THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE (1983)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I chose this German poster for RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE because it tossed in a couple of color-coded bimbos in negligees, neither of whom appears in the film. Since INVINCIBLE is a musical, there are a handful of skimpily clad singers in one or two scenes, but White Negligee and Black Negligee are not among them.

The musical numbers, as it happens, are also the only remarkable thing about INVINCIBLE, an Australian attempt to spoof the SUPERMAN movie franchise. Some of the songs were penned by Richard "ROCKY HORROR" O'Brien, and two of them allow starring villain Christopher Lee to show off his impressive baritone. Star Alan Arkin also turns in some decent spoken-singing, though it's clearly not his strength.

Metallic-suited Captain Invincible (Arkin) somehow acquires super-powers sometime during WWII, and he uses those powers-- largely magnetic in nature--to fight the good fight against the Nazi menace. Unfortunately, since for a time the Allies were allied with the Russians, his past actions get the captain in dutch with Commie-hunters in 1950s America. The captain becomes so disgusted with this small-minded political persecution that he disappears for the next thirty years, holing up in an Australian city. In addition, he becomes a drunk and a bum, and it's not at all clear how he sustains himself during this time.

In 1983 the captain's long-time enemy Mister Midnight (Lee) resurfaces, beginning by stealing a vital piece of U.S. ordnance, a "hypno-ray." It's never very clear what Midnight wants to accomplish with the ray, though there's a sequence that suggests some sort of real-estate scheme, possibly a nod to Lex Luthor's evil plan in the 1978 SUPERMAN. 

Providentially, a young policewoman named Patty witnesses the captain use his powers, and she contacts the U.S. with news of the hero's survival. The President himself (an amusing Michael Pate) journeys Down Under to persuade the hero to come out of retirement, and eventually the captain allows himself to return to America, with Patty in tow. 

Since no semblance of romance is ever suggested, clearly the script, co-written by nineties wunderkind Steven E. de Souza, was hoping to remain kid-friendly all the way. And in truth, with the exception of the humor in the songs, all the comic stuff in INVINCIBLE feels like it was designed for one of those tepid 1970s Disney comedies. If one happens to be in the mood for tepid humor, then INVINCIBLE fills that particular bill. A representative scene is one in which the captain, trying to test out his rusty powers, magnetically covers himself in dozens of metal implements. It's kind of cute, but not actively funny. Midnight, who may have played some role in forcing the hero into retirement, finds out that the captain is back and begins taking counter-measures. The captain and Patty go mooching about, tracking down Midnight's operation, and after a lot of low-level comedy the captain meets his old foe, who tries various stratagems, including luring the hero back to dipsomania. 

The captain's comical use of his powers provide most of the "action," which just barely edges into the combative mode. Much of the script emphasizes the protagonist's regret for the passing of a more innocent time, though the film's portrait of the eighties is pretty mild, so the film's latter half doesn't advance the sociopolitical content of the opening. Interestingly, four years previous, a DC comic book asserted that the heroes of the Justice Society had gone into retirement because of similar anti-Communist accusations during the early 1950s. But in those days, it seems unlikely that any writer who wasn't already a comics-fan would have been aware of that precedent.

20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957)

 

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


As all monster-film fans know, FX-genius Ray Harryhausen was inspired to enter his profession by his viewings of 1933's KING KONG.  His enthusiasm for the art of stop-motion later led to his collaboration with KONG's prime mover Willis O'Brien on 1949's MIGHTY JOE YOUNG.  In the decade of the 1950s Harryhausen's star rose alongside the prominence of science fiction films, as he made his name with giant monster-films like THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS  and  IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, as well as the alien-invasion flick EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS.  20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH is his last giant-monster film of the 1950s.  With one exception-- 1969's THE VALLEY OF GWANGI-- all of Harryhausen's completed works in later decades situated his stop-motion horrors in otherworldly scenarios-- either those of science fiction, fantasy, or that strange generic breed, the "caveman-and-dinosaur" film.

Did Harryhausen ever want to make a monster that audiences loved as they loved Willis O'Brien's KING KONG? It may be that he was too respectful of O'Brien's accomplishment to wish to copy it directly, or even to do a knockoff, as O'Brien essentially did with both THE SON OF KONG and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG.  20 MILLION, unlike the previous two giant-monster movies, features a monster with a roughly humanoid appearance. Arguably 20 MILLION had more potential to evoke KONG-like emotions than a giant dinosaur or a giant octopus.  The creature, whom Harryhausen dubbed the "Ymir" though it's never given a name in the film, displays a good range of expression in addition to its humanoid appearance, and I mentioned in my review of BEAST that I found Ymir possessed  superior "moxie."  Yet the script for 20 MILLION, one accepted by both Harryhausen and producer Charles Schneer, makes almost no attempts to mine the Ymir's Kong-like potential.  Thus it's possible that Harryhausen primarily cared about the Ymir as a technical, not a dramatic, challenge. 

The title refers to the origins of the monster on the planet Venus. It's possible that the title may also be a shout-out to Harryhausen's first giant-monster flick, as well as a reference to the roughly similar titled of Jules Verne's most famous book, 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA.  This reference becomes explicit at the film's opening, for when a manned rocket returns to Earth from its Venus mission and plummets into the sea, one military character remarks that the vessel is now "20,000 leagues under the sea"-- presumably a measure of depth, rather than the distance-connotation of Verne's title. A brief introduction links man's mastery of space-travel and atomic science, even though 20 MILLION has nothing whatever to do with the usual tropes of "atomic bomb cinema"-- unless you count the fact that the film takes place in a postwar world dominated by America because the U.S. was first to master the atom. Possibly the scripters tossed out the atomic-power reference to make it credible to 1957 audiences that the US government would soon be able to send rockets to Venus just as rapidly as the atom had been split.

Some Sicilian fishermen witness the splashdown and rescue two members of the Venus expedition.  Of the two, the older astronaut perishes of a Venusian disease that has already slain the other members of the expedition.  Only young leading-man astronaut Bob Calder survives, apparently having avoided contamination on the flight back-- though both he and the attending doctor take absolutely no precautions to avoid contact with the dying astronaut.  The doctor-- also, as in many 1950s films, the leading man's love-interest-- is actually a doctor-in-training: one Marisa Leonardo, the American granddaughter of a local Italian medical man.  Sparks fly between Calder and Marisa the same way they did between the leads of IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, but their dialogue is less memorable and the leads lack charisma.

A third survivor of the flight is the egg of the Ymir, encased in a glass cylinder by the astronauts.  The cylinder is cast out of the rocket during its fall and is found by a relentlessly cute little Italian boy, Pepe.  The boy, a devout lover of all things American, sells the container to Doctor Leonardo so that Pepe can purchase a cowboy hat.  The other Italian characters are generally deferential to the American military, except at one point where an Italian policeman puts his people's survival ahead of American interests. From this film one would never know that the two countries had been opponents during a world war.

