I have been watching Fu Manchu serials and some of Bela Lugosis stuff and have been carefully satiating my craving for the 1940's, mainly via alpha video's bottomless and therefore somewhat daunting collection of popular stuff from this era. "Ramar..." isn't quite as exotic or crazy as either of those but it's really good, despite it's cheapness and it IS cheap.
The star, Jon Hall, is good as is the comraderie between he and his crew, mainly one white guy and one black guy with a pet monkey "babbette". This series is historically viewed as racist but it's not maliciously so, just has some now ridiculous depictions of blacks as scaredy cats and jungle people and subserviant and so forth. The bottom line for "Ramar" is that whoever made this knew how to bring a story, however trite, to life at a fast clip, something not many can seem to do even now. This is part of a 10 disk set with 4 20 minute episode each and I could see blowing through that no problem. not all in a row but eventually.
Some episodes are better than others but if you don't like this episode the next one starts soon enough, that kind of thing. check out "lady of the leopards" on disk one, my towering favorite thus far, about a woman who is possesed by the jungle and wears a leopard bathing suit outfit and becomes a kind of god to a leopard tribe!!
The most ridiculous parts are the stock footage of animals. they will be going along than someone will say "Doctor look!" and it will be some rhinos or something and they will roll the footage for a moment then ramar will say " you're right lets go this other way" . I liked the anarchistic arrangement between ramar and the natives where they didn't have authority over each other or the people who came to the island.
