INDIANA JONES

Raiders of the Lost Ark 

WARNINGS: gratuitous violence, grotesqueness, sexism, racism

TO NOTE: iconic scenes, the genesis of the adventurous archeologist (hat wearing, lasso lashing hero afraid of snakes!)

Having been double crossed by a couple of Peruvian tour guides, and outsmarting numerous booby traps as well as outrunning the cinematic rolling stone, India Jones loses the golden statue he obtained to his nemesis, a French archeologist working with the Nazis. 

After returning home to teach at University (in an unclear, but likely New England state), he is recruited to look find the Lost Ark before the Nazis do. He flies to Nepal to get a headpiece possessed by a former girlfriend that he had jilted (when in a less than clearly consensual relationship with a someone of lesser status, and possibly a minor), where he manages to rescue her after contributing to burning down her business all at once. Indy and Marion leave with the relic, but the Nazi has a copy burned into his hand from when he picked up the relic that had been heated by the fire, and follow them.

They fly to Cairo, and joined by an Egyptian ally and Rhesus monkey, he loses Marion in a gun battle, and the monkey dies, eating the poisoned dates before Indy does. 

In an underground trove of Egyptian treasures, Indy attaches the headpiece to the top of a staff , and lines up the sunlight to a miniature plan of the city, and finds the next destination. He finds Marion in a compromised situation, and leaves her on her own, still tied up and gagged. Fortunately, she makes her way out on her own, but only after changing into a backless white dress picked out by the French archeologist, which will be increasingly ripped to shreds (torn first to a more practical and shorter length by Indy himself) and filthy with dirt by the time they get to port.

With a team of Egyptians, in the midst of a thunderstorm at dusk,  they unearth the entrance to a chamber filled with snakes, which Indy hates.

While  has to dress up to keep the French professor occupied, Indy torches the snakes and lifts the ark of the covenant out with the help of his friend and two poles, the bird’s faces covered in modesty with outstretched wings, before they are discovered by the French and Germans. Marion is dumped unceremoniously into the chamber, catching herself on an enormous statue of a dog god,  before falling into Indy’s arms. 

They escape, with a fight scene on a moving Nazi plane and a fistfight with a large German ending in a near escape land an explosion. Then Indy on horseback follows the convoy taking the ark, and hijacks the army vehicle, cavalierly knocking innocent people over, and brutally murdering others in his quest to recapture the ark, before being hidden in Omar’s garage. 

Marion finally gets a change of clothes, but it is still white, and it is not really clothes, but a satin nightgown. She tries to nurse his wounds, while he complains about all the places he hurts until he finds a few space places, from his left elbow, his forehead, his right cheek, and his lips, in a sweet goodnight before he falls into an exhausted sleep.

Somehow Indy manages to ride the Uboat (how lucky is for it not to go underwater!) without being drowned or discovered, and manages to threaten the parade with a rocket launcher. The Frenchman calls his bluff  (a fly dies in the discourse!), knowing he won’t blow up this precious piece of history.    

On an isolated Greek island, and wearing a high priest’s garb, the Frenchman releases spirits that destroy all who all look at them, with grotesque and macabre results. Only Indy and Marion are spared, eyes closed, and sweating from the heat.

Returning to DC, Indy is paid, and the bureaucracy assures everyone that the ark will be studied carefully. Instead, and probably for the best, the ark is nailed into a generic crate marked TOP SECRET and placed with thousands of other similar crates to be stored in obscurity.