THE GRAND SUPERHERO OPERA

THE PHANTOM RIDER (1946)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Although the 1946 PHANTOM RIDER is mostly a by-the-numbers "costumed cowboy" serial, it has some points that elevate it above the level of the routine.

For one thing, it has nothing to do with the Universal chapterplay of the same title, which was essentially just another outre-outfit oater. In that 1936 offering, Buck Jones just donned an all-white outfit, possibly with the idea of suggesting that he was ghostly, like The Ghost Rider of the comics, who appeared in 1949. In the 1946 serial, Doctor Jim Sterling (Robert Kent) ends up donning a costume designed to make him look like an ancient Indian spirit, consisting of buckskins, a feathered headdress, and a rubber mask covering his entire face, purportedly to make others think that he's Indian. The Rider never fools any white villains into thinking him a spirit, though a good number of the local Indians-- never given a tribal name-- apparently can't tell red-hued rubber from crimson flesh.

For the other thing, RIDER possesses some good progressive (back when that word meant something) political content. Easterner Sterling is on his way to become the doctor to a small western town, whose name might be Big Tree, like the nearby Indian reservation. On his way to town in a buckboard, Sterling gives a lift to Blue Feather (George J. Lewis), the college-educated son of the Indians' chief. Blue Feather provides exposition about how he educated himself so that he could improve the lot of his people in living in the white man's world, especially in dealing with the bandits menacing both the whites and the Indians. Blue Feather's main ambition is to create an Indian police force, vetted by the federal government and with the power to arrest the lawless. Sterling shows his approval of this lofty goal-- and within the first chapter, gets direct evidence of bandit predations. Blue Feather is wounded and sidelined, so the noble doctor decides to take over the young Indian's mission. With the help of schoolmarm Doris (Peggy Stewart), Sterling decides to assume the appearance of an ancient Indian savior, The Phantom Rider, to convince the Indians to follow the white man's way of fighting oppression.

As in the 1938 LONE RANGER serial, the bandits are hiding under the cloak of counterfeit authority. Local Indian agent Carson (LeRoy Mason) is not the real person assigned to the post, but an otherwise unnamed schemer using the position to coordinate his gang's activities. The Rider pops up and starts preying on the predators, they try to stop him, rinse and repeat.

Despite a cool setup, RIDER falls into a lot of pedestrian situations, with no memorable cliffhangers and mostly gun-action. According to THE FILES OF JERRY BLAKE, the hero's rubber-mask disguise had a restrictive effect on what both Robert Kent and any doubles could do in fight-scenes. But the photography here is much crisper, and thus more involving, than in many later serials, so RIDER always looks good even if one has seen the same business a dozen times before. The story would have gained some heft had it built up conflicts between Sterling's profession and his avocation, or the character of Schoolmarm Doris. JERRY BLAKE liked the comedy relief of "Nugget," a grizzled miner, but he didn't do anything for me. The villains are also ordinary and no better than they have to be, and the formation of the Indian police force comes about a little too easily. I'm glad I had the chance to see it but will probably not watch it again. I suppose Bad Progressives would sneer at the serial for placing a "white savior" in charge, but to me it makes a world of difference when the savior, whatever his race, is helping others save themselves

SEVEN MEN OF KUNG FU (1978)

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

I can only echo this online post that this misbegotten chopsocky, by a writer-director who only made four films in his career, is the most atrociously edited film the kung-fu genre has ever produced. It's yet another take on the old "Chings vs. Mings" quarrel, and I think main villain Chang Yi (seen above with red-dyed hair) is one of the Mings, also called "anti-Chings" by the subtitles on the streaming copy I watched. In addition to Chang Yi, the other three top-billed performers are the redoubtable diva Lung Chung-erh, Chang Ying-chen (billed elsewhere as Emily Chang Ying-chen), and Lo Lieh. I didn't see the name of Chan Sing in the barely-Anglicized credits, but I think he, along with Lieh and Emily, are the "good Chings" of the story, one of whom gets the honor of fighting the evil potentate played by Chang Yi.

Hong Kong chopsockies aren't models of exposition at the best of times, but this director Cheung Hang is the worst of the worst. He barrels past any setup that would familiarize viewers with who the characters and what they want, and he seems in a tearing hurry to get to the really important scenes, where characters stand around and recite sententious aphorisms. This is perhaps the talkiest chopsocky ever made. There's a brief sense of romance between Chan Sing and the actress I believe to be Emily Chang, but it comes to naught when she's killed. I admit that I'm not sure I've correctly ID'd the girl wielding her sword beside Chan Sing, but that's my best guess.