Leonardo opens the container and finds a jelly-like substance that he leaves sitting out on a table (some scientist!).  Shortly later, he and his granddaughter discover that the "egg" has hatched into a small reptilian humanoid.  They put the creature in a cage, but Ymir shows a distressing tendency to grow at a rapid rate.  Unlike Kong, Ymir shows no interest in Marisa or any other human female, though he does terrify Marisa by his very appearance. He also grabs her arm once, though his action seems to be nothing but a reflex, associated with his attempts to escape confinement. 

The Venusian beast gets loose and goes on the rampage, looking for food on this alien world.  Calder strives to keep local Italian cops from shooting the monster-- not because he cares anything about the creature's welfare, but because its Venusian metabolism may hold clues that will help Earthmen survive on Venus.  Various conversations by military men establish that the U.S. wants to take advantage of Venus' mineral resources-- so that the military ethic comes down to little more than good old Lebensraum under a science-fictional heading.

Calder reveals that these creatures don't grow so big in their native habitat, meaning that its rapid growth is purely a reaction to Earth's atmosphere.  He also reveals that they can be kayoed by doses of electricity.  Since bullets don't harm the creature, Calder arranges for the Ymir to be captured in an electrical net. The army arranges to hold Ymir captive at Rome's zoological gardens.  They do succeed in keeping Ymir prisoner long enough to learn at least some of its biological secrets, which is perhaps designed to make the average viewer feel like the coming destruction is worth the candle.

A trope from KING KONG is repeated when reporters are allowed to enter the laboratory where Ymir is held prisoner, subject to continued electric shocks to keep him docile. In contrast to KONG, where the reporters actively cause Kong's rampage with their flash-bulbs, these members of the Fourth Estate do nothing to enrage Ymir: the monster is simply freed when one of the mechanisms holding him fails. Free again, the giant reptile-man pounds his way through the nearest wall and finds himself confronted by a zoo-elephant.  Harryhausen's animation establishes clearly that Ymir tries to avoid fighting the Earth-creature, but for whatever reason the elephant ignores his human handler and insists on giving battle.  At the time the resultant fight provided a high-water mark in the combination of real-world photography with stop-motion effects, though arguably Harryhausen would surpass this film with his works in the magical fantasy genre.

Ymir wins his battle with the elephant-- Venus One, Earth Zero-- and runs around Rome, terrorizing and killing (mostly by accident) Roman citizens.  Calder himself takes the field, briefly knocking down the alien by slamming into it with a car. The film concludes as Ymir takes a Kong-like stand atop the Coliseum and is finally killed by bombardments from the U.S. military.  In another departure from the example of KONG, the film's last words pronounce not sympathy for the dead monster, but for the sufferings of his opponents, as one scientist asks, "Why is it always, always so costly for Man to move from the present to the future?" The same sentiment is expressed in BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, but 20 MILLION doesn't even have one character who expresses ambivalence to the overall theme of postwar Manifest Destiny.

In my review of KING KONG I asserted that Kong's three battles with primitive predators on Skull Island served the purpose of enhancing his reputation for "kingship," and thus increasing the tragic feeling that results when mankind's superior weaponry slays the mighty ape.  But though none of KONG's characters precisely eulogize Kong, at least Carl Denham has a dim intuition of the issues at stake. In contrast, no one in 20 MILLION has the slightest moral qualm about having snatched the creature from its natural habitat, brought it to Earth to study, and ending up by killing it once it served its purpose as a research-specimen.  Additionally, despite the Ymir's quasi-humanoid appearance,  no one wonders whether or not the creature may have any degree of intelligence. Calder and his associates speak of it as "the animal" or "the thing," and the animation of the Ymir validates their view, since the creature's only emotions are those of hunger and anger.  Still, with BEAST's rhedosaurus and IT's octopus, there was good reason to presume that they were "just animals."  I usually hate to invoke sociological readings with a Marxist flavor, but even I must admit that the Earthmen's assumption of Ymir's animal nature seems awfully convenient given their imperialistic project.

MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME (1985)

 

 

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

I hadn't looked at any of the MAD MAX films, or any critical reviews of same, for over 20 years. Then I first decided I ought to review them for this site and for THE GRAND SUPERHERO OPERA. I didn't exactly rush to do so, since my review of MAD MAX appeared in July of last year and I got around to THE ROAD WARRIOR last month. In those reviews I noted that I'd never been a big fan of the Mad One's debut movie and that ROAD WARRIOR wasn't nearly as riveting as I remembered.

Though the original trilogy is dystopian fiction, the first two are just barely science fiction, since writer-director George Miller is primarily focused on brain-busting action. I have an impression that for reviewers in 1985, the third and last film in the trilogy was viewed as underwhelming. But as I look at THUNDERDOME now, it seems like the only movie in the batch that works both as dystopian myth and science-fictional myth.

The other films alluded to the central character's uneasy relationship with his original job as a highway patrolman and how isolated he was from the ramshackle barbarian societies that arose after the Big Whatever brought about the demise of civilization. In a world governed by a dog-eat-dog ethic, what can a lone cop do except retreat from attachments and try to protect himself? Miller's Max-myth owes not a little bit to tropes of the Western gunfighter, who rides into some small town and initially shows no regard for the less adventurous townfolk. But Max, like those solitary gunmen, is always moved to protect ordinary life even if he cannot share in its pleasures. 

So as THUNDERDOME commences Max (Mel Gibson) is once more on his own, trekking through the wilderness with his goods and a couple of camels. A father-and-son pair of ravagers, flying a crude two-seater plane, steal the hero's possessions, and afterward Max follows their trail to the nearest human outpost. The outpost's name, Bartertown, is emblematic of rabid consumerism; everyone is out for himself/herself, and the sort of barter practiced there is defined by the phrase *caveat emptor.* It's surely some sort of sociological comment that the power of Bartertown resides in their ability to refine methane from the feces of pigs.

Max learns that the bandits have already sold his goods on the open market, and since there's no law here, the hero can only seek to regain his goods with the barter of his fighting-skills in the service of the city's overt ruler Auntie Entity (Tina Turner). Auntie has a rival for rulership: the dwarf Master, who keeps company with a musclebound brute, Blaster. Auntie wants Max to defeat Blaster in mortal combat so that Master will lose his protector and Auntie can assume total hierarchy in Bartertown. And said mortal combat takes place in the arena called Thunderdome.

The fight in Thunderdome is justly famous, but in this movie it's a prelude to more subtle forms of conflict. Without getting into specifics, Max finds that there are a few decencies he won't discard for personal gain. This moral squeamishness gets him exiled from Bartertown, bound to a horse's back and sent into the desert. Auntie, for her part, gets what she wanted without having to pay her rebellious servant.

