Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

This month's film SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1954) is a film that seemed to be calling out to CrazyFilmGuy to be reviewed.  Every time I would flip through Turner Classic Movie's TV Guide with my remote to see what they were showing for a given week, SEVEN BRIDES would always seem to be one of the films on their schedule.  Its title was intriguing, leading me to ponder, "How could a family have seven boys?" But then I remembered I went to a Jesuit university where I met students that came from families that had nine, eleven, and even sixteen siblings.  Then, I read TCM's brief synopsis of the film.  SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS is set in Oregon in 1850.  I'm from Oregon. The last made in Oregon film I had watched many years ago Anthony Mann's BEND IN THE RIVER (1950) had some great Oregon scenery including Mount Hood and the Columbia River.  Could SEVEN BRIDES top BEND IN THE RIVER with its Oregon locales?

The answer to that question is an emphatic no. Although SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS is set in Oregon, the MGM musical directed by Stanley Donen (SINGING IN THE RAIN) was filmed on the studio backlot in Culver City, California with painted backdrops used instead of actual locations. Director Donen wanted to film in Oregon but MGM had another big musical in production at the same time, Vincent Minnelli's BRIDGADOON (1954) with Gene Kelly and Van Johnson so Donen's budget was scaled back. SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS was little brother to big brother BRIGADOON which was supposed to be MGM's big musical event that year.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the box office.  SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS turned out to be more popular and made more money than BRIGADOON, the Broadway musical about a legendary and mysterious Scottish town that appears once a century.

SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS is not based on a hit musical like BRIGADOON but rather on a story called The Sobbin Women by Stephen Vincent Benet. With a screenplay by husband and wife team Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich along with Dorothy Kingsley and directed by Stanley Donen, SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS takes place in the Oregon Territory in 1850. The Paul Bunyonesque backwoodsman Adam Pontipee (Howard Keel) arrives in town from his forest home twelve miles away with two goals: to trade for goods with the locals and to find himself a wife. None of the local women catch his eye until he spies a plucky, beautiful young woman Milly (Jane Powell) chopping wood for her boss Mr. Bixby (Russell Simpson) and then serving food at the local tavern to a group of men. In a whirlwind (just a few hours) courtship, Adam asks Milly to marry him. Adam visits the Reverend Elcott (Ian Wolfe) to ask his permission to wed Milly who has been raised by Elcott and his wife. Elcott gives his permission and Adam and Milly are wed. Adam whisks his new bride back to his forest cabin. 

Upon arriving at his cabin, Milly discovers Adam left out one small detail.  He lives with his six equally handsome, rambunctious brothers. Besides Adam, there's Benjamin (Jeff Richards), Caleb (Matt Mattox), Daniel (Marc Platt), Ephraim (Jacques d'Amboise), Frank aka Frankincense (Tommy Rall), and Gideon (Russ Tamblyn). Like their big brother, they all have red hair and red beards. The brothers are out of control and nearly ruin Adam and Milly's wedding night. Milly's not happy she's been misled but she soon makes the best of the situation, making the brothers shower and shave and say their prayers.  Milly can't understand why all these good looking young men have no girlfriends.  When Milly goes into town, the brothers all join her. The brothers are mesmerized by all the young ladies milling about in town but the brothers have no manners. They end up getting into fights with the town's male suitors, forcing them to return home. 

Milly instructs the younger brothers how to be refined, polite, and gentlemanly. And she teaches them how to dance. Adam, Milly, and the brothers return to town for a dance and barn raising.  Milly's girlfriends leave their hometown dates and come to see Milly including Dorcas Gaylen (Julie Newmeyer later Newmar), Alice Elcott (Nancy Kilgas), Sarah Kline (Betty Carr), Liza (Virginia Gibson), Ruth Jepson (Ruta Kilmonis), and Martha (Norma Doggett). In SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS best sequence, the Pontipee brothers have a dance off with the six local ladies versus their suitors. Later, the Pontipee brothers compete in a barn raising contest against three other teams. But the local men take advantage of the Pontipees new polite ways, dropping boards on them until Adam snaps and chews out his siblings for not pushing back. A huge brawl ensues, bringing down the barn and causing the Pontipees to be kicked out of town.

