of the title) whose adventures recall those of Indiana Jones but add a lot of Margheriti flavor — most notably in the form of the exceptional miniature work and a bit of genre cross-pollination (the movie finds added texture and specificity in combining an Indiana Jones-esque jungle milieu with World War II action).
“The Hunters of the Golden Cobra” was a hit, so Margheriti reunited most of his cast and crew for “The Ark of the Sun God” two years later, this time shooting in Turkey rather than the Philippines. If “Cobra” combines the combat picture with Indiana Jones-style adventure, “Sun God” brings James Bond into the mix — there’s as much 007 influence as Spielberg on this story of a thief (Warbeck again) who survives car chases, kidnappings, elaborate traps, and an ancient curse in his pursuit of a magical scepter. Given that Spielberg always wanted to make a James Bond movie but opted for “Raiders” when George Lucas told him he had something even better than James Bond, the combination of reference points is quite fascinating.
David Warbeck and John Steiner are absent for the trilogy’s third entry, “Jungle Raiders,” which returns to the Philippines and casts “Peyton Place” star Christopher Connelly as the surrogate Indiana Jones. “Jungle Raiders” is the best of Margheriti’s Jonesploitation movies, thanks to the casting of spaghetti Western legend Lee Van Cleef as a scheming government operative and some eccentric touches like a five-year-old kid who has an unusually tender relationship with a cobra. Once again, the miniature work is exceptional (particularly in a rousing car chase), and Connelly brings a relaxed sense of humor to his struggles with death cults, double-crosses, and unstable volcanoes as he tries to find the legendary “Ruby of Gloom.”
In spite of being referenced in both “Inglourious Basterds” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Antonio Margheriti remains a bit less celebrated than many of his peers in Italian genre cinema — he doesn’t have the name recognition of a Dario Argento or Mario Bava or even Sergio Martino, probably because he was so varied in his tastes. He wasn’t primarily associated with one genre the way Argento was with horror or Sergio Leone was with Westerns. He’s also among the least flamboyant of Italian stylists, fitting more in the classical Hollywood tradition of the invisible craftsman than the auteur — he’s more Michael Curtiz or Victor Fleming than Sam Fuller or Alfred Hitchcock.
In his own modest way though, Margheriti is a director whose work provides abundant rewards for the viewer, and the “jungle” trilogy is a great gateway to his oeuvre — fast, funny, and rousing, these movies distill the pleasures of the “real” Indiana Jones movies to their essence and make it clear why Margheriti was able to sustain a career that lasted 40 years and yielded over 50 films and television shows. An imitator rather than an innovator, Margheriti nevertheless raised his imitations to the level of art through his sheer professionalism and passion — two qualities that make “Antonio Margheriti & the Jungles of Doom” essential viewing.
“Antonio Margheriti & The Jungles of Doom” is now available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Severin.
