THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER (1981)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*


Whenever I've mentioned THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER in conversation, it's usually been to allude to its role in arguably killing off a spate of "comic book movies" that might have come arisen in the wake of the box-office successes of STAR WARS, SUPERMAN, and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Hollywood obviously sensed the public's possible enthusiasm for properties that either derived from comic books or had "comic-bookish" reputations. However, though Hollywood expressed interest in a lot of franchises-- including, incredibly enough, PLASTIC MAN-- the possibility of more big-time movies of this type was killed for a time by three major flops: FLASH GORDON and POPEYE in 1980, and LONE RANGER in 1981.

Seeing this iteration of the Lone Ranger today, in the wake of the lively but hollow LONE RANGER of 2014, the 1981 film doesn't seem so bad. Its worst sin is the opposite of Verbinski's flick: where the 2014 Ranger is overblown, the 1981 Ranger-- boasting five talents working on the screenplay-- is simply pedestrian. Interestingly, the later film probably borrows more of its basic elements from the 1981 film, particularly in respect to a Lone Ranger who begins as a bit of a dude, and whose brother is more at home in the Old West than he is.

To avoid some of the negative associations of the most famous Ranger-Tonto origin-- where Tonto virtually gives up his life to become the white hero's sidekick-- young Tonto and young John Reid become bonded in childhood, when the Indian boy takes the white boy into his camp following the death of John's parents. John stays with Tonto's tribe long enough to make clear that the Ranger will be a liminal figure, straddling the cultures of "White" and "Red." Then John returns to the white man's world and becomes a lawyer.  He returns to the Old West to join his brother, already a Texas Ranger, and this leads to the "slaughter of the innocents" of which Reid, the solitary survivor, will dedicate himself to justice.  This time, however, Tonto is somewhat more proactive. It's his advice to the bereaved lawyer-- telling him about the good effects of silver-tipped arrows-- that leads the future Ranger to come up with his famous "silver bullet" icon.

Directed by former cinematographer William A. Fraker, RANGER usually has a fine visual look, with some strong action-sequences. However, Fraker and his writers seem to be just ticking off each point of the famous "legend" in desultory fashion.  Even the script's new developments don't help. The Ranger's foe Butch Cavendish is no longer a penny-ante outlaw: he's a Darth Vader of the Old West, planning a grand conspiracy to kidnap President Grant and force the government to give Cavendish title to a huge parcel of land.  This idea of crippling the nascent United States by dividing it up-- not via secession but for a supervillain's ego-- is very much in tune with the seminal "Ranger" scripts of radio and television, where the hero is always out to protect the unity of the future America. But the script is so uninspired, that Cavendish's scheme comes off as unimpressive and untenable rather than grandiose.

And finally, even without the bad publicity that arose when the owners of the Ranger franchise filed a "cease and desist" court order against Clayton Moore-- the film probably would have failed due to the lack of charisma of both of its leads, Klinton "voice-dubbed-in" Spilsbury and Michael Horse. Other supporting actors do themselves well, particularly Juanin Clay as Reid's love interest, but without strong performances in the lead roles, the film was doomed from the start.

I do give the film a "fair" rating in the mythicity category simply for attempting to formulate a new version of the Ranger mythos that placed more value on Native American traditions.

DICK TRACY RETURNS (1938)

 

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

In my review of Republic Studio's 1937 DICK TRACY serial, I mentioned that its idea of pitting the comic-strip police detective-- upgraded to a "g-man" by Republic-- against a virtual "supervillain" went very much against the content of the strip. The closest thing the strip had to a masked marauder was a fellow called "the Blank," and he didn't appear until October 1937, roughly ten months after the serial-Tracy contended with "the Spider."

DICK TRACY RETURNS is closer to the general content of the comic strip during the 1930s, wherein most of the villains were fairly down-to-earth, lacking the freakish features that predominated in Tracy villains from the 1940s and thereafter. In RETURNS, G-man Tracy pursues the Stark Gang, six ruthless professional crooks always garbed in plain clothes, and consisting of leader Pa Stark (Charles Middleton) and his five sons. Only in a handful of the serial's fifteen chapters does metaphenomenal content arise. In an early chapter, the Starks get involved in trying to steal the army's new radio-transmitter for the benefit of a foreign power, which would seem to indicate the extent to which even pre-war America anticipated getting pulled into the World War abroad. The invention, which seems to be the same as a later-discussed invention that combines elements of a telescope and a television, would seem to fall into the domain of the uncanny, though it functions as no more than a basic "McGuffin." Most of the time the Starks use only commonplace weapons, but in one episode, they booby-trap Tracy with a flash-camera gimmicked with tear-gas-- and this scene provides slightly better justification for gauging the serial's phenomenality as uncanny.

Such matters aside, the bulk of the serial focuses on the numerous schemes of the Starks and the efforts of Tracy and his fellow g-men to trap the crooks. As in the previous installment, the villains don't have one overriding plan, but continuously come up with new plots, usually oriented on simply making money. Middleton, who gained a measure of cinematic immortality as "Ming the Merciless" in FLASH GORDON, makes a good foil for Ralph Byrd's Tracy, particularly when, as the serial progresses, Pa keeps losing son after son to G-men gunfire. Still, given Republic's concentration on fistfights and car-chases, the potential melodrama is never realized. Still, at least all of the Stark boys are given some individuality, which is more than one can say of Tracy's assistants, particularly a rather pusillanimous version of Tracy's kid-ward Junior.

