LORD JUMP

LORD JIM (1965)
dir: Richard Brooks

LORD JUMP
MAD #98, October 1965
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

Jim (Peter O'Toole) is a promising young English merchant seaman who rises to first officer under Captain Marlow (Jack Hawkins), who is narrating the film. However, Jim is injured and left at Java. When he is fit again, he signs on with the first available ship, a dilapidated freighter called the SS Patna, crammed with hundreds of Muslims on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

When a storm threatens the leaking ship, the crew panics and takes to the lifeboats, abandoning their passengers; in a moment of weakness, Jim joins them. When they reach port, the sailors are stunned to find an intact Patna already there before them. The rest of the crew disappears, but Jim insists on confessing his guilt at an official inquiry and is stripped of his sailing papers. Filled with self-loathing, Jim becomes a drifter. One day, he saves a boatload of gunpowder from sabotage.

Stein (Paul Lukas), the cargo's owner, offers him an extremely dangerous job: transporting it and some rifles by river to distant Patusan to help Stein's old friend, the town's chief, lead an uprising against bandits led by a local warlord named The General. When Schomberg is bribed to deny Stein the use of the motorboat he had promised, Jim takes a sailboat with two native crewmen, leaving the aged Stein behind. As they near their destination, one of the crewmen reveals himself to be working for the General. He kills the other sailor and flees to warn the General. Jim manages to hide the cargo before he is captured. Jim is tortured but refuses to divulge the location. This surprises Cornelius (Card Jurgens), the drunken, cowardly agent of Stein's trading company who has joined the general (Eli Wallach). That night, the Girl (Daliah Lavi) leads Jim's rescue.

Jim distributes the arms and plans the attack on the General's stockade. He is assisted by Waris (Juzo Itami), the chief Du-Ramin (Tatsuo Saito)'s son. After much bloody fighting, Jim delivers the crushing blow, pushing a barrel of gunpowder through a hail of bullets into the bandits' final stronghold, blowing it up along with the General. Only Cornelius survives, hiding in a secret underground room with the General's hidden treasure. Jim is hailed as a hero. Du-Ramin bestows the title tuan on him, which translates as "Lord". Jim is content to live in Patusan with the Girl. Cornelius and Schomberg recruit notorious cut-throat "Gentleman" Duncan Brown and his men to steal the treasure, and in the course of this they are detected and cornered. At an impasse, Brown offers to leave peacefully, but the village does not trust him. Jim insists they be allowed to go, offering his own life as forfeit if anyone is killed as a result. As Brown and his men feign to leave, under cover of heavy fog, they make one last attempt at the treasure. Waris and Jim dispatch them, although Waris is mortally wounded.

The statue in the first panel is of Mao Zedong, who is Chinese.

Afterward, Stein pleads with Du-Ramin to spare Jim. Du-Ramin agrees if Jim leaves the following morning. Stein urges Jim to leave, but he refuses. The following morning as the funeral procession for the dead villagers starts, Jim walks up to Du-Ramin and waits, taking in the village's beauty. Du-Ramin shoots him and Jim's body is added to the procession, which ends in the cremation of the dead.