Winter arrives. The Pontipee brothers are dejected and lovesick especially Gideon who misses Alice. Benjamin plans to leave, tired of snow and loneliness. Adam gives his brothers a pep talk, encouraging them to return to town and grab their sweethearts. The brothers take Adam up on his suggestion and kidnap their girls. They flee thru Echo Pass, chased by their suitors.  The girls scream, bringing down an avalanche that cuts off the Pontipee's from the town until Spring. Milly is furious with Adam for encouraging the boys behavior. Adam storms off to a higher mountain cabin to sulk. Milly sends the brothers to live in the barn for their actions.  She becomes the den mother to the young women who begin to go stir crazy and man crazy all cooped up. Milly reveals she's pregnant and gives birth to a baby girl. Gideon hikes up to Adam's secluded cabin to tell him he's a father. Gideon scolds Adam for leaving Milly and tells him to become a better husband and father. Spring arrives. Echo Pass reopens.  Adam wants to return the six young women back into town but both his brothers and the women protest. The townspeople including Reverend Elcott creep near the homestead to take back their women.  But the sound of a baby crying will cause great confusion and make the Pontipee Boys, their girlfriends, and the fathers of the girls to make a quick, comic decision that makes everyone (including the audience) happy. 

The film might be called SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS but some of the plot owes to SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES (1937) with Milly as the Snow White character and the Pontipee brothers as the lovable miners. Milly becomes a mother figure to the Pontipees who have had no maternal upbringing since they were babies. Milly tames the rowdy brothers, forcing them to shower and shave and learn good manners. She teaches them to say their prayers before every meal and how to dance with a member of the opposite sex.  And when Milly goes into town, the brothers join her, ready to try out their new skills on the town's local ladies. 

What's surprising is that Adam (Howard Keel) the oldest brother who woos Milly in whirlwind record time is no Prince Charming. In fact, he's not very sympathetic or heroic even though he's the oldest, the big brother his siblings look up to. He basically tricks Milly into marrying him so she can take care of his wild younger brothers. He may ooze confidence but like his younger brothers, Adam is a novice to the intricacies of a relationship. When Milly has their baby, Adam is the absent father, his pride hurt by Millie scolding him for his part in persuading the brothers to kidnap their future brides (Adam's retelling of the Greek philosopher Plutarch's "the Abduction of the Sabine Women" which he comically pronounces "Sobbin Women" probably not the best example to use). Adam shirks his man of the cabin duties, hiding from his responsibilities. Adam will finally come around but not until the very last reel.

If there's a real hero in SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, it's dance choreographer Michael Kidd (THE BAND WAGON). The dance sequences in SEVEN BRIDES literally leap off the screen, innovative and modern, like audiences had never seen before. The barn dance (which took three weeks to rehearse) is exhilarating with its ensemble dancing and kinetic energy. Kidd incorporates axes and chopping wood as a type of dance when the brothers sing Lonesome Polecat. And the barn raising contest is choreography of a different nature, a combination of stunts and fighting that still plays like a dance number. Throw in director Stanley Donen's expert direction of the dance sequences and lyrics by Johnny Mercer and a score by Gene de Paul.

How do you distinguish multiple brothers and brides in SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS? With vivid colors of course.  As the animal kingdom can attest to, color can also be an aphrodisiac to attract a mate of the opposite sex. Each Pontipee brother wears a different brightly colored shirt in both the barn dance number and whenever they're opposite their prospective brides to help them stand out.  The brides also wear a dazzling palette of colors to distinguish each girl from one another.  The town men are dressed in drab grays so they don't clash with the Pontipees. The Pontipees are all given red hair and/or beards to help the woodsmen stand out from the local boyfriends. For the record, the seven brothers and seven brides that connect are Adam and Milly, Benjamin and Dorcas, Caleb and Ruth, Daniel and Liza, Ephraim and Martha, Frank and Sarah, and Gideon and Alice. 

Howard Keel looks like a giant mountain man as Adam Pontipee next to Jane Powell's Milly in SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS and no wonder.  Keel was 6 feet 4 inches tall.  Keel was a singer, a baritone, who had a good run of starring roles in musicals in the 1950s including SHOW BOAT (1951) with Ava Gardner and KISS ME KATE (1953) a musical version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. It's reported that SEVEN BRIDES was Keel's favorite musical.  Co-star Jane Powell also had success in musicals in the 40s and 50s with films like A DATE WITH JUDY (1948) and ROYAL WEDDING (1951) with Fred Astaire also directed by Stanley Donen. But Powell would outgrow her girl next door image and move on to television and theater later on.

