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Call of the Jungle: Severin Films’ Antonio Margheriti Adventure Film Boxset

Just like the title of the Fat Boy Slim album says: “You’ve come along way, baby!”

Back in the late 2000s/early 2010s, a younger Nicholas Diak was enrolled in the liberal arts program at the Tacoma campus of the University of Washington. I was neck deep in my master’s thesis which was about Italian genre filmmaker Antonio Margheriti and his masterpiece, Castle of Blood (1964).

Aside from demonstrating the virtues of Castle of Blood and why it was an important movie in Italian film canon (it was transgressive, showed nudity, depicted lesbianism in a chaste, Italian society, etc.), I had also made a call for the reconsideration of Margheriti as an Italian director of note. I felt at the time (and still do) that he was extremely overshadowed by the likes of Bava, Argento, Fulci, and Leone, and his contributions to the various genres he operated in were not as acknowledged or appreciated as they should have been.

This was extremely apparent at the time in that Margheriti films were next to impossible to procure. While the four directors I mentioned above all had accessible filmographies, made even more available with the rise of DVDs and the emergence of boutique film labels, Margheriti films remained hard to find and obtain, much like the treasures featured in his Indiana Jones knock offs of the 80s. In order to find Margerhiti’s films, I often had to go to Scarecrow Video in Seattle, check the (albeit small) Margheriti section, note the titles and formats, and hope for the best on eBay or websites like the now defunct xploitedCinema. In time I accrued a handsome amount of other region DVDs and VHS tapes of Margheriti’s films. Many hours were spent at the UWT A/V lab transferring those VHS tapes to a DVDr. In the end, these all become my treasures.

It is now 15 to 20 years later. My writing career has been all over the map, but I have never stopped writing about and championing Margheriti. The list at the end of this write up is a consolidated list of my writings and podcast/vidcast appearances talking about the director and his films (if you’re interested). Concurrently, Margheriti’s films did find themselves being released in accessible, restored editions that they deserve.

Castle of Blood has a red spiral with Barbara Steele and other zombies behind her. Alien from the Abyss shows a robot-alien with lots of tubes running from its helmet. It has a huge crab claw that it is using to break a glass window.
Personal copies of the Severin release of Castle of Blood and Alien from the Abyss.

Severin Films, the masters of releasing European genre and sexploitation cinema stateside, has been kind to Margheriti. Prior they had released Castle of Blood (in a couple different editions) and Alien from the Abyss (1989), an underrated knock off of Alien(s) and Predator (1987), and technically, kinda/sorta Blood for Dracula (1974).

Boxset with three black-cased Blu-ray/4Ks.
The Antonio Margheriti & The Jungles of Doom boxset.

The 80s were a prolific decade for Margheriti, where his filmography looked split between two different genres: the post-Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) adventure film, and the post-Vietnam men-on-a-mission film (both overlapping with jungle settings). Severin’s newest Margheriti masterpiece release, Antonio Margheriti & the Jungles of Doom: His 80s Adventure Films, is an excellent representation of the former. It is a stately boxset with new editions of Ark of the Sun God (1984), Jungle Raiders (1985), and Hunters of the Golden Cobra (1982), though each film is available individually. For fun, I’d like to show off a side by side of these new Severin releases next to what I had to work with back in the day.

The 4K/Blu-ray depicts a man in a blue shirt, white cap, and holding a revolver, behind chased by indigenous folk. There are trees and a waterfall behind him. In the sky is a white suited/white hat Lee Van Cleef and a woman in a safari hat. There is an orante cobra statue between them.
Personal copies of Jungle Raiders on 4K and VHS.

Looking at DVDCompare.net, it appears that Jungle Raiders‘ only physical release after the 80s was a German DVD in 2000, the early days of the format. The long abandoned Antonio Margheriti website lists no DVDs of this film. This makes the Severin release the first truly accessible incarnation of the film, unless one happened to hold on to their VHS copy distributed by the Cannon Group (like me!). To be fair, Jungle Raiders does make a great addition to the Cannon library, along side other Indiana Jones-ish fare like Firewalker (1986), King Solomon’s Mines (1985), and its sequel, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986).

The Severin edition contains a UHD and Blu-ray format of the film, a trailer, and an interview with Edoardo Margheriti, the son of Margheriti who assisted his father in many of his films. The VHS edition does not support any special features, obviously, but I have to give it a point for having fantastic artwork. The Severin Films cover art is nice, and evokes a 1950s style, think Secret of the Incas (1954), but the Cannon VHS screams 80s ‘splosions.

Artwork on both release shows David warbeck, showing off his chest, as he reaches for a Cobra. The Blu-ray has the cobra surrounded by lightning bolts while the VHS has it surrounded by flames.
Personal copies of The Hunters of the Golden Cobra on 4K/Blu-ray and VHS.