I AM NUMBER FOUR (2011)

 

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




I've not read the "Lorien Legacies" books that spawned this Dreamworks picture (first to be distributed by Disney's Touchstone-- cue "strange bedfellows" maxim), but I'm guessing from what I've read elsewhere that the film probably does the original justice.  FOUR is not a particularly inventive picture, following in the wake of many many teen-centered stories about young people trying to pass in ordinary societies despite possessing extraordinary powers

However, it does have one strength: it picks one simple story and follows it through with a minimum of complication.  This puts it ahead of other "power-teen" films in which the scenarios attempt to out-X the X-men in terms of dizzying continuities, as with (for example) 2008's JUMPER and 2009's PUSH.

The hero is the son of alien parents, both of whom have died, and his only parental figure is another alien who attempts to keep him safe, concealing him amid the humans of Earth, whom they both fortunately resemble.  Unfortunately, the young man has certain powers-- termed "legacies" to make them sound less like superhero attributes-- that are blossoming with his adolescence. At the picture's start, he blows his last Earth-cover-ID by letting other teens witness his abilities, so the guardian has to set his young charge up in another location.  The bulk of the story then follows young "John Smith" (the alien teen's choice for a new name) as he and guardian "Henri" try to keep low and avoid a hostile group of alien bounty hunters, the Mogadorians.

Naturally, the first thing John Smith does in his new locale is to butt heads with the local bullies and get cozy with a nosy Earth-girl-- one given to posting scandalous news on her website.  John also meets and befriends a young nerd named Sam who believes-- correctly, as it turns out-- that his father was kidnapped by aliens.  Sam gets the best line in the film: "My life is an episode of the X-Files."  John's carelessness brings down the wrath of the bounty hunters.  Henri dies but John meets another of his kind who in effect takes Henri's place: a young kick-ass female who calls herself "Number Six."  The teens trounce their attackers in some strong FX-scenes that, compared to other films in this subgenre, are relatively easy to follow.  John, expecting trouble to find him again, leaves his girlfriend and hits the road once more, this time with both Sam and Number Six in tow, thus leaving open the possibility of Sam locating his lost dad.

Given that this is all very well-traveled material, there might have been a justifiable temptation to camp it up.  Thankfully, the four principal actors all play it straight, and the script, while never provocative, supplies good bits of business for them.  Teresa Palmer as Number Six shows an intensity that's preferable to John Smith's maunderings.  It might have been a more inventive story had it been built around her, but the filmmakers did reasonably well with what they had.

. 

THE MONSTER AND THE APE (1945)

 

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



THE MONSTER AND THE APE (henceforth just "APE") is something of a switch-around with a long established serial-trope. Many SF-oriented serials of the 1930s and 1940s displayed a fascination with big clunky robots. Such primitive effects were probably not especially expensive, beyond the original design of  each robot, given that they were all men in suits, but I would guess that they were time-consuming to film. That may be the reason why in most SF-serials-- including this one-- the robot is used sparingly.  However, long-time western director Howard Bretherton and his scripters-- both of whom had worked on many more serials than Bretheron had-- found a way to give their juvenile patrons a little more bang for the buck: they gave their villain a trained ape. Thus the evil Doctor Ernst --surely one of the least imposing villain-names in serials-- has one inhuman servant already working for him while he strives to steal another one, the Metalogen Man, from its creators.

Like many scientists of this period the robot's creators have altruistic motives: they want their Metalogen Man to liberate humankind from hard labor. Doctor Ernst wants the Metalogen Man for criminal purposes, and early in APE he claims to be one of its inventors, though the script drops that particular ball later on. After Ernst has his killer gorilla Thor (Ray Corrigan) knock off most of the robot's makers, the surviving scientist Dr. Arnold and his daughter Babs call in an engineer from another foundation-- Ken Morgan, who for all intents and purposes acts like your basic cop/ FBI bloodhound.  The plot is driven the same way most serials are: "find a vital part for the robot," "find a source of energy for the robot," and so on.

Often the villain outshines the hero in serials, but not here. Though George Macready would prove a highly watchable performer in other films, he's merely efficient as a robot-stealing mad scientist, lacking the intensity of Eduardo Cianelli playing a similar fiend in 1940's MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN. Nevertheless, he's clearly more the narrative focus than the bland Morgan (Robert Lowery of BATMAN fame). Lowery acquits himself well in the serial's numerous punch-ups, and he plays almost a lone hand, with only minor assistance from Arnold, his daughter, and his black chauffeur/comedy relief Flash.

Flash, essayed by Willie Best, is just about the only reason I rated the symbolism of this well-shot but routine adventure-serial as "fair" rather than "poor."  Best didn't regularly do serials, and although many of his routines conform to the general outline of the "scaredycat Negro" popular at the time, I see some evidence that he may have interpolated some bits of business that he originated, since said bits don't resemble much of anything in the other serials by the credited scripters. "Flash," of course, is an ironic reference to the notion that black people are all lazy, but the character does show a modicum of gumption. In an early chapter Morgan has Flash drive him to the crooks' suspected hideout, and leaves the chauffeur outside while he, the two-fisted engineer, investigates.  Morgan of course gets into a fight with the hoods, wrestling with one over a pistol. When the gun goes off, Flash reluctantly goes to Morgan's aid, wielding that stereotypical "Negro weapon," a straight-razor. He and Morgan are knocked out and left behind, but things work out so that the local cops check out the scene and find only Flash with his razor.  Later he complains about being grilled by the cops, making one wonder why none of the heroes found time to go bail him out.  Also, though Flash is skittish of the robot, and jumps whenever he thinks it moves, he does gain a little skill in operating it-- though his triumph is dimmed when Ernst takes over the robot by remote control.

URSUS IN THE VALLEY OF LIONS (1961)

 

 

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

A note on two of the tropes mentioned here: the only thing that's uncanny about the titular lions in this flick is that they manage to raise a human baby to become a big strapping muscleman, who, unlike the lions, wears clothes before he ever meets people. The "bizarre crime" referenced is that old peplum favorite the "tug-o-war" between a muscleman and some incredible opponent. Sometimes I subsume these under "diabolical devices," as when the hero's being pulled into a wall of spikes. Here the villain forces a bunch of ordinary people to play a tug-o-war with a brace of elephants trying to drag the people into a blazing inferno. Crime yes, device no.