As for the brothers and brides, they include a former professional baseball player, many professional dancers including ballet dancers, and a dancer/actress who would later play the Catwoman on television.  Jeff Richards who plays Benjamin Pontipee made it to the triple A level of baseball before turning to acting. Chosen for his good looks and not his dancing, Richards was relegated to the background in some of the dance sequences. Matt Mattox, Marc Platt, Tommy Rall, and Jacques d'Amboise were professional dancers and perform the majority of the dancing in SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS. The one brother who went on to a long career in film and television was the youngest - Russ Tamblyn who plays Gideon. Tamblyn wasn't a dancer but had gymnastic training that's put to use in the barn dance sequence. Tamblyn would appear in Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins WEST SIDE STORY (1961) and later have a rebirth on David Lynch's surreal TV mystery TWIN PEAKS (1990-91 and reboot in 2017) as hippie psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Jacoby.

All of the brides were professional dancers and many performed on Broadway. All but one of the actresses had their singing voices dubbed by someone else (not uncommon in film musicals).Virginia Gibson who plays Liza and marries Ephraim does her own singing on June Bride with the others dubbed. Nancy Kilgas who plays Alice Elcott (daughter to Reverend Elcott) and marries Gideon is one of the most striking brides. The blonde Kilgas would also appear and dance in the film version of OKLAHOMA! (1955). Then, there's dancer/actress Julie Newmeyer who plays the bride Dorcas and marries Benjamin. Newmeyer is better known to audiences now as Julie Newmar and would go on to fame playing the feline villainess the Catwoman opposite Adam West's Batman on TV's BATMAN (1966-67) and still provides her voice for the animated BATMAN videos. 

Some final SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS tidbits. SEVEN BRIDES was shot in widescreen CinemaScope but MGM was worried that not all movie theaters would be able to screen CinemaScope so SEVEN BRIDES was also filmed in a normal film ratio. The normal version cost more to shoot than the widescreen version but was never shown until MGM put it on the SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS 2004 DVD release. Although SEVEN BRIDES takes place in Oregon, no footage was shot there (the few live action sequences were shot in Idaho).  However, both Jane Powell who plays Milly and Jeff Richards who plays Benjamin were born in Portland, Oregon. It's common now for a film to be turned into a musical but SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS was an early example of this. Two television series would be based on SEVEN BRIDES. ABC's HERE COME THE BRIDES (1968-70)  starring Joan Blondell and David Soul and later CBS's SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1982-83) with MCGYVER'S Richard Dean Anderson and a young River Phoenix. 

In a way, the fact that SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS wasn't filmed on location in Oregon and outside I think worked in its favor. There's something surreally naturalistic about the mountain and forest backdrops. We concentrate more on the characters than the setting.  WEST SIDE STORY would show audiences what it was like to see dancers in an outdoor, urban setting.  BRIGADOON with its distinctive Scottish locale would have been served better to have been filmed in Scotland. SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS doesn't have one memorable song that audiences have sung over and over for generations  but it has plenty of catchy tunes like Bless Your Beautiful Hide; Wonderful, Wonderful Day; Sobbin Women, and Spring, Spring, Spring that will have you humming for a few days after viewing.  Isn't that what you want from a musical like SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS?

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Gunga Din (1939)

One of my favorite joys in life is to find out the origin of a word.  The Romans gave us words like "ovation", "circus", and of course "Casearean (or C-section)" named after Julius Caesar. But it was the second film in the Indiana Jones series INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984) that taught me the history behind the word "thug." Whenever I heard the word "thug", I thought of a heavy set, muscular, violent person. It turns out "thug" is derived from a murderous cult in India from the 1800s known as "Thuggee", a fraternity of ritual stranglers who worshipped the goddess Kali Ma also known as the Dark Mother. After using Nazis as the bad guys in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981), director Steven Spielberg and executive producer George Lucas needed new, different villains for TEMPLE OF DOOM.  Screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (who wrote George Lucas's 1973 AMERICAN GRAFFITI) from a story idea by Lucas turned to the Thuggees for INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM.