The deeper form of conflict appears when, by dumb luck, Max crosses the inhospitable stretch of desert called "the Nothing" and ends up in another settlement, built around an oasis.

While Bartertown is a place of instant gratification, of adults ripping off other adults, the oasis-refuge is a realm of childlike wonder, not least because it's inhabited only by kids and teenagers. All are the descendants of the survivors of a plane that crashed near the oasis decades ago. Theirs is a kingdom of youth, like that of the Lost Boys in PETER PAN, but unlike the Lost Boys these youths celebrate the vanished wonders of the fallen civilized world, which they call "Tomorrow-morrow land." The children believe that Max is Captain Walker, the pilot of the downed plane, who years ago left the oasis to look for help. Max denies being the cynosure of this bizarre "cargo cult," and when some of the kids adamantly insist on leaving to look for their fabled paradise, Max does his best to restrain them.

But Realist Max can't restrain these impossible dreamers, and a group of kids sneaks off into the desert. Max and a few allies pursue them, but they don't overtake the rebels until both groups are out of supplies. Max knows what kind of reception he can expect from Auntie Entity, so he and his Lost Boys infiltrate Bartertown to steal the supplies they need. By "coincidence" this gives Max the chance to avenge Auntie's mistreatment by liberating the captive Master and blowing up Auntie's pigshit-refinery. Max's group steals a car and flees. but Auntie's forces pursue, also in the usual barbarian art-cars. In the end, Max gives his Lost Boys (and Girls) the chance to find a version of Tomorrow-Land. The hero doesn't share in the new world, but like the gunfighter goes back to his ceaseless Cain-like wandering-- which would not be further explored until 2015's MAX MAX FURY ROAD.

If the subgenre of post-apocalypse fiction has a masterpiece in cinema, THUNDERDOME is it. Max had faced a conflict between savagery and civilization in ROAD WARRIOR, but this time there are two opposed civilizations: one devoted to greed and one to imagination. In addition to the generally expected excellence of the action scenes, there's a concomitant quality to the extravagance of the costumes (note the bizarre outfit of Auntie's henchmen Ironbar) and to the score, provided this time by Maurice Jarre. Most surprisingly, since most big-budget movies outside the musical genre don't produce outstanding songs, THUNDERDOME can boast, both sung by Turner but written by separate songwriters. 

Since Max has a greater range of emotions this time, Mel Gibson gets to show off more acting chops, and Tina Turner, whose cinematic outings were few, consistently delivers both the ambition and wry humor of Auntie Entity. The only substantive criticism I can make is that none of the kids from the oasis emerge as interesting characters in their own right. And this is in spite of the fact that the script gives a couple of them very mythic names-- Finn McCoo, derived from an archaic Irish hero, and Savannah Nix, whose cognomen combines an image of fertility with the name Nyx, most probably referencing the Greek personification of Night. If any of them sustain mythicity, it would probably Savannah, since she is one of the older kids who keeps alive the myth of Tomorrow-morrow Land, and who departs the security of the oasis in pursuit of a dream that, while foolish on the surface, ends up enlisting Max in making sure that the aspiration becomes a reality.

PRINCESS OF MARS (2009)

 

 

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

Since Edgar Rice Burroughs' pioneering Martian hero did get a creditable (if not exceptional) adaptation in 2012, I can't very well carp that this Asylum production deprived viewers of a definitive adaptation of the John Carter mythos. I can complain that it's a generally mediocre film, and the best I can say of it is that it's far from the worst to come out of this studio. One source claims that Disney had announced their adaptation even back in 2009, which would explain the Asylum people becoming interested in the property, though I assume they actually had to pay for the rights to Burroughs' story, which is a sort of accomplishment in itself.

Antonio Sabato Jr. is at least a reasonably impressive hero-type here. His version of John Carter is a U.S. army sniper stationed in Afghanistan, and after he's injured in combat with a drug-merchant named Sarka, Carter's nearly-dead form is utilized by army doctors for a teleportation experiment. Sounds pretty counter-intuitive to use a half-dead guy for an experiment, but that's the Asylum for you. FWIW, in the original novel Carter is in danger of death before he gets magically transported to Mars, so I suppose that's what the writer-director was riffing on. (Also, because current science no longer believes life on Mars possible, one scientist notes that they're not sending Carter to THAT Mars, but to some other planet they've given that name.)

On Mars Carter is healed of all his wounds but nearly naked. He also discovers he's stronger than normal thanks to the gravity of Mars. He's spotted by his future love Dejah Thoris (Traci Lords) but she leaves him to his fate-- which turns out being captured by the tusk-mouthed savages known as Tharks. (In the books the Tharks have four arms; no surprise that this film doesn't even attempt this effect.) Carter is given a potion that allows him to talk Martian, and he learns about the long history of conflict between the Tharks and the human Martians, represented by Dejah and her people. Dejah is also captured by the Tharks and, despite a rough first meeting, eventually she persuades Carter to help her save the planet. As in the books, the planet's atmosphere is only maintained by artificial installations, and if they're destroyed, so does the populace.

The script is pedestrian and the effects-- mostly big CGI beasts seen from a distance-- are paltry. For no good reason the writer injects another Earthman, the drug-merchant, apparently just so that Carter can fight another guy with super-strength-- though their actual fight is forgettable. The villain's name, Sarka / Sab Than, sustains a little continuity interest simply because in Burroughs, "Sarkoja" is one of the primary villains of PRINCESS OF MARS, though she's actually a scheming female Thark, while Burroughs' "Sab Than" is a minor secondary antagonist.

The film's only saving graces are Sabato and Lords. It's interesting that while Burroughs' Dejah Thoris is no kind of warrior princess, both this film and the 2012 iteration make her into a sword-mistress. Sadly, though Lords looks pretty good in the role despite her age, she doesn't get to do anything but stab a small critter with her blade. From what I can tell, as of this writing the role of Dejah seems to be Lords' last role of any significance. 

CHAMELEON (1998), CHAMELEON II; DEATH MATCH (1999), CHAMELEON 3: DARK ANGEL (2000)

 

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

I suppose fans have ROBOCOP to blame for all the SF-adventure films in which whole cities dispense with standing police forces (all before "Defund the Police!") and depend rather on privatized law-enforcement units. To be sure, the original ROBOCOP takes the position that privatized law is not a good choice over police who report to government oversight, so maybe it's not ultimately responsible for dipstick iterations of the concept like the two FUTURE FORCE movies.

The three CHAMELEON TV-movies are certainly not down in the bottom level of dreck; all three are just decent formula entertainment. United Paramount Network shot a number of these TV-films from 1995 to 2004, and while never outstanding I generally esteemed their best stuff over anything offered by SYFY Channel's original efforts. CHAMELEON was one of a few that was structured as a possible teleseries, though no such series manifested.