At any rate this fourth outing gave Ursus an origin of sorts, though the writers weren't really making any attempt at a "continuity" for the character. For one thing, the hero of the first film seems to be a peasant who's extremely strong for no particular reason. VALLEY makes Baby Ursus the last surviving member of a royal line overthrown by a pretender named Ajak (Alberto Lupo). The baby survives Ajak's usurpation and through various contrivances ends up in the care of a pride of lions. Twenty-something years later, Ursus dwells in the pride's valley, having no contact with other humans until a slave-caravan breaks down. This scene provides the film's only humor, as the aggrieved master of the caravan complains about his ill fortune that has prevented him selling his slaves in the nearest big city-- also the city where Ajak reigns. But the most important thing is that among the female slaves are the movie's Good Girl and Bad Girl, Annia (Mariangela Giordano) and Diar (Moira Orfei). There's just enough to establish that Diar nurses a deep resentment for Annia before Ursus takes a fancy to Annia and whisks her away to his lair to become his mate. (No sexy scenes here of course: all Annia is seen to do is cook for the big guy.)

Diar is sold to Ajak's court, but in dealing with the slave-master Ajak beholds a medallion the slaver got from Ursus. Ajak realizes that it's an emblem of the royal family he deposed, so he's anxious to wipe out the last trace of any rivals. Diar, ambitious to rise above her station, volunteers to help the evil ruler find Ursus.

The main hero gets a smattering of fight-scenes here, particularly when he has to employ his strength against that brace of elephants, but as a character he's a cipher. The dramatic meat of this opus is between the two females, particularly when Diar, a slave all her life, reveals that her resentment stems from knowing that Annia was a royal at some time in the past. Diar's resentment, though, blinds her to Ajak's treachery and she meets the usual bad end, though only after she's been of help to the hero.

The "Tarzan" borrowings don't do anything to make VALLEY more than a thoroughly average peplum, distinguished only by the hotness of Orfei and Giordano.

EMPIRE OF ASH II (1988), EMPIRE OF ASH III (1989)

 

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

Now in contrast to the previously reviewed film PHOENIX THE WARRIOR, these two films come closer to the mark as far as making mildly entertaining films. If you as filmmaker know that you really have no coherent, non-derivative ideas, then just go for broke, and throw everything and the kitchen sink into the mix. The titling of the two films is a prime example of this mentality. They're really films One and Two in a series of two, but some marketing genius decided to make it seem as if they both descended from some hypothetical "EMPIRE OF ASH" out there in the Platonic nether-regions.

Producer Lloyd A. Simandl seems to have originated the basic story, and as both co-writer and co-director he keeps both films on the same basic track. For once, we've got a post-apocalyptic film taking place in heavily forested areas, which never seems to be a serious problem for all the Mad Max-style transports wheeling around. Supposedly we're in a post-nuclear "New Idaho," as played by the forests of Canada, and ordinary people are constantly menaced both by a cult of religious fanatics and by scientific nuts who like to experiment on human subjects. Some reviews claim that the two groups fight one another, but I mostly remember them contending with main heroine Danielle (Melanie Kilgour).

Both films are search-and-rescue films. In the first, the science geeks kidnap Danielle's sister for their experiments, and the gun-wielding warrior woman goes after them. On her way she befriends a roguish traveler, Orion (Thom Schioler), who only reluctantly joins her cause (I think he agreed after she slept with him, but I'm not sure). EMPIRE 2 is full of lots of random running around and shooting, and there are times that neither Danielle or Orion are on screen while the plot just wobbles all over the place. The most charismatic character is not the heroine-- though these are two of a very small number of post-apoc films with female protagonists-- but the main villain, a striking blonde enforcer for one of the evil groups, maybe the techie madmen. I thought for sure the film was setting viewers up for a face-off between good girl and bad girl, but the end just dissolves into another big shoot-up and the rescue of Danielle's sister. The film's highlight is a daffy sequence in which one of the tech-geeks blows up a building by launching miniature missiles from his hat.

There's no trace of Orion or the sister in EMPIRE III, but Danielle decides to help out a young guy named Harris who's trying to rescue his girlfriend from the tech-weirdos-- who now have a hot brunette in charge, and who AGAIN does not get a final catfight with the heroine. EMPIRE 3 is just as aimless as the first film, and Kilgour is still not especially charismatic, with the dominatrix villain again getting some of the best scenes. One small advantage of the aimlessness is that "kitchen sink" approach I spoke of. For instance, there's an amusing scene that brings back the guy with the hat, given the name "Rocket Man," and shows him as becoming tongue-tied when two hot young babes want to get a better look at his "missiles." The leader of the religious fanatics this time out is American "heavy" William "CONAN THE BARBARIAN" Smith, but although he intones his pseudo-Christian dogma well enough, his character doesn't do much as a whole. But the first film must've made some money, since this time the producers sprung not only for Smith but also for some cuts from American rock favorites. An implied lesbian almost-rape adds to some of the delirium, and for once the girls chosen to drop their tops are well chosen-- not always the case for a lot of Canadian movies of the eighties.

HONOR ROLL #148, SEPTEMBER 28

 MELANIE KILGOUR seeks to build an empire upon the ashes of bad scripts.

There's no lion about how much Ursus dislikes ALBERTO LUPO.

Mad scientist GEORGE MACREADY is caught between the monster and the deep brown ape.

Don't ask TERESA PALMER for her number.

LYNNE ROBERTS gets little to do while backing up Dick Tracy.

