Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

In an article by Christopher Bahn, “Why ‘Raiders’ succeeds where ‘Temple’ doesn’t” he writes, “Spielberg himself says he hated ‘Temple,’ telling Premiere magazine in 1988, ‘It was too dark, too subterranean, and much too horrific.’” This seems to be why so many people are repelled by Temple of Doom along with Spielberg’s bias in casting a lesser talented actress in the lead role of Willie Scott. In fact the opening title credit makes it plain as day how biased he is as he features the woman he’s smitten with in real-life (Kate Capshaw, the future Mrs. Spielberg) in front of the fucking movie title. As for the rest of that opening musical number, I always found it annoying but have read persuasive explanations defending it. Mostly it made me wince because of Capshaw’s tin delivery.

Her acting is quite bad too, but she’s not as awful as all the Temple of Doom haters make her out to be. If anything Short Round is just as much of a lazy stock character as the high-maintenance “I broke a nail” female fish out of water – he is a stereotype and the obligatory moppet sidekick whose cuteness bludgeons the viewer like an adorable little Chinese blackjack. In fact he cannot speak without yelling obvious observations. Example: Kate Capshaw falls off her elephant and into a large puddle of water. Short Round: “All wet! Berry Funny! All wet!” Later when Indy is playing cards with him by a fire, I expected him to exclaim: “You hold cards!” and when Indy flips him a nickel in appreciation for siding with him against the complaining Willie, to wisely observe: “Me got nickel!” By the time the action gets going, Short Round and Willie mostly stop talking and the shrill whining and bludgeoning cuteness diminish considerably. This is when the movie becomes “too dark, too subterranean…too horrific” for Spielberg and where his opinion and mine separate.

The villainy of the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade doesn’t come close to the depravity of Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) and the human sacrifice rituals he performs in honor of the evil deity, Kali. The suffering Indy is put through in Temple of Doom is unmatched in the other two. No actor can find so many nuances in varying cries of anguish as Harrison Ford. The scenes involving the voodoo doll are extremely upsetting in particular because, first of all, the tied up Indy already has his face being squeezed in the vise grip of a huge Thuggee brute, and then his voodoo doll is held over a flame, and to hear his too convincing screams of pain as he tries to struggle while having his face smashed down is just more torture than many young kids could probably endure. It does not surprise me one bit that this was one of the key films involved in passing legislation on creating the PG-13 rating. There are few PG-13 films more intense in depicting horror than Temple of Doom. The source of much of the overwhelming intensity is easy to pinpoint – it’s the sheer maniacal evil just popping out of Amrish Puri’s face...

That and the pervasive fires-of-Hell-red lighting. I have never felt that a bad situation was so out of Indiana Jones’s hands as I have during the underground Kali temple imprisonment and brainwashing.



As for the brainwashing (when Indy is forced to drink the blood of Kali) it is all effectively disturbing until Harrison Ford has to turn to the dark side. After writhing on a stone table in agony, he sits up into the light, wild-eyed. Unfortunately, affecting wild eyes does not equal appearing malevolent. It is impossible for Harrison Ford to be convincing as someone with evil intentions, which is why the end of What Lies Beneath seems so utterly unnatural and ineffective. Thankfully, Evil Indy does not last long, and the old Harrison Ford we know and love comes back with his endearing grouchiness and Ford’s stunning commitment to throw his whole being into being threatened, hurt, and thoroughly harassed by the badguys. No other action hero, besides maybe John McClane, is so amusingly and convincingly pissed off and frustrated while dealing with people trying to inflict pain on him. Really, Harrison Ford is a tour-de-force of physical acting. That’s why he can seem so inert in roles that require him to just sit and speak.

Temple of Doom scares and disgusts people, but I like being scared and disgusted, and tend to be rather liberal in my acceptance of extreme, transgressive cinema. I’ve heard Temple of Doom called “tasteless” but I think that can only be applied to the often simplistic racial depictions and the gross out banquet. The human sacrifices have a fearsome lunatic grandeur too powerful to simply be dismissed as “tasteless” or “silly.” From some angles Mola Ram’s headdress with the gargantuan horns can look a little foolish, but usually it conjures mighty satanic imagery perfect for such an underground bloodletting.







I am dismayed when I hear over and over and over how Temple of Doom is the weakest of the trilogy and blah, blah, blah. If anything the pagan occult mythology is far more suited to the purposes of what the origins of this character were. The Judeo-Christian mythology of Raiders and Last Crusade almost make those films look innocuous by comparison with the foreign, exotic supernatural forces at work in Temple of Doom. Heart-ripping human sacrifices will always be more terrifying to me than drinking water out of the wrong Grail chalice. There is more fright and horror in the underground Thuggee ceremonies than there is in the entireties of Raiders or Last Crusade, with exception to the gory finale of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Temple of Doom goes into the heart of darkness while the bookends remain timidly within the realms of white-bread danger.

I love all three films, but of all the memorable and iconic moments in the trilogy, my absolute favorite...


...is the rope-bridge stand off finale of Temple of Doom. Not just because it is the most inescapable situation Indy has ever been in, a dilemma to which there is no solution, a situation for which the only means of getting out alive would be for a deus ex machina to come out of the sky and pluck Indy from out of the death trap he’s sandwiched in, but because it proves that no matter how batshit insane a foe Indy goes up against, he will always win, because no one is more fucking crazy than Indiana Jones himself.



Grade: A


Coming Soon: A review of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

* A review of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)