It turns out that INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM wasn't the first time the Thuggee cult had appeared as villains on the silver screen. Back in 1939, considered one of the greatest years for movies of all time with films like Victor Fleming's GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WIZARD OF OZ, Frank Capra's MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, William Wyler's WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and John Ford's STAGECOACH among that year's releases, George Stevens GUNGA DIN, a rollicking adventure set in 19th Century India based on a poem by Rudyard Kipling had the British army fighting off the Thuggees. But the Thuggees are not the only connection between GUNGA DIN and TEMPLE OF DOOM.  The TEMPLE OF DOOM filmmakers pay homage to GUNGA DIN with some of TEMPLE OF DOOM'S plot as well as scenes that are inspired by sequences in GUNGA DIN.

Conventional wisdom would have had audiences expecting that the second Indiana Jones film to stay in the World War II realm and have the Imperial Japanese army as the heavies following the Nazis in the first film. But INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM takes place two years before RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.  The film begins in a Shanghai nightclub (appropriately named the Club Obi Wan) in 1935. Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones (Harrison Ford) trades in his fedora and bullwhip for a white dinner jacket and red carnation. Director Steven Spielberg trades in his bravura action set pieces for a Busby Berkley dance number as nightclub entertainer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) belts out Cole Porter's Anything Goes (which will be the theme of this over the top sequel to the hugely popular and successful RAIDERS OFTHE LOST ARK). But looks are deceiving. Indy is here to make a deal with Chinese gangster Lao Che (Roy Chiao). Indy offers him the ashes of First Dynasty Chinese emperor Nurhachi and Lao provides Indy with an exquisite diamond. But Lao slips Indy some poison in his champagne.  Lao wants both treasures in exchange for the antidote. Chaos ensues as Indy uses Willie as a distraction to try and grab the antidote and the diamond. Indy manages to snare the antidote courtesy of Willie as they jump out of the nightclub's window to a waiting car driven by Indy's pint sized associate, a young orphan boy named Short Round (THE GOONIES Ke Huy Quan).

Indy, Willie, and Short Round flee Shanghai in a cargo plane (which happens to be owned by Lao Che). The pilots bail out leaving the three pilotless over the Himalayas. Indy inflates a large raft and the three jump out before the plane crashes, plunging down snowy slopes and churning river rapids before coming to a rest in the Indian village of Mayapore. They're greeted by a local shaman (D.R. Nanayakkara) who tells Indy that an evil has befallen the village. Their sacred stone has been stolen from its shrine and all the children have vanished. The elder believes dark forces at the nearby Pankot Palace are responsible. Providing elephants for transportation and handlers, Indiana, Willie, and Short Round reach Pankot Palace where they're greeted by Chattar Lal (Roshan Seth), Prime Minister to the Maharaja of Pankot. He invites the trio to a lavish dinner hosted by the young Maharaja (Raj Singh) with guests including British Army Indian Captain Philip Blumburtt (Philip Stone), visiting on a routine palace inspection. Indy brings up the rumors of a Thuggee cult revival but the Prime Minister and the Maharaja bristle at the suggestion.

After dinner, Indy and Willie flirt in their adjacent rooms but before they can consummate their evening, a Thuggee assassin emerges from a mural and tries to strangle Indy.  After dispatching the killer, Indy discovers a secret passage in Willie's room. Indy and Short Round maneuver past a chamber teeming with thousands of beetles, centipedes, and other crawling insects before becoming trapped in a collapsing room, about to be crushed by giant spikes before Willie rescues them. The trio continue through subterranean caverns until they reach a rocky perch.  Below them, a Thuggee ceremony commences at the Temple of Doom with high priest Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) and his cult performing a human sacrifice to their goddess Kali. Ram removes the beating heart from the victim before he's vanquished by fire in a pit to appease Kali. Thuggee priests place three glowing Sankara stones (including the village's stone) in the Kali statue's eye sockets. When the Thuggees leave, Indy goes to retrieve the stones only to discover in a level below, the stolen children forced into slave labor, digging for the last two Sankara stones in mines below the palace. If the Thuggees possess all five stones, it could provide the cult with supernatural powers. Willie and Short Round are caught by the Thuggees along with Indy. Mola Ram forces Indy to drink "the blood of Kali", bringing on the "black sleep", turning Indy against his friends.

