The Prodigal Statue

Front cover of a photo novel with Denny Miller as Tarzan standing in front of the statue.

The Beginning

In 1981, I picked up a comic from my local news agency. As a nine-year-old with a love of the fantastic, I grabbed a comic entitled Hellfire, which featured a horned monster on its cover terrorizing a young couple. It was a striking cover that captured my imagination. I enjoyed reading it (mainly stories about the DC horror superhero, The Demon), but it was the image on the cover that has stayed with me through the years and started me on a strange journey of discovery. 

 Hellfire (1981). This one-shot horror comic was published in Australia by Murray Publishing.

The picture was by Spanish artist, Josep Marti Ripoll, under the name, Marti Ripoll. It was originally featured on the front cover of Professor Zamorra #85: Der Feuergötze, a 1977 German novella by Von Robert Lamont, published by Bastei Verlag. The title translated into English is The Fire Idol.

Tarzan the Ape Man (1959)  

It was a year or two later that I first saw the film Tarzan the Ape Man (1959), starring Denny Miller as Tarzan. It's at the film's climax when Tarzan is saving Jane, her Father, and his partner Holt from a fiery sacrificial death, that a large statue of a horned humanoid monster holding a snake is featured. As the film finished I raced to my comic box, feeling I had seen the horned statue before. As I flicked through the stack, I finally came to Hellfire and realized that I had a match. The idol, on whose sacrificial altar the wild inhabitants of the lost city tried to present Jane as a burnt offering, was the same as the one on the cover.

Holt (Cesare Danova) and Jane (Joanna Barnes) climb the statue to escape the fiery sacrificial pyre in Tarzan the Ape Man (1959)

I thought that this would be the end of the appearance of the mysterious statue, however sometime later I sat down on another Saturday morning to watch another epic fantasy movie, director George Pal's Atlantis: the Lost Continent. It was as the characters were entering the temple of Atlantis that something caught my eye, there sitting in the middle of the temple was a familiar statue, the horned man-beast from my comic and from the lost city high atop Tarzan's Mutia Escarpment. However here the head of the snake had been removed and replaced with a dome-like structure. And it appears that another coat of paint had been applied to give it a different look from its previous appearances.

Azor the High Priest (Edward Platt) and Demetrios (Sal Ponti) look upon the statue, minus the snakes head and mace, in Atlantis, The Lost Continent (1961)

Until recently the statue had become just a faded memory from my childhood until I was discussing  Denny Miller's Tarzan the Ape Man with fellow fans on FaceBook. It was now that I realized that I may be able to solve the mystery of the amazing horned idol. After some discussion with my fellow fans, I discovered that the statue originally appeared in the 1955 movie, The Prodigal, starring Lana Turner and Edmund Purdom and Directed by Richard Thorpe (Tarzan Escapes (1936), Tarzan Finds a Son (1939), Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941) Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942). The art direction for this film was overseen by Cedric Gibbons and Randall Duell and it is they that were probably responsible for the amazing statue. It is interesting to note that the set decoration was the responsibility of Edwin B Willis and Henry Grace, the latter of which was also the Set Decorator on the other two MGM movies, Tarzan the Ape Man and Atlantis, The Lost Continent.

Where it all began, Samarra (Lana Turner) and the statue in The Prodigal (1955).

In the end, it seems that Henry Grace was the common denominator in utilising this stunning 11-foot tall and 3000-pound, fibreglass statue (www.volusiariders.com/49-stories-road/204926-babylonian-fertility-god-demon.html) in the three movies produced by MGM and thus increasing the cinematic presence of this amazing product of the art department.

Worship in the Temple of Astarte in The Prodigal (1955).

The Statues Identity

In The Prodigal, the statue is seen in the Temple of Astarte and is the male counterpart of the goddess, the storm and fertility god, Baal (Lord) Hadad. He, and the many versions of the storm god throughout the ancient near east (ie, Marduk, Teshub, Enlil, etc) were usually portrayed as having the horns of a bull and sometimes the body of a bull and at other times, riding a bull. He is often depicted holding a club or mace, as in the above picture, as well as a hand full of thunderbolts.

Depictions of the storm god with the horns of a bull and wielding an axe or mace
in his right hand as the movie statue is. The figure on the left, instead of
holding thunderbolts is holding a snake as the movie statue is.

There is also the accompanying legend of the storm God fighting and defeating the great dragon or serpent of chaos that symbolises the sea, an action that resulted in the appearance of land out of the primordial ocean. In the minds of the ancients, this battle was re-enacted time and time again, when people on the land witnessed the storm raging over the sea, thunderbolts being hurled down from the heavens into the raging waters. In the movie statue being discussed, it is possible this defeated serpent of chaos that can be seen in the hands of the storm god. Another possibility is that it is the 'Serpent of Splendour' or the Mushussu, often depicted in many Babylonian pictures of the storm god Bel (Lord) Marduk.

Bel Marduk and his Mushussu (The Serpent of Splendour).

Depictions of the storm god from various ancient near eastern cultures,
each featuring the bull motif either as a physical feature or chariot/throne.

Many of these themes can also be found in the Hebrew Bible and explain the association of the golden calf (although discouraged) with the worship of the Israelite god Yahweh (Deuteronomy 9: 16, 1 Kings 12: 25-30).

Moses smashed the tablets of the Ten Commandments in protest against the Israelites depicting Yahweh as a golden calf.

At various points he is also depicted as a storm god, slayer of the dragon, and the one who divides the seas to bring forth land (eg. Job 26: 1-14), themes that are also found in the New Testament (Mark 4: 35-40, Revelations 12). As can be seen, the power of this mythology and imagery is very strong and continued to persist, entering classical mythology (Zeus transforming into a bull) and even Norse mythology (Thor's wielding of a hammer and battle with the serpent Jormungandr).

Clockwise from left to right: DC comics character Baal-Hadad, the movie statue's head, and another picture found on the internet depicting the god Dagon but seemingly inspired by the movie statue.

Where is he now?

After some time surfing the internet and responding to comments on an earlier version of this article, I managed to piece together some of the statue's journey after its movie career ended. 

In 1970, MGM auctioned off thousands of props and costumes. Along with Dorothy's ruby slippers and George Pal's time machine, the statue and a smaller version of it (seen below) were sold (https://youtu.be/1wReBwaorjc).

  

During the 1970's it ended up in a secondhand/junk shop, in Ogletown, Delaware, for several years (www.tsutpen.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/before-and-after-250-babylonian.html?m=1). It was around this time in 1977, that the statue was used as the inspiration for the cover of Der Feuergötze. Eventually, the statue was sold to a travel agency, Tranquillity Travel, in Dover, Delaware, where it sat out the front of the business on Route 13 (www.tsutpen.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/before-and-after-250-babylonian.html?m=1). It was here that the statue got its next big modelling gig, appearing on the cover of the Live Skull album, Snuffer, released in 1988.

In 2003/2004 the statue was bought by Denney Van Istendal for $5000 in Lumberton, New Jersey, much to the horror of the local community (www.roadsideamerica.com/news/10348). Eventually, after much controversy, the statue was put up for sale again in 2009. For some time the rumour was put forward that it had been sold to a bar in Philadelphia (www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/1615). However, the truth is that it was purchased by someone nearby and still resides in Lumberton. With this news, many questions still remain:  Will the statue ever be placed in a museum somewhere and restored to its cinematic glory?  Will it ever be reunited with a new snake head and mace? Where is the smaller version of the statue?  And finally, will it ever make a cinematic comeback?

The statue in Lumberton, New Jersey

The statue with the 'For Sale' sign.