In far-off 2028, corporate culture is now served by privatized enforcement agency IBI. Cloning has been perfected, and IBI, seeking to create their own "super-agent," brings forth one of the first adult clones to be genetically crossbred with three species of animals: cougar, falcon and chameleon. Said agent is Kam (Bobbie Phillips), who is supposed to an emotionless enforcer for the IBI, and for her remorseless creator. However, her first mission for IBI puts the company in a bad light: they want to kill off a man who's invented a "credit chip" that allows him to get around billing systems. The IBI does kill the inventor and his wife, but Kam, when tasked with killing the inventor's young son, rebels and flees with him.

Phillips generally strikes a good balance between her training as a martial-arts badass-- she looks very Terminator-esque wearing dark shades and riding a motorcycle-- and her innate humanity, for all that she's a "sub," a "substitute human"-- sometimes abbreviated as "subhuman." There are a few reflections on the morality of making clones to serve as a slave species, but the script doesn't pay a lot of attention to moral issues. 

Anyway, despite Kam's prickly nature, she and the kid remain together most of the film, working as de facto partners until Kam finally defeats IBI. Well, actually she defeats a rogue faction headed by her mean creator. Once this faction has been taken down, Kam is free to rejoin a less tainted IBI for future adventures. 

Personally, I would have dropped the preposterous "animal DNA" stuff. Maybe I could have bought into her having her muscles enhanced with "cougar DNA," but "chameleon DNA" giving her the power to blend into her surroundings was for me a bridge too far. If the creators just wanted her to be excluded from the normal ranks of humanity, being a test tube baby could have worked as well as the animal-hybrid trope.

CHAMELEON 2: DEATH MATCH shows how the concept probably would have played out in a regular series. This time there are no rogues in the IBI household, but Kam does have to deal with being assigned a new (and unwanted) cop-partner Booker. As the two of them go head to head with a gang-lord named Dulac and his many allies, MATCH shows itself to be much more focused upon crime-fighting action a la DIE HARD. There's one vague suggestion that IBI may still harbor some corrupt elements, but for the most part it's all about stopping the career criminals. The predictable arc of Kam's interaction with Booker-- first they fight, then they protect each other's backs-- is pedestrian and does nothing to advance Kam's perceptions of her own humanity. And although Phillips is still very sexy, the sequel lacks the sex-scenes of the original. Granted, those sequences were rather tame given that they were meant for broadcast television, but they did add some ambivalence as to what duties Kam was trained to perform for her "masters." In place of sex, there are a few more extended kung fu fight scenes.

With the last telefilm, subtitled DARK ANGEL, the creators seemed to go all out, possibly guessing that this would be their last time to breathe life into their chameleonic heroine-- which indeed it was.

To be sure, as with the other two films, the script is very spotty on a lot of details-- not only about this future-scape's grand scheme, like how people live in a corporate-dominated culture and how they feel about clones like Kam-- but even the details about how Kam lives her life when she's not out kicking criminal butts. The writers apparently forgot that the original time-frame was 2028, for the prologue shifts the time ahead about ten years, though nothing about Kam's life in the IBI has changed in the least. She does have a slightly more compassionate handler this time out, though he exists only to utter vague misgivings about Kam's temperamental nature, and the possibility that she might be as capable as a wild animal of indiscriminate killing because she's "subhuman." It's not clear why any IBI official cares about indiscriminate killing, if indeed they have no government oversight, but the scene does make the viewer sympathize with Kam over a hierarchy that created her as a living weapon and then hypocritically submits her to psychological review.

Elsewhere in the city, scientist Tess Adkins (Teal Redmann) and her father are working for an energy company, trying to harness "dark matter" as a new source of energy. However, a subordinate scientist and a tough bodyguard named Kane (Alex Kuzelicki) betray the project. They kill Tess's father and carry off the dark matter device, despite Tess's warning that the power of dark matter could unleash a "black hole" capable of destroying all life. The young woman escapes, which doesn't immediately concern the conspirators, until they get the device back to their base, where they find that they can't make the machine work. So they go looking for the scientist, at about the same time Kam is assigned to run the witness to ground.

This basic scenario was already used in the first movie, but this time the stakes are raised in terms of both action and drama. The chameleon-girl finds Tess, but so does Kane-- and in that first martial encounter, Kam realizes that her opponent is also a "subhuman" clone, since he can both fight and heal wounds as well as she can. Moreover, even though he's an adult, Kam recognizes Kane as her clone-brother, though she hasn't seen him since both of them were little kids being raised by a surrogate mother. Again the script drops the ball on a lot of intriguing questions. Was Kane just made from roughly the same hybrid gene-recombination process as Kam, or were they literal brother and sister, albeit nurtured by the nameless surrogate mother? At some point in the past, the IBI simply loses track of Kane. Since he seems to have free will and nothing is said about his having been sold to foreign powers, the best assumption is that he simply decided to go rogue on his own-- though that doesn't really explain why Kam has conveniently forgotten all about him until the time of DARK ANGEL. (Since both of the clone-people wear black attire, maybe "Angels" would have been a better title.)

For all these unquestionable flaws, though, the action is exemplary for a budget-conscious TV-film, boasting four strong fights between Phillips and Kuzelicki and a number of ancillary battles against other lowlifes trying to take Tess prisoner. Kam is consistently shown as being caught between the desire to reconnect with her lost sibling and the necessity to stop his rampage, to say nothing of resenting her own "sub" status. (A memorable line in the prologue conflates her duty "to serve and protect" as being equivalent to a slave's "service.") In contrast to the kid Kam protects in the first flick, Tess doesn't do much to bring out Kam's humanity, given that Tess is just as prickly as her savior for no adequate reason. Still, Kam finally gets a challenge worthy of her talents, not only in her fights with Kane but in her struggle to keep the dark matter from annihilating the world.

Kane, though defeated, escapes, and a coda suggests that Kam may seek to find him again, though he showed no sign of wanting a reconciliation. But even though there would be no more outings for the girl with the animal DNA, at least she went out on a high note.

JACK ARMSTRONG (1947)

 

 

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

I don't precisely know what I like about the cheap Columbia serial JACK ARMSTRONG, based on a popular radio adventure-series. It's certainly just as cost-conscious as a number of other serials-- THE LOST PLANET, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND-- in which producer Sam Katzman had his actors plod around some very limited shooting-set for fifteen chapters, getting into occasional fistfights but never able to escape to any other venue.

Certainly no one would praise the serial for capturing the sense of youthful protagonists running around solving dastardly crimes, since none of the principals-- Jack (John Hart) or brother-and-sister Betty and Billy (Rosemary LaPlanche, Joe Brown Jr) were less than 24 years of age. The "teens" are also accompanied by an older fellow, the siblings' "Uncle Jim," but he doesn't play a large role in the heroics. Brown's character of Billy is just another lame comedy relief character, but as Jack and Betty the actors Hart and LaPlanche give the serial some needed charisma. The young heroes track down mysterious signals to a remote South Seas island and find there a secret installation whose scientists are constructing an "astroglobe" with which they can rule the world. The leader of the plot is Jason Grood (Charles Middleton of FLASH GORDON fame), but most of the active villainy is supplied by Grood's flunky Zorn (Wheeler Oakman) and a plotter who wants to move in on Grood's action. 

The thing that keeps ARMSTRONG a little above the average is not even particularly original. The island is inhabited by South Seas natives, led by a lissome Princess Alura (Clair James), and these denizens vary between being a help or a hindrance to the adventurers. In a few episodes Grood poses as the natives' god in order to manipulate them against the good guys, but surprisingly the writers don't use this old chestnut very often. There's not much detail about how the natives feel about Caucasians, but in a telling line, Grood reminds a native ally that the natives all know how "cruel" the white men have been to their people. To be sure, there's less evidence of white misbehavior here than what one might have seen in a contemporaneous Tarzan film, but at least the mention of past grievances gives the conflict a little more sociological heft.

As others before me have observed, 15 chapters is too long for this kind of limited set-action, and some plotlines are suggested and never realized, as when Zorn kidnaps one of Uncle Jim's scientists for help on the project-- and said scientist does nothing that even slightly affects the plot. Middleton is a welcome presence in his few scenes-- he was said to be ill and passed away two years later-- though Katzman's people left his name out of the credits. The fight-scenes are decent but unremarkable, and the only memorable aspect of the cliffhangers is that in one of them, the female lead rescues her compatriots, which didn't happen all that often in serials. There are a few impressive FX scenes-- one in which a man is killed in an electric booby trap, and another in which hero Jack sneaks aboard Grood's rocketship (seen only as a single control room) to foil the use of the death-ray. All else considered, maybe I just liked the bouncy theme music.

HONOR ROLL #154

 While Charles "Ming" Middleton was benched as main villain, WHEELER OAKMAN made a good pinch-hitter.

"Karma-karma-karma-BOBBIE PHILLIPS."

Dejah Thoris might be a princess, but ANTONIO SABATO JR ain't a prince of a guy.

Max don't need another villainess when he's got TINA TURNER around.

After YMIR asked for better billing from Ray Harryhausen, he found his name mysteriously elided from the script.

No one wanted to see ALAN ARKIN return-- or even debut-- as any superhero.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: THRONE OF ATLANTIS (2015)

 

 

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

In JUSTICE LEAGUE WAR, the League's DTV cartoon just prior to THRONE OF ATLANTIS, writer Heath Corson wasn't able to make anything of the sow's-ear of the Geoff Johns comic-book story but another sow's-ear. However, the 2012-13 "Throne" by Johns is much improved by Corson in the animated adaptation. The comic-book original takes place some time after Aquaman has become acquainted with his Atlantean origins. However, Corson takes the rudiments of the "Throne" continuity and blends it with an Aquaman origin story, one which probably owes something to both AQUAMAN issues written by Johns and to previous takes on the origin-tale, possibly (according to Wikipedia) the 2001 episode of the JUSTICE LEAGUE teleseries "The Enemy Below." Parenthetically, these various origin-tales provided the main source of the storyline for the 2018 AQUAMAN.

Given that WAR presented the heroes of the Justice League as a bunch of quarrelsome infants, THRONE is a considerable improvement. Green Lantern still has an inexplicable animus toward Batman, and he's given some unexplained antipathy toward all things mystical (like the story of Atlantis), but some of the friendly banter between Lantern and The Flash is palatable. Superman and Wonder Woman are in the midst of their first date, a trope which I imagine didn't last long, as I don't remember seeing this Great Romance in any of the DTV films that followed. However, it was pleasant to see Shazam prodding Cyborg to make a date with the cute lady scientist Cyborg works with. And though Batman remains an impatient martinet, even he has a couple of clever lines. They all spend a logical amount of time investigating the slaughter of a US submarine by subsea dwellers, whom they eventually learn are denizens of fabled Atlantis.

In the original "Throne" comic Aquaman's mother has passed away, but in this THRONE she's alive and ruling Atlantis (which is concealed from the surface world by magical safeguards, just like Paradise Island). She's served by her bodyguard Mera, who is implied to be a denizen of Atlantis but not a noblewoman destined to marry Atlantean royalty as she is in the 2018 AQUAMAN. Atlanna fears that her rule is threatened by both her son Orm, the Ocean Master, and his aide Manta (not billed as "Black Manta," and implied to be an Atlantean rather than a surfaceman). Atlanna sends Mera to find her elder son Arthur Curry, whom Atlanna spawned with a surface dweller, because the queen suspects she must appeal to the law of primogeniture to keep Orm away from the throne. 

Mera finds Arthur Curry and reveals to him his true history, but Orm has learned of his competition, and he sends berserker monsters to slay both Mera and Arthur. The Justice League comes to the rescue of both, and then all of them descend to Atlantis. However, before they get there, Orm realizes that his mother is blocking his rise to power, and he kills her, thus inheriting the talisman of her power, the Trident of Neptune. With this magical weapon Orm subdues Arthur, Mera and the Justice League, and then launches an invasion to conquer the surface world. Naturally, the heroes escape their bonds and show up to ruin the villains' plans. (During combat Manta, who's usually rated as the quintessential Aquaman villain, tells the Marine Marvel that he stage-managed Orm's revolt and Atlanna's death, thus taking primary credit for all the evilness.)

In a feature of less than ninety minutes, there's not much time to establish the character of the pivotal hero, but this version of Aquaman is in some ways more sympathetic than the bruiser of the live-action film. Scripter Corson finds interesting ways to work in a lot of Aqua-motifs, such as his discovery of his power over fish and his romantic flirtations with Mera. Corson even does a shout-out to the BATMAN: BRAVE AND BOLD characterization of the hero by having the THRONE version use the BOLD version's catchphrase, "Outrageous." There are also an assortment of cameos: John Henry Irons appears, apparently before he assumes his heroic ID of "Steel," and a coda not present in the comics-original has an imprisoned Ocean Master visited by Lex Luthor. I suspect that this suggestion of an alliance yielded no more follow-ups than the interaction of Luthor and Deathstroke at the conclusion of the theatrical JUSTICE LEAGUE movie.

THE GIANT OF METROPOLIS (1961)

 

 

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

GIANT OF METROPOLIS is one of the few "sword and sandal" films to which I've given a good rating. Its quality may have something to do with its appearance in 1961, which predates the descent of the "Italian muscleman" films into total predictability. It's also of interest that this was one of only five films directed by Umberto Scarpelli. Though he might have left filmmaking for any number of reasons, it's somewhat fitting that his last work for Italian cinema turns out to be among the best in its genre-- though, to be sure, Scarpelli is not credited as having conceived the main idea, only for providing dialogue. Since the script's three writers don't have a ton of outstanding credits to their names, perhaps METROPOLIS is just one of those occasional "perfect storms" of creativity.