So what the hell does "Doris" Lung-Chung-erh play? If the cited review is correct, she plays some sort of weird witch-being who's seen intermittently throughout the film (via repetitions of the exact same scene), in the company of a white-faced guy later called a "zombie." But her actual participation is to show up at the end to harass Lo Lieh over some unclear grievance. She sics her zombie on him, which he defeats with ease. But then she hits Lo with something like a fire-spell, wounds him with a wire-weapon, and then just beats his ass with kung-fu, which Lo can't seem to counter. There's a quick voiceover about honor and duty, and then the film just ends, leading me to the conclusion that the witch-woman killed Lo. It wouldn't be the first time in a chopsocky that a hero died at the end, but viewers usually know what the hell he's dying for.

Only the sight of Lung beating up Lo Lieh gives this turkey even mild curiosity value.

LUPIN III: TACTICS OF ANGELS (2005)

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

I'm by no means a Lupin III expert, even where the animated films are concerned. But it's pretty evident to most of the feature films/TV specials usually involve three groups in conflict. The primary conflict is most often the Lupin Gang of superlative thieves with some other criminal gang, who are always more ignoble and destructive than the "honest thieves," and there's a secondary conflict in which Inspector Zenigata, accompanied by whatever law-enforcement agents he can draft, pursues the Lupin Gang but has to be satisfied with the defeated villains Lupin has left behind. It's a corollary tendency that if Fujiko Mine sees any advantage in betraying the gang to the villains, she usually will, but she always gets welcomed back to the fold when the evil guys seek to off her.

TACTICS starts out like a lot of Lupin adventures (though overall this TV special has better comedic elements than many of the others). Zenigata has received a challenge from Lupin to the effect that the master thief's going to raid the US installation Area 51. As Zenigata learns from head scientist Emily, the installation holds a bonafide alien artifact, a sphere called "The Original Metal," apparently because it's so hard nothing can cut it. Lupin and his associates succeed swimmingly. Jigen and Goemon are disgusted, however, when Lupin informs that he didn't steal the artifact in order to fence it and make a lot of cash. He plans to turn the metal of the sphere into a unique finger-ring for Fujiko, the better to steal her heart. Unfortunately for Lupin, not even Goemon's peerless samurai blade can cut the metal, and Goemon must leave to seek some way to repair his chipped sword. So then Lupin begins trying to figure out some way to penetrate the metal-- though even at the movie's end, it's not a sure thing that Lupin really intended just to make the Original Metal into a ring for Fujiko.

But other forces also want the Metal. The viewer meets "The Bloody Angels" before the Lupin Gang does, as this all-female fighting force practices for the coming conflict by killing four fighters dressed up like Lupin's people. The four Angels are Lady Jo (a kung fu expert who usually dresses up as a man), Poison Sophie (a poisons expert), Bomber Lily (an expert in both explosives and stage magic), and Kaoru (a samurai whose skills are a close match to Goemon's). The Bloody Angels (whose name always sounds like that of the "Lovely Angels" of the DIRTY PAIR franchise) seek to find out which of the gang has the metal sphere. But clever Lupin has made copies, so that not even devious Fujiko can be sure of stealing the right object when she tries to sell it to Lady Jo, who almost kills Fujiko.

The four main Angels, who are the forefront of an all-female army, provide the gang with good opposition, but the best comes from Kaoru, whose sword Goemon believed to be "cursed." It's not certain whether this is the case or not, but if so it would be a very rare instance of the supernatural existing in Lupin's sci-fi world. Because Goemon's sword was chipped by contact with Original Metal, he even has to flee Kaoru in the first encounter, though of course the second face-off turns out very differently. Lupin is faced with an intriguing puzzle: if no Earthly force can scrape off a shard of the sphere, what good is it to the Angels, or to any foreign government they might sell it to? As it happens, there is a good solution to this puzzle, which involves using the sphere in conjunction with something else to create a death-ray that no government should be trusted with.

Though the Angels are initially portrayed as terrorists, one of them, Sophie, claims to have an altruistic reason to want the sphere. Since she becomes somewhat simpatico with Lupin during their clashes, she reveals to Lupin that she carries a major grudge against the US due to having lost her brother, a member of the US military forces, due to incompetent commanders. It's rare for stories in the LUPIN canon to be very critical specifically of US practices, given that America is a big market for the franchise. At the same time, Sophie's grudge is loosely demonstrated to be sophistry in that she believes she can built a new, better country out of the ashes of devastation-- something Lupin opposes for purely practical reasons. Then Sophie is killed by one of her own, and the gang has no further sympathies for the other three angels or their small army of lady soldiers.

