WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN (2009)

 

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

This one-season Nicktoons series, whose 26 episodes have been collected on a single DVD set, shows some intriguing differences from AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES, another superhero series also executed by Marvel's animation arm. 

The AVENGERS series. although it did maintain some loose continuing plotlines, generally followed the model set by the Silver Age comic series.  Said series tended to follow what I term "closed arcs," which is to say, multi-issue storylines that generally terminated with some sense of closure.  This isn't to say that there were never any loose plot-threads left dangling, for such did appear both in the comics and in the 2010 cartoon series. 

In contrast, WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN quite naturally follows the example set by the X-MEN comic throughout its many incarnations: the example of the "open arcs."  X-MEN arcs, at least in comparison with those of Silver Age comics, tended to copy the example of television soap-operas to a far greater extent. Closure was rare, for no sooner did the heroes vanquish one menace than another cropped up in its place.  In following this example, WOLVERINE was true to its origins.

A problem with this approach is soon evidenced: since the animated series doesn't have the same quantity of stories to work with, WOLVERINE soon shows the strain of too many plots spoiling the broth.  The writer's borrow from a wide variety of periods in the X-MEN annals: the plot of the Hellfire Club (rather demurely renamed as "the Inner Circle"), the story of Magneto's Genosha  (pre-catastrophe), and even a swipe from the post-catastrophe period in which Grant Morrison worked.  The overall effect is that the multiple plotlines begin to fight one another instead of enhancing the overall progress of the heroes' journeys.

The idea of making legendary loner-hero Wolverine the leader of the team-- an idea apparently generated more by marketing than creative inspiration-- dominates the first ten or so episodes and then fizzles out, being usurped by other concerns.  It's clear from the writer commentaries that the scripters have a nerdish love of all things Marvel, which makes for a number of "cameo" appearances of obscure characters.  And on occasion it's fun to see them mix things up, like devising a romance between hero Nightcrawler and villain Magneto's daughter the Scarlet Witch, which resembles nothing in the original stories.  But although the dialogue is sharp and the action is above-average, the convoluted plotting makes it difficult to relate to the supposed theme: the needlessness of the conflict between human beings and their mutant relations.  The writers also create false expectations by jamming in too many characters, as when they show Rogue in the first episode, after which she disappears for most of the series.  X-MEN EVOLUTION, which used fewer plots from the comics, nevertheless displayed stronger writing by virtue of keeping to a fixed selection of protagonists.

RETURN OF THE EVIL FOX (1991)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

Genuiely funny comedies from Hong Kong are so rare that the true collector might want to direct his efforts toward something that offers greater satisfaction—say, looking for hens’ teeth. RETURN OF THE EVIL FOX might not be the worst HK comedy out there, but it’s so mediocre that it will do nothing to disprove the generalization.

A page right out of medieval Chinese history sets up the main storyline. Two medieval exorcists, beautiful Chiang Su-su (Charene Choi) and her wimpy brother, anticipate that their temple will soon be attacked by a female demon, whom the subtitles always style “the Fox Elf.” Chiang, a kung-fu exorcist, goes out to fight the demon, who looks like a human female (Pauline Wang), except that in place of human hands she has oversized furry fox-paws. The brother remains inside so that he can sit by the candlelit altar, praying for their mutual ancestors to send supernatural aid. However, as the candles start going out, it looks like the prayers won’t be answered. The Fox Elf gives Chiang a mortal wound, but just then the ancestors imbue her brother with supernatural power. With that power the possessed exorcist imprisons the spirit of his sister and that of the Fox Elf in a big jar.

Cut to modern times. Despite the imprisonment of Chiang’s spirit, somehow she has a lookalike modern descendant, a lady reporter named Yi (also Choi). Her sister Yu (Sandra Ng) and her goofy father pursue the ancient family business of exorcising ghosts and demons, though they’re not very good at it and Dad owes a lot of money to local gamblers. When the father won’t pay Yu what she thinks she’s worth, she puts together a Hong Kong version of a “Ghostbusters” act with two other women, and they pretend to banish ghosts while dressed in bizarre costumes. Meanwhile, two new arrivals show up on the family’s doorstep. One is Hwa, a hunky young guy who according to the subtitles is either the father’s godson or his foster son. The other is a Tibetan monk who fears that the Fox Elf has been secretly feeding off human victims to build her power. Apparently she managed to do so 107 times without detection, and if she can devour one more, correlating with the mystic Buddhist number 108, she’ll be free to ravage the modern world.

Naturally, the monk is entirely right, though nobody seems to take the threat seriously. The dumb dad is busy fending off his creditors, and Yi is oblivious to Hwa’s blooming passion for her, while sister Yu covets Hwa but can make no headway. There’s also an idiot hotel manager and a few other goofballs, though on the whole Sandra Ng’s character gets most of the comedy-moments. Ng shows herself a good comic actor, but Yu is a one-note character, and the writers seemed to have no idea as to how to have fun with this basic “romantic triangle” trope.

Eventually the monk gets all the buffoons to work toward exorcising the Fox Elf, which makes for the strongest action-scenes of the movie, albeit weakened by yet more alleged moments of humor. Given that the defenders of humanity are so dopey and monotonous, the Fox Elf is at least consistent in her menace, and I judge her to be the central character of this mixed-up mess.

FUTURE FEAR (1997)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor* 
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*

I consider myself fairly easy to please regarding B-movies and their video descendants, but my sense of charity is very nearly exhausted by FUTURE FEAR-- the sole product of one-time director Lewis Baumander, released under the umbrella of Roger Corman's Concorde-New Horizons organization. I saw it long ago on cable, remembered little about and so gave it a second viewing via YouTube.

It's axiomatic that few straight-to-video-and-cable productions are noted for originality. They're cranked out quickly, usually with heavy indebtedness to high-profile Hollywood genre-works, and usually their main virtue is offering uncomplicated thrills of sex and violence.

Baumander's FUTURE FEAR, though, doesn't even offer the most modest thrills, despite teaming up two small-time icons of home video, Maria "Angel of Destruction" Ford and Jeff "Mission of Justice" Wincott. These film-titles, of course, have meaning only for fanatics like myself, who must comb through nearly everything in search for unusual thrills. But FEAR offers no thrills, only an incoherent mess of a storyline tricked out with countless incomprehensible references to Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND books.Carroll's iconic characters and situations are so enmeshed in modern pop culture that I can forgive an author for invoking them in an unoriginal manner-- but not for making them tedious.

Sometime in the future, Earth sends a probe into space. The probe comes back with a virus that lays waste to humanity-- though none of this chaos is within the film's budget.  Only one scientist is able to come up with a possible serum: Doctor John Denniel (note the similarity of the name to the famed illustrator of the Alice books, John Tenniel). To do so, though, Denniel must create a form of pseudo-life on which to run his experiments.

