THE GRAND SUPERHERO OPERA

SANTO VS INFERNAL MEN (1961)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Seven years after Rene Cardona offered the iconic wrestler a shot at the silver screen, Santo finally took the plunge-- sort of.

I reviewed the first of these two Cuban-location films, and now I found on streaming a subtitled copy of SANTO VS INFERNAL MEN. Both movies decline to call the performer in the silver mask "Santo," and his character in both movies is a subordinate to another police agent-- Fernando Oses' "El Incognito" in BRAIN, and Joaquin Cordero's mufti drug-cop "Joaquin" here. The mad scientist plot would become far more typical of Santo's adventures under producer Rene Cardona, starting with SANTO VS. THE ZOMBIES.

Unfortunately, INFERNAL is dull from start to finish. I'm sure the producers of the Santo series threw in these mundane crime-films from time to time to save money, but I doubt any of them are very noteworthy. The only interesting aspect of the film is how many performers went on to play key roles in the Cardona lucha-verse: Gina Romand, Joaquin "Doctor Satan" Cordero, and Enrique Zambrano. In addition, one story is that while wrapping up INFERNAL, the movie crew found that Castro's forces were taking over the country. The story of the crew's escape from that entanglement would probably make a better movie than anything in this infernal waste of time.

XTERMINATOR AND THE AI APOCALYPSE (2023)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

I know nothing about the origins of this low-budget CGI oddity. But just as a guess, it looks and sounds as if writer/director/voice-actor "BC Fourteen" started out trying to make a fan-film about the armored adversary from George Lucas' prequel STAR WARS series, General Grievous. Then he reworked his CGI model into a more skull-faced humanoid and dubbed hm "Xterminator," but kept the raspy, acerbic voice-characterization.

The setting is some futuristic sparse-opera-- my new term for a space-opera so sparse in details that it might as well be a western. Almost all we see of humanity are various armored soldiers, under the command of one Grace Sherwood, and her raison d'etre as a commander of Earth-forces is to play "Thunderbolt Ross" to the robotic villain Xterminator. He calls himself "X" for short, but he's an apocalyptic AI who despises humans as much as humans despise him. So who does Sherwood call upon when her creator obliges her to rip off "Escape from New York" and send someone to Mars to rescue a missing diplomat? That's riiiight...

While X is on his Mars mission, motivated by both carrot and stick, Sherwood decides to hedge her bets by unleashing an intelligent shark-monster. Megalodon, to ambush X. Why does Megalodon exist in this sparse-opera? Same reason Sherwood confers with an intelligent Bigfoot: a director's silly in-joke. because he worked on an early CGI junk-flick, BIGFOOT VS MEGALODON. For good measure, Sherwood also arranges a Martian jailbreak to add to X's headaches.

Though XATAA is never more than a junk-flick, I might have been slightly entertained if Fourteen had been able to deliver on all the promised action. But just as was the case with all the SYFY big-beast fests, action costs too much money for cheapie CGI movies. There's just barely enough violence for XATAA to qualify in my combative mode category. Yet while I can't recommend the film, it did make me a bit curious about Fourteen's half-dozen "Bigfoot" junk-flicks.

THOR: TALES OF ASGARD (2011)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

A few years after Marvel's THOR comic became a good seller for the company, creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby instituted a backup feature, "Tales of Asgard," which also lasted a year or two before the THOR feature took over the whole book. The backup gave artist Jack Kirby the chance to focus only upon Thor's hometown of Asgard, doing his best to convey Fosterian magic and grandeur within the space of seven pages an issue.

The MCU's live-action THOR series, which began the same year this DTV was issued, barely attempted pageantry in its depictions of the Norse wonder-world. TALES doesn't manage to come close to Kirby's passionate depiction of a universe governed by magic and martial prowess. However, TALES makes a sincere effort, and on the whole looks pretty good in terms of visuals.

Now, the 2011 live-action THOR largely rejects the Norse "don't die in your bed" ethos, TALES follows that same course in large part, pushing a pacifist message. However, because this DTV is depicting Thor as a young male god seeking to prove himself within a male culture, the script doesn't quite reject all aspects of masculinity. However, there remains an orientation toward a judgmental feminism, incarnated in this video's concept of the warrior-woman Sif-- though nothing as toxic as the MCU would later embrace.