Not only did KLINTON SPILSBURY's movie career end when his Lone Ranger movie flopped, he didn't even get to yell "Hi yo Silver" in his own voice.

MS. MARVEL (2022)

 

 

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

Half of the six-part MS. MARVEL streaming series is just a low-impact validation of Muslim-American culture. In contradistinction to the many invidious portraits of Muslims in American film and television, all of the Muslims in MARVEL-- mostly if not entirely of Pakistani extraction-- are absolutely virtuous in every way, so much so that they all register as fundamentally dull.

Validation of a marginalized culture doesn't have to be dull. In the early 1970s, one saw a small handful of movies dealing with African Americans living largely average lives with no pimps or gangsters in evidence. Two of these, SOUNDER (1972) and CLAUDINE (1974), are strong melodramas with appealing characters. However, MARVEL is able to manage no more than an unimaginative, standardized "hero's journey" in which Muslim-American Kamala Khan, upon getting super powers from a mysterious object, fights various vaguely conceived opponents while connecting with her Pakistani forbears. 

Online reviews of this adaptation of Marvel Comics' first well-known Muslim hero (no love for the Arabian Knight, I guess) have attacked the series on issues I find irrelevant. For one thing, in early issues Kamala displays powers comparable to the stretching powers of the Fantastic Four's Mister Fantastic-- though usually she only turns her hands into colossal fists. Attempting to translate this kind of comic-book power might not only be prohibitively expensive, it might not even look all that good in a live-action format. So it does not bother me that the producers behind the series gave Kamala energy-powers that often have the same basic "stretchy" effect. For a second thing, though I understand the business-related reasons as to why Kamala was designated an "Inhuman" in her early comic-book career, and why she's now being called a "mutant," neither designation makes any difference to my estimation of the streaming series.

I might have given MARVEL a passing grade regarding its mythicity just for its celebration of the normative world of Muslim-Americans. However, as usual Kevin Feige's MCU cannot pass up any opportunity to distort real-world politics. Thus, when Kamala begins to make contact with the Pakistani world of her deceased grandmother-- who is also the source of the aforesaid power-imbuing object-- the heroine experiences some of the violence of the 1940s period called "The Partition," during which Pakistan was established as a state separate from the parent country of India. But from this series one would barely know that the violence stemmed from conflicts between Indians and Pakistanis as the respective groups either departed from or headed toward the future state of Pakistan. 

At that point in history, the British were removing their forces from India, specifically because both Indians and future-Pakistanis wanted them out. Some historians believe that the former administrators of India should have stayed in India long enough to oversee the Partition, and that's a possible fault that the series might have explored. But the flashbacks to the Partition barely if ever mention the presence of Hindus, and includes a scene in which British soldiers are for some reason bombarding helpless Pakistanis. Why would the Brits be doing this? MARVEL does not care to give specifics; violence is just something Evil White People commit, even when they have nothing to gain from their Evil Acts. Feige's MCU cannot admit that two POC groups might have conflicts that result in the sort of destruction that can only be levied against the White Patriarchy.

And of course American authorities have continued the Evil Whiteness of the Brits. Though a few episodes have Kamala menaced by a POC terrorist group, her primary opponent is a government agency, Damage Control, which is out to capture Kamala because she's unpredictable. (I'm surprised that the Registration Act of CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is not evoked, but that political briar patch seems not to have any effect on the streaming serials.) For once, the leader of the nasty agency is a female-type woman, but she's painted as an unregenerate racist in that she claims she wants to keep powers away from "the wrong type of people." She immediately clarifies that she means anile teenagers, not Muslims, but the writers know how their audience will read the remark. The most I can say of MS. MARVEL is that its woke politics aren't nearly as lazy and predictable as those of FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER, and that star Iman Vellani gives her limited role a lot of gusto.

PETER PAN (2003)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological*

As a kid I was only mildly interested in the stories of Peter Pan. I dutifully watched the TV special, with Mary Martin following the trend of having Pan played by smallish women. I found myself a little bored with the Disney animated movie, because that version of Captain Hook was too goofy and effete to pose any real threat. I didn’t read J.M. Barrie’s classic novel until after childhood had long flown, and the novel gave me a greater appreciation for some of the more accomplished adaptations of later years, and even offbeat takes like Spielberg’s HOOK.

In contrast to works that require considerable fidelity in translation—say, the Harry Potter series—Peter Pan films are probably at their best when the creators treat Barrie’s text as a grab-bag of evocative motifs, which can be rearranged in many pleasing ways without doing violence to the basic story. This U.S.-Australian adaptation, directed and co-written by P. J. Hogan, exemplifies such an approach, and at present it’s the best “Peter Pan movie” I’ve seen, not counting a prequel-film like NEVERLAND.

Though Barrie’s book is rather ambivalent about Peter’s age, the dominant image has become that of a puckish pre-adolescent, if only to justify the scenes of burgeoning puppy love between Peter and Wendy. Jeremy Sumpter hits all the right notes, showing Peter as heedlessly energetic, mercurial, forgetful, and both envious and leery of the bonds of familial love. Rachel Hurd-Wood’s Wendy has been crafted to be more of a tomboy, first seen telling wild stories of pirate adventure, as opposed to being the demure figure from Barrie’s book. Nevertheless, the script doesn’t overplay Wendy’s swashbuckling fantasies, and her interactions with Peter are marked more by feminine persuasion than by any contemporaneous notions of empowerment. Even more thankfully, Jason Isaac’s Captain Hook is a genuine threat to Peter and the lost boys, and manages to project sinister charm without falling into the effeteness trap. The actors playing the Lost Boys and the various members of the Darling family all fill their roles admirably, and the only false note comes from Ludivine Sagnier’s Tinkerbelle, whose jealousy of Wendy is too often used for “baggy-pants” comedy.

Both the mermaids and the Kaw Indians put in appearances, but the emphasis here is the age-old quarrel between youth and age. Thus Wendy finds herself somewhat caught between her desire to mold ageless Peter into something of a ‘husband” and her realization that even a charming pirate like Hook has been corrupted by the adult priorities of ruthless acquisition. To boost the spectacle of the book’s climax, the evil pirate captain gains the power to fly via fairy-dust, and he and Peter lock horns in both physical and psychological combat. This reworking allows the filmmakers to dispense with the way the book got rid of Hook’s men—implicitly they’re all knifed to death by the Lost Boys—and instead, magical fairy-power simply blasts them off their own ship, after which they’re never seen or spoken of again. Hook does still meet his crocodilian doom, but Hogan’s version is in some ways more interesting than Barrie’s, in that the former reinforces that “age vs. youth” conflict.

I don’t remember whether or not Barrie had the Lost Boys return to Earth, but Hogan does let this scene go on a little too long. Still, the ending, with Wendy bidding farewell to the Boy Who Never Grew Up, does credit to the poignancy of Barrie’s tribute to the last years of childhood.

WOLVESBAYNE (2009)

 

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


I've often assigned the mythos of "drama" to stories that involve vampires or werewolves, following the myth-critical notion that such monsters have a dominantly *purgative* character. However, WOLVESBAYNE-- a six-years-late knockoff of the UNDERWORLD series-- pits one werewolf, a bunch of good vampires and some vampire-hunters against some really evil vampires. Like UNDERWORLD, WOLVESBAYNE's focus is so much on theoretically invigorating fight-scenes and saving the world from doom, and so despite the horror-elements, this one falls within the mythos of adventure.

This telefilm was almost certainly someone's idea for a horror-themed TV series, for it ends with the two principals, experienced vampire Alex Layton and newbie werewolf Russell Bayne (as in "wolfsbane," get it?) planning to sally forth against evil once more, even though they've just defeated a Big Bad capable of establishing a vampire dominion of the world. Alex and Russell originally have a "meet awkward" moment in which they don't really get along, but Alex senses that Russell's in for trouble. Sure enough, he gets bitten by a werewolf, so that he's informally initiated into the "monster club"-- although no other werewolves appear, and most of the conflict is just half-decent vampires vs. really bad vampires. Possibly the script meant to suggest some common origin for this world/s vamps and wolf-people, since there's a tossed-off mention of a "retrovirus." Once Russell has become a wolf-guy, Alex accepts her duty to train him in the fine points of monster-existence, like tapping into your super-powers without changing form. This comes in handy, because at the same time there's a cult of power-hungry vamps who want to resuscitate an ancient vamp queen, Lilith, so that she can help them conquer the world.

The action and makeup FX are standard, but I might have found this road-company horror-opus entertaining if the two leads had been decently conceived. Alex, however, oscillates inconsistently between being a strict taskmaster and a kind Samaritan. Russell might have been interesting had he remained a self-absorbed type from start to finish, but he "gets religion" far too easily, and on top of that, the script reveals that his great-grandfather was some sort of vampire hunter who had ties to the venerable Van Helsing himself-- who ALSO has a modern-day descendant heading up the modern vamp-hunters.

A good summary statement for this one:

"Too many tropes spoil the script."

SAMURAI (1979)

 

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

There's not much to say about the rejected TV-series pilot SAMURAI.  Lee Cantrell, son of an American businessman and a Japanese heir to the samurai tradition, decides to dress up in black togs-- but no mask whatever-- and fight crime on the mean streets of San Francisco.  He comes up against a corrupt industrialist who, for no clear reason, wants to unleash an earthquake with a special machine, whose presence pushes this potentially-uncanny martial-arts flick into the realm of the marvelous.

Stunts and dialogue-- particularly the lines dealing with Cantell's supposed "culture clash"-- are bland and unmemorable.  Joe Penny, a talented enough actor, is given nothing to work with and is unable to raise this mediocrity even to the level of a "so bad it's good" outing.

GUILTY CROWN (2011)

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

If I hadn't known while watching this two-season anime show was an original TV production, I might have assumed that a lot of the narrative lacunae stemmed from the writers dropping out segments from a slower-moving manga or prose series. Instead, I think the flaws of pacing and character development came about from the writers trying to cram too much into the show's 22 episodes. That said, the writers did manage to bring the entire concept to a mostly satisfying close, in marked contrast to such "left-up-in-the-air" adaptations as NISEKOI and HEAVEN'S LOST PROPERTY. 

The story commences with a seemingly ordinary Japanese high school student, Shu Ouma, who lives in a Japan subjected to a humiliating fate. Ten years previous, an outbreak known as the Apocalypse Virus originates in Japan, and other Earth-nations place the nation under their control in order to manage the virus. The other nations are not specified, though one broad characterization looks American, and it seems likely that the scripters had in mind some parallels with the Commodore Perry intrusion upon Japan's sovereignty. An organization named the GHQ uses its medically based, UN-derived authority to usurp control of Japan, and its agents and their mecha-- respectively "Anti Bodies" and "Endlaves"-- are none too gentle about enforcing their will. An anti-GHQ organization, Funeral Parlor, appears to oppose this rule by outsiders.

Shu accidentally gets mixed up with Funeral Parlor when he meets Inori, a pop-singer who's one of the Parlor's agents. She entrusts him with a genome-weapon stolen from GHQ, but Shu triggers the weapon so as to infect himself. He develops the unique power to draw "Voids" out of other human beings, which are energy-manifestations that look like physical objects-- a sword, shears, even healing bandages. Shu then can then wield these objects against the enemies of Japan, so Funeral Parlor pressures the high-schooler to join. Shu gets involved partly because of his attraction to Inori, but he really wants to live an ordinary life. Funeral Parlor's leader is the demanding Gai, with whom Shu butts heads, but he's drawn into friend-like relationships with such ensemble-characters as courageous paraplegic Ayase and freaky hacker Tsugumi. Some of Shu's high-school acquaintances also become part of the ensemble, though they become more significant in the show's second season.

