GOLDFACE, THE FANTASTIC SUPERMAN (1967)

 

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

Some online commentators made connections between this film-- which seems to have appeared in Italian theaters ahead of the two better-known Superargo films-- and the Mexican wrestler films that had been around since the late fifties. To me it seems unlikely that European countries would bother translating such low-budget flicks for their respective audiences when they had so much home-made product to distribute. Moreover, it's not like the idea of "wrestler-as-superhero" was so innovative that several separate entities could never separately come up with it.

Speculations on the film's genesis are far more interesting than the film itself, which often feels like a condensed serial with even less continuity between its "chapters" than a real condensation. Unlike most luchadores, Goldface maintains a separate identity from his gold-masked persona, so his mask serves the same function seen in standard comic books. The story is driven by the activities of a master villain, the Cobra, who goes around blowing up buildings to make the owners pay extortion. The villain has neither a costume nor any special weapons, while even the hero at least makes use of an explosive toy plane during one escapade. 

The Cobra also attempts to abduct the hot daughter of another manufacturer, thus setting up romantic encounters between Olga (Eva Mirandi) and her heroic savior (Robert Anthony). There's even a cute moment when Olga jumps in the ring with Goldface to pretend-wrestle him.

Other commentary has been made regarding Goldface's sidekick Kotar, a muscular, bare-chested African who likes to eat peanuts. (He does don a costume like Goldface's for a few minutes.) Kotar is almost surely derived from the sidekick Lothar in the comic strip MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN. which had remained popular in Europe long after losing ground in the U.S. I don't necessarily think it's automatically racist to portray a Black character as a big dumb brute; all races include real people who are, or appear to be, nothing but dumb brutes. Kotar is definitely a nothing character, not given the comparative dignity of his model. However, both characters shared one basic appeal: that of showing Black males in a physically dominant position, getting to beat up scores of White bad guys. In short, there's nothing to this one-shot beyond a few lively fight scenes.

ZODIAC FIGHTERS (1978)

 

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

Funny how quickly one's priorities can change. I was all set to bomb this obscure old Polly Shang Kuan fantasy as being one of the worst chopsockies I'd ever seen. Then I saw DARK LADY OF KUNG FU, and FIGHTERS started looking at least a little better.

It's still not even decent formula, and the few positive online reviews seem focused on the film's "so bad it's good" qualities. I found FIGHTERS far too repetitive to tickle my funny bone, though.

So a poor woman (Kuan), whose name (according to one source) is East Sea Dragon, is called upon by Princess Heartbreak to take on the evildoer Tiger Shark (Lo Lieh, only seen in the final minutes of the flick) and his servants, the Five Elements. Heartbreak shows Dragon a cave, claiming that it used to be the repository of twelve scrolls which held the power of the Twelve Zodiac Animals. But eleven kung-fu practitioners found their way into the cave and transferred the zodiac-powers  to themselves. Now there's just one zodiac scroll, and Heartbreak talks Dragon into taking on that power, which just happens to be the power of the Zodiac Dragon. That means Dragon now wields authority over all the other animal-fighters, but she has to find them first.

What follows is loads and loads of silly shit in which actors cavort about dressed in cheap animal-costumes-- rabbits, pigs, dogs, etc. After a lot of slapstick routines, Dragon finally assembles her warriors on a beach to battle Tiger Shark. He's a little bit cool, since he not only has henchmen with lobster-claws, but also a palanquin that can shoot sharks at his enemies. Alternately, the sharks can also shoot bear-traps from their mouths. This is the sort of inspired lunacy that would have upgraded the film to the wackiness level of, say, Kuan's FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL. Kuan doesn't have any decent battles, so FIGHTERS is not much more than a blip in her kung-fu diva career.

BABYLON 5: THE RIVER OF SOULS (1998)

  

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

RIVER OF SOULS was one of two films shown after BABYLON 5 ended, so it reflects an assortment of changes that had taken place in the series proper. Most of the familiar faces of the show were gone, though Michael Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle), no longer a series regular by the fifth season, finds an excuse to return to the space station to help initiate the new plot. Claudia Christian's Ivanovna departed the series, but she was replaced by Captain Elizabeth Lockley (Tracy Scoggins), who has control of the station in the absence of John Sheridan. But hey-- we still have Zack Allan, as played by Jeff Conaway!

Again writer-director J. Michael Straczynski creates trouble by having an arcane artifact brought aboard the Bab 5 station, but this time the history of the artifact is more philosophically challenging. Archaeologist Bryson (Ian MacShane) unearths a mysterious globe and takes it to the station to meet with his investor, who is none other than the entrepreneur Garibaldi. Bryson has sold Garibaldi a bill of goods about using the globe to further human life-spans, but the scientist has actually been suborned by the beings within the globe, a billion souls from an extinct race. The souls are beginning to escape their confinement and start to cause trouble, though it takes some time before Lockley knows the nature of the threat. A subplot involving a "holobrothel" adds some welcome humor to the story.