Denniel has no interest in using these pseudo-humans for anything but test cases. However, his ex-wife Anna-- also a lieutenant within whatever military hierarchy has survived-- nurtures an irrational desire to keep the test cases alive, because she once suffered the abortion of Denniel's child. Her commander General Wallace (Stacy Keach) orders Anna to steal from Denniel a case that holds all of his research: a case which is called "the Ark" for no good reason. I suppose the writer-director was thinking of it as a parallel to Noah's boat, rather than the ark of Indiana Jones-- though, just to confuse things, the hero does have a line where he says he's in a "poor man's Raiders of the Lost Ark flick."

Anna pursues her ex-lover via helicopter for a while, but the majority of the film has her chasing him through an unconvincing subterranean complex. Both of them spout assorted wisecracks drawn from high-profile pop culture, but Denniel hardly lets a minute go by without tossing in some reference to Lewis Carroll. The script gives no coherent reason for him to be such a Carroll nut, so it goes without saying that Baumander is working the character's mouth for him, perhaps in the mistaken impression that these continuous quotes would make the project seem more interesting.  Baumander is clearly no action-director, given that the peripatetic struggles of husband and wife are pretty tedious, even though as noted above both of the leads had experience doing martial-arts movies.

As for the character of General Wallace, he exists to interrupt the chase-scenes and rant about his secret plans: he wants to use the virus to wipe out all the world's "inferior races" and to create humanoids to his specifications. Oh, and incidentally, he's also responsible for killing Denniel's father, though this has zero impact on the plot as such. In the end Anna turns against her superior officer, and she pays the ultimate price for it. Her sacrifice moves Denniel to amend his original "no right to life" stance, though as the film closes it's no clear how he plans to do so and save the world from the virus at the same time.

This is one of the most relentlessly confused films I've ever screened, and not even in the amusing manner of Ed Wood.

BEASTMASTER 3: THE EYE OF BRAXUS (1996)

 

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

Long after the 1982 BEASTMASTER, directed by Don "Phantasm" Coscarelli, debuted in theaters, the saga of the barbarian Dar, who fought for justice in his fantasy-otherworld, got a couple of sequels. As I remember, the 1991 BEASTMASTER 2 was at least watchable, despite cutting costs by letting Dar wander into a time portal that took him into 1990s Los Angeles.

The second and last sequel is not improved by keeping the hero on his own turf. Though writer David Wise had distinguished himself with some decent scripts for American animated teleshows like the seventies STAR TREK and the nineties BATMAN, EYE OF BRAXUS is a lazy, by-the-numbers example of a sword-and-sorcery tale. There are a couple of other S &S movies that are even worse than BRAXUS, but maybe no more than a half dozen.

Dar (Marc Singer), now accompanied by a lion rather than his standard tiger, accepts a mission from his king-brother Tal (seen in the first film, though here he's played by Casper Van Dien). Dar must seek out the evil sorcerer Lord Agon (David Warner), who sacrifices innocents to prolong his life, and who plans to release the evil god Braxus from his prison in a mystic gem. On his way to take down Agon-- whose name is Greek for "contest"-- Dar picks up a handful of helpers, played by such familiar faces as Tony Todd, Sandra Hess and Lesley Anne Down. And that's pretty much the whole plot.

I might not have objected to such a formulaic scenario had director Gabrielle Beaumont, who'd been directing TV episodes since 1974, had given the fight-scenes any heft, given that this is what S&S fans particularly want to see in the genre. But all of the brawls are low-energy, even from Sandra Hess, who distinguished herself not only in more expensive productions like MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNHILATION but also minor B-movies like the 1994 ENDANGERED. 

Lesley Ann Down tries to add a little humor as a wisecracking sorceress, but her jokes just underscore that everyone in this fantasy-world talks like their last residence was in Encino. Aside from star-spotting, pretty much a total waste of time.

DRACULA 2000 (2000)

 

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


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

In addition to warning any readers that I'm going to disclose plot-points here, I'll add a personal revelation. My reaction to this series-- or at least, to the first film in the series-- is first and foremost the reaction of a religious comparativist. Thus, though I was reared in a Christian religious tradition, these days it doesn't bother me to see a work of entertainment play fast and loose with the tropes and narratives of Christian belief, as it might annoy others.

DRACULA 2000 and its two direct-to-video sequels are all directed by Patrick Lussier and co-written by Lussier and one of his producers, Joel Soisson. The recently deceased Wes Craven is listed as a producer on the series, but I doubt Craven-- for whom Lussier worked as an editor-- had any creative input. Although the creators probably hoped to launch a series like that of Craven's Freddy Krueger, their emphasis is more on action than on horror-- though as it happens, there's enough narrative emphasis on the pathos of the monster to keep the stories from sliding into the category of adventure, as one sees in 1998's BLADE and 1999's THE MUMMY.

The first entry in the series, while flawed, stands head and shoulders above its sequels, thanks to the audacity of its concept. The ending of Bram Stoker's novel is altered to reveal that (1) in 1898 Abraham Van Helsing overcame but did not destroy the body of Dracula, because Dracula was a unique type of vampire resistant to ordinary means of disposal, (2) for the next hundred years Van Helsing kept Dracula's comatose form imprisoned in a special vault, while the vampire-hunter gave himself a qualified immortality by infusing himself with the vampire's blood, and (3) Dracula's origins extend far further back in history than his masquerade as a Romanian count, for he's actually the Biblical Judas Iscariot, cursed to walk the world as an immortal until such time as God forgives him for his part in Christ's execution.

As a reshuffling of Christian tropes for the sake of entertainment, this is pretty ingenious. The writers may have been inspired by a verse in the Gospel of John that possibly contributed to the legend of the Wandering Jew, though none of the Gospels are directly referenced: Soisson and Lussier merely state that God's immortality-curse upon Judas is the true reason that the vampire hates the touch of silver (because Judas betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver) and any Christian paraphernalia. Of course, this doesn't quite explain why other vampires, who don't have those associations, share the same antipathies, though the script does assert that some mysterious "essence" is transferred from Dracula to others, whether he bites them or whether they infuse themselves with his blood. On the other OTHER hand, there's nothing in the Judas narrative about beheadings, so it's a safe bet that all scenes in which vampire-hunters kill bloodsuckers by chopping off their craniums are directly indebted to Stoker.

DRACULA 2000 features many other "quotes" from Stoker. The reborn Dracula ravages everyone on board the cargo plane that takes him to America-- specifically, New Orleans-- just as the original reduced the cargo-ship Demeter-- the one carrying the vampire's coffin to England-- to a ship of death. Soisson and Lussier also touch on the novel's "good girl/ bad girl" dichotomy. They keep the name Lucy for one of Dracula's first victims, who is also a friend to the film's version of Mina, Mary Van Helsing-- this time the daughter of Dracula's nemesis, rather than the wife of vampire hunter Jonathan Harker. Given all the Christian connotations, the use of the name "Mary" is surely no coincidence, though Mary Van Helsing is not portrayed as a virginal paragon, as Mina Harker is in the Stoker novel. If this Mary is like any character in the Christ-narrative, it would be Mary Magdalene, who has had "seven demons" exorcised from her body by Christ in two of the four Gospels. Judas-Dracula's corrupts rather than cleanses this Mary, though it's an additional irony that from birth Mary has been bonded to Dracula because she was conceived after Abraham Van Helsing had been using Dracula's blood for many years. Thus as soon as Mary encounters Dracula "the bad father," she must struggle against her sense of bondage to the vampire, and as with Mina Harker the struggle has more to do with sexual ambivalence than with a purely spiritual crisis. It's also psychologically noteworthy that though Abraham is killed, Dracula doesn't do the deed himself, but has the old vampire-hunter slain by Dracuala's figurative offspring, three modern-day women turned into bloodlusting brides. Unlike Mina, though, Mary actually gets fabulous super-powers after being turned by Dracula, and she uses them to battle Dracula much more physically than the retiring Mina of the Stoker novel. In essence, the psychological constellation of Mary, her real father Abraham and her symbolic father Dracula is the core of DRACULA 2000. That said, the writers don't stint on the BLADE-style action, for the senior Van Helsing also receives aid from a doughty young man named Simon, whose motto is "Never fuck with an antiques-dealer!" I'll forbear to comment on possible Christian meanings of the name Simon, since the movie-character really isn't anything but a convenient tough guy.