The most mythic aspect of CROWN is its concept of Voids, which are generated from the soulfulness of whatever human they're taken from. For many years I've noted that anime and manga make substantial use of a trope in which human beings get turned into weapons, conspicuous in the 2003 manga BECAUSE I'M THE GODDESS.  In CROWN, since the weapons are expressions of people's heart-deep feelings, Shu becomes the conduit through which young Japanese people assert themselves against the foreign powers, which embrace their rule of Japan with too much gusto. 

At the same time, Shu's head is uneasy now that he wears "the crown" of responsibility for his people's fate. One episode of the second season, in which Shu and his friends (including the Funeral Parlor agents, masquerading as students) hole up at school when GHQ turns up the heat. Briefly Shu almost does a Paul Atreides, becoming a petty tyrant because of the death of a woman who loves him (but whose love he didn't return). The writers get him out of that funk rather quickly, but I give them credit for giving the "nice ordinary guy" some potential for corruption.

On the matter of the protagonist's ordinary nature, the first season drops hints that he isn't really so quotidian, particularly since his adoptive mother works in genome studies. The end of the first season reveals that Inori is actually an android who is supposed to be the receptacle for the first victim of the Apocalypse Virus, and that said victim is none other than-- Shu's older sister Mana, whom Shu conveniently forgets for most of the first season. The second season burrows even deeper into the strange triangle between Shu, Gai and Inori/Mana, but overall I enjoyed the hyper-dramatics, since they were grounded within a concrescent application of psychology and sociology. 

HOWLING II (1985)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

HOWLING II is in every way stupid where the original film is smart, and this despite input from novelist Brandner, and despite the presence of ever-reliable Christopher Lee and gorgeous Sybil Danning in her salad years.

Perhaps because the producers arranged to shoot the film in Prague, the dominant idea from Brandner and director Phillippe Mora was to replace the idea of a werewolf community with that of a werewolf sex-cult, ruled over by an apparently ageless queen named Stirba (Danning). Stirba apparently plans some evil ritual on the "10th millennium" of her birth, although the film is maddeningly vague about what she means to do and how she means to do it. A former sheriff, brother to the leading lady killed at the end of the first film, and a lady reporter are enlisted into the good fight by a road-company Van Helsing named Stefan Crosscoe (Lee). Toward the end of the film it's belatedly revealed that Stefan and Stirba are brother and sister, with scant foreshadowing by the clumsy script, far more concerned with having extras shamble about in shoddy costumes and try to exemplify European decadence. There are some curious, badly chosen attempts to play with the werewolf legend: Stefan advises his adherents that Stirba and her acolytes are so evil, mere silver won't kill them, only bullets of titanium. (Titanium bullets are mentioned in the Mexican "Nostradamus" serial of the 1960s, but this may be mere coincidence, as Mora does not strike me as a fannish type after the example of Dante.) After all this emphasis on titanium, though, at the end Srefan reveals mystical powers and manages to kill his sister with them even as she kills him (perhaps meant to suggest a "love-death," though the film is too muddled to put this across). This final scene does make HOWLING II to be, unlike the original, a "combative drama," for what little that's worth.

There have been worse horror-movies, simply by virtue of being duller than this nonsense. But it's still pretty awful.

HONOR ROLL #147, SEPTEMBER 12

FERDY MAYNE'S fortunes are on the wane from doing HOWLING II.

Heavy lies the head of SHU OUMA when he wears the Guilty Crown.

Samurai is as samurai does, sez JOE PENNY.

Werewolf chick CHRIS ROMANO goes out on a howl.

JEREMY SUMPTER can't help thinking about unhappy thoughts.

IMAN VELLANI has her own definition of "big 'uns."

THE SHADOW STRIKES (1937)

 

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


Usually when a studio gets the rights to a serial property, the filmmakers use the first entry as a template for future entries, and only change the basic model for the hero's adventures over considerable time (if at all).  Grand National Pictures, the first film-studio ever to adapt the adventures of the pulp-magazine hero The Shadow, broke that particular mold.  After coming out with just one film showing their hero "Lamont Cranston" (or "Granston," depending on the film) as a costumed crimefighter, their very next entry in this "series" re-imagined the character as a completely down-to-earth crime reporter.

Directed by Lynn Shores (whose only other noteworthy film in my book is CHARLIE CHAN AT THE WAX MUSEUM), THE SHADOW STRIKES is adapted from a Maxwell Grant Shadow story.  Indeed, the credits for STRIKES make pointed reference to the Shadow's origins as a "Street and Smith" character, though no such reference appears in the subsequent picture.  The story is an undistinguished mystery in the vein of "Who Killed the Rich Guy This Time," with a subplot involving the heroic "Lamont Granston" looking for the murderers of his father. This is apparently this Shadow's motive for having become a crimefighter.  I gather that by the end of the story he found them, because at the close Granston's confidante/butler wonders whether or not the hero wishes to retire the Shadow costume.  Frankly, I was too bored to follow the plot that closely.

LaRoque, an actor with a long list of silent and sound credits-- none of which I've seen-- acquits himself reasonably well in the Granston role, but Shadow fans then were surely disappointed that he only changed into a Shadow-like outfit twice in the film, and only very briefly.  When he first appears in a darkened room and gets the drop on a couple of crooks, he's wearing only a black hat and a black cloak, with nothing whatever to guard his face.  Author William Gibson detailed all sorts of illusionistic devices that the prose Shadow used to make it seem as if he disappeared before his opponents' eyes.  The Grand National Shadow looks like he could be exposed by shining a flashlight in his face.