In the movie's latter half the plot ramps up when a new visitor arrives: a member of the despised race known as Soulhunters. This unnamed, bald-pated alien (Martin Sheen) seeks the globe because his people are the ones who imprisoned the billion souls in it, in the belief that they were preserving them from utter extinction. Even before the nature of the souls' quandary is revealed, Lockley and her aides have some interesting debates with Sheen-Hunter about the nature of death and the release from life. (Even Jeff Conaway doesn't spoil things.)

Scoggins carries the lion's share of the story and acquits herself well. Sheen has certainly embodied better characters, but he's fun to watch anyway. For a space-filler, RIVER OF SOULS isn't at all bad.

DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN (1972)

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

In my review of Jess Franco's 1968 psycho-killer film SUCCUBUS, I wrote:

In the [Jess Franco] interview he claimed it was a virtue that he’d made a film that he himself didn’t understand. But viewing SUCCUBUS didn’t leave me with the impression of an artist filled with visionary fire. I might not like a lot of Godard, but there are always some ideas swirling around even in his worst films. Franco is just a con-man, dealing in phony-baloney surrealism.

I don't retract any of this, because the more I see of Franco, the more I'm convinced he had only a superficial appreciation for any of the ideas or symbolic correlations he used in his films. That said, I think the man genuinely loved film, and though he made many bad movies, he may have had the insight that most moviegoers of his time didn't respond so much to solidly crafted stories as to compelling images. It wasn't that Franco never made a movie with a strong narrative, but as he pursued his rather gypsy-like method of filmmaking, it's likely that he began pursuing a concept of film as a dream-like experience.

Roughly two years after Franco finished COUNT DRACULA, which did have at least a fairly consistent narrative, the director executed his first monster-mash. Since I don't think Franco would have done so if he didn't think this sort of recrudescent Universal formula would make money, it's possible he'd observed the dependable (albeit not spectacular) popularity of Paul Naschy's monster-films in Europe. Yet PRISONER is far looser in structure than any of the Naschy movies.

There's barely any dialogue in PRISONER, and the closest thing to a rationale for the conflict appears in an opening crawl by an author named "David Kuhne" (an alias Franco had used over the years), claiming that a great struggle will take place between the vampire lord Dracula (Howard Vernon) and Doctor Frankenstein (Dennis Price), so cosmic in nature (my words) that it will call forth other monsters "like an echo."

What we actually get is a fractured story that barely hangs together. Dracula, made up to look like the vamp from the lost silent film LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, is apparently back in Transylvania, since he's seen attacking a local woman and then retreating to his castle. A vampire-killer, given the name "Doctor Seward" from the Stoker novel, enters the coffin in the daytime and impales Dracula with the tiniest stake ever seen. The slain vampire metamorphoses into a very small dead bat, and Seward leaves the castle. It's not clear why he doesn't leave the country as well, given that he believes Dracula to be dead. Possibly Franco wanted to keep a "straight man" protagonist around, though Seward does almost nothing else for the rest of the movie.

Enter Doctor Frankenstein, who moves into the castle and uses his mad science to both revive and enslave the vampire lord. Not that the viewer gets much sense of Dracula's reaction to these events, since in Vernon's few scenes, he merely looks fixedly into the camera and bares his prominent fangs. There are also some vampire brides hanging around, but whether they were created before or after Frankenstein's advent, I couldn't tell.

Frankenstein has a somewhat freaky looking assistant named Morpho (Luis Barboo), possibly on loan from Franco's own mad scientist Orloff. But possibly the current doctor thinks he needs more muscle power, so he creates a new Monster (Fernando Bilbao), who is seen abducting a woman from a coach. Despite the Monster's strength, though, the evil doctor has some vague plan to create an army of superhumans using not his own artificial creation, but the vampires-- not that Franco is ever explicit about the master plan.

However, that cosmic pushback is on the way, apparently from a local gypsy tribe. Unlike the gypsies of Stoker's novel, this tribe suffers from Dracula's tyranny, and the women of the tribe (hardly any men are seen) make enigmatic prophecies that beneficent forces will appear to oppose both the vampire and the mad scientist. Possibly Franco remembered the association between gypsies and The Wolf Man, for a somewhat scruffy wolf-man shows up at the castle and has a short fight with the Monster. Though the werewolf is killed by the Monster, for some reason Dracula at some point decides to rebel-- though it's hard to judge since Vernon has no actual scenes of rebellion. All one sees is a vampire woman killing Morpho, and this defiance sends Frankenstein around the bend. He slays all the vampires in their coffins and then unleashes some sort of electrical chaos from his machines that annihilates both the doctor and his Monster, leaving Seward to intone some meaningless prattle in conclusion.

