I have to admit that I put this one in for laughs: I collect vintage import VHS and managed to score a partially LBX tape of this deliriously goofy but surprisingly watchable low budget TARZAN ripoff from 1972. My main interest was in the presence of Italian cult actor Raf Baldessare (see WEB OF THE SPIDER), and just by looking at the credits I could tell he would be cast in the role of the sneering, Nazi-like great white hunter, and that the film would have the racial sensitivity of a THREE STOOGES short in the way it depicted Native African cultures.
That much was correct, but I was quite surprised to find a passable little adventure tale here, combining equal parts of TARZAN, THE DEFIANT ONES, Hammer's wonderfully awful PREHISTORIC WOMEN, and some hint of what would later be PAPILLION and my beloved YOR, HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE, complete with actual location photography filmed in -- believe it or not -- Uganda and Tanzania that found plenty of time for shots of the local sights, and the whole film pulsing with a FABULOUS musical score from Marcello Gambini. ZAMBO even has his own theme song ... I'd nearly kill for a soundtrack album.
THE PLOT: Brad Harris plays one of two convicts sent to rot in an African prison for a murder he didn't commit & manages to escape from a transport train whilst handcuffed to another convict whom he of course first hates & then finds respect for. The two fight a losing battle to survive the wilds of the jungle, with Harris the survivor who disappears into the primordial forests to find a certain amount of fame as "Zambo", who is sort of a cross between Robin Hood and Sam J. Jones' FLASH GORDON dressed up like TARZAN: He acts as a sort of self-appointed big game ranger, heroic defender of the native flora + fauna, guru saint to the native tribes-people (whom he convincingly defends as being more civilized than the modern world), and all around Phantom-like super hero. He even has a little native boy as a sidekick, and can "understand" the animals & summon them when needed.
Through reasons to obscure to bother with, a "scientific expedition" led by Daniela Vargas (see CALTIKI THE IMMORTAL MONSTER) and Italian film legend Attilio Dottesio (see basically every Spaghetti western not made by Sergio Leone) engages the local great white hunter (Baderlasse, with a goatee & waxed mustache) to help them find this legendary Zambo, who supposedly has learned the secrets of the ancient peoples who once had a city in the jungles. Baderlasse is also under a private contract to bring Zambo in dead or alive, and with the presence of blond Eurobabe Giesela Hahn (famed for her roles in such epics as COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS, ALIEN CONTAMINATION, and Jess Franco's DEVIL HUNTER or Il Cacciatore di uomini) you can tell that derring-do, native intrigue, fairly fought duels to the death, and a sort of clean natured macho heroism awaits viewers preceptive enough to realize what a special little movie this is.
It's essentially Jungal Sleaze, a term I cooked up to describe potboilers set in exotic, "jungly" locales where imported Caucasian types run around dressed up in Bwahna suits whilst native commotions and mysteries from the past manifest themselves in various entertaining and/or predictable ways. But what makes ZAMBO somewhat special is that it was actually filmed in the element it was supposed to depict, not just on some decorated indoors Cinematalia sound stage in Rome bedecked with potted palms (ala PREHISTORIC WOMEN, the SFX miniatures from YOR or Amando de Ossorio's NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS). They actually went to Tanzania and scouted locations or whatever, and for that matter this must have had a bit of a budget: The opening credits are shown in the film's original 2:35:1 Techniscope widescreen ratio, though sadly the rest of the tape I found unwinds in a sort of 1/4 LBX format that hints at a beautiful little movie, if an original print can ever be unearthed (knock knock, Blue Underground??).
The film is also surprisingly clean cut, good natured and suitable for anyone who likes adventures with cunning, resourceful heroes who have a sort of naive earnestness about them -- like Jones' Flash or Reb Brown's Yor. And like YOR there were a couple of surprisingly dramatic & tragic turns to the script which I will speak nothing of: This is a movie that actually delivered 91 minutes or so of nonstop INTEREST to someone who absolutely despises formulaic Hollywood programming films. The musical score is fabulous, the story created genuine interest within me about all of the events & people depicted, and while the ending was sort of weak it suggested to me that this may have been planned as the first of a series of ZAMBO adventures, though sadly the IMDb cites only this one.
To the folks who have been voting 2's on this and not bothering to go into why they found it so awful, I only have two words: LIGHTEN UP. No this doesn't have the production values of an Indiana Jones thriller or what have you, but what they did with the relatively modest budget and talents of the people who were involved is actually quite remarkable for an Italian made "B" movie -- Sort of a Spagtetti Tarzan, if you will, and it beats the heck out of anything I've seen up on a big screen since that first Hobbit movie, which for me is saying quite a lot. Highly recommended, though perhaps a bit violent for the tykes, but good luck finding it for home video. Mine came all the way from Greece, and it ain't going anywhere.