The Thuggees prepare to sacrifice Willie next, placing her in a cage and lowering her into the pit to be consumed by fire. Short Round escapes from his forced labor chains. He grabs a torch and burns Indy, snapping him out of his trance. Indy and Short Round fight off some Thuggees and rescue Willie.  Indy grabs the three Sankara stones then sets out to free the children from their captors, tussling with a large Thuggee foreman (Pat Roach). Indy, Willie, and Short Round climb into an empty mine car where they're chased in a rollercoaster thrill ride by Thuggee henchmen before a final showdown with Mola Ram and his worshippers on a precarious rope bridge high above a chasm with a crocodile infested river below. Will Indy, Willie,and Short Round prevail and return the Sankara stone back to the nearby village along with its lost children?  That's why they call it a cliffhanger...literally!

Although INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM begins in pre-World War II Shanghai, once Indy, Willie, and Short Round arrive at the Indian village and then Pankot Palace, it's as if they've been transported back into 19th century India, prime GUNGA DIN territory.  We never see any modern conveniences like a telephone or an automobile after the plane crash. CrazyFilmGuy will explore the similarities between the two films after the GUNGA DIN review but a temples, elephants, a British Officer on a routine inspection of the region, and a rope bridge hint that TEMPLE OF DOOM has its roots in the classic GUNGA DIN. 

When Willie Scott looks at the camera and sings Anything Goes (in Mandarin no less) to kick off INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, she isn't kidding.  Compared to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (which was about as exciting as a film could be), TEMPLE OF DOOM is an onslaught of sight, sound, and virtually non-stop action. Spielberg and Lucas take this film up a level with a brawl during a dance number, a harrowing escape from a plane about to crash, a chase in mine cars through underground tunnels, and a tense finale on a rope bridge.  TEMPLE OF DOOM is a darker film than RAIDERS with human sacrifice and child slavery woven into its plot.  The banquet scene at Pankot Palace was not for the squeamish with eyeball soup, slithery eels, and monkey brains for dessert.  TEMPLE OF DOOM was so intense that it brought on a new ratings code known as PG-13 after its release. When I saw TEMPLE OF DOOM for the second time at a college screening, the sound was so loud, I was wincing along with cheering. It was an assault on the senses.

This second chapter of the INDIANA JONES series provides audiences with several new incarnations of Indiana Jones played by Harrison Ford that we didn't see in RAIDERS. There's the James Bond like Indy at the beginning of the film with a white dinner jacket and red carnation, sipping champagne (laced with poison) as he deals with gangster Lao Che.  We've never seen Indiana Jones so urbane before.  Then, there's the dark side of Indiana Jones when he's forced to drink Thuggee blood by Mola Ram. He strikes Short Round and assists in the near fiery demise of Willie. Short Round snaps Indy from the Thuggee's evil spell with a torch burn to his mid-section. There's the physical Indiana Jones. Harrison Ford is much buffer looking in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and Spielberg shows that off with a few scenes of Ford shirtless. Indy may be a professor of antiquities but he's been working out in between classes. Indy will need that physicality whether he's fighting a behemoth guard in the mines below Pankot Palace or hanging on for dear life from the rope bridge. 

Finally, there's the paternal side of Indiana Jones in his interaction with his 11 year old sidekick Short Round (Ke Huy Quan), a Chinese orphan Indy caught picking his pocket in Shanghai. Indy and Short Round have a touching father/son relationship throughout the picture. They may bicker and try to cheat one another while playing cards. Indy will scold Short Round for triggering booby traps but when they embrace after Short Round snaps Indy from his Thuggee trance, the love on both their faces is magical. In his second outing as the intrepid adventurer in TEMPLE OF DOOM, Harrison Ford has complete control of his Indiana Jones character displaying a more comic side to the archaeologist. Indy also displays characteristics of a super hero, rescuing a legion of Indian children enslaved by the Thuggees.