JACK O' LANTERN (1972)

 

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

Whereas most of the offerings from FESTIVAL OF CLASSICS were adaptations of familiar classics like SNOW WHITE and ALICE IN WONDERLAND, the episode JACK O'LANTERN appears to be entirely original. There are some real folkloric stories about a human who gets changed into Jack O'Lantern, but none of these seem to have anything to do with this Rankin-Bass effort.

A grandfather relates the story of Jack O'Lantern to his grandkids in modern times. Back in the days when Grandpa was a boy, and had a same-age sister, the two kids are aghast to learn that their farm may be destroyed by strange phenomena that the father calls "ghosties and ghoulies." They get the idea that maybe they could drive away the apparitions if they improve on the cornfield's headless scarecrow. The kids plan to take a pumpkin, carve a jack o'lantern face on it, and stick it atop the scarecrow. However, after getting carved the pumpkin comes alive, revealing that it grew from a seed in which a leprechaun of "the Old Sod" was hibernating for the winter. The pumpkin informs the kids that his name is Jack O'Lantern, but he seems to take to the idea of being part of a scarecrow, since he promptly sticks himself onto the scarecrow-pole. He also reveals that he knows that the apparitions have been conjured forth by two sorcerers that the leprechaun knows from previous acquaintance: Zelda the Witch and her "jellyfish of a husband," Archibald the Warlock.

Jack, though given to long blarney-filled monologues, is a good guy, so he stays in the cornfield and gives battle to the phantoms of the two sorcerers. The leprechaun has access to assorted powers-- tossing lightning bolts or throwing orange needles that look like slivers of pumpkin-- but only because he possesses an internal resource, his "pot of gold." Unfortunately, the bad magicians realize that they can triumph by holding the kids hostage, forcing Jack to surrender his pot o'gold and thus losing his powers (as well as turning into a leprechaun again). However, the fortunes of Jack and his charges improve when the farm-animals (who can talk, by the way) come to the rescue.

Finally, after Jack has saved the farm, the story ends and returns to the present, at which point the unbelieving modern kids are given irrefutable evidence that Grandpa's story really happened. It's a clever little tale, which excels in its scenes of magical combat-- thus making it a combative work, unlike its silly companion piece.

FANTASTIC FOUR (1994-96)

 

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

Since I grew up with the 1960s Hanna-Barbera FANTASTIC FOUR cartoon, that one will always be my go-to adaptation of this pivotal Marvel comic book. That said, I realize that the limited animation of the company, while it could capture the quirky humor of Lee and Kirby's Early Period, it couldn't quite manage the visual grandeur of the Middle Period. That was the period in which many of the key concepts of the Marvel Universe-- Galactus and the Silver Surfer, the alien Kree, and the Inhumans-- were formulated. Hanna-Barbera did adapt the Galactus Trilogy, but with mixed results at best.

The 1994-96 series makes a concerted effort to adapt the best of Classic Lee-Kirby FF, but also with mixed results. The biggest problem is that the first season suffers from poor animation and character design, as well as very lame humor. Ben "the Thing" Grimm is given the bulk of the supposedly comical dialogue, though there's a new character, the FF's female landlord, who's even worse in the comedy department. The series begins with Reed "Mister Fantastic" Richards and Sue "Invisible Woman" Richards already married, which eliminates a lot of the early tension between the romantic couple (and messes up the chemistry in the show's one Sub-Mariner adaptation). Johnny "Human Torch" Storm has no impressive story-arcs in the first season, but then, he didn't have many in the Early Period of the original comic, either. The scripts often play mix-and-match with different stories, but this isn't always a problem, since even a few of the early FF stories were rather dodgy (particularly FF #2, the introduction of the Skrulls).

Had there only been one season, I would have rated the show as poor. However, the quality of the animation and character design is improved in the second season, possibly thanks to a bigger budget. (Given the awfulness of the first season's theme song, the lyric-less music for the second season is a titanic improvement.) The scripts stick closer than before to their original models, and while this doesn't always lead to greater mythicity, at least one episode, "Prey of the Black Panther" is particularly strong in this department. The Torch gets a lot more attention this time, as the season includes his blazing passion for the Inhuman Crystal, which arc actually receives a modest payoff at the end of the second and last season. Almost all adaptations are from Lee and Kirby, though one episode faithfully adapts John Byrne's arc with Frankie "She-Torch" Raye, while another, "Worlds Within Worlds," melds Lee & Kirby introduction of Psycho-Man with a problematic Byrne story about Sue Richards' metamorphosis into the violent villainess Malice.

On the whole, the 1994 cartoon is watchable, but even the best-animated episodes leave something to be desired.

TEX AND THE LORD OF THE DEEP (1985)

 

 

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

I've never read any of the TEX comics, which became very popular in Europe since Italy published the first serial in 1948. Tex, whose full name is Tex Willer, is largely unknown in the U.S., and this movie-- henceforth abbreviated to LORD-- seems to be the only English-language translation of the character into any medium.

The movie is said to have been an unofficial pilot for a television series. But despite its having adapted sequences from three of the comic serial's arcs, and despite having the directorial services of Duccio Tessari, LORD flopped at the Italian box office, so there was no teleseries. Possibly the budget was limited from the get-go because any teleserial would also have been similarly limited.

LORD starts out moderately well, using long shots of Western natural wonders and a portentous voice-over to introduce the audience to the upstanding ranger Tex Willer (Giuliano Genma), who pals around with a stalwart Indian buddy and the real-life scout Kit Carson (thus making this stand-alone film a sort of crossover-work). Tex is seen avenging some Indians from white scumbags who've been selling them liquor. 