The title alone suggests ambition on the part of the creators. The basic idea derives from the myth of Atlantis, a super-scientific civilization destroyed before the rise of recorded history, and a prologue even establishes that the action takes place on "the continent of Atlantis." But the city is plainly named after the future-city of Metropolis as seen in the classic 1927 Fritz Lang movie, though there's no real attempt to follow the plot-action of the silent film. I suspect what happened was that the writers were inspired by the basic pattern of Lang's masterpiece, which was a melodrama about the struggles between the high and low classes in a future-city-- including both romantic and familial conflicts. Lang's film is basically optimistic at the conclusion, and the city of its title is seen to endure all of its travails. However, since Scarpelli's film follows the pattern of the Atlantis myth, the only positive thing about this Metropolis is that its destruction clears the path for younger, less corrupt descendants.

Hulking Obro (Gordon Mitchell) wanders with his savage-looking tribe-- possibly cast out from some other land?-- until they come near the continent of  Atlantis. Like Moses seeking the Promised Land, Obro's aged father dies before the tribe reaches its goal, and as he dies the old man turns over the stewardship of their people to Obro, and encourages the hero to seek out Metropolis.

This doesn't turn out to be good paternal advice. When the savages approach the city, weird magnetic vortices assail them, and all but Obro are disintegrated. No reason is given for Obro's survival, but the city's ruler becomes curious about the stranger and orders him brought into Metropolis-- which will be a mistake on the ruler's part, though possibly one he was destined to make.

King Yotar (Rolando Lupi) is not your routine city-tyrant. Yotar is the heir to a long Atlantean tradition of super-science, and he will do anything to keep Metropolis on top of things, particularly because of dire stellar predictions about the city's demise. Most of the populace has been converted into obedient zombies, but one thing you've got to say for Yotar: he doesn't play favorites. Instead of letting his own father pass away peacefully, Yotar has transferred his dad's intelligence into an artificial body, so that Yotar can consult him whenever he pleases.

He doesn't treat his immediate family any better. His first wife died, leaving him a nubile daughter, Mercede (Bella Cortez), who initially thinks that her father hung the moon. But Yotar's second wife Queen Texen (Liana Orfei) knows better. Though she loves her husband, she fears his propensity to try to control her and everyone else. Her greatest concern is with his plan to transfer his father's intelligence into his small son Elmos. This transfer will give Elmos eternal life, but at the cost of his childhood. Yotar doesn't see why this should be a problem; doesn't everyone want to bypass the troubles of childhood? 

He doesn't seem to harbor any dire plans for Mercede, but there's a peculiar scene in which she does a revealing dance before his throne, flanked on either side by a white male dancer and a black male dancer. One can't help but think of Salome dancing to impress her stepfather, and the addition of her dancing with a racially mixed pair of males adds a little race-fetishism to the fire. Yotar shows no overt reaction to the dance. However, when he leaves his throne-room, he immediately seeks out his current queen and embraces her, despite her protests that he only wants to control her. Later Obro will comment that Yotar is not a villain, just a man mistaken in his priorities-- and the fact that the King doesn't have any designs on his daughter would seem to bear this out.

Yotar, tasked with prophecies that the stranger may spell the city's doom, subjects Obro to assorted ordeals. In an arena Obro is forced to fight a big hairy cave-guy, and later gets defeated by a gang of vicious pygmies. Yotar even tries to show the hero that muscle is no match for scientific magic by forcing Obro to struggle against magnetic forces-- which struggle Obro loses, unlike most such challenging feats in these type of films.

However, Texen and her minister Egon liberate Obro, wanting him to use his martial prowess to dispose of Yotar's guards so she and Egon can prevent Elmos from being subjected to his father's experiment. Egon's insertion is necessary because when Yotar finds out about Texen's betrayal, she takes her own life-- which doesn't seem to be a very good strategy for taking care of Elmos. However, her sacrifice earns Obro another ally, for Mercede sees Texen die, and she turns against her father and succors the stranger-- with whom, inevitably, she will become romantically linked.

I'll conclude my account there, for from then on the die is pretty much cast as to what's going to happen to the Atlantean kingdom. But all of the dramatis personae of METROPOLIS are much more vivid than those of the average historical epic, largely because they're all playing off the hubris of Yotar, who only realizes the evil of his actions in his last moments. The basic theme of seeking to control others, even for their own good, makes much better drama than tinpot tyrants who just want to beat the people down. Mitchell, though not capable of nuanced acting like his cast-mates, nevertheless has an impressive presence, especially when he's mowing down guards with what looks like a Samson-style "jawbone of an ass." 

GENERATION X (1996)

 

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

There was a time when Marvel Comics could barely get a decent live-action project off the ground. GENERATION X is one of the many misfires, adapting the same-name comics-series that had only appeared two years previous. Clearly the only reason this telefilm-pilot for a series that was never greenlighted was because someone wanted to see if they could tap into the popularity of the X-comics on a small TV budget. Four years later, of course, Bryan Singer demonstrated that, 1970s TV to the contrary, big-screen features would be the best way to make serious coin off Marvel properties.

For what it is, GENERATION  is at least watchable. The script is necessarily obliged to elide most references to the X-cosmos from which the source comic arose, except that now "Xavier's School for Exceptional Students" (aka "Mutant College") is run by Emma Frost, the White Queen (Finola Hughes). The script also draws on one element from the comics-character's history: that she had previously led another group of super-powered mutants who all died in combat, leaving Frost with a deep desire not to repeat past mistakes. She's aided by Banshee (Jeremy Ratchford), whose history with the school receives no elaboration, As in the comic books, the regular world is quite aware of the existence of mutants, and there's a Mutant Registration Act that enables the government to imprison the superhuman species. This sociological situation appears only in the setup scenes and does not affect the story except to emphasize why Frost's new group of young charges have to keep things on the down-low.

Two of the mutant students are more or less original characters, Buff (Suzanne Davis) and Refrax (Randall Slavin), while the other four are adaptations of such Marvel characters as Jubilee, M, Mondo, and Skin (respectively Heather McComb, Amarilis, Bumper Robinson, and Agustin Rodriguez). The performers all interact reasonably well, not getting along at first but finally bonding in a sense of mutant esprit de corps. None of the character interactions are memorable, though, so I for one have no regrets that these versions of the Gen-X'ers never appeared again.

The weakest link here is the decision to come up with a villain who had a loose connection with Emma Frost, though only in the sense of their being scientific rivals. Somehow the two of them were both involved in dream-research, and while Frost diverges into mutant research instead, her rival Tresh (an over-acting Matt Frewer) figured out how to tap into people's dreams for fun and profit. Not surprisingly, on a TV-movie budget, director Jack Sholder couldn't even come up with visual effects equal to the lesser moments of 1984's DREAMSCAPE.

