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Tales of the Gold Monkey: The Complete Series (TV)
R1 - America - Shout! Factory Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (15th July 2010). |
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The Show
 Major mainstream success for a genre style film kicks off a series of imitators in different forms, bringing a huge fad in wake of one film’s profitability. After “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) revealed itself to be a huge hit, mostly because it’s a masterpiece, you had your adventure imitators like “Romancing the Stone” (1984) or in TV “Tales of the Gold Monkey” (1982-1983). Going for a similar 1930’s feel “Gold Monkey” even features a similar golden statue as the opening plot point and villainous Nazi’s but instead takes a turn to aviation and focuses on the rougeish pilot Jake Cutter (Stephen Collins) and his adventures around the South Pacific in 1938. Teaming up with alcoholic mechanic/comic relief Corky (Jeff MacKay), French bar-owner and often mission instigator Louie (Ron Moody, pilot; Roddy McDowall, rest of series) and U.S. spy/Jake’s love interest Sarah (Caitlin O’Heaney). The gang goes on different adventures flying from island to island delivering goods and fighting off baddies like Nazis or the stereotypical dragon lady Princess Koji (Marta DuBois). What’s admirable is that the show takes its adventure status seriously by giving out mystical plots like a magical golden monkey statue with killer apes guarding it and ordinary ones like the assassination of political figures. They have some romping times and roam around in their planes, but it’s all with a few helpings of cheese and some corny jokes thrown in the mix. The problematic aspects of the show like Princess Koji and her ‘barbaric’ island of seemingly feudal micro-japan reify the old 30’s stereotypes but this time with just 80’s actors. However Collins manages to pull off the TV adventure hero fairly well, going for the innocent looks and the random punching scenes, but he doesn’t quite have the charisma to carry the entire show. The backup and comic relief characters are fairly stock and so the actor’s don’t really have to pull a lot of weight to make them work and don’t seem to feel the need to exert themselves to do so. It’s nice to see Roddy McDowall outside the monkey suit and doing some fun work here, even though there are semi-sentient apes as villains in then first episode. But really what “Tales of the Gold Monkey” comes down to is a predecessor for the great “TaleSpin” (1990-1994). “Gold Monkey” is almost a live action “TaleSpin” that came ten years before but with more racial undertones and less exciting adventures. Sure the adventures of Jake and gang can be fun, but they tend to sag in the middle and drag through the adventure rather than just pushing through. It’s really not a bad show, but I had trouble getting involved with the characters and once I got past the recurring jokes, like the German priest in short shorts who is a secret Nazi that also loves to have sex with the native women under the guise of blessing them, the series gets a little less fun to watch. The series ran for a total of 21 episodes, including a double length pilot. The episodes include: - “Tales of the Gold Monkey” - “Shanghaied” - “Black Pearl” - “Legends are Forever” - “Escape from Death Island” - “Trunk from the Past” - “Once a Tiger…” - “Honor Thy Brother” - “The Lady and the Tiger” - “The Late Sarah White” - “The Sultan of Swat” - “Ape Boy” - “God Save the Queen” - “High Stakes Lady” - “Force of Habit” - “Cooked Goose” - “Last Chance Louie” - “Naka Jima Kill” - “Boragora or Bust” - “A Distant Shout of Thunder” - “Mourning Becomes Matuka”
Video
In it’s original full screen 1.33:1 television aspect ratio the show looks about as good as you could expect from a cult 80’s show that somehow found it’s way onto DVD. It looks like reruns on television, though better than any VHS recordings that super fans may have lying around, with the constant noise and grain that seems fairly typical of early 80’s television show transfers. Still considering it may be a tougher piece to keep totally intact, the transfer works well on DVD and would take some serious production to get much better.
Audio
The audio fares about as well, with a lone English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo audio track holding up fairly well. The musical stylings are about what you would expect from an 80’s adventure sitcom and they come through like about as well as the visuals. There’s a slightly muted and reserved quality about them that is almost VHS in quality, but it’s not really a bad thing since it helps to date the show itself and doesn’t make it sound off when updated for modern audio systems. Even though the quality isn’t the highest, it has the authentic feel in the audio balance from being filmed some on location and on sets in that era. Overall it’s just a good transfer. The only qualm may be the complete lack of subtitles on the disc.
Extras
For an 80’s show that I had never heard of, the disc is well packed with special features including five audio commentaries, a making-of featurette and a bunch of galleries. Other than commentaries the bulk of the special features are on the sixth and final disc. DISC ONE, TWO & THREE: There are no extras on these discs. DISC FOUR: “Force of Habit” is the first episodic audio commentary with head writer/producer Tom Greene. Greene talks about how he was drawn to be involved with the show after working on other scripts and dabbling in the show before, this was his first full script for the show in an episode based on a catholic nun. He spends a good amount of time praising the crew and his writing process, while bringing up different stories about being on set and behind the scenes as well as how he imagined the show would come together from his script. It’s a good start for the five commentaries on the disc and Greene seems continuously engaged and willing to tell every little detail about working on the show. DISC FIVE: The next episodic audio commentary comes on “Last Chance Louie” here head writer/producer Tom Greene praises the episode as the best episode in the series, feeling like the series truly hit its stride. It’s a little more broken up in terms of the actual commentating aspect, talking about how he and series writer George Geiger essentially wrote the entire show by this point, speaking more on little moments in the show like the tears shed by Roddy McDowall, how the episode could have been a two parter but wasn’t, the accents, searching for stock footage, and great bits describing the show, minus his dog’s intrusion to the recording studio at the end. Another episodic audio commentary can be found on “Naka Jima Kill” in the episode head writer/producer Tom Greene dubs ‘the naughty episode’ for the behind-the-scenes antics that happened during the episode. More interesting pieces from the set about nearly every little sequence that occurs in the show. It’s a little shocking how many little stories he remembers, like fearing a stuntperson had drowned when really he had just swam out at another point and gone directly to the food table, or how people on set praised him in front of his parents and different little bloopers in the show. There are a few more pauses than the other commentaries but it’s still fairly continuous with random stories from the set. The third episodic audio commentary appears on “Boragora or Bust” and for this episode head writer/producer Tom Greene dubs it the in the groove episode, he speaks on how it follows from the “Last Chance Louie” episode and the importance of aluminum foil in the show. He talks a lot on how the show almost wrote itself and how easily it started to come to him by this point in the series, as well as throwing in the varied and random stories behind the scenes of the show. Greene really feels the episode moves into higher dramatic territory rather than camp after this episode, another solid commentary. DISC SIX: “A Distant Shout of Thunder” head writer/producer Tom Greene talks about his childhood inspirations for the plot of the episode and the overarching political themes of the episode. It’s continually amazing how Greene’s memory seems to remember all the little details about the show filmed from the early 80’s and talking on the different aspects of the shows filming from the presence of El Nińo during filming to network concerns about the presence of crosses and the sexiness of scenes in the show. “Making of ‘Tales of the Gold Monkey’” featurette runs for 36 minutes and 13 seconds. Speaking with Stephen Collins, Caitlin O’Heaney, Tom Greene (writer/producer) and Harvey S. Laidman (series director), this featurette is as much a retrospective as making-of, speaking with all of the cast members in talking head interviews. It’s a great look at how each of them saw the making-of the show and listen to them tell their stories from the set of the show and their perspectives on the characters these 18 or so years later. Additionally it’s always great to see how actors have aged over time, Collins just got greyer in the hair and let’s just say O’Heaney is no Pam Grier. There’s extensive talk of Collins’ and O’Heaney’s chemistry, filming individual episodes. Collins even shares an interesting moment about the shows cancellation and how NBC’s research seemed to say the show was a 7-year hit yet because ABC didn’t read the same research it got cancelled. A really good retrospective of interviews on the show that didn’t last very long but seems to be well loved by those involved. Then the "Character Biographies" are sort of featurettes that almost play like the credits for “Star Wars: A New Hope” (1977) with a huge chunk of scrolling text moving through up through the frame for each actor. The biographies are playable separately or together for 11 minutes and 29 seconds: - “Jake Cutter – Stephen Collins” runs for 2 minutes and 29 seconds. - “Jack – Leo the Dog” runs for 1 minute and 20 seconds. - “Sarah Stickney White – Caitlin O’Heaney” runs for 1 minute and 14 seconds. - “Corky – Jeff Mackay” runs for 1 minute and 34 seconds. - “Bon Chance Louie – Roddy McDowall (Ron Moody – Pilot Only)” runs for 1 minute and 14 seconds. - “The Reverend Willie Tenboom – John Calvin” runs for 1 minute and 18 seconds. - “Princess Koji – Marta Dubois” runs for 1 minute and 16 seconds. - “Todo – John Fujioka” runs for 58 seconds. Next are two "Personal Biographies," similar to the "Character Biographies" featurettes above, but only for the two main actors. Playable together for 5 minutes and 56 seconds or separately: - “Stephen Collins” runs for 3 minutes and 27 seconds. - “Caitlin O’Heaney” runs for 2 minute and 29 seconds. The “Fact File” text featurette runs for 3 minutes and 49 seconds, another member of the scrolling text family that is basically a run through of trivia that you would find online or in a series description, as well as some of the stories you hear in commentaries and the making-of featurette. The stills gallery contains four separate galleries that run as slide shows: - “Colour Images” runs for 3 minutes and 43 seconds. - “B&W Images” runs for 2 minutes and 6 seconds. - “Caitlin’s Original Costumes Gallery” runs for 58 seconds, featuring the older, present day Caitlin modeling some of her old outfits from the show that she has kept. - “Artifacts Gallery” runs for 1 minute and 3 seconds, containing images of the artifacts used in the show. This disc contains a large amount of menu items that are okay as special features but really don’t do much more than the 22-page booklet that comes with the disc does. The “Series Synopsis” text info just is a brief paragraph explaining the show. Similarly the “Series Concept” text info is just four paragraphs across 4 slides detaling the idea for the show.
Packaging
The 6-disc set comes in a keep case, packaged within a cardboard slip-case and includes a 22-page booklet.
Overall
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