THE MYSTERY OF THUG ISLAND (1964)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I've seen two or three of the Italian-made "Sandokan" films, adapting swashbuckling novels popular in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And I believe I may have seen this 1964 movie on television long ago. But until researching THUG I did not know-- if the information on TV Tropes is reliable-- that the novel from which THUG was adapted was something of a precursor to the Sandokan novels. Further, the main hero of that early novel, Indian tiger-hunter Tremal-Naik, became a support-character to the more popular serial adventurer Sandokan. I get some sense that maybe the author of the series may have later written Sandokan into the novel starring Tremal-Naik, but I can't be sure. Ironically, this film adaptation appeared in Italian theaters AFTER its director Luigi Capuano had already adapted two Sandokan-starring stories, and in those films, Tremal-Naik appears (though played by another actor) in his supporting role.

The main action deals with how Tremal-Naik, in his one starring story, meets his future wife Ada, who I believe may also appear as support-cast in the Sandokan corpus. The time of the story is not specified, but the British Raj fully controls India. In real-world history, British officers wiped out the organized gangs of robbers called Thuggee in the 1830s, so one may speculate that the events take place prior to that event.

Ada is, surprisingly, a white female, the daughter of widowed British army captain MacPherson (Peter Van Eyck of "Doctor Mabuse" fame). When Ada is still a little girl, she's stolen from her home by Souyadhana (Guy Madison), a Thuggee high priest. For unexplained reasons, Souyadhana has decided that his cult needs a woman to pose as the pure incarnation of their goddess Kali, and he thinks Ada fills his bill. He never confesses to having kidnapped Ada to gain revenge on the British generally or MacPherson specifically, nor does he hold any insidious plans for Ada when she grows to maturity and is played by Ingeborg Schoner. As far as I can tell, he just wants his own "white goddess." For Ada's part, she either forgets, or is brainwashed into forgetting, her old life. She is, however, aware that her skin is not the same color as the male Thugs and the one serving-girl she knows, and she only pays lip service to the Thuggee ideal of killing people for the love of Kali. 

MacPherson of course goes looking for his daughter, accompanied by Indian irregulars who have no higher opinion of the Thuggee than the Englishman does. They even arrive at the sanctuary of Souyadhana's cult on "Snakes Island," but the soldiers don't find the stranglers, because they occupy a cavern beneath the island's surface.

However, the Thuggee's choice of hideouts has one disadvantage: if you advertise that your place has snakes, you may get visits from snake hunters. Tremal-Naik (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart), having conveniently changed his profession from tiger-stalker to snake-catcher for the movie's benefit, lands on the island with a fellow hunter, and they begin looking for their serpentine quarry. 

Then Tremal-Naik stumbles across Ada when she emerges from the cult's caverns in order to bathe in a surface stream. The low-caste Indian and the army captain's daughter fall in love at first sight, but she flees back to the cavern, confused by her sudden onrush of feelings. The heroic hunter of course keeps looking for her-- and after that, the movie just proceeds from one action-scenario to another. The closest thing to a plot-development comes when Souyadhana gets the idea to set an enemy to kill an enemy, offering Tremal-Naik a chance to unite with Ada if he kills her officer-father. This doesn't happen, though there are no shortage of lively (but mostly bloodless) fight-scenes throughout THUG. When the high priest's cult seems doomed, the high priest floods the cavern, but all the good people survive. THUG ends with the planned marriage of Tremal-Naik and Ada, a thing with which seems unlikely given the usual 1830s attitudes to intermarriage between Indians and Europeans. 

I would have liked a little more detail about the beliefs of the Kali-worshipers, but at least they do seem an uncanny lot, thanks to some spooky theremin music. If one assumes that the Tremal-Naik of the 1895 novel gets as much action there as his cinematic counterpart, the character may be the first Indian combative hero in European pop fiction. He and Ada may even be the first example of an Indian-European romantic interaction that culminates in an established martial status.