Thor's support-cast members-- adoptive brother Loki, and the Scandinavian Three Musketeers known as Fandral, Hogun, and Volstaag-- are also younger and greener, and Loki at this point is a novice schemer, still on good terms with his boisterous brother. But none of them burn to prove themselves as Thor does. However, Daddy Odin's noble brow is perpetually bent with the weight of keeping Asgard's peace with their long-time enemies the Frost Giants, so he can't be bothered figuring out a rite of passage for the young Thunder God. But there is a sort of "impossible quest" that Asgardian males are allowed to undertake, in order to satisfy their desire for adventure. Odin's troubles start when his son takes on the quest and comes back with a dangerous prize.

There's a hard-to-follow backstory about how the Frost Giants almost wiped out the Dark Elves. Apparently the Elves were allied to Asgard, but Odin's warriors didn't come to the Elves' defense for whatever reasons. So the latter made a pact with the fire-demon Surtur, which risked the survival of all the Nine Worlds. The Frost Giants annihilated most of the Dark Elves anyway, and one of the survivors, Algrim, took a position as a court advisor to Odin. However, Algrim's position in Asgard is not unlike an emigre from South Vietnam taking shelter in the US: deep down, there's a sense of betrayal by an ally who didn't live up to his part of the bargain. Thor seeks to discover the lost Sword of Surtur, but his masculine bull-headedness imperils Asgard from both the covert menace of Algrim and the overt one of the war-happy Frost Giants. In the end, Thor learns humility, at least until it comes time for him to relearn a parallel lesson in the 2011 live-action flick.

While in the regular MCU movies Sif is just One of the Boys, here she has some sort of vague grudge against the males of Asgard, and she has an affiliation with a tribe of female warriors who live apart from Asgard proper. At least some of her testiness stems from having the hots for Young Thor and thus expecting him to be more than an entitled heir. This isn't much of a conflict, even for a B-plot. Still, there's nothing actively bad about TALES-- while all of the "live" THOR films suffer from major narrative problems.

RETURN OF THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN AND THE BIONIC WOMAN (1987)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological, sociological*

"Did you want your son made over in your own image?"

This is a pretty intense line coming from a character in the gosh-gee-wowie world of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, especially being spoken by Michael Austin (Tom Schanley) to his father Steve Austin (Lee Majors). The character of Michael never appeared on the TV shows but was at some point conceived by Steve with a mother from a short-lived marriage. (She's conveniently out of the picture, of course.) The line is all the more interesting because making over this would-be spinoff hero in the image of Steve Austin is exactly what the producers of the telefilm had in mind. Thus when Michael suffers a terrible accident, he loses exactly the same body parts that Steve did-- one arm, two legs, and an eye, though Steve's son does get one extra enhancement: his eye can shoot lasers in addition to being able to see great distances. The line is also interesting because the two bionic wonders before Michael were given their makeovers by the government without their express consent, and the producers of the TV-movie apparently couldn't resist repeating the trope of the "forced conversion." (Didn't any of these people ever enter a real hospital, where the physicians almost always have to ask for consent for any operation?)

Though RETURN was conceived as a back-door pilot for a series starring Michael Austin, the first hour of the show is all about Steve Austin and Jamie Sommars (Lindsay Wagner). Both of them retired from the OSI about a decade ago, with Steve taking up some sort of fishing gig while Jamie apparently took classes to become a licensed therapist for the underprivileged. Former boss Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) approaches Steve about coming back to the fold to stop a terrorist operation, Fortress, because Steve dealt before with its obsessed leader Stenning (Martin Landau). Though Steve refuses, he's soon forced to return to the spy biz because Stenning, despite being in prison, is aware of the bionic duo's powers and begins sending thugs to harvest their mechanical organs. This contingency forces Steve and Jamie to reunite after years of estrangement, with all the attendant emotional turmoil.

As for Michael, Steve just happens to be in the process of seeking a connection with his grown son, a pilot in the Air Force. Despite his having been raised by an aunt, Michael seems fairly neutral toward his famous sire, knowing him only as an astronaut. Shortly before Michael has his transformative accident, Steve reveals his abilities to his son. Michael thinks bionic enhancements are cool, until he's forced to get them himself. Naturally, Michael doesn't spend much time grousing about his fate. Jamie transfers from whatever her regular gig is to become the therapist to Steve's offspring. Michael makes rapid progress as a bionic wonder, all leading up to the final confrontation with Fortress. Wikipedia's assertion that the producers had the successful film "Top Gun" on their minds is confirmed when Oscar asks Michael to come work for him "if you ever get tired of being Top Gun in the Air Force."