The best scene in this perplexing film is probably the Monster-Wolf Man fight, which, while not even equal to the best such battles in the Naschy repertoire, at least moves this monster-mash into the realm of the combative. While I don't think Franco had any sincere love for the classic Universal monsters, one might at least argue that he had some partial recognition of their power as dream-images, and that once or twice his use of their mythic power works a good deal better than anything in Al Adamson's contemporaneous DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN.

 

 

MATCHING ESCORT (1983)

 

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



This period kung-fu film, whose translated title seems to mean precisely nothing, is sometimes titled WOLF DEVIL WOMAN 2.  The events of the story have nothing to do with the 1982 film WOLF DEVIL WOMAN, but it looks like ESCORT uses many of the same sets and costumes of the earlier film, in addition to its female star Chang Ling.

Picking up on a trope used in the earlier film, from girlhood heroine Pearl, a young noblewoman, receives training designed to increase her leg-strength, consisting of her wearing heavy iron shoes. By the time she reaches young womanhood, she runs around normally despite the weight.  But evil forces conspire against her family, all of whom are wiped out.  Only Pearl survives, because her uncle, just before he dies, instructs her to take off her shoes.  Once she does so, she finds that she can leap about with gravity-defying bounds, allowing her to escape the assassins temporarily.

If this were her only skill, the film would deserve the label "uncanny," for her enhanced strength would be along the same lines as that of Tarzan, whose formidability results from the rigor of his life with the apes.  However, there's also some oblique references to magic here, as well as some technology that doesn't belong in medieval China, which bump the film into the marvelous category.

Though Pearl escapes her family's killers, she has no real fighting-skills, though she does manage to trounce a gang of bandits who assault her later.  She also meets a handsome young swordsman and his comic retainer, though only at film's end will she learn that the swordsman is no less than the Emperor himself, traveling incognito as he seeks out the same group of assassins, albeit for his own reasons.

Pearl's enemies overtake her once more and she's flung into a mountain crevasse.  Her fall is broken by a pool inside the mountain, but the pool is part of the domain of a crippled old hermit; a domain filled with peculiar giant flowers and mushrooms.  The old man lost his legs to the same fiends who killed Pearl's family, and for years he's been cultivating a "medicine pool" which would somehow help him gain his revenge.  He yells at Pearl, claiming that she's soaked up all the power of his pool, but she tries to make nice by becoming his apprentice.  Later, after various comic training sequences-- none of which involve weapons-- the old man dies and claims that he's passing his spiritual power on to Pearl.  The audience sees no evidence of this, except that when Pearl goes after her enemies, she not only possesses her leaping-power but peerless sword-skills.

The more serious fight-scenes that follow include some wild fantasy-battles, though Chang Ling herself isn't an especially convincing fake-fighter.  In the end, Pearl's forced to spare the main villain because he's the brother of the Emperor, and must face the Emperor's presumably more lenient justice.  Oddly, Pearl and the Emperor part ways at the end, with an odd remark about her being unable to stay with him because she's a "commoner."  The opening made it look like she was of noble family, but maybe the translation's at fault there. 

THE LAST FRONTIER (1932)

 

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

The main significance of this cheap-looking and confusing serial is largely the novelty value of seeing a very young Lon Chaney Jr play a costumed western crusader. The character of The Black Ghost wears an all-black outfit and sports (for about two minutes) a full face-mask. When he goes unmasked, though, he sports a large mustache, and this is apparently enough for keep everyone from recognizing the Ghost as local newspaperman Tom Kirby, because, well, Tom's clean-shaven. Even Tom's girlfriend Betty (Dorothy Gulliver) doesn't recognize Tom with that 'stache, and she sees him up close more than anyone else. Oh, and the Ghost assumes a bogus Spanish accent, possibly to impress anyone who was pining after seeing Zorro return to the screen.

The conflict is a standard "who's selling guns to the Indians" plot, and both Tom and the Ghost labor to prove that it's the evil Morris. There's a subplot about Morris's assistant Maitland (Francis X. Bushman), who lies to his lovely wife about his true business, but none of that melodrama shapes into anything impressive. The action scenes-- lots of riding and shooting, with few real cliffhangers-- are nothing special. There's one howler in which an imprisoned Tom hoaxes a Black cavalry officer into thinking he hears ghosts, and it's about what one might expect.

Chaney is OK playing his "white" self, but laughable as a Latin lover type. Gulliver gives the best performance, not least by seeming to be in love with Chaney's Lothario, though she's also a gutsy if not formidable heroine.

HONOR ROLL #183

 FRANK LACKTEEN, him heap big phony Indian.

MENG FEI got a bad reaction when he asked Chang Ling to be his escort.