As much as I love genre films in all their permutations, I have to admit that I'd have liked to see the Judas-Dracula idea executed by talents who could've got more mythopoeic mileage out of the concept. But one takes what one can get.

LONE WOLF AND CUB: THE CRITERION COLLECTION (1972-74)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*


This DVD collection includes the six films adapting the very long chanbara ("swordplay") saga of the LONE WOLF AND CUB manga. The collection also includes a re-edited Americanized film-version, SHOGUN ASSASSIN, derived mostly from the second film in the series. and various extras.

By way of explicating the manga's concept, I wrote this here:

I won't attempt in this post to cover every aspect of the complicated manga-saga LONE WOLF AND CUB, a series taking place during the era of Japan's Shogunate rule. Main character Itto Ogami, a master of the samurai sword and executioner to the Shogun, is cast out from his lofty position due to the political maneuvers of his enemies. With the fall of his aristocratic house, he wanders Japan as a masterless ronin, hiring out his sword as a master assassin. At the same time he's constantly pursued by enemies for the price on his head. His only companion is his very young son Daigoro, whom Itto usually pushes in a baby cart. This image alone, a melding of the worlds of innocence and violence, is quintessentially Japanese in character. That said, not every LONE WOLF story is equally mythic. Some stories are simply tales in which Itto takes on some powerful foe and wins out. Other stories succeed in communicating the rigor of the samurai ethos but characters may remain flat.

The best of the manga-stories manage to communicate a pitiless world of grim duty, in which Ogami even occasionally slays innocents who in some way come into conflict with his samurai sense of obligation. It would not be hard to see Ogami's world through the lens of irony, depicting Japan's medieval world as a chaos of petty intrigues. However, the episodic stories constantly tout Ogami's samurai ethos as admirable, and even when he's forced to slay a valiant foe, the authors present the event as a clash of noble spirits, in line with the invigorating aspect of the adventure-mythos. Yet because the stories are fairly episodic, they vary wildly in terms of capturing a modern myth of the peerless samurai hero.

The six 1970s films display an equally high level of craft, but like many of the manga-stories they don't quite rise to the "good" level of the best myth-films. All six star Tomisaburo Wakayama and Tomikawa Akihito as Ogami and his son Daigoro, though it could be argued that the famous baby-cart-- outfitted with hidden knives and rapid-fire rifles-- is the unbilled "third star" of the movies. Even if there were no other metaphenomenal elements in the LONE WOLF films, the baby-cart-- with which Ogami takes on whole armies in two separate series-films-- would transport these tough-minded swordplay-films into the realm of the uncanny. Strangely, of all the manga-stories adapted, the six here don't choose to translate "The Guns of Sakai," which relates the way in which Daigoro's stroller gets weaponized.

Because the films are all of a piece, I won't review them individually, though I will note that the filmmakers did not choose to adapt the final story of the manga, in which Ogami destroyed the leader of his enemies. Instead, I'll simply indicate the metaphenomenal elements to be found in each film.

SWORD OF VENGEANCE (1972)-- here's the first revelation of the baby cart's special capacities.

BABY CART AT THE RIVER STYX (1972)-- Ogami is pursued by female assassins with ninja-like tricks, including knives hidden in radishes. He also fights a threesome of master fighters with weapons like iron claws and "flying maces."

BABY CART TO HADES (1972)-- Ogami defeats costumed ninja in various disguises. This is the first of the two films in which Ogami defeats a small army.

BABY CART IN PERIL (1972)-- Ogami is hired to slay a female assassin seeking to avenge her rapist by killing many of his retainers; she sports extravagant, demonic body-tattoos designed to distract her opponents. The rapist is apparently a hypnotist, able to cause his opponents to see flames enveloping his katana, but the woman's tattoos throw him off his game so that she can slay him before Ogami slays her.

BABY CART IN THE LAND OF DEMONS (1973)-- Ogami must recover a letter from the hands of a Buddhist monk. This is the closest that the movie-series comes to the marvelous-supernatural, since when Ogami draws near the monk, the assassin cannot attack the monk because he has transcended ordinary life. Still, one can interpret this form of "chi" as something akin to hypnosis, and Ogami manages to transcend his own limitations to complete his mission.

WHITE HEAVEN IN HELL (1974)-- Ogami is threatened by a clan of tricksters who come close to unsettling his samutai calm with their ghostly appearance. Indeed, the three foremost killers were buried alive for 42 days, without food or water, and are viewed by their leader as being "neither dead nor alive." Nevertheless, Ogami is able to kill the unkillable, after which he destroys another army.

HONOR ROLL #97, DECEMBER 31

Isn't TOMASO WAKABAYASHI a "lone wolf" in the same way Clayton Moore was a "lone ranger?"

JUSTINE WADDELL, the daughter of Van Helsing, takes a personal approach to vampire-busting.

DAVID WARNER lowers himself to appear in the last of the BEASTMASTER features.

Having got over past and present fears, JEFF WINCOTT is only concerned with "future fears."

Call PAULINE WONG "foxy" and she'll bite you, and not in a good way.

WOLVERINE gets promoted over the other X-Men once again in this animated series.

SON OF ZORRO (1947)

 

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

Of the four Republic serials made with the character of Zorro, SON OF ZORRO was the third in line. The first two appeared prior to America's involvement in WWII, while this one and GHOST OF ZORRO only showed up in the postwar years. Almost all of them take place in modern times rather than in Spanish California, as did the original novel and the silent film adaptation MARK OF ZORRO.

In essence, SON is a very basic, albeit well-engineered, take on the familiar B-western trope of "cowboy hero rides into town and saves everyone from evil bankers and businessmen trying to bilk the townfolk." It's set slightly after the end of the Civil War, which is important only because hero Jeff Stewart (whose name sounds a bit like that of Confederate officer "J.E.B. Stuart") returns to his ancestral ranch after serving "the call of his colors"-- by which the writers mean a flag, of course.

In Jeff's absence, evil slickers have taken over much of the town and the surrounding ranches, bleeding the people dry with taxes and fees while simultaneously giving shelter to an outlaw-gang. A local judge with the fitting name of "Hyde" seems to be in command of both the outlaws and the crooked lawmen, though in the course of the serial another individual will be revealed to be the "secret mastermind" behind all the crimes.

Jeff (George Turner) naturally objects to all of the crooked goings-on. He makes a couple of allies-- his ranch-hand Pancho and the local postmistress Kate (Peggy Stewart)-- but his greatest asset is that just happens to have had the famous Zorro as an ancestor. The career of the earlier Zorro is not explored, it's just an excuse for the existence of the original hero's costume hanging around Jeff's ranch. Jeff starts out claiming that he doesn't believe in vigilante action. But before the first episode is done, he's donned the mask of Zorro to battle the evildoers. At first Pancho is the only one who knows of Jeff's double identity, but at some early point he reveals it to Kate as well, though it must have gone past me in the blink of an eye, since it doesn't get much narrative emphasis.

Since lead actor Turner had been a boxer before becoming an actor, he acquits himself well in the lively Republic fight-scenes. Since the villains are entirely mundane, the cliffhangers often involve the bad guys trying to blow someone up with dynamite. The most interesting trap is an accidental one, when Kate gets knocked unconscious and falls into the path of an ordinary mill-wheel. 

Western serials are generally a little better than B-western features as far as giving the womenfolk some heroic action, but SON OF ZORRO doesn't allow Kate much agency. In the first segment she draws a gun to protect Jeff while he fistfights a thug, and in one cliffhanger she saves herself by jumping from a driverless stagecoach. But despite the moxie Stewart brings to her simple character, she's just another damsel in distress. I was familiar with many of the supporting actors, but not with Ernie Adams, and I was pleased by the way he played Judge Hyde with welcome touches of oiliness and bad temper. In essence, SON is just a B-western with decent production values and cliffhangers tossed in, and adds nothing at all to the mythos of the original Zorro.

MODESTY BLAISE (1966)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


Here's a mini-review I recently wrote on the Classic Horror board:

As I type this, I've almost finished watching MB on Youtube. I can appreciate Losey's use of vivid, primary colors and weird angles, but he's taken the story O'Donnell did and flummoxed it around for the sake of "artiness." Reportedly in the day he claimed he was going to "out-Bond Bond," but had never seen a whole Bond film, and so only had his own skewed perception of what the genre was about. OUR MAN FLINT is a much more successful spoofy spy-flick-- heck, even the obscure OUT OF SIGHT understands how to play on the tropes better. Why Losey thought his Antonioni borrowings would play in Peoria is beyond me.
I've seen a lot of criticism of Vitti, but I think she was just doing what she was told to do, to be airy-fairy and silly, and she did that well. It just didn't help sell the movie.

Of course I have a few more things to say about this famous misfire. The MODESTY BLAISE comic strip, written by Peter O'Donnell, debuted in 1963, and its success with the public coincided with the "Bond fever" unleashed by the 1962 movie DOCTOR NO. Technically the sophisticated Modesty Blaise and her partner Willie Garvin weren't any sort of espionage agents. But because they were reformed master criminals, they had a working knowledge of the subcultures of crime and espionage, and most of their exploits were only different from those of Bond in that they were independent agents who answered only to their own sense of justice. At some point, the franchise was optioned for film adaptation, and O'Donnell provided a screenplay, based partly on the first outing of Modesty and Willie. Though O'Donnell's screenplay was only marginally influential on the finished film, the author novelized his story in the first prose novel, MODESTY BLAISE. Though I haven't read the novel in many years, I recall it as a tautly-written adventure-story informed by humor and strong sentiment. The novel has no metaphenomenal elements, though other stories in both the comic strip and the prose adaptations employed such elements on occasion. The 1966 film does have a few uncanny devices-- gas-bombs and something called "antisonar"-- which place the solo film into the realm of the uncanny.

Director Joseph Losey, best known at the time for his 1963 arthouse success THE SERVANT, reportedly found O'Donnell's script boring, though he kept just the bare bones of the original story, in which Modesty (Monica Vitti) and Willie (Terence Stamp) take on master criminal Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde) and his small army of henchmen. Whereas O'Donnell provided a crisp adventure-tale involving stolen diamonds, this setup was for Losey merely an excuse for endless shots of Vitti fluttering around various exotic locales in bizarre costumes.

Twice blonde-haired Vitti is made up to look like the comic-strip character, complete with brunette hair and quasi-military outfit.  But at no time does Losey give either of the two heroes any resemblance to their tough-as-nails predecessors. Willie does a little bit of his signature knife-fighting, and Modesty does a little clumsy judo, but Losey seems utterly uninterested in giving the audience anything approximating thrills. Had he spent even a tenth of his costume budget on stuntwork, maybe MODESTY would've been improved slightly. As it stands, the only scene that offers some suspense is one in which Gabriel's perverse right-hand henchwoman beats up a mime and throws off a cliff. In the original story, the mime is an undercover man, but the script by Evan Jones (who had worked with Losey on three previous projects) doesn't even provide that rationale. I suspect that Losey only kept this scene true to the original because it tickled his love for surrealistic imagery.

While Losey shows no interest in the travails of Modesty and Willie, the villain Gabriel comes close to being the real star of the show, as Losey apparently instructed Bogarde to play the character as a flaming, effete homosexual. Thus the film is replete with countless scenes of Gabriel lounging around and making ironic pronouncements-- though none of his supposedly humorous asides are funny.

Speaking of irony, Losey certainly intended to undercut the straightforward adventure of the original narrative and replace it with something like "camp," although Losey apparently did not understand that true camp only mocks its narrative very indirectly. One can't call MODESTY "satire" either, since there's no target for any animus. So by default MODESTY becomes a free-form irony, mocking the supposed pretensions of adventure-fiction with yet greater pretensions.

The movie's sole virtue is its use of vibrant primary colors. But in many respects, even though it's an irony like the 1968 BARBARELLA, the later film took the opposite course: piecing together various sequences from the picarescque French comic feature and making them into a relatively tight whole.

DOOM (2005)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*


I've no familiarity with the 1993 video game DOOM or any of its later iterations. Wikipedia informs me that the original concept's "first-person shooter" scenario took a lone gunman  to the planet Mars, where he shoots it out with an assortment of demons from Hell itself. In contrast, the movie DOOM remains firmly within a science-fiction universe, aside from a highly speculative assertion by a scientist that there may be a genetic code for the human soul.

The year is 2046, and humankind has gained access to Mars by finding a teleport-device, left in Nevada by ancient Martians who apparently deserted their planet. There's no evidence as to what happened to the emigrants, and Mars itself shows no trace of living creatures, but a facility of Earth-scientists has been built on the planet to study the remains of the long-dead denizens. When communication between Mars and Earth breaks down, a squad of Marines, all armed to the teeth with advanced weapons, are sent via portal to Mars to rescue the scientists and, perhaps more importantly, their research. However, once there, the soldiers are repeatedly attacked by monsters.

Because of the combination of marines and monsters, some critics chose to see DOOM as overly indebted to the 1986 ALIENS. There are rough similarities, particularly the idea of humans attempting to co-opt alien science or resources for human military advantage. As in ALIENS, most of the military grunts are "doomed" to become cannon fodder. However, the David Callaham-Wesley Strick script emphasizes the way in which the monsters from the outside are identical to those on the inside.

Only three characters are of great consequence: the mission-leader "Sarge" (Dwayne Johnson), his subordinate "Reaper" (Karl Urban), and Samantha Grimm (Rosamund Pyke), who, in addition to being one of the facility's scientists, is also Reaper's twin sister. In between conflicts with monsters, Samantha eventually reveals that her fellow scientists performed a genetic analysis of the human-like inhabitants of Mars. The oldest remains of Martians showed 23 pairs of chromosomes, just like humans, but later Martians had 24 pairs. Samantha theorizes that the 24th chromosomal pair was synthetic, and that it boosted the strength and healing-powers of the natives. However, she further theorized that the genetic tinkering caused a cultural upheaval that resulted in the extermination of the race, including, presumably, those that failed to colonize Earth.

The plot-device of the long-distant upheaval recalls a similar trope from 1956's FORBIDDEN PLANET. In that film, the humans who investigate the titular world learn that its long-vanished native race invented mind-boosting machines that unleashed the "demons of the id," so that the natives destroyed themselves in their quest for advancement. In the course of all the monster-slaying, Samantha observes that although some monsters came about from the project using human test-servants, and others were "infected" by contact with mutated persons, the infection doesn't spread to everyone. She observes that the genetic mutation occurs only in persons who have a propensity for excessive violence in their (figurative) souls. This leads to a combative confrontation for Reaper, for his superior officer Sarge soon reveals the dark nature hidden behind his military facade. Fortunately, Reaper, who also gets exposed to the genetic mutagen, also has his positive nature boosted by the mutagen. Overall, I found DOOM a reasonably good example of military SF-cinema, though I found tedious the movie's attempt to reproduce a "first-person shooter" scenario. Happily, it only took up about five minutes toward the end.

Whereas ALIENS is a film in which the titular extraterrestrials are on center stage, dwarfing the importance of the space-marines fighting them, determining the "main characters" of DOOM becomes a little more dicey, given that the actual Martians are all dead. However, their genetic legacy-- that of passing on the mutagen  that can enhance either "good" or "evil"-- has more central importance to the narrative than any of the three human characters. A quick check of Wikis about the video game suggests that there's no generic name for the "Doom Monsters," probably because they are largely supposed to be either Hell-demons or humans possessed by demons. So for my own satisfaction, I'll state that the stars of DOOM are indeed the "Doom Mutants"-- and, since both Sarge and Reaper become affected by the mutagen, they become reflections of the mutagen's potential to create both monsters and monster-fighting heroes.

ADDENDUM: Though there are no literal devils in the movie, it's interesting that in one scene Samantha demonstrates that mutagen-infected flesh literally goes out of its way to infect violent people, and ignores those who are not so spiritually polluted. This may be a psuedo-scientific way of saying that people who have already "signed over the souls to the Devil" are the main victims of the mutagen.

SAMSON AND THE SEA BEAST (1963)

 

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

I'm fairly surprised that by all indications this was NOT originally a "Maciste" film in its original form. But as seen above, the Italian title was essentially "Samson against the Pirates." Given the way Maciste got around-- to the courts of the Czar, or to 15th-century Scotland-- why not have him show up in what I assume to be the 17th century, vanquishing pirates? Maybe the producers decided that most Maciste films got turned into Samson or Hercules anyway for the American market, so why not claim that this is Samson doing a Maciste turn?

There's no explanation for the strength of the titular muscleman (Kirk Morris), although one of the villains comments that he must have some supernatural power to be able to toss men around so easily. Samson like most such heroes is not a swordsman, so most of the (rather dull) fight-scenes are just the usual knockabout kind. On the plus side, because the film is trying to suggest the heady adventure of a swashbuckler, SEA BEAST doesn't look as grungy as many muscleman flicks, and the photography is the film's most pleasing aspect, even though most of the action transpires on land.

In addition to Samson's uncanny strength, his chief opponent, the pirate king Murad (Daniele Vargas), arranges a "diabolical device" to test the hero's power: chaining him to two boats whose rowers try to force their way out to sea-- and if Samson can't counter their pull, he'll be impaled by spears. It's neither the best nor worst of its kind. Cute blonde Margaret Lee provides the movie's only pulchritude.

DANGER: DIABOLIK (1968)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

In my review of the first FANTOMAS book, I gave the novel a rating of high mythicity. However, this was less because of the character of Fantomas than in response to the way other characters reacted to his criminal capers. Based on the first book, and on the handful of films I’ve seen, I don’t really see that particular supercrook’s appeal.

I have not read any of the original DIABOLIK comics, but the 1968 film-adaptation—at least partially based on original comics-stories—is a very different story. Of all the European feature-films that either adapted comics-features or just flirted with elements of the medium, DANGER DIABOLIK is the most successful.

It’s also one of the most successful films by director Mario Bava, who’s also credited as a scriptwriter on the project. Bava’s excellent design-sense wasn’t always matched by the scripts he either wrote or inherited. But even though DANGER was derived from three separate Diabolik stories—the film’s script never seems choppy or forced. I surmise that Bava, or someone else involved with the script, chose to use stories with a common theme: the attraction of money.

Of course, all films about thieves, gentlemanly or otherwise, involve money as a goal. DANGER, however, invokes “money as a myth.” Diabolik (John Philip Law) flies in the face of the thief who tries to avoid detection by committing at least some crimes in a cowl and bodysuit—but he never seems motivated merely by sheer gain. After Diabolik’s first crime, when he rips off a shipment of cash, he takes the loot to his underwater hideout. Then he and his cohort/girlfriend Eva (Marisa Mell) spread all of the bills onto a bed and make love amid them. It’s the adults’ version of Uncle Scrooge swimming through his horde of coins and cash, and there’s no mention as to what either Diabolik or Eva will use the cash for—if indeed they use it for anything but lovemaking.

One interesting consequence of Diabolik’s scandalous success is that his nemesis Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli) receives extraordinary powers to bring the master thief to justice. This power allows Ginko to put pressure on real, hardened criminals, so that he can extort one of the worst, Valmont (Adolfo Celi), into capturing Diabolik. The gangster uses his contacts to find and capture Eva, the better to maneuver Diabolik to his demise. However, in a dramatic turnabout Diabolik forces Valmont to come with him in rescuing Eva. Valmont tries to escape, but even when Diabolik shoots the evildoer, the master thief works money into the equation—for he shoots Valmont full of stolen emeralds, and later harvests the loot from the crook’s dead body.

DANGER is replete with other fine set-pieces, to say nothing of sporting one of composer Ennio Morricone’s best scores. But nothing surpasses the ending, in which the forces of law and order appear to triumph, and Diabolik is apparently entombed in a deluge of liquid gold. Yet the film promises that the apparently dead thief will rise and rob again—and though there were no Diabolik sequels, the character remains as alive as the viewer’s fantasy of stealing with the utmost style.