TACTICS is certainly one of the bloodiest productions in this franchise that I've seen, with lots of characters getting shot or sliced up. The animators don't linger upon the after-effects of the violence, but the carnage is a real factor in giving TACTICS a harder edge than many similar works-- though, oddly, it's also one of the funniest LUPINs in my experience. The viewer never learns anything about the ET science that formed the sphere, and no aliens make the scene. But there's a stronger sociological theme here than in most LUPINs. (Also, Fujiko does get a chance to be more of an action-girl than in many other productions.)

DRAGON QUEST/DRAGON WARRIOR (1989-91)

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

I'm indebted to this YT channel for providing fansubs for the Japanese anime series DRAGON QUEST, based on a popular 1980s video game that received distribution in the US and other countries. In 1989, 13 of the anime's 43 original episodes were dubbed and released to American TV under the title DRAGON WARRIOR. I presume that the translation company hoped that 13 episodes would "prime the pump" and create viewer demand to see the entire series in English. But this did not occur, and I presume that only fansubbed editions are available for non-Japanese speakers.

As a viewer who was frustrated in the Day to see only a small number of episodes, I'm happy to have some closure. That said, I was never under any delusion that QUEST was any hidden mythopoeic treasure. Even in 1989 I was pretty sure the anime was just a very basic fantasy RPG, in which noble, sword-swinging stalwarts went on quests to defeat evil demons and/or sorcerers. I later learned that there had been a manga prior to the anime, and that the two are only loosely related to either the video game or to one another, though I'm unclear as to when the anime started using different names for the main characters. There are only a few minor myth-kernels in the TV show at most.

The screenshot above shows the five main heroes. In the foreground is the hero Abel, while his girlfriend Tiala clings to him. At left is the lady warrior Daisy, while to the right, the floating fellow is the magician Yanack and the fellow with the skull-helmet is Abel's pudgy buddy Mokomoko, who provide much of the comedy relief. The setup is that Tiala is the hereditary protector of a magical stone capable of releasing a powerful dragon from its slumber. The devilish-looking Baramos abducts Tiala from her village in order to gain control of the dragon, whose blood can confer immortality. Abel and Mokomoko arm themselves and seek to rescue Tiala. On their way they pick up the aid of the good sorcerer Yanack and the woman-warrior Daisy. Yanack has no real backstory, but Daisy became a warrior in order to seek her lost brother. She originally joins Abel and Mokomoko because she thinks there's profit in their quest, but naturally she bonds with the guys and becomes a hero dedicated to defeating the various minions of Baramos. She also falls in unrequited love with Abel and also must bear the indignity of being ogled by the dirty old magician Yanack.

I don't remember exactly why the quest becomes a matter not of just rescuing Tiala but also about finding holy objects that will make it possible to resurrect the dragon. Appropriately the objects are a Holy Sword and a Holy Grail, mirroring (if only unintentionally) the sexual propensities of Abel and Tiala, who are implicitly a holy couple whose unison can redeem the fallen world. Baramos is just a dime-a-dozen magical menace, but the scenes of the heroes, as well as their encounters with ordinary folks, allow for much better character interactions than one sees in most American-made animated TV shows. A couple of storylines involve Baramos corrupting or controlling the relatives of the heroes and causing Daisy to fight her lost brother and Abel to battle his father. So far as I can tell, it's not recounted as to how Baramos was far-sighted enough to suborn these characters. This is particularly true of Daisy's brother, who's actually raised from childhood by a villainous minion, long before Baramos could possibly have known that Daisy was going to be one of the heroes who opposed him. Still, QUEST also isn't afraid to knock off some of the lovable side-characters, such as a "nice monster" who befriends Tiala.

Still, good design triumphs over limited TV animation, and QUEST always feels action-packed. And one extra benefit of the American dub is that the translation company produced what I consider a superior theme-song, complete with quick cuts from the episodes, that I still find stimulating thirty-plus years later.

LORD OF ILLUSIONS (1995)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

LORD OF ILLUSIONS to date is the last feature film written and directed by horror author Clive Barker, and proves the least accomplished after 1987's HELLRAISER and 1990's NIGHTBREED. Like NIGHTBREED, ILLUSIONS came to theatres in an adumbrated studio cut, which is probably what I saw years ago. But since I barely remember anything about the cut version of ILLUSIONS, my review of the director's cut won't be influenced by the earlier viewing-- or by having read, many months ago, the short story Barker used as his template, since Wiki mentions that Barker substantially changed that template for the movie.

