"Nature, as we have experienced it over the years, has been a treasure chest of wonders, and if we protect our natural heritage, there will always be memorable moments in the wild kingdom." - Host Marlin Perkins in "Memorable Moments in the Wild Kingdom"
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom: The African Wild DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Naturalist Marlin Perkins began his zoo career 1926 at the St. Louis Zoological Gardens. His first position wasn't very grand - he worked on the crew helping to maintain the grounds. Within two years, he had been promoted to curator of reptiles. Positions running zoos in Buffalo and Chicago quickly followed. While at the Lincoln Park Zoo, Perkins became the host of Zoo Parade, a Sunday afternoon NBC series that introduced the public to the zoo's animals. The show ended its successful run after seven seasons, and Perkins returned to the St. Louis Zoo, this time as its director.
In 1963, Perkins returned to TV in what would become the longest running nature documentary series of all time: Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. With his assistant Jim Fowler, Perkins ventured off to the far reaches of the earth, bringing home viewers close up looks at exotic lands, unique flora, and wild animals running free in their natural habitats. The series ran Sunday afternoons on NBC for four seasons before graduating to its primetime lineup beginning in 1968. NBC cancelled the series three years later, but the show went on to enjoy a long and successful run in syndication. Perkins, who had fallen ill, retired from the show in 1985. Fowler took over hosting duties (assisted by James Gros) until the series ceased production in 1988.
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom: The African Wild collects ten episodes from throughout the series' run. The three episodes on disc one focus on gorillas: "Gorillas of the Mountains," "Gorillas of the Mountains II," and "Reunion with the Gorillas." Elephants take center stage on disc two: "Tuskers Below!," "Elephants of Lake Kariba," and "Last Home of the Elephant." The four episodes on disc three, "African Game Catchers," "To Catch a Giraffe," "Hippo," and "Memorable Moments in the Wild Kingdom," present more of a hodgepodge.
The three episodes focusing on gorillas are this collection's highpoint. All three follow acclaimed gorilla researcher Dr. Dian Fossey (of Gorillas in the Mist fame). Fossey spent thirteen years in Rwanda studying and protecting the area's endangered gorilla population. The first two episodes are from 1978, ten years into Fossey's project. In "Gorillas of the Mountain," she dispels our misconceptions about the species and provides us with a fascinating look at the animals' social strata, introducing us to the gorillas she has affectionately and extensively documented, including those she has named Beethoven, Simba, Tiger, and Pablo. In part two, she explains the process by which the gorillas became acclimated to her foreign presence and illustrates the dangers posed to the animals' survival by poachers and other humans. After thirteen years in the field, Fossey returned to the United States to accept a teaching position and to write her well-known memoir. "Reunion with the Gorillas" is a 1984 episode that follows her return to Rwanda after a three year absence. Fossey's devotion to the gorillas eventually lead to her death at the hand of poachers.
Several of the other episodes (including "Tuskers Below!," "African Game Catchers," "To Catch a Giraffe," "Hippo," and portions of "Memorable Moments.") seem to be unhealthily obsessed with capturing and relocating animals. Obviously, Wild Kingdom was filmed at a time before it was okay to simply observe animals in their natural habitat - interaction was the key. This often leads to the sight of terrified animals being ensnared and then quite alarmingly shoved into a burlap sack. (Hopefully the sacks were completely emptied before Perkins and Fowler shoved another animal into them.) These episodes are distinct enough to hold our interest - when trying to capture a hippo, the team surreally decides to employ a road grader as their vehicle of choice, and "To Catch a Giraffe" is filmed in Rhodesia's amusingly named Wankie National Park - but they begin to blur together after a while. Plus, we can't help but wonder whether these poor animals are being relocated to a lesser populated area of the savannah, or if they are simply being relocated to a crummy zoo in Akron.
"Memorable Moments in the Wild Kingdom" presents highlights from throughout the series' run. Perkins snuggles up to a pair of black bear cubs, Fowler tackles wild elk by jumping out of a moving helicopter, the two help lasso jaguars out west, and Perkins struggles to rescue a stranded Capuchin monkey in Venezuela. The clips are often amusing and incredible, leaving us wanting more. We don't have to look far: the footage in which an elephant desperately tries to rouse her calf after Perkins' team has sedated it for inoculation can be viewed in its entirety in "Tuskers Below!".
The best episodes, like those focusing on gorillas, are observational. In "Last Home of the Elephants," Perkins journeys to Gambia to observe brightly colored birds and endangered elephants struggling to survive during the dry season. "Elephants of Lake Kariba" features genuinely exciting whitewater footage as Fowler and Gros travel down the Zambezi River near Victoria Falls. They make the trip in order to relocate elephants, but are sidetracked by an effort to rescue a baby elephant that has been caught in a poacher's snare. This episode, from late in the series' run, employs more sophisticated storytelling techniques than earlier installments. The narration is done on site rather than in a musty studio, and even the visual storytelling is much improved.
The studio footage where Perkins and Fowler introduce the upcoming episode often lacks spontaneity. The two seem stiff and stilted when playing to the camera in this way. They sometimes attempt to lighten things up with the presence of WK, their monkey pal. Monkeys dressed in human clothing and performing human tasks have proven endlessly amusing in TV shows like Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp and movies like Babe: Pig in the City. Having the same thing on a serious nature show is a bit odd. In one episode, Perkins pretends to shoot WK, who then dutifully plays dead. Later, WK dresses in a safari outfit, "drives" a mini Jeep, and pretends to capture animals, carrying a shotgun the entire time, thus proving that there is a fine line between cute and creepy.
Some of the on location shots appear to be staged - mostly the human shots rather than those involving the animals. The fieldwork was obviously filmed without sound, often resulting in unconvincing sound effects. Still, there is no denying the beauty of the animals and the locales in which they are filmed. As the forefather of nature documentaries, Wild Kingdom may not be the most innovative or polished of shows, but it is still exciting, educational, and highly entertaining.
The ten episodes that make up The African Wild are divided onto three discs. The discs are housed in a handsomely designed digipak. Each disc is printed with a photo of the animal spotlighted in the disc's episodes - a gorilla on disc one, an elephant on disc two, and a giraffe on disc three. Thanks to the clear plastic trays in which the DVDs rest, these bold photos continue onto the DVD packaging itself. The reverse sides of the digipak feature a written history of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and bios of the series three hosts: Marlin Perkins, Jim Fowler, and Peter Gros. The digipak slides into a cardboard outer sleeve. The back of this outer sleeve includes episode titles and brief synopses.
The full motion DVD menus are even more attractive. As music from the series plays on a continuous loop, a spinning globe features footage of various animals superimposed over the continents or body of water in which they live. Silhouettes at the bottom of the screen represent the animals featured on each disc. Viewers can choose to play all of a disc's episodes, or view the episode list. The episode list menus spotlight full motion footage from the episodes along with episode titles. Choosing an individual episode leads to brief, stylishly edited montages of footage from the episode before the episode itself begins to play.