That much was correct, but I was quite surprised to find a passable little adventure tale here, combining equal parts of TARZAN, THE DEFIANT ONES, Hammer's wonderfully awful PREHISTORIC WOMEN, and some hint of what would later be PAPILLION and my beloved YOR, HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE, complete with actual location photography filmed in -- believe it or not -- Uganda and Tanzania that found plenty of time for shots of the local sights, and the whole film pulsing with a FABULOUS musical score from Marcello Gambini. ZAMBO even has his own theme song ... I'd nearly kill for a soundtrack album.
THE PLOT: Brad Harris plays one of two convicts sent to rot in an African prison for a murder he didn't commit & manages to escape from a transport train whilst handcuffed to another convict whom he of course first hates & then finds respect for. The two fight a losing battle to survive the wilds of the jungle, with Harris the survivor who disappears into the primordial forests to find a certain amount of fame as "Zambo", who is sort of a cross between Robin Hood and Sam J. Jones' FLASH GORDON dressed up like TARZAN: He acts as a sort of self-appointed big game ranger, heroic defender of the native flora + fauna, guru saint to the native tribes-people (whom he convincingly defends as being more civilized than the modern world), and all around Phantom-like super hero. He even has a little native boy as a sidekick, and can "understand" the animals & summon them when needed.
Through reasons to obscure to bother with, a "scientific expedition" led by Daniela Vargas (see CALTIKI THE IMMORTAL MONSTER) and Italian film legend Attilio Dottesio (see basically every Spaghetti western not made by Sergio Leone) engages the local great white hunter (Baderlasse, with a goatee & waxed mustache) to help them find this legendary Zambo, who supposedly has learned the secrets of the ancient peoples who once had a city in the jungles. Baderlasse is also under a private contract to bring Zambo in dead or alive, and with the presence of blond Eurobabe Giesela Hahn (famed for her roles in such epics as COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS, ALIEN CONTAMINATION, and Jess Franco's DEVIL HUNTER or Il Cacciatore di uomini) you can tell that derring-do, native intrigue, fairly fought duels to the death, and a sort of clean natured macho heroism awaits viewers preceptive enough to realize what a special little movie this is.
It's essentially Jungal Sleaze, a term I cooked up to describe potboilers set in exotic, "jungly" locales where imported Caucasian types run around dressed up in Bwahna suits whilst native commotions and mysteries from the past manifest themselves in various entertaining and/or predictable ways. But what makes ZAMBO somewhat special is that it was actually filmed in the element it was supposed to depict, not just on some decorated indoors Cinematalia sound stage in Rome bedecked with potted palms (ala PREHISTORIC WOMEN, the SFX miniatures from YOR or Amando de Ossorio's NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS). They actually went to Tanzania and scouted locations or whatever, and for that matter this must have had a bit of a budget: The opening credits are shown in the film's original 2:35:1 Techniscope widescreen ratio, though sadly the rest of the tape I found unwinds in a sort of 1/4 LBX format that hints at a beautiful little movie, if an original print can ever be unearthed (knock knock, Blue Underground??).
The film is also surprisingly clean cut, good natured and suitable for anyone who likes adventures with cunning, resourceful heroes who have a sort of naive earnestness about them -- like Jones' Flash or Reb Brown's Yor. And like YOR there were a couple of surprisingly dramatic & tragic turns to the script which I will speak nothing of: This is a movie that actually delivered 91 minutes or so of nonstop INTEREST to someone who absolutely despises formulaic Hollywood programming films. The musical score is fabulous, the story created genuine interest within me about all of the events & people depicted, and while the ending was sort of weak it suggested to me that this may have been planned as the first of a series of ZAMBO adventures, though sadly the IMDb cites only this one.
To the folks who have been voting 2's on this and not bothering to go into why they found it so awful, I only have two words: LIGHTEN UP. No this doesn't have the production values of an Indiana Jones thriller or what have you, but what they did with the relatively modest budget and talents of the people who were involved is actually quite remarkable for an Italian made "B" movie -- Sort of a Spagtetti Tarzan, if you will, and it beats the heck out of anything I've seen up on a big screen since that first Hobbit movie, which for me is saying quite a lot. Highly recommended, though perhaps a bit violent for the tykes, but good luck finding it for home video. Mine came all the way from Greece, and it ain't going anywhere.