Most fans would agree the weakest part of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM is Willie Scott, the American cabaret entertainer played by Kate Capshaw (BLACK RAIN). It's not Capshaw's fault.  Willie Scott is the one poorly written character in the film.  She's constantly whining, complaining, and shrieking and that's only the first third of the film. If Willie could have been a little tougher like Katherine Hepburn or Lauren Bacall and less like a diva, she would have been a perfect romantic interest and foil for Indy. Instead, Willie makes us long for Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Give Capshaw credit.  She does manage to bring some empathy and humor to Willie in a few scenes. And TEMPLE OF DOOM director Spielberg and Capshaw would fall in love during the making of the film and become married (they're still a happy couple today in 2021). 

Some final thoughts on INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. Spielberg is one of the few directors who makes the most of his movie sets. He lovingly shoots every inch of the Thuggee Temple of Doom set with its enormous statue of Kali and throng of worshippers (shot and lit hellishly by director of photography Douglas Slocombe). Besides the Temple of Doom set, production designer Elliott Scott's collapsing room with spikes and skulls galore screams to be an amusement park ride. The Club Obi Wan from the beginning of TEMPLE OF DOOM is a nice nod to George Lucas's STAR WARS character, the Jedi Knight Obi Wan Kenobi. Look for a quick cameo by Dan Ackroyd (THE BLUES BROTHERS) as Weber, a British civil servant who helps Indy make his escape from Shanghai. TEMPLE OF DOOM takes the audience to some exotic locations like Sri Lanka and the Chinese island of Macau. Spielberg has a couple of nice big wide shots of Indy, Willie, and Short Round riding elephants through the Sri Lankan landscape that pay homage to Spielberg's idol director David Lean (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA). INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM has the luxury of filming it's India scenes in nearby Sri Lanka, a luxury the makers of GUNGA DIN did not have. 

Back in 1939, director George Stevens and his film crew chose an area northeast of Los Angeles called Lone Pine, California to stand in for the rugged mountains of India to make GUNGA DIN based on a poem by famed English author Rudyard Kipling. With a screenplay by Joel Sayre and Fred Guiol from a story by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (who wrote THE FRONT PAGE), GUNGA DIN would compete with THE WIZARD OF OZ (made in the same year) as the first great adventure film.  GUNGA DIN would mix adventure, romance, and action sequences, all set in an exotic, dangerous location.  This recipe would inspire countless films in the future including INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. 

GUNGA DIN takes place in 1880 with a British regiment on routine patrol in northern India returning to their British Army post at Muri. They encounter a group of nomads and allow them to follow them. That night, while sleeping, the nomads ambush the regiment, strangling the soldiers.  The nomads are actually the feared Thuggees, a lethal Indian murder cult thought to be extinct.  At another British outpost at Tantrapur near the Khyber Pass, the Thuggees cut the telegraph wires, cutting off contact to Muri. In Muri, Colonel Weed (Montagu Love) does not like these recent ominous incidents.  A patrol vanishing and communication to the next nearest town cut off. Weed orders the recall of his three best soldiers from leave: Sergeant Archibald "Archie" Cutter (Cary Grant), Sergeant MacChesney (Victor McLaglen), and Sergeant Thomas Ballantine (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr). Instead of enjoying rest and relaxation, the three men are found fighting a Scottish Regiment after Cutter was sold a phony treasure map by one of the Scots.

Weed sends Cutter, MacChesney, and Ballantine to investigate Tantrapur along with 25 British Indian Army troops and their camp workers including water carrier Gunga Din (Sam Jaffe) who dreams of becoming a British soldier and serving the Queen. When they reach their destination, they find the outpost desolate, the wires cut, uneaten dinners still on tables. The Thuggees are hiding on the rooftops. Cutter stumbles across a group of Thuggees hiding in a room including Chota (Abner Biberman), the leader.  A battle ensues and the three Royal Engineers use dynamite and grit to escape. They return to Col. Weed and Major Mitchell (Lumsden Hare) with an axe from the enemy, proof to Weed that the Thuggee cult has returned. Weed prepares to send them back to finish the job but Cutter and MacChesney discover that Ballantine has requested a discharge so that he can marry his fiancee Emmy Stebbins (Joan Fontaine) and go into her father's tea business.