The germ of the original idea was that professional detective Harry D'Amour investigated the supposed death of a stage illusionist, Philip Swann, only to learn that Swann was performing his tricks with real magic. To make that bare notion more salable, Barker interpolated the story of a demonically powered cult-leader named William Nix (Daniel von Bargen), who becomes an enemy Swann (Kevin J. O'Connor) seeks to escape and whom D'Amour (Scott Bakula) must try to eradicate. The result is an ungainly blend of noir detection and flamboyant occult menace, with an evil sorcerer who says things like, "I was born to murder the world."

It's not impossible to do a good mashup of hardboiled crime with supernatural investigation, but Barker doesn't have a handle on either genre's boundaries. The story begins with Swann and his allies invading the HQ of Nix's cult, overcoming Nix, and burying him alive so that he can't destroy the world with his illimitable (but unexplained) powers. Thirteen years later, detective D'Amour-- whose experience with occult matters is only vaguely described-- is hired by Swann's wife (Famke Janssen) to protect the magician, since some of Nix's freaky cultists have been swarming about and making trouble. Then Swann apparently dies-- only to have it revealed later on that he faked his death-- and one of the cultists manages to revive Nix. Despite being woefully overmatched, D'Amour pulls a rabbit out of his hat and prevents the apocalypse, and gets the girl to boot, thanks to Swann conveniently dying for real.

Barker's lack of ability to ground his wild characters in reality is oddly presaged by a line spoken by one of his minor characters halfway through the film. A sanitarium attendant, not privy to any of the magical goings-on, states to D'Amour, "We have to agree on what's real and what's not. That's what holds us together." Barker means this ironically, since through D'Amour the audience has already seen that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the attendant's philosophy. But inadvertently, Barker described his own inability to make either his plot or characters "hold together." He provides only the most cursory motivation at all times, and his big reveal at the climax-- that Nix had a gay thing for Swann and wanted them to be together after mankind's death-- gets zero foreshadowing. Characters pop in and out of D'Amour's orbit without explanation, and most of them are focused on showing how recherche they are. Oddly, Bakula's homespun normality could have been used to Barker's advantage here, and the actor does his best to give the role a dogged, passionate morality. But D'Amour just feels like Barker copying old movie-detectives, not coming up with his own unique take on the form. Barker may have had better luck with the character in prose, where he's not dependent on interacting with performers other than himself.

ONE PIECE: HEART OF GOLD (2016)

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

HEART OF GOLD, though a TV special, looks as good in terms of design and animation quality as any of the movies. In fact, HEART directly leads into the next OP movie, GOLD.

I don't know how often the regular series used the "treasure-hunt" theme, but that's the theme at the heart of HEART. In this case, Acier, a brilliant scientist living on an island with the patently obvious name of "Alchemi," invents a substance called "Pure Gold," more priceless than any other treasure in the world. However, a giant fish named Bonbonri swallowed the island, along with both Acier and his grade-schooler daughter Olga. The two get separated and then live within the stomach of Bonbonri for the next 200 years, and they don't age because the Pure Gold also bestows agelessness upon those exposed to it. However, at some point Olga is accidentally vomited out of the giant fish's belly, along with a tame beastie, a lizard able to skim the surface of the ocean. Olga and her riding-lizard are taken into the custody of Marines, but she has to flee when the Marine ship is assaulted by a seeker of the Pure Gold, Mad Treasure. Her flight leads her into the hands of the Straw Hat Pirates, who for once would like to gain the treasure of the Pure Gold as well as helping the helpless.

The exploration of the various environments in Bonbori's belly is amusing, and the action is kept at the usual high levels. Mad Treasure is a pleasing "bully-boy" type of foe, endowed with a colorful Devil Fruit power: the ability to extend endlessly-stretchable chains from his body, and he's aided by two other henchmen, one of whom is a lady who practices what might be called "drunk-archer-fu."

If HEART has a downside, it's Olga. She's a type often seen in sentimental anime: a kid who acts in a bratty manner to cover up her insecurities. Naturally, the good-hearted pirates take her under their wing, and she learns the value of comradeship, as well as reconciling with her father, whom she hated for having brought chaos into their lives. Still, I admired one affecting image at the climax. After all of the good guys have defeated Mad Treasure and escaped the stomach of the big beast, it consumes the Pure Gold and somehow transforms the metal into a light hanging from its brow, like that of the real-world angler-fish. HEART is another decent take on the ONE PIECE formula; no more, no less.