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

As I did for my essays on the Bond films THUNDERBALL and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, I chose to reread the Bond prose works that most influenced 1981's FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. The film EYES takes its title from one Fleming short-story of that title, about a young woman whom Bond helps in gaining vengeance on her parents' killers, but as it happens the main body of the film is built more around a second short-story, "Risico." In the latter story Bond is sent to Greece to attempt to allay the drug-trade in Great Britain by buying out one of the chief druglords. Since this wouldn't be a very dramatic conflict the hero is dragged into a battle between two Greek-bosses, with a certain amount of double-dealing about which of them is Bond's real enemy.

Both stories, like the film, fall into the phenomenality I call *atypical.* EYES sports none of the freakish villains that often transport Fleming's stories into the realm of the *uncanny,* and there are certainly none of the SF-elements that pushed the movie-series into the realm of the *marvelous,* as was seen in EYES' immediate predecessor, 1979's MOONRAKER. Indeed, the series' producers were very vocal in 1981 about getting Bond away from the more outlandish fantasy of MOONRAKER. EYES, despite some outrageous stunts necessary to sell the cinematic Bond, does that quite well. I found the film far preferable to the later "realistic" take on the Bond franchise seen in the Daniel Craig films CASINO ROYALE (2006) and QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2008), which both lack the earlier franchise's concern with the exotic and the titillating.

EYES' narrative action follows "Risico" fairly closely, but in keeping with giving the movie a more noble sociological motive, here Bond is not attempting to buy off a druglord but to locate a lost codebreaker-device before one of the Greek crime-bosses, name of Kristatos (Julian Glover), can sell the device to the Russians. In fighting Kristatos, whose name slightly suggests "Christ," Bond is aided by a less venal crime-boss named "Columbo,"whose name in Greek means "dove." Neither in the short story nor the movie do there seem to be any conscious religious subtexts to the naming of the two characters, but in the film director John Glen does manage to work in dove-images from time to time, adding a nice visual leitmotif. I can't help wondering if perhaps Hong Kong director John Woo derived some of his fascination with dove-symbolism from the Glen film.

Bond's other major helper is the female lead, Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet). Although the female avenger in the EYES short story is all-British, the film's screenwriters make the character half-Greek, which allows her to fit in better with the Mediterranean atmosphere, as well as giving her a bit of a Diana-the-Huntress resonance. As a female lead and helpmeet Melina is no more than adequate compared to other Bond Women, and isn't nearly as strong a character as Judy Havelock in the Fleming short story. But at least Melina isn't as much a diminishment of the original as is the film-version of THUNDERBALL's Domino.

The one primary character who's not in either short story is Bibi, a young protege of Kristatos being trained for Olympic skating competition, though it comes out that Kristatos is less interested in her legs than in what lies between them. Presumably Bibi appears because the filmmakers had engaged the services of popular skater Lynn-Holly Johnson, but her character provides some welcome humor when she attempts to seduce James Bond with a sort of Lolita-style aggression. Ironically, the character rejects Kristatos by saying he's too old for her: in truth Julian Glover was over ten years younger than Roger Moore. In addition, Bibi is played to be much younger than the actress actually was, as Johnson was only one year younger than Bouquet.

Moore does "realistic Bond" quite well, with less of the smarmy conceit I found in MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. However, the best thing about EYES are the suspenseful action-sequences. For me the standout is a scene EYES lifts from the novel LIVE AND LET DIE, in which Bond is towed by the villain's boat through shark-filled waters. The film also adds Melina to the ride, adding to the suspense all the more. I suppose this scene registers as more exciting for me than THUNDERBALL's soggy underwater sequences because of improvements in underwater shooting-technology since the 1960s. But this and the end-scenes-- the invasion of Kristatos' mountain fortress-- make EYES the best of John Glen's Bond outings.

ADDENDUM 10-21-19: I've been meaning for some time to change my reading of this film's phenomenality. I originally deemed it "atypical," which term I later changed to "naturalistic," but on reconsideration I decided that the movie's opening scene, in which Bond is menaced by a remote-controlled helicopter, controlled by a Blofeld-like "spectre," does count in the overall diegesis even though the main story seems to be rejecting such uncanny thrills.

HONOR ROLL #96, DECEMBER 26

 TOPOL's made a better crazy doctor in FLASH GORDON than he did a villain in this James Bond flick.

Wacky TERRY-THOMAS reacts to the latest ploy of the cavalier villain Diabolik.

No "sea beast" here; just a pirate played by DANIELE VARGAS.

The spawn of DOOM gives rise to one monster and one hero, the latter essayed by KARL URBAN.

All style and no substance is MONICA VITTI's version of Modesty Blaise.

Zorro fell on pretty hard times with this film, but it wasn't GEORGE TURNER's fault.

ALL-STAR SUPERMAN (2011)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, metaphysical, psychological, sociological*

In 2005-08 Grant Morrison, in collaboration with artist Frank Quitely, authored a twelve-issue Superman series, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. Though the name may have been suggested by one of DC Comics’ most notable Golden Age anthology-titles, ALL STAR COMICS, there may also be some knowing irony on Morrison’s part. Though the comic-book series is very episodic—seeming to be an amalgam of “Grant Morrison’s Favorite Superman-Concepts”—the overall arc is concerned with Superman’s conflict with the very star that gives him most of his super-powers.

Writer Dwayne McDuffie prunes away any of the comic-book narrative that doesn’t contribute to the OAV’s story—which, incidentally, means eliminating my favorite segment, BEING BIZARRO. But the omissions are to the overall narrative’s benefit. The setup is that Superman’s most persistent enemy Lex Luthor finally succeeds in dooming his Kryptonian antagonist, poisoning the hero through his connection with Earth’s sun. The film, like the comic, is a little vague about how Luthor brings this doom about, though it has something to do with his having contacted an alien being, Solaris, who desires to get rid of Earth’s sun and take its place at the center of the system. However, the method is not as important as the effect: what does the world’s greatest hero do when he’s convinced his death is inevitable?

Revealing his identity to Lois Lane, of course, tops the list, though as in the comic the romance of Lois and Superman is not especially compelling. A little more levity comes in when two super-suitors from the future, Atlas and Samson, arrive to court Lois, much to the hero’s chagrin. That said, Superman’s main mission is that of finding out what Luthor did and what the villain’s long-range plans are, once his old nemesis is no longer a threat. The film’s strongest section has Clark Kent visit Luthor in prison, which allows the viewer to see how narcissistic Luthor’s personality is. At times, the film,like the original comic, strains to sell the hero as the opposite: the true-blue boy scout who would never consider peeping on a woman with X-ray vision. Yet toward the end of the series—and the cartoon—the viewer is given a plausible reason as to why Superman is so incredibly good-hearted.

Even before the highly publicized “Death of Superman” storyline, there had many DC stories which presented readers Superman as dead or dying. Most such stories sought to capitalize on the incongruity of seeing the world’s most powerful hero reduced to common mortality. I tend to think that Morrison wished to do his own unique take on heroic mortality, and thus both series and cartoon end ambiguously: Superman disappears into the sun, but Lois promises that he’ll return once he’s done “fixing” it. Thus Morrison’s Superman remains a myth even after being rendered mortal.