The bionic stunts here are as good as anything on the older shows, and some of the dialogue is a good deal better, courtesy of Michael Sloan, who would also write the next two TV-films with Steve and Jamie (but no Michael). Lee Majors's real son Lee Majors Jr has a minor supporting role as a young agent of the OSI, and he DOES reprise that role for the other two bionic-reunion flicks. One interesting aspect of the script is that Fortress is said to be some sort of "America for Americans" reactionary group, which is a bit surprising since the TV shows usually steered clear of real-world politics. Martin Landau does his usual professional job as the Big Bad, ranting about how the country allows aliens to infect its "bloodstream," or something like that. And yes, it's fun to see the chemistry between Majors and Wagner for the first of three final collaborations.

ONE PIECE: STRONG WORLD (2009)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

I'd never attempt to review the multitudinous productions of ONE PIECE, the still-running manga and anime, any more than I'd take a shot at DRAGONBALL, the 1980s shonen that PIECE essentially superseded in popularity. Both are just too much of a time-commitment. But I can take a shot at the various movies and TV specials.

Phenomenality in ONE PIECE is problematic at best. It's not science fiction, nor what I call magical-era fantasy. The portmanteau term "science fantasy" is best, for it represents a world where all sorts of bizarre creatures and environments exist according to whatever phenomena the author wants to introduce-- much like the Mars books of Burroughs. Some characters in the PIECE universe use technology of a sort, but it's tech-gear filtered through the lens of historical fiction-- in this case, that of the Golden Age of Piracy. To further complicate the universe, there's some entity that scatters so-called "Devil Fruits" throughout the endless islands, and each fruit can bestow a particular, unique power on whoever eats one. So PIECE crosses the worlds of Burroughsian science-fantasy with that of superhero comics.

STRONG WORLD takes place after the manga and anime had been running roughly a decade, and stars nine-- count 'em, nine-- do-gooder pirates who never seem to find time to do the sort of things real pirates do. Instead, they're forever stomping out evil tyrants, or avenging little girls who've had their dollies messed up by bandits, and that sort of thing. In this case the goody-good "Straw Hat Pirates," led by the courageous moron Monkey D. Luffy, pit themselves against Shiki the Golden Lion, a villain who plans to dominate the world with a horde of mutated animals. In addition, Shiki abducts the Straw Hats' lissome lady navigator Nami to serve in his crew and scatters the other eight heroes all over the place. Naturally, after various exploits, they converge and kick the evildoer's ass.

Manga-creator Eichiro Oda wrote the movie's original story, and those in the know can see him recycling a major trope for the character Nami. When she first appears, she's the virtual slave of a petty ruler, and the Straw Hats rescue her. So WORLD is a partial reprise of that trope, with Shiki defeating the Straw Hats at first, so that Nami has to agree to serve him to spare her friends. The various "caring moments" in the film never overwhelm the big noisy action-scenarios but do serve as a necessary counterpoint.

ONE PIECE, which has been a major success in the world manga market, arguably found a way to translate the appeal of "superhero powers" to a shonen science-fantasy universe, and more than any other manga, seems to have eclipsed the American superheroes with the younger generations. WORLD is a decent action-fantasy programmer, with the only debit being that Shiki is just your usual tinpot tyrant. But the animators did a bang-up job designing all of the Golden Lion's malicious monsters, who provide some of the film's best moments.

GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI (1993-94); GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI MOVIE (1994)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

I'd seen a few random episodes of this anime teleseries long ago but recently decided to take the plunge and watch all the subbed episodes online, as well as comparing them to the first two years of the 1991-99 manga series. Though some anime serials change many details about the manga-stories they adapt, or even produce totally original installments, all 45 episodes of the SWEEPER series are based on the tales of Takashi Shiina. The biggest changes are slight increases in slapstick violence and the injections of support-characters not in the original stories, probably just to increase their run-time.