Emmy throws an engagement party that night.  Cutter and MacChesney spike the punch bowl, causing Ballantine's replacement Sergeant Bertie Higginbotham (Robert Coote) to become sick.  MacChesney tricks Ballantine into temporarily reenlisting due to Higginbotham's illness.  Cutter catches Gunga Din practicing military maneuvers . He likes Din's initiative and allows him to keep a bugle the bhisti (water carrier) found. The Army led by MacChesney, Cutter, and Ballantine return to Tantrapur but the Thuggees have fled.  Gunga Din tells Cutter about a temple in the mountains made of gold.  Cutter proposes a trip to check out the temple which gets him thrown into the brig by MacChesney.  Din helps Cutter escape with the aid of MacChesney's elephant Annie.  Cutter and Gunga Din flee through the pass and cross a wobbly rope bridge over a canyon until they come across the temple. But before they can enter, a procession of Thuggees led by their Guru (Eduardo Ciannelli) file into the temple to pay homage to a menacing statue of Kali and swear in new Thuggee recruits.

Cutter gives himself up to the Thuggees, a diversion to allow Gunga Din to escape and warn MacChesney about Cutter's predicament. Cutter is taken up to a tower where he's tortured. MacChesney, Ballantine, and Gunga Din return to rescue Cutter but the Thuggees capture them. They're thrown in a cell with Cutter who's incensed that they didn't bring the entire army with them. The Guru plans on luring the regiment to be slaughtered. MacChesney pretends to share a map from Ballantine's pocket to the Guru with the troop's movements.  Instead, they grab the Guru and take him to the temple's roof.  As the English Army and the Scottish Regiment begin to move through a narrow pass where the Thuggees are waiting to attack, Gunga Din climbs to the top of the temple's golden dome and blows a bugle to warn the Brits and Scots. Gunga Din is fatally shot but his warning aids the English as they rally to defeat the Thuggees and rescue Cutter, MacChesney, and Ballantine.

Let's look at the comparisons between INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and GUNGA DIN. It all starts with each film's opening sequence.  Both films utilize a large man banging a gong to kick off the film.  GUNGA DIN has an enormous contingent of British officers in India.  TEMPLE OF DOOM utilizes the lone British Captain Blumburtt at the banquet scene but the Brits do come to Indy's aid at the finale, led by Blumburtt, as riflemen pick off Thuggees at the cliff's edge.  Elephants play a part in both films.  Sgt. MacChesney has a funny scene with his personal elephant Annie when she won't take some medicine. Elephants take Indy, Willie, and Short Round to Pankot Palace and provide comic relief as one elephant playfully pokes Willie at the campfire. 

Temples and the goddess Kali Ma play a pivotal role in TEMPLE OF DOOM and GUNGA DIN.  Indy discovers the Temple of Doom underneath Pankot Palace and has a front row seat to the Thuggee's performing a human sacrifice, even ripping the beating heart out of a poor victim.  Archie Cutter and Gunga Din find the legendary golden temple only to watch the Thuggees parade in and pay homage to Kali in a sinister ceremony.  Both Indiana Jones and Archie Cutter are tortured by the Thuggees at their respective temples.  

The most visual connection between TEMPLE OF DOOM and GUNGA DIN is the rickety rope bridge stretched over a gaping chasm.  In GUNGA DIN, it's the gateway to the golden temple but the rope bridge is cut at the end, sending some Thuggees to their demise. Spielberg makes the rope bridge the final set piece in TEMPLE OF DOOM, going all in with Indy cutting the bridge and then hanging on to battle Mola Ram as they cling to the bridge pressed against the cliffside.  The Thuggees as the main villains are the key connection between INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and  GUNGA DIN. In TEMPLE OF DOOM, they're diabolical enough to force hundreds of children into slave labor.  In GUNGA DIN, the Thuggee Guru sacrifices his own life to inspire his followers to storm the roof and kill Cutter, MacChesney, and Ballantine. The Thuggee's evil knows no bounds.