I’m not sure how possible it would be to translate Frank Quitely’s somewhat decadent art-style to an animated OAV, so I don’t fault the animators for largely taking a more basic storytelling stance, while only using a few visual “Quitely quotes.”

THE PRINCESS BLADE (2001)

 

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

This swordplay film is billed as a re-imagining of the seventies manga LADy SNOWBLOOD and its cinematic adaptations. Regrettably, PRINCESS BLADE lacks the earlier works’ strong characterization and period flavor. Indeed, BLADE essentially takes place in modern times, though a vague SF-apocalypse is conjured up to account for the absence of firearms. (That said, if one can judge the original film by the English-dubbed version, the script doesn’t even come up with a future-history as elaborate as that of BUNRAKU.)

Heroine Yuki (Yumiko Shaku) resembles Lady Snowblood in sporting a name that means “snow” in Japanese. In addition, this Yuki is also out to avenge an injustice done to her parents, though here the parents have some aristocratic background. Some old retainers address Yuki as “princess,” though it’s never clear as to why the scion of a royal house is first seen running around assassinating enemies with her samurai sword. The script has so little interest in establishing Yuki’s backstory or the ambitions of her enemies that both concerns are largely ignored in favor of a romantic subplot. Early in the film Yuki is wounded by her foes, but in escaping finds her way to a Japanese farm and takes up residence for a time with a handsome farm-boy, who’s even less well characterized than Yuki.

Though the script pays some lip-service to the conflict between normal life and the existence of an action-hero, BLADE’s only strong elements are the swordfight-scenes, and these are far from top of the line. Yumiko Shaku delivered a powerful performance in GODZILLA AGAINSTMECHAGODZILLA—a perf strong enough that she almost outshone the Big Green Guy—but in BLADE she has nothing to work with.

TOTAL RECALL (1990)

 

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


Though Philip K. Dick's stories are usually more complex than the movies they spawn, this generalization does not apply to his original 1966 tale "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale."  This short story includes three of Dick's favorite themes-- a character's paranoia-flavored pursuit by hostile powers, his loss of identity, and the blurring of distinctions between dreams and reality.  Yet the parts do not exceed the whole.  Dick's story of a lowly clerk whose identity is a fictional implant by the agents of the government, and who discovers this truth, sets up a vivid problem and then resolves through a device that amounts to little more than a shaggy-dog story.

Director Paul Verhoeven and a team of four credited writers-- one of whom was the celebrated Dan O'Bannon-- expanded the bare bones of Dick's original story.  The final script became a high-intensity action-adventure vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Lowly wage-slave Douglas Quaid (changed from Dick's name "Douglas Quail") finds out that he was once a secret agent for the evil governor of the Mars Colony, Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox).  One of Cohaagen's agents, Lori (Sharon Stone), even marries Quaid in order to bolster Quaid's belief in his implanted identity.  As if he's subconsciously rebelling against the fictional ID, Quaid begins to have dreams of Mars, dreams which include a beautiful brunette who doesn't resemble Lori in the least.  This is one of the most substantial improvements on the original.  In Dick's story, Quail's wife briefly accuses Quail of dreaming about other women, but he has not in truth done so, while she is not an agent, just a shrew who deserts Quail because she deems him a loser.  Lori, in contrast, realizes that Quaid's Martian dreams constitute a rebellion against his false memories.

Whereas Dick's character only briefly rebels against the authorities who pursue him, and then gives in for sake of the story's shaggy-dog conclusion, Quaid goes on the run like a steroid version of NORTH BY NORTHWEST's Roger Thornhill.  However, that's not to say that RECALL is simply a pulpish indulgence in pure violence, a la 1985's COMMANDO.  Verhoeven and his writers build a very Dickian world, in which the villains are a Marxist's dream, always in hot pursuit of filthy lucre and willing to tyrannize over anyone who gets in their way.  Coohaagen keeps all of Mars under his thumb due to his control of the imported air franchise, and his mining of a precious metal creates hideous mutations who are even more marginalized than the normal Martian citizens.  There's also a guerilla rebellion on Mars, whose opposition plays into Cohaagen's plans for Quaid. Verhoeven uses the mutants for considerable shock value, as with the "three-breasted" hooker, who alone shows up in the squeaky-clean 2012 remake. Yet they have meaning on another level as well: they are the "wretched refuse" who initially look disgusting but are eventually seen as more valorous than many "normals."  In addition, some of the mutants also possess psychic powers, which adheres to Dick's tendency to associate super-normal mental states with abnormal individuals.

I won't dwell on the intricacies of Cohaagen's overall plot.  It has its own share of "refrigerator moments," as Hitchcock calls them, but it's more believable than the original story by far.  Schwarzenegger does quite well in the role, particularly in his early scenes where he believes himself married to a loving wife but has a lustful relationship with the woman of his dreams-- who, of course, is as real as his secret-agent persona.  This is a great improvement over the original story, where the protagonist desires to escape to Mars but has no interest in playing around on his shrewish wife.  It's also of psychological interest that Quaid's "false identity" comes to be a better man than his original, corrupt identity-- sort of a case of a "son" outdoing a "father," even though they're the same person.  Michael Ironside, as Cohaagen's main henchman, provides a good brawl with Quaid and "bad wife" Stone has a kickass fight with "good girlfriend" Rachel Ticotin.  As with Verhoeven's ROBOCOP, this is a rousing adventure that makes limited use of irony for its humor, but is not an actual ironic text like the director's 1997 STARSHIP TROOPERS.


My only major criticism of the 1990 film is a familiar one: I don't see why Jerry Goldsmith should have won any sort of award for a score that blatantly mimics the score for 1982's CONAN THE BARBARIAN.

ALADDIN AND HIS LAMP (1952)

 

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


Though there's almost no chance that this 1950s programmer influenced 1992's ALADDIN, it's an interesting coincidence that this is one of the few English-language pictures, prior to the Disney film, to give the keeper of the lamp a rather swashbuckling nature.

To be sure, the filmmakers, director Lew (THE RAVEN) Landers and two screenwriters, were probably channeling one of the story-tropes from 1924's THIEF OF BAGDAD. The opening establishes that an invader named Bokra and his soldiers have taken over Bagdad and that the leader plans to marry Princess Zafir (the always reliable Patricia Medina). Aladdin (Johnny Sands), who happens to be a thief rather than the lazy layabout from the Arabian Nights tale, decides that he wants an up-close look at the famed beauty, and just like the Fairbanks-thief, Aladdin scales the palace wall and pitches woo to the princess. Zafir's not a shrinking-violet, as she slaps his face, but on some level the viewer's led to believe that she's covertly impressed by his daring.

Aladdin escapes the palace with his hide intact, but, in the biggest similarity to the folktale, an evil magician, one Mahmud, persuades the thief to haul an innocent-looking lamp out of a deep well. Aladdin takes the job, but when the magician seems a little too eager to dispense with his helper's services, Mahmud angrily seals Aladdin up in the well. However, the thief soon discovers that he can call upon the genie of the lamp to obtain freedom and riches. But there's a catch not present in the original tale. The genie wants to win his freedom from the lamp, and he can only do so if he slays his master. However, the genie can only make an attempt on his master's life immediately after the master makes a wish. Further, to judge from the forthcoming attempts, the genie has to disguise himself as a mortal and kill his master with a weapon, rather than just zapping his enemy into dust.