Most of the episodes are done-in-one, with the exception of occasional two-parters. Starring character Reiko Mikami is a "ghost sweeper" in her late twenties or early thirties, and she uses a variety of supernatural weapons to exorcise troublesome ghosts and demons who plague modern-day people and businesses. Mikami is as courageous and resourceful as the best heroes, but she's also extremely mercenary, taxing her customers with huge bills so that someday she can become a rich woman. She's also slightly larcenous-- one episode displays her knowledge of burglary techniques-- and she constantly underpays her male assistant, seventeen-year-old Tadao Yokoshima. She gets away with this because she's super-hot and knows that horndog Yokoshima will accept any wage just to scope her out. The fact that she's exploiting the youth, however, does not keep her from doling out brutal punishment to the teen any time he tries to feel her up, or even expresses a negative opinion of her. Yokoshima, for his part, is clearly meant to be the "goat" of the series, the one who has all the terrible things happen to him-- and because he's such an unregenerate perv, his sufferings are funny. As contrast, Mikami also employs a naive young female ghost, Okinu, who's much milder in temperament than either Mikami or Yokoshima, but still generates her share of difficulties.

SWEEPER's cast has a healthy variety of equally wacky support-types, and as I noted, sometimes the writers injected them into adaptations of stories where they didn't appear. Happily, unlike some later manga-concepts, the first couple of years of the manga didn't overpopulate the series so as to distract from the central star and her two primary helpers, which arguably occurred with URUSEI YATSURA. This concentration on the three principals helps generate suspense about their responses to one another. While Mikami never becomes generous, she will fight for her friends, and sometimes even for "friendly enemies." It's not clear from the first two years of stories if she becomes a syndromic sadist through her constant thrashings of Yokoshima, though it will be interesting to see if the character changes at all in the manga as a whole. She does show some regard for his welfare at times, and even respects him a bit, until he inevitably loses that respect thanks to his horniness.

SWEEPER is always light-hearted and non-serious, though manga-artist Shiina comes up with some creative concepts from time to time. For instance, when the team accidentally injures Santa Claus. they have to complete his rounds for him, though Shiina mentions that in modern times there are so many kids in the world, Santa has to choose recipients by sheer chance. A wilder sort of folklore-crossover has Mikami take on the Pied Piper of Hamelin-- albeit one put through a mythic mix-master, since his abilities include the power to turn adults into little kids (Mikami being his first victim) and to summon rats as his minions. The final episode adapts a story in which the ghost-sweepers get trapped inside a movie, interacting with fictional characters who are fully aware of being fiction. Something about the way treats the movie characters reminded me of the Japanese folklore-idea of the *tsukumogami,* an inanimate object that takes on a pseudo-life thanks to associating with humans. Neither the manga nor the anime is interested in any existential questions. But even ideas with potential unused can supply a sense of the creators' raw creativity. In conclusion, even before finishing my survey of the manga series, I like SWEEPER enough to say that its feminine protagonist ought to rank more highly in the lists of "best heroines ever."

ADDENDUM: After the teleseries ended the producers finally wrote what seems to be, from available info, an all-original story for the franchise. This hour-long OAV is also a very peculiar crossover, for it pits Reiko and her team, as well her usual support-cast, against the vampire Nosferatu. There's no resemblance between this monster and the character from the silent film classic, but it's implied that the spirit of the vampire somehow traveled to medieval Japan and possessed the body of the famous lord Nobunaga Oda. A contemporary exorcist seems to have slain the vampire-lord, but he reincarnates in modern Japan, along with his aide Ranmaru. Both Nobuaga and Ranmaru were real historical figures, though so far as I can tell most later expansions on their careers were not "fictionalized" enough for them to comprise crossover-icons. Anyway, the dead exorcist also appears in modern times and gives Reiko a magical spear with which to vanquish the demon. Reiko is her usual money-grubbing self but still steps up when Nosferatu endangers her world. None of the support-characters do much and Reiko's cowardly assistant Tadao only gets substantial time because the exorcist-ghost possesses him, using his body to help Reiko. The film recycles the usual tropes of the manga with no originality, though anyone in 1994 "shipping" Reiko and Tadao would have been pleased that when Reiko's life stands in danger, she thinks of her assistant moments before "he" shows up to save her. This Galahad fantasy, however, does not keep Reiko from beating up Tadao several times for his horndog behavior. There are a few decent scenes but overall, the movie-- given the subtitle "The Resurrection of Nosferatu" in a dubbed English version-- lacks the charm of the teleseries and the original manga.