Not a terrible movie, nor a "pretty good" formula flick, GENERATION X is mostly interesting as a curio.

DEATH RACE 2000 (1975)

 

 

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

The name "Roger Corman" does not usually get paired with the concept of irony, and even the few movies he's made within that category, such as 1959's A BUCKET OF BLOOD, tend to be among his more cheapjack efforts. But DEATH RACE 2000 is actually a better satire than a lot of arthouse efforts, precisely because it wallows in the sort of spectacle with which Corman's name is synonymous-- lots of sex and violence. To be sure, viewers will never know how RACE would have turned out had director Paul Bartel not been forced to elide a lot of his preferred humor-scenes, almost certainly in favor of more breasts and blood. But the result is a balancing act between the priorities of Corman, the consummate carny showman, and Bartel the aesthete trying to eschew mere kinetic entertainment.

It's 2000, and the American government has become a totalitarian government which keeps citizens happy with bread and circuses in the form of the Transcontinental Road Race. The drivers in the race are not only allowed to kill one another if they can, they're also allowed to run down any citizens that get near the race track, for "bonus points." This combination of gladiatorial games and government-imposed euthanasia doesn't go over well with everyone, so a Resistance group led by Thomasina Paine (descendant of the Revolutionary War philosopher) seeks to undermine America's corrupt regime by sabotaging the race.

Most of the racers have become popular personalities with names approximating those of professional wrestlers: "Nero the Hero," "Matilda the Hun," and "Machine Gun Joe," the last being a guy outfitted like a thirties-style gangster and played by a young Sylvester Stallone. Machine Gun is the second most popular racer with the frantic fans, but the favorite is Frankenstein (David Carradine), a mysterious costumed combatant whose face-mask is said to conceal scars from many racing injuries. Each contestant drives with a navigator in the passenger's seat, and in Frankenstein's case, he gets a comely young woman named Annie (Simone Griffith) as his new partner.

In no time the racers are flying down the track, callously running down any pedestrians-- even fans-- incautious enough to come close. At the same time, the rebels begin setting traps for the cars, and even Frankenstein almost falls victim. He begins to suspect Annie of colluding with the Resistance. Meanwhile, Annie learns that Frankenstein's supposed disfigurement is just a narrative designed to justify the wearing of the mask, since the government constructed the identity so that various wards of the state could assume the persona. (Thus, this "Frankenstein" is made up not of disparate body parts but of disparate people.) With all of this unburdening of secrets, eventually Frankenstein and Annie end up in bed together, though at first it appears to be something of a "wham bam" encounter. However, the taciturn road-warrior reveals that he shares the ambition of the Resistance: to get close enough to the President to kill him. But before this ambivalent hero can do so, he has to get past the blasting assaults of Machine Gun.

Since the script was produced by three primary contributors, I can't say which may have contributed the naive notion of being able to overthrow a regime just by killing off the head of state. But the way in which the notion is conveyed-- complete with Frankenstein and his bride Annie immediately assuming the status of the new rulers-- draws attention to the falseness of the trope, so that, like all ironies, it subtly undermines the myths it seemingly endorses-- though arguably doing nothing but making a different type of myth.

GHOULIES (1984)

 

                             

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor* 
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama,*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological, metaphysical*

Because the first GHOULIES and the first GREMLINS were in production at the same time, no outsider can be certain as to whether director/co-writer Luca Bercovici’s low-budget horror-film was meant to bite the style of the big Warner Brothers production. Warners lost a court case against the GHOULIES franchise, paving the way for three more low-budget entries in the series. Nevertheless, while it’s possible that Bercovici may have utlitized diminutive demons because he was aware of the GREMLINS project, the plot of the initial GHOULIES outing resembles the Warners project far less than the plot of H.P. Lovecraft’s “Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”

In point of fact, none of the gross little creatures in the first film—either the actual fetal-looking monsters called “Ghoulies,” or a pair of benign magical dwarves—are the center of the story’s action. That center is none other than sorcerer Malcolm Graves, first seen about twenty years before the main action of the narrative. Graves intends to make a ritual sacrifice of his infant son Jonathan to gain Satanic power. The boy’s mother sabotages the ritual, so that Malcolm can’t kill Jonathan as planned. However, the far-sighted sorcerer has a henchman spirit the child away. Jonathan is raised to manhood without knowing anything about his true parentage, and apparently Malcolm passes away naturally before he has the chance to perform the sacrificial ritual again. However, Malcolm’s death sets plot-wheels in motion. The grown Jonathan and his girlfriend Rebecca are informed that Jonathan has received the bequest of Malcolm’s mansion, so the two of them take possession with an eye toward leaning more about Jonathan’s heritage.

Unsurprisingly, Malcolm’s spirit is still hanging about, and over time he usurps Jonathan’s personality, causing the young man to dabble in the occult. To make matters worse, the two young people hold a party for their friends at the mansion, which results in many young people meeting unremarkable deaths at the hands of the Ghoulies or other demons—all so that Malcolm can take permanent possession of his son’s body (and maybe his girlfriend too). The story culminates in a magical battle between father and son, but though Malcolm is defeated, he, not the Ghoulies, provides the narrative’s motive force—whereas the focal characters of the sequels—none directed by Bercovicci—are more about the Ghoulies themselves.

DICK TRACY, DETECTIVE (1945)

 

 

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

This 1945 B-film was the first of four produced by RKO Studios. Prior to DETECTIVE, Ralph Byrd was the only actor who had portrayed the famed comic-strip character. For whatever reason, Byrd was unavailable this time, so the studio cast Morgan Conway for this film and the next, DICK TRACY VS. CUEBALL Reportedly exhibitors complained to RKO that audiences didn't accept Conway, after which Byrd was hired to star in the series' final two films.

The plot concerns hardened criminal Splitface (Mike Mazurki), so named because he bears a huge scar bisecting the sides of his face. Splitface gets free of prison and goes on a rampage, slashing up an assortment of citizens. His motive is revenge upon the jury members who sent him up, but a confederate, a psychic grifter named Starling, complicates things by extorting some of the intended victims. Starling seems mildly psychic since he goes into trance and foretells his own death, but the vibe isn't strong enough to sustain the uncanny, though said vibe is supplied in spades by the imposing scarred visage of the hulking murderer Splitface. In addition, there's some business about the daughter of a nightclub owner, played by a not-yet-famous Jane Greer, and there's also a comic mortician named Deathridge.

In contrast to the serials, the RKO flicks incorporated a fair number of supporting characters from the Chester Gould strip-- Junior, Pat Patton, Chief Brandon-- though only the hero's neglected girlfriend Tess Trueheart (Anne Jeffreys) gets much characterization. As the dogged detective, Morgan Conway is an okay substitute for Ralph Byrd, and he acquits himself well in the concluding fight-scene with Splitface.