Then the plot proper starts, as Tex and his friends track some bandits who've ripped off a convoy of Army rifles. The heroes learn that the bandits may be working with a mysterious cult of living Aztecs who possess strange magical abilities. Tex and his buddies even witness one such ability, when a survivor of the convoy raid is subjected to some force that melts away the flesh of his face, leaving a skull (the only good effect in the film).

Meanwhile, the film segues to showing the Aztecs, who plot to conquer the world by uniting the Indian tribes against the White Man, and continuing their age-old custom of sacrificing human beings to their gods. The Aztecs, one of whom is female, debate their next move, while Tex and his friends seek them out-- 

And the two never meet. The remainder of the film trails off as Tex's band fights with some of the bandits, but the heroes never meet the Aztec plotters, and the latter are apparently defeated when their alchemical weapon goes awry. 

I don't think one can blame this incoherence on budget alone. LORD just seems to be one of those bad-luck films in which everything just goes wrong and everyone involved just wants it to be over and done with it. Genma had an impressive career playing heroes in westerns and in sword-and-sandal flicks, but it's impossible to judge whether or not he could have done a good version of this character, since his work is undercut at every turn. The flick doesn't even play to the sword-and-sandal tradition of playing up a hot evil queen, since the female Aztec's scenes are short and unmemorable.

FREDDIE AS FRO 7 (1992)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, cosmological*


This British kiddie-cartoon sports a wealth of well-known voice-actors-- Ben Kingsley, Billie Whitelaw and Brian Blessed-- but the script, co-written by director Jon Aceveski, is lame beyond words.

The "F.R.O.7" of the title is an incoherent play on both the word "frog" and "James Bond, 007," because it features what is presumably the world's only secret-agent frog. Aceveski devotes a third of the film building up the idea of how "Freddie" became a humanoid frog, though nothing is said about how he managed to become a French secret agent in a world where he's the only anthropomorphic being. But no "Howard the Duck" alienation for Freddie the Frog; he's a walking caricature of "the French Romeo," making passes at a lady secret agent while he gets his new assignment. It seems a dictator, El Supremo, has been stealing national monuments for some nefarious purpose, so Freddie and a couple of human agents are assigned to take the evildoer down. Perhaps to justify his secret-agent status, Freddie is actually seen fighting with the villains a few times, combining kung fu with frog-fu (taking really big leaps high in the air).

Like the other features covered here, FREDDIE should be relentlessly unfunny to anyone but a really young kid who's never heard any of the jokes before. That said, a really young kid probably wouldn't appreciate the film's main joke: that Freddie is a "frog" not only by virtue of his green skin, but also because he's French. "Frog," "frog-eaters"-- get it? The oddest thing in FREDDIE is as follows: he gets turned into a frog by his sorceress-aunt back in medieval times. Centuries later, Freddie "magicks" himself into the form of a humanized frog, and somehow escapes the perils of anti-frog prejudice in order to become an agent of the French secret service. Finally, he learns that his sorceress-aunt is still alive, partnered with El  Supremo--and though Freddie gets even with his aunt by foiling her plot, never once does he consider getting her to reverse her spell and make him human again.

Maybe, as Kermit memorably said, "it ain't easy bein' green." But if that's not really the way you were born, and you got the chance to stop being green-- why wouldn't that be the first thing on your mind?

NOTE: Wikipedia speculates that, had there been a sequel to the flop frog-flick, the hero might have confronted his aunt again and been restored to humanity. Still, it's idiotic that, in Freddie's only outing, the idea of re-humanization doesn't even occur to him.

PEGASUS VS, CHIMERA (2012)

 

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

REDEMPTION looks really good next to PEGASUS  VS. CHIMERA, a truly bare-bones version of the Pegasus story. In the original Greek myth, the hero Bellerophon gains control of the winged horse Pegasus, and one of his deeds includes killing a destrucrtive beast, the Chimera. 

This time around, a tyrant named Orthos kills the father of a young man, Belleros. The youth hides away long enough to put a few years on him. At this point he decides it’s finally the right time to go forth and avenge his father.

By this time, Orthos has gotten older, though he staves off the aging process with spells from his pet magician. However, Orthos still has a lot of enemies, mostly the race of the defiant Tyrians, to which Belleros belongs.  The wizard encourages Orthus to overcome all opposition by summoning the Chiimera from the depths of Hades, and Orthos agrees.

Not long before summoning the Chimera, Orthos slays the Tyrian king, who happened to have a tough daughter, skilled in archery and swordplay. Daughter Philony stumbles across Belleros, and they make an alliance. They can’t do anything against the supernatural power of the Chimera, but a good seer helps them summon Pegasus from his constellation in the firmament. The sorceress also tells them if Pegasus doesn’t finish their task by a certain time, the whole universe will fall apart. (Wonder if Big Daddy Zeus knows about this?)

It’s a serviceable enough plot, but PEGASUS is hobbled by its budget. The CGI is so restricted that the winged horse and the reptilian monster can only gesture menacingly at one another whenever they fight. Even fight-scenes between actors are hampered by the director’s penchant for quick cuts possibly utilized to avoid the necessity for retakes. The actors try gamely to sustain the material, but none of them—not even Rae (“I used to be A-list”) Dawn Chong-- can make a silk purse of this horse’s ass.

HONOR ROLL #146, SEPTEMBER 12

 Despite the billing, the people behind the flying horse, NAZNEEN CONTRACTOR and SEBASTIAN ROCHE, are the stars of this little show.

If I've not said so before, I treat all funny-animal heroes as if they came from alternate sci-fi-style dimensions, including obscurities like FREDDIE THE FROG.

Nothing lordly about GIULIANO GEMMA's venture into the depths of bad westerns.

As a gesture to feminist priorities, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN has her full powers from the very beginning of this take on the venerable First Family of Marvel.

Another "good monster" heard from in JACK O LANTERN.

ROD LAROQUE, cinema's first Shadow.