While nasty Bokra plots to make Zafir marry him, Aladdin conjures a fabulous palace to impress the princess. In a plot-thread not unlike the Disney film, Zafir can't be won over by phony miracles, so the piqued Aladdin uses his second wish to conjure up the world's most beautiful woman, only to find that she doesn't please him as much as Zafir. (It helps that Zafir makes the scene in time to save the hero from his baser nature.) After both wishes, Aladdin manages to thwart the genie's assassination attempts. However, before Aladdin can make his third wish, Mahmud intrudes and steals the lamp-- though, being a secondary villain, he soon yields pride of place to Bokra.

Without going into further plot-details, suffice to say that Aladdin is a doughty type in this version, good with a sword or with his fists. However, when Bokra gets into the act of genie-conjuring, he gets a little too incautious about observing the rules-- thus paving the way for the genie's freedom and the lovers' reunion. The genie even tosses in a little moralizing at the end, regardless the fruitlessness of idle wishing rather than taking action. Be that as it may, I grade LAMP's mythicity a little higher than the average Oriental sword-and-slipper flick for its ingenious play on the tropes of genie-mythology.

Aside from JUNGLE JIM IN THE FORBIDDEN LAND, this was Landers' final metaphenomenal film, though during his later TV career he executed some SUPERMAN episodes as well.

SHIN GODZILLA (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*


My visceral response to SHIN GODZILLA is "too many bureaucrats, not enough Godzilla."

Intellectually I can respect that SHIN is a new take on a familiar set of tropes-- one of which is a trope that's barely been used since the original GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS. The first film in the long-running franchise is all about Godzilla fighting against the military might of Japan, and nothing else, and SHIN GODZILLA follows this template. In contrast, every Japanese-made Godzilla film since the original has followed the template of the second outing, GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN. This sequel was the first time the Big G was shown battling another colossal monster, and as I argued in my review, this served to divert some of the violence away from human targets:

One immense benefit of the battle between the two creatures is that their conflict distracts from the audience's expectations of seeing Osaka ravaged as Tokyo was in the first film.  That said, their conflict also has some of the same ego-boosting effect seen in KING KONG: when Godzilla triumphs over the formidable Anguirus, he proves that he is "top lizard" much as Kong did in defeating various dinosaurs.  Thus Anguirus is in some sense a stand-in for Osaka: the extended-- and exciting-- wrestling match of the two colossi takes the place of a more expensive general destruction of the city.  Though this maneuver may have had its roots in economics, the "monster duel" would become one of the central tropes of the Godzilla franchise, becoming far more important than the trope was in the original KONG or in most of its recapitulations.

No other monsters appear in SHIN, nor are there invading aliens or scientific madmen. If anything, SHIN follows the "humans fighting giant monster" pattern of the giant monster-films of the 1950s, particularly the one that purportedly inspires GOJIRA, 1953's THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.  In fact, since the new Godzilla takes place in modern times, the script, written by co-director Hideashi Anno, is obliged to set aside the traditional origin, in which Godzilla is a prehistoric creature awakened and given super-powers by atomic testing. Still, "Shin Godzilla" is birthed by a more modern concern; that of the dumping of radioactive waste in the oceans. Thus the new Godzilla can't represent the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though he can incarnate a looser conception of the hubris of modern man-- in this case, a creature that presumably starts as some modern animal, yet thanks to the radioactive waste, goes through a series of macroevolutionary transformations until it reaches the apex of its creation

Like the old 1950s SF-flicks, SHIN's narrative spends a lot of time following the activities of assorted humans as they strive to cope with the advent of a monster beyond their understanding. As in the older flicks, most of the humans rate, at best, as passable in terms of their characterization. Yet Anno's script is endlessly fascinated with the real-world consequences of the monster's invasion: devoting painstaking details to the ways in which government employees second-guess one another even in an emergency, or wrangle about details, or even concern themselves with the social status of their scientific experts. The two most developed viewpoint characters, Japanese functionary Rando and U.S. envoy Kayoco, are young politicians who are intensely aware of their career opportunities even in the midst of combating a giant monster.

One trope that SHIN develops far more than any earlier Godzilla film is that of the "pseudo-science rationalization." From the first film onward, entries in the Godzilla franchise barely bother to explain any of the giant monsters in terms of then-current science. However, Anno's script makes it a major concern for Japan's scientists to dope out Godzilla's nature as a means to capture/destroy the creature. These cosmological myths, as well as the attempt to make the mutant symbolize all of unpredictable nature-- and maybe even of God-- are give SHIN GODZILLA a better than average mythicity.

As for Godzilla himself, the new version is tolerable but far from a match for the original classic design, or even the re-design for the so-called "Millennium Series."

FIGHTING DEVIL DOGS (1938)

 

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


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

It's rather amazing that FIGHTING DEVIL DOGS is as well-liked as it is. Though the serial's directors, William Witney and John English, would soon become pre-eminent in their field, DEVIL DOGS owes a considerable debt to Republic's 1937 serial DICK TRACY. The debt goes beyond simply the later serial recycling footage from TRACY, particularly one of the villain's weapons, "the Flying Wing." Further, as the above still shows, the principal villain, a masked figure, is aided by a hunchbacked scientist, just like the villain in TRACY. Only one of DEVIL DOGS's scripters worked on DICK TRACY, so it's more than a little possible that some producer at Republic gave the order to recycle plot-elements used in the apparently successful TRACY. Even the sympathetic element of TRACY-- his brother is killed by the villain's havoc-- is virtually duplicated by early in this one, where one of the two Marine heroes loses his father to the contrivances of "The Lightning."

Whether or not the visage of the villain inspired Darth Vader or not, the Lightning's costume is indubitably an improvement over the image presented by TRACY's featured fiend, whose men couldn't seem to make up their minds whether to call him "the Spider" or "the Lame One." The Lightning's regal armor seems to belong to a futuristic era, and this dovetails nicely with his ability to unleash super-scientific menaces designed to humble the mundane world: electric rays, flying torpedos, and so forth. The mystery of the villain's true identity is no better or worse than a dozen others, but even before he's unveiled, the Lightning seems to have gravitas, as if he embodied the advances in human technology that would spread all over the world within the space of one year, when another world war would burst forth. Even his hunchback (John Picorri) has more class than the guy serving the Lame One.

The two military heroes (Lee Powell, Herman Brix) are barely distinguishable aside from one of them having his father killed, but they (and their doubles) display credible dynamism in the fight-scenes. And though most fans have been impressed by the similarity of the costumes of Darth Vader and the Lightning, I was a little more intrigued to learn that (remember, SPOILERS) that the villain was actually the father of the serial's heroine. Granted, she's never as torn-up about this revelation as Luke Skywalker is-- the script even gives her an "out" by revealing that he's an adoptive father-- but I have no problem believing that George Lucas reached into his "old serial" collection when he was writing EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.