The last similarity between INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and GUNGA DIN is a surprising one.  It would seem only Indiana Jones is interested in relics and treasures, "Fortune and glory", as he tells Short Round but GUNGA DIN has a surprising link to Indy in Sgt. Archibald Cutter (Cary Grant). Cutter's not an archaeologist but an amateur soldier of fortune, seeking artifacts and treasures for his own personal gain.  We first meet Cutter at the start of GUNGA DIN fighting a Scottish brigade almost single handedly after he was sold a fake treasure map by one of the Scots. That should have been enough to steer Cutter away from "fortune and glory" but then Gunga Din tells Cutter about a temple in the mountains, covered in gold.  It's Cutter's lust for gold and emeralds that nearly causes death to him and his best friends. I wasn't expecting that treasure hunting connection between TEMPLE OF DOOM and GUNGA DIN.

In a way, Cutter, MacChesney, and Ballantine are like three musketeers in GUNGA DIN.  They are the best of friends, bound to one another by duty and honor in an inhospitable land. Like the musketeers, they work as a team whether fighting for Cutter's honor when he's sold a fake treasure map or rescuing one another from cutthroat adversaries.  When Ballantine threatens to leave their fraternity for a woman and civilian life, MacChesney and Cutter sabotage his engagement and future for the sake of their friendship.  The three men are almost child-like in their love for each other wrapped in male bonding.

GUNGA DIN has romance and adventure but it's the amount of  humor and comic sequences in the film that's most surprising.  Yet it shouldn't be.  Director George Stevens cut his teeth in comedy working at Hal Roach Studios in the silent era, writing gags and serving as cameraman for those comedy titans Laurel and Hardy.  In GUNGA DIN, MacChesney showing his elephant how to take her medicine aka "elephant elixir" or MacChesney and Cutter trying to spike the punch at Ballantine's engagement party but not have their superiors drink it showcases Stevens comic sensibilities. Stevens would direct classics from all genres during his illustrious career including musicals (1936's SWING TIME), comedies (1942's WOMAN OF THE YEAR), Westerns (1953's SHANE), and sweeping dramas (1956's GIANT). 

Stevens also shows flair for staging fight sequences.  In a homage to his famous silent film era father Douglas Fairbanks (THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, THE MARK OF ZORRO), his son Douglas Fairbanks, Jr who plays Sgt. Ballantine has a nifty choreographed fight scene early in the film with some acrobatics and flair that his father would be proud of. Fairbanks, Jr also has the most romantic part in the film, a part you would expect that Cary Grant would have played.  But film legend has it that Cary Grant was originally set to play Ballantine but requested (or maybe demanded) to play the Archie Cutter role which Douglas Fairbanks, Jr was going to play.  Cutter is definitely the more complex, juicier role of the two. But they're both great roles and Grant and Fairbanks, Jr are fantastic.  Rounding out the threesome is Victor McLaglen as Sgt. MacChesney, sort of the big brother/father figure of the trio. A favorite of director John Ford, McLaglen played soldiers in all theaters of conflict in films like John Ford's THE LOST PATROL (1934) or Ford's FORT APACHE (1948).

The finale of GUNGA DIN seems a little anti-climactic with neither MacChesney, Cutter, or Ballantine actually saving the day.  It's the neglected Gunga Din who bravely sacrifices his life to alert the India British Army of the trap set for them.  That's the point of Rudyard Kipling's poem.  The narrator of the poem proclaims "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din," because the white soldiers treated Din poorly before he saved their lives while giving up his own.  In GUNGA DIN, the first choice to play the Din character was Indian born actor Sabu but he was unavailable (Sabu would play Mowgli in the 1942 screen version of Kipling's THE JUNGLE BOOK).  Instead, Jewish Russian-American actor Sam Jaffee played Gunga Din (with the assistance of dark make-up).  Unlike the poem, the treatment by the British soldiers toward Gunga Din is softened in GUNGA DIN and Cutter and Din are like partners in the film. Din breaks Cutter out of jail and leads Cutter to the golden temple. 

Like THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980), the second chapter of George Lucas's STAR WARS trilogy, INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM is a darker film than RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and like EMPIRE, was not as well received when it was initially released.  But over time, I think TEMPLE OF DOOM stands up well as does THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, separating itself from RAIDERS as a stand alone sequel.  But where RAIDERS owes its roots to the Saturday morning serials of the 30s and 40s, TEMPLE OF DOOM borrows from GUNGA DIN, a film classic that introduced film audiences to the diabolical Thuggee cult (which the word "thug" is derived from) and was one of the first great adventure action films at the time, paving the way for INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM forty five years later.