Conway's two outings as Dick Tracy were the only outstanding roles in his short career. Although director William Berke accrued a much longer (if equally journeyman) set of credits, DICK TRACY DETECTIVE is probably the only film on his resume that even old-time film-buffs would remember, though I found THE MARSHAL'S DAUGHTER mildly interesting. Of the films on Berke's resume, none are visually memorable, but maybe Berke tried to up his game somewhat for this flick, because DETECTIVE makes nice use of noirish shadows and atypical camera angles.

HONOR ROLL #153

 "Don't bogart that role, Ralph Byrd," sang MORGAN CONWAY, "pass it over to me."

MICHAEL DES BARRES gets a better role than the Ghoulies in the flick named for them, but that's not saying much.

SIMONE GRIFFETH joins David Carradine in racing against, and toward, death.

A mediocre movie trumps a White Queen in the case of FINOLA HUGHES.

ROLANDO LUPI gives the gigantic hero a tour of a past-era "Metropolis."

MERA gets more exposure in an animated Aquaman adventure than she will in the hero's next live-action outing.

THE INCREDIBLE PARIS INCIDENT (1967)

 

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

With a name as contrived as “Argoman,” I’m moved to speculate that the producers of this film were having fun with the name of a slightly earlier European superhero, Superago. The latter character, a costumed wrestler with no super-powers like Mexico’s “El Santo,” had recently appeared in the first of two low-budget Italian films. I don’t know if the first SUPERARGO film reaped big box-office or not, but regardless, it’s quite possible that the real target of any spoofery was the American teleseries BATMAN, which rose to meteoric success in early 1966. Strangely, though, Argoman doesn’t follow the model of either Batman or any masked wrestler, but that of Superman, if Superman divided his time between stopping crimes and committing them.

In this modus operandi, Argoman resembles yet another “saintly” predecessor: that of gentleman-thief Simon “the Saint” Templar. Following a quick action-sequence, the audience sees Argoman (Roger Browne) in his secret ID as rich guy Reginald Hoover. Reggie tells his butler Chandra (Eduardo Fajardo) about some of his recent deeds, like switching out the Mona Lisa for a clever fake.

It wasn’t clear to me whether or not the general public, and officials like police inspector Lawrence, had any awareness that Argoman was both a superhero and a super-thief. However, a budding world conqueror, Jenabelle (Dominique Broschero) checks out Reginald in his skyscraper apartment from the vantage of a sky-ship. Reginald promptly uses his powers to force her ship to land. After a little cat-and-mouse foreplay, they have sex and Jenabelle leaves.

Yes, you heard right.Not that one sees any direct depictions of sex, but here we have the hero making love to his hottie nemesis at the film’s beginning, rather than postponing any possible encounter toward the film’s end. Since there’s even less characterization in this film than in the average peplum, my theory is that, because director Sergio Greco knew that he didn’t have a big budget, he decided to fascinate male audiences with the best “special effect” he had: the sultry Miss Broschero (who appears in a wide variety of bizarre but comely outfits).

Having given away the milk for free, though, the rest of the film isn’t able to up the ante. For a superhero film, it’s very talky. Though there are some nice sets and super-villain gimmickery (Jenabelle plans to conquer the world with robot doubles, including one of Argoman), the pace is flaccid and there are too few fight-scenes, causing me to wonder if fight-choreographers were left out of the budget. Additionally, since Argoman has no origin, he just pulls any power he wants-- x-ray eyes, magnetism, and so on-- out of thin air.

Despite the attempt to make the hero a bit of a Fantomas-style rogue, there are no prominent areas of camp or satire here. It just seems like a wonky, tongue-in-cheek attempt to exploit the success of the sixties breed of American costumed heroes. Roger Browne, better known for his superspy adventures, tries to give his character some insouciant qualities, but the script doesn’t really get how to do either a straight or satirical superhero adventure, and so remains little more than a footnote in the genre’s cinematic history.

THE ONE ARMED BOXER (1971)

 

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

I've only rarely been impressed with the direction of Hong Kong "chopsockies" from the sixties through the eighties. Most of these entries favor flat, mid-range almost stagey shots of the principal actors, whether they're fighting a big battle or engaging in talking-head activity. Then I watched the two "One Armed Boxer" films back to back, both of which star Jimmy Wang Yu, probably due to his meteoric rise to stardom thanks to his performances in THE ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN and its first sequel.

While his acting may have contributed to his getting the director's job, in both of these films Wang Yu showed an impressive facility with many of the techniques pioneered in Western cinema-- quick cuts, well chosen close ups, and angled shots. I haven't seen any of Wang Yu's other directorial efforts, but will make the effort to check them out now.

Wang Yu also wrote six of the films he directed, but though the two BOXER films are well written compared to the usual fare, they aren't extraordinary in the script department. Both are set up to provide the put-upon hero with an array of bizarre enemies for a series of end-fights, though BOXER #1 takes much more time to built up the hero's special status.

The hero, Tien Lung by name, is one of many students at a dojo run by Master Hang Tui. He and his fellow students get into a fight with the students of a rival school, the Hook Gang. The Hooks' master, one Chao, is also a purveyor of such criminal activities as prostitution and opium dealing. That first fight escalates as the two schools quarrel (the main sociological element of the film). Finally Chao brings in several professional assassins, all skilled in different martial arts, to decimate Hang Tui and all of his students. Only Tien Lung survives, but only because one of the evil swordsmen cut his entire arm off.

Providentially, Tien Lung is rescued from death by an old pharmacologist and his lovely daughter Jade. Tien is naturally distressed about losing an arm, but he swears to carry out vengeance for his school somehow. Jade, already taken with Tien, appeals to her father, who gives Tien a rare drug, designed to amp up his strength to superhuman levels. Yet, in the movie's most memorable scene, the hero can only obtain this power by subjecting his surviving arm to a burning torture. This practice is familiar from many kung-fu films, and seems to convey the notion that practitioners of the arts can gain great powers through acts of self-abnegation.

The transformation takes place, and soon Tien is seen smashing stone objects with his lone fist. Conveniently enough, all of Chao's assassins have remained in the vicinity, and Tien announces his quest for vengeance by slaying two of them. Chao summons Tien for a showdown at a rock quarry and the hero faces down all of his enemies. I didn't get much sense that Tien's fabulous strength played that much of a role in the battles, with one exception. The scene in which the Hang Tui students were slaughtered portrays a Hindu assassin who tries to disconcert enemies by walking on his hands when he fights. The method by whichTien counters the Hindu at the climax is one of those of those deliriously crazed events for which the kung-fu devotee lives to ferret out. 

The quest for vengeance is the only real drama in the story, and despite some suggestions of romance Jade doesn't appear in the sequel. However, two of the assassins whom Tien slays are utilized to set off the action for the sequel-- a rare example of strong continuity in any series of HK martial arts films.