Hunters of the Golden Cobra is one of the many, many films Margheriti made with cult film star David Warbeck (read his biography put out by FAB Press many years ago, he talks fondly working with the Italian director). Like Jungle Raiders, it appears Hunters of the Golden Cobra only got one release (well, a DVD and a Blu-ray), put out X-Cess Entertainment in Germany (also lacking an entry at the Margheriti website). There’s no date for this release at DVDCompare.net, but one of the special features is a video with Dr. Marcus Stiglegger, who had contributed to Severin’s own release of Horrors of Spider Island (1960), so that makes this German release fairly recent. That means in the 40-ish years since its release in theaters/VHS, Hunters of the Golden Cobra has not been available at all.

The Severin Films release holds even more treasures than the Jungle Raiders release: two interviews, a Q&A with star Warbeck, a video essay, and trailers. The Vestron Video VHS is a neat artifact of the era, but its cover art does not quite capture the energy in the Indiana Jones-like films. The Severin release definitely takes the VHS artwork and improves upon it.

Two rows of movies. Top one is 2 Blu-rays bottom is three DVDs. All are of Ark of the Sun God, but with different art.
Personal copies of Ark of the Sun God on DVD and Blu-ray.

And finally, there is Ark of the Sun God. As you can probably surmise from the picture above, there are a) a lot of editions of Ark of the Sun God and b) I REALLY like Ark of the Sun God. It is, unironically, one of my top five favourite films of all time. Right up there with von Trier’s Europa (1991) and Kieślowski’s Three Colours: Red (1994). Ark of the Sun God is at that level!

The first academic presentation I ever gave, at the 2009 Popular/American Culture Association Conference, was on Ark of the Sun God. If you look closely at the bottom center DVD, you’ll see, in silver marker, an autograph by Edoardo Margheriti to Michele and I. Back in the late 2000s I posted this film (and a few others) to Edoardo for him to autograph, and it has been one of the jewels in my collection. Thus, for the reasons above (and more) I have a strong affinity to this film.

The bottom row of three DVDs are, well, pretty bad in regards to image quality. They are definitely rips from VHS tapes. The AIP Studios release (bottom left) looks borderline like a Ghanaian film poster, with the cartoonish flames on the tanker and Susie Sudlow looking rather ghoulish.

The Tales of Voodoo Vol 4 DVD (bottom right) has two movies on it: Temple of Hell (which is Ark of the Sun God) and Cannibal Curse (1988). Cannibal Curse is ripped from a subtitled VHS tape, and if the subtitle is too long, it cuts off due to the cropping of the frame. The cover of this DVD looks akin to a cover a horror comic from EC Comics back in its day, though not too fitting for Ark of th – I mean – Temple of Hell, which has no voodoo or even really any gore (the character of Mohammed gets shot and bleeds, but he recovers).

The center middle DVD from Pulp Video, the one that is autographed, is my favourite DVD of the trio and the one that I have watched the most. The art on this one is great and really captures the last scene of the film when Warbeck and company find the Scepter of Gilgamesh (there is no Ark in this film) and battle with Turkish Star Wars and his minions.

Shockingly, I have no VHS copies of Ark of the Sun God, and that is because I was able to find the film on DVD(s). What I do have is the 88 Films release of Ark of the Sun God that came out in 2023. This is an import release (88 Films is in the UK), but it is stacked with extras: poster, booklet, a commentary, two interviews, and more. At the time, this looked to be the best treatment Ark of the Sun God would ever receive.

Of course, Severin Film stepped up to the plate to deliver their own release of Ark of the Sun God in early 2026. The Severin Films does not contain the same supplemental material as the 88 Films edition, instead bringing an interview with Edoardo, and interview with the film’s writer Giovanni Paolucci, and Margheriti reminiscing about David Warbeck. The cover art is a much, much better version of the AIP DVD release.

What Severin Film brings that is truly unique is a CD soundtrack that has songs from both Hunters of the Golden Cobra and Ark of the Sun God. For decades the Ark of the Sun God theme song done by Josette Martial has been unavailable, which is unfortunate because the track is an Italio-Disco banger. In 2025 the album got a digital-only release on Amazon via Cam Sugar, but here it is, in physical format for the first time, in Severin’s release. A Holy Grail, er, Holy Scepter of Gilgamesh, album release for sure.

And with that, my little retrospective of comparing old VHS tapes and DVDs of Margheriti’s Indiana Jones movies to their new Severin counterpart concludes. I hope that this boxset is extremely successful because there is a plethora of other adventure/action/jungle movies Margheriti directed in the 80s that would greatly benefit from a re-release. A double Blu-ray of the Indio movies perhaps? A triple boxset of his men-on-a-mission films with Lewis Collins maybe? These are all great, fun, films that capture that 80s action/mercenary film spirit that was prevalent at the time.

If you’ve enjoyed this fun retrospective and want to check out some of my writings on Margheriti, see the links below.

My best piece on Margheriti is no doubt my essay “Welcome to the Jungle: Fun and Games in Antonio Margheriti’s 1980s Mercenary Films” that was published at We Are the Mutants. One of the best things I’ve ever written:

“Welcome to the Jungle: Fun and…”

There is, of course, my master’s thesis that started it all for me. However, it is really old and I’ve become a much better writer since then:

UWT Library – Masters Thesis

And lots more:

I’ve also looked at other Severin Films releases at my website here: