MIL MASCARAS: AZTEC REVENGE (2015)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*                                                                                                                                                  AZTEC REVENGE, though plagued by the same low budget and amateur actors as ACADEMY OF DOOM, is an improvement over the entry from seven years previous. Though the fights are nothing special, at least they look to have been professionally blocked out. Yet REVENGE seems to have been the last moviemaking hurrah for writer-producer Jeffrey Uhlmann, not to mention his last acting credit. Amusingly, Uhlmann played all the nasty nemeses in this series: the evil mummy in the 2007 movie, the evil mastermind of the 2008 follow-up, and the evil decapitated head of an Aztec chieftain here. According to IMDB, REVENGE is almost the last credit for Mil Mascaras, though I can't tell whether he decisively retired from wrestling or from filmmaking.                                                                

Perhaps scripter Uhlmann intuited that REVENGE might be his last shot at capturing the cheese-appeal of the luchador-movies. Not only does the main menace of the film suggest the Aztec menace of the 1963 Mex-horror film THE LIVING HEAD, the Aztec Chief (never called anything else) possesses, like his 1963 kinsman, the power to manipulate others mentally. After the decapitated do-badder is unearthed in an archeological dig, he takes control of a couple of college students to serve him. Then he branches out, forcing athletes to dress up like ninjas and to attack wrestlers-- reason being, the Chief wants to transplant his head onto the healthy body of a champion fighter. This academic angle is of course the way Uhlmann once more worked things out so that the majority of the movie's scenes take place on a campus, whether it's the same one utilized in ACADEMY or not. Further, throughout the movie Mil Mascaras' confidantes on campus are a security guard (the worst actor, btw), a professor known only as The Professor, and a doctor known as Ruth. No, not that one, although this middle-aged, somewhat frumpy woman supplies Mil with his only romantic interest in the film, as she comes on to him in one scene.  Mil doesn't take her up on her offer, but maybe he thinks about it. And maybe that's why the Chief, with a college full of hot girls, chooses Ruth to be his Aztec queen-- just to twist his enemy's tail, as it were.                   

   Speaking of pulchritude, ACADEMY barely rated in that category, since almost all the female characters there went around clad in heavy masks and wrestling-gear. Hardly in line with Mexican movies of the era being emulated, since the babe-factor usually dominated, sometimes pairing aging wrestlers with very young heroines. But Uhlmann throws in a pleasingly gratuitous scene in which the Chief takes control of a whole sorority, boosts their strength somewhat (says the script), and has these nightgowned beauties try to overpower Mil, who's too gallant to hit back. At the very end, when the Chief can't take possession of Mil's body, he fits his head atop a ramshackle robot form that MUST be a callback to THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY. Yet the greatest suspense in the movie takes place not when Mil Mascaras is in physical danger, but when he's accused of participating in a kidnapping, and the suspicious cops inform the hero that he's under arrest and will have to take off his mask for their records. The goodguy wrestler escapes this fate, just as the real performer was never unmasked in the ring. But it's the sort of suspense I've rarely seen even in the "real" luchador movies.   

ARENA (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                     If I did not know from interviews that the writers of this project, Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo, were both stone SF-fans, I might think that ARENA had been written as a mundane boxing yarn, in which the characters' urban environment was taken for granted and needed no explanation. That's how little Bilson and DeMeo tell audiences about the background of the space-station on which all of the film's action takes place. I've seen or read hundreds of sketchy space-opera stories in which Earthpeople of some far-future era gambol about a space-opera cosmos, interacting with a plethora of other, usually-intelligent ETs. But I'm not sure I've encountered any space-opera as sketchy as ARENA.                                                               

 

All the viewer knows about protagonist Steve Armstrong (Paul Satterfield) is that though he has formidable boxing-skills, he's ended up working as a short order cook on the space station with his buddy Shorty (Hamilton Camp), an ET with four (not very believable) arms. A rowdy alien gets in Steve's face, possibly because humans of this era have low status, and Steve punches the alien out, which gets him and Shorty fired. However, the defeated ET was the prize fighter in the very limited stable of fight-manager Quinn (Claudia Christian). Two of her buddies show up at Shorty's domicile to attack Steve, and after a grueling fight, he beats them both. It's not clear that Quinn expressly told her employees to go beat up Steve to find out how good a fighter he was, but after he wins, Quinn just happens to be on hand to offer Steve a contract. He initially refuses but Shorty gets Steve in financial trouble with local fight-fixer Rogor (Marc Alaimo), so inevitably Steve joins Quinn's retinue.                                     

As in every other formulaic boxing-film, Steve starts moving up in the ranks, beating every other fighter he encounters. There's a marginal subplot about how no human has won in the arena-fights for some really long time, which may have something to do with Rogor fixing all the fights. Since Rogor can't bring Steve under his control, he sends his sexy accomplice Jade (Shari Shattuck) to seduce and then poison Steve, so that Steve can't win the match against the ugly ET champion. For no clear reason, Steve just throws off the poisoning, shows up at the match, and promptly trounces his opponent, making the universe safe-- for human boxers, I guess.       

 Considering how undercooked the ARENA script is, the movie's production values are pretty good, and director Peter Manooghian (who directed two other films that are, like one, connected to the Charles Band-iverse) keeps things lively. Satterfield carries most of the movie with his fight-scenes, though I don't know how much he was doubled. But no one watches this sort of thing for good dramatic acting. Curiously, the script is so laser-focused on giving Steve his big triumph that there's no romantic subplot between the fighter and his manager. Usually, in these sorts of films, the hero's "true love," the female professional, is good-looking but not as captivating as the evil temptress. But this time, actresses Christian and Shattuck look equally glamorous. There's only a sidelong glance or two to suggest that Quinn might be jealous of Jade's incursions, until the end-scene, where the former punches out the latter-- which is my only reason for giving this movie a "fighting femme" tag.      

PURGATORY (1999)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

One of the best metaphenomenal westerns I've ever encountered, aside from the best episodes of KUNG FU, debuted on the TNT cable channel-- which I would have to say, never struck me as a font of great original film-making.

A gang of bandits, led by Britton (Eric Roberts) and Guthrie (Peter Stormare), robs a bank in a western town, and during a gunfight, an innocent woman is slain. This moves none of the outlaws save Sonny, nephew of Guthrie (Brad Rowe), but a posse comes after the robbers, so they must flee into the desert. After passing through a dust storm, the gang finds itself in an isolated town named Refuge.

At first glance the citizens of Refuge look like ordinary peacable folks, which should make them easy pickings for the outlaws. None of the locals, even the sheriff (Sam Shepard), carry guns, they won't swear or drink, and every time the church bell rings, the citizens drop what they're doing and assemble in church.

Sonny, by chatting one of the pretty girls, is the first to get an inkling that Refuge is not an ordinary town. Some of the outlaws begin noticing that certain citizens have a resemblance to famous dead gunfighters-- Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, Jesse James-- while the sheriff himself bears a likeness to Wild Bill Hickock. Eventually the secret comes out: Refuge is a literal "ghost town," where the spirits of dead people have come together to endure a form of purgatory. If they can live righteous lives for a period of time, the citizens can ascend to the rewards of heaven. When one of the locals loses his patience with a nasty outlaw and clouts him with a shovel, a mysterious Indian shows up and escorts the local away to an unknown fate.

The outlaws, though not entirely believing the story, waste no time in taking advantage of the situation. At this point Sonny loses sympathy with his former comrades, particularly when his uncle threatens to rape the pretty young thing whom Sonny likes. It also helps his belief when he actually witnesses a new arrival to town, none other than the woman he saw slain back in the mortal world.

Though the film starts with the outlaws, Gordon Dawson's script is really centered on the former gunfighters, who, to win entry into heaven, must try to resist their instinct to fight back. Sonny, whose name suggests his low-ranking status in the gang, becomes crucial to encouraging the gunfighters to do the right thing, to battle evil even if they may have to go to hell for it.

One might cavil that PURGATORY changes its ground rules from time to time, as when one outlaw is literally smitten by heaven, though the skies are silent when it's time for the big showdown. However, one might argue that everything that happens in Refuge has been ordained by "the big man" in order to test the residents, much like the depiction of God in the "Book of Job." But in most isophenomenal westerns, religious characters are nominal figures, confined to watching the battle of good and evil play out. PURGATORY reverses that trope, putting religion in the driver's seat, but still lending validity to the western's crucial myth of the showdown. All of the actors-- even Randy Quaid, whom I personally don't like-- acquit themselves well, though clearly Sam Shepard is "first among equals" here.

MORBIUS (2022)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                          Maybe I would have hated MORBIUS as much as many "morbin' meme-sters" did had I seen the movie in a theater, where I had to pay for it. It is, I must admit, a pretty ordinary take on the Marvel character, who was never much more than your average "Doctor Jekyll and Mister Vamp" type of figure, full of existential agony every time he exsanguinated a hapless victim. But having seen the film for free, I can think of a lot of movies that deserve a lot more antipathy.                                                                                                     

The year before Sony Pictures released MORBIUS in April 2022, they'd had success both in collaborating with Marvel Films on two profitable SPIDER-MAN films, and had also done reasonably well with its October 2021 sequel to the new franchise Sony had built around former Spider-Man villain Venom. There was no good reason to think the company couldn't build a solid franchise around Michael Morbius, a scientist who accidentally infected himself with "scientific vampirism." All the producers had to do was repeat the Venom formula: eliding the movie-version's connections to the comic-book source-material-- Morbius's costume and his relationship to Spider-Man. It's possible, though, that MORBIUS got hurt by some of the public's disenchantment with superheroes when the MCU launched "Phase Four" in 2021. In contrast to 2019, which finished up with AVENGERS ENDGAME and the second Sony-MCU collab on Spider-Man, post-pandemic MCU released four 2021's films prior to MORBIUS's April release. These were BLACK WIDOW, SHANG-CHI, ETERNALS, and the third Sony-MCU SPIDER-MAN movie. The SPIDER-MAN film was the only major box-office success, while the "mainstream" MCU movies at best made some money beyond their principal budgets, but didn't prove all that exciting to the public. I think it probable that MORBIUS got caught up in the public's disappointment with uninspired flicks like SHANG-CHI in particular-- though even SHANG-CHI and MORBIUS look good next to a couple of the eyesores of the last half of 2022.                                                                                                    

So, back to MORBIUS's plot, which, as I specified, is pretty ordinary, but in an inoffensive way. Since childhood Michael Morbius suffers from a genetic blood disorder that forces him to walk with crutches, and while at a rehab center he meets another kid similarly afflicted, Lucien, whom for unknown reasons Michael nicknames "Milo." Michael saves Milo from a crisis, and the two bond into adulthood, where they're respectively played by Jared Leto and Matt Smith. Milo's character remains sketchy, though he's apparently both rich and crooked in some mysterious way. Michael, however, distinguishes himself with his innovative research into the disease from which he and Milo suffer-- the broad implication being that friendship with Milo has caused Michael to become altruistic, wanting to cure Milo as much as himself. Michael's research is funded by Milo and aided by fellow doctor Martine (Adria Arjona), who inevitably serves as Michael's romantic interest. Michael decides that a cure for the disease can be found by combining human DNA with that of vampire bats, and naturally the desperate scientist tests his formula on himself. Like dozens upon dozens of scientific overreachers, Michael becomes a monster: a vampiric powerhouse, but only as the result of feeding on human blood. But though Michael does contend with law-enforcement agents investigating his transgressions, his major foe turns out to be his best friend, who wants to possess the power of a vampire, no matter who gets hurt.                       

It's a shame the writers didn't provide Michael and Milo with more than these very schematic characterizations, because Leto and Smith are very talented performers and could have handled much more complex emotions, and Leto in particular looks good in vamp-face. There are some big action-scenes that emphasize some "morphing" effects akin to those in the VENOM franchise. While the fight-scenes aren't as bad as the ones in those late-2021 releases I mentioned-- i.e., the second BLACK PANTHER and the fourth THOR-- I imagine the familiar look of the action didn't do MORBIUS any favors. A mid-credits sequence tosses in another villain from the SPIDER-MAN movie universe, Michael Keaton's "Vulture," but whatever future plot-action this would have set up was doomed by the film's perceived failure. Again, I'm not saying that MORBIUS was anything special. But it also didn't deserve the "special" level of animosity it inspired.    
 

KNIGHTS (1993)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*                                                                                                                          Some sources claim that KNIGHTS was meant to be writer-director Albert Pyun's follow-up to one of his more money-making works, the 1989 CYBORG. That might be one reason why KNIGHTS starts out without even explaining what catastrophe reduced all of Earth into a desert wasteland occupied by small human enclaves. The original reason was supposed to have been a plague, while cyborgs were invented later. An early segment claims that the first cyborgs in the KNIGHTS-world were invented for military use, but they didn't have anything to do with the apocalypse. It's not clear how the dominant form of cyborg becomes that of vampires, remorselessly searching out scattered humans to feed on. Somehow that seems like a counter-intuitive trait to be programmed by even the darkest of Black Ops.                                                                                                   

 The cyborgs are led by Job (Lance Henriksen). Presumably the cyborgs don't reproduce, so they enlist rogue humans to swell their ranks and conquer all the desert-dwellers. This might have provided fertile ground for a subplot about humans betraying other humans, but the reality is that the rogue humans are just there to provide more sparring-partners for the story's hero. This is Nea (Kathy Long), who escapes a cyborg-raid that wipes out her entire tribe. Just as other cyborgs led by Simon (Scott Paulin) overtake Nea, she's rescued by good cyborg Gabriel (Kris Kristofferson). Like the young heroes of many westerns, Nea attaches herself to the more experienced fighter and spends years training under him, until she becomes a lean, mean kickboxing-machine.                                                                                     

   Regrettably, it takes Pyun roughly half the movie's running-time before Nea gets to come to the defense of other human tribes and kick major cyborg butt. Nea makes a strong but simplistic heroine and somewhat disproves the point I made in my CYBORG review, that the main attraction of this type of film is the testosterone factor. Long isn't a great actress, but she might have had more to work with had Pyun built up her relationship with Gabriel. But he keeps the good cyborg very simple as well. He's been programmed by his creator to defend the embattled humans, but for some reason he knows nothing about his creator or the creator's motives. Strangely, during Simon's encounter with Gabriel, Simon shows awareness that the good 'borg is named for the Christian angel-- though no one wonders why the head bad 'borg was named for a Biblical character who suffers travails at the will of God. And despite some very good fight-scenes for Nea in the last half-hour, she doesn't get to square off against the Big Bad at the climax. There are a couple of other recognizable performers in KNIGHTS, such as Gary Daniels (another kickboxer-turned-actor) and Vincent Klyn (who played the main villain in CYBORG), but action is pretty much all KNIGHTS has to offer-- though it does rate as one of a very few "apocaflicks" to focus on a female protagonist.                                                        

HERCULES (2014)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair* 
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                  The Wiki-article on this film mentioned that its producers originally intended, for whatever reason, not to credit Steve Moore, author of the graphic novel on which the movie was based. I've read none of Moore's works on the subject of the Greek hero, but since this Dwayne Johnson project spawned two imitations, THE LEGEND OF HERCULES and HERCULES REBORN, one might credit Moore with having brought these into being as well.                                   

  I didn't remember anything about my previous screening of this flick, but now I see why: the only thing HERCULES has going for it is a restrained performance by Johnson, in which he bulked up more than his usual weight and, more importantly, avoided any of his signature winks to the audience. This Hercules grew up as an orphan who became a great warrior due to his uncanny strength and his fighting-skills, and over time people began telling stories about his divine parentage and his slaying of giant monsters. Only one event in the myths strongly resembles the traditional narratives: while Hercules lived in Thebes with his wife and children under the rule of King Eurystheus, his family was slaughtered. He was accused of having slain them when he went mad, but all Hercules remembers is witnessing a spectre akin to the death-hound Cereberus. After that, Hercules became a full-time mercenary, leading an assortment of soldiers, some of whom are also based on legendary figures (Atalanta, Autolycus, Tydeus). Hercules comes to the defense of King Cotys (John Hurt), ruler of Thrace, against an invading force. But wait-- could it be that Cotys hasn't told the whole truth about the situation? Just like Hercules' memories of his family's slaughter may not be entirely correct?                                                                             

 Basically, 2014 HERCULES is constructed like a two-part mystery story, and neither mystery is interesting. The script tries to sell the idea that Hercules, after having been a mercenary who for years killed for whoever paid him the best, suddenly gets the Religion of Altruism and turns against Cotys and his secret ally. The secondary characters are no better, supplying nothing more than the marking of time. The battles are OK, but the most I can say is that they aren't as terrible as those in LEGEND. If I had to choose between the three, HERCULES REBORN seems the best just by virtue of having less pretension than the other two-- though I'd probably choose to view a half dozen Herc-flicks from the 1960s over any of these 2014 losers.              

HONOR ROLL #270

 As archaic villains go, JOHN HURT is-- kind of harmless.                                   

Kickboxing heroine Kathy Long gets ample secondary support from KRIS KRISTOFFERSON.                                                                        

JARED LETO, the vampire with the low box office scores.                      

Going alphabetically, the gunfighters of Purgatory include RANDY QUAID, SAM SHEPARD, JD SOUTHER and DONNIE WAHLBERG.                                                                                       

 PAUL SATTERFIELD attempted to take the ROCKY road to success.                                                                                                    

JEFFREY ULLMAN played villains in the last three Mil Mascaras movies, but his biggest role was behind the cameras, or none of them would have been made at all.