DENNIS PRICE's take on Frankenstein is somewhat less than priceless.

Catastrophe at the space station is just another workday for TRACY SCOGGINS.

YEE HUNG looks around but can't find her cue card.

ROBERT ANTHONY goes for the gold.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON TWO EARTHS (2010)

 

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

On a second viewing I found CRISIS ON TWO EARTHS to be a middle-range Justice League adventure, with a few impressive sequences but not compelling overall. 

Writer Dwayne McDuffie originally conceived the story to take place within the continuity of the two JUSTICE LEAGUE teleserials, back when he was a primary writer for that show, but that narrative was revised for this stand-alone DTV movie. The villains known as the Crime Syndicate originated in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #29-30, wherein the Justice League voyaged to an alternate Earth, dubbed "Earth-3." The Crime Syndicate consisted of five criminal versions of core Justice Leaguers: Ultraman (Superman), Owlman (Batman), Johnny Quick (The Flash), Power Ring (Green Lantern), and Superwoman (Wonder Woman). These characters made assorted appearances over the years until Grant Morrison produced his own take on them in the 2000 graphic novel JLA: EARTH 2. 

The main thing McDuffie took from Morrison was the idea that the five super-criminals, instead of simply using their super-abilities to pull off assorted robberies, become leaders of criminal gangs powerful enough to challenge the government of their alternate Earth. In fact, McDuffie builds on this concept, eliding many of Morrison's more abstruse concepts in order to show the quintet of crooks operating like Mafia dons, each controlling separate territories and constantly quarreling over turf. The federal government, administered by President Slade Wilson, has been forced to broker an uneasy peace with the gangs, though the President does still control nuclear bombs to use as a fail-safe. To counter Wilson's advantage, leader Ultraman has Owlman build a retaliatory bomb for the Crime Syndicate. However, Owlman and his sometime lover Superwoman are actually planning to destroy the entire continuum of alternate worlds by detonating the super-explosive on "Earth-Prime," the original domain from which all other alternates descended.

Fortunately for "Crime-Earth," its version of Luthor, who's a good guy on his world, crosses into the earth of the Justice League and talks the heroes into playing interdimensional cops. Though McDuffie gives all five of the principal heroes-- Superman, Batman, Flash, Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter-- various bits of character-business, the writer unquestionably slants the new narrative toward Batman, in contrast to the Superman-centric focus of the Morrison story. The best scenes involve the Caped Crusader contending with the far more powerful alternate-world version of Wonder Woman, which is a clear shout-out to the romance-angle the TV show generated between Batman and the real amazon princess. And when Owlman speeds off to Earth-Prime to begin the destruction of all realities, it is of course Owlman's "good double" who's elected to stop him. This climax has the greatest psychological heft, since Batman's pessimistic outlook on life becomes distorted on "Crime-Earth" into Owlman's extreme nihilism and fundamental desire for death.

Some of the duller character-bits-- Martian Manhunter has a quickie love-affair with the President's daughter-- are at least executed without taking away from the video's main attraction, big splashy fight-scenes. Arguably Wonder Woman's battles with Superwoman are the most well-choreographed, aside from the aforementioned end-fight between Batman and his doppelganger. There are only a few fleeting moments of metaphysical awe at the very concept of alternate worlds, but there have certainly been far worse JLA adventures than this one.

PRINCESS RESURRECTION (2007)

 

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

While rambling through an online site of translated manga I chanced upon Yasunori Mitsunaga's 2017-21 PRINCESS RESURRECTION NIGHTMARE, which I soon learned was a sequel to a 2005-13 manga series, simply PRINCESS RESURRECTION. I liked the design of the characters but not so much the episodic stories, though what I read made me curious as to whether there had been an anime adaptation. There was.

The principal trope governing RESURRECTION in all its forms is: "an ordinary human is forced to live on the same premises as a bunch of monstrous humanoids, some or all of whom are sexy girls." This informs such popular manga/anime efforts as ROSARIO + VAMPIRE and MONSTER MUSUME, and indeed all of the monsters with whom the viewpoint character, middle-schooler Hiro, must mingle are indeed sexy girls. But compared to the cited manga, there seems to be a different aesthetic at work here. The 26-episode teleseries doesn't adapt many of the early manga-installments, but the show seems to match the original RESURRECTION in terms of being very episodic and low on character-development.

From what little information the anime-setup gives, Hiro and his older sister Sawawa are apparently alone in the world. Sawawa gets a job as a live-in maid for a mansion in Sasanaki Village, and so Hiro follows her to her new home to take up residence at the selfsame mansion. Though Hiro fails to find anyone at the mansion, he wanders about and by chance sees a queenly young woman about to be killed by falling construction girders. Hiro pushes the woman out of the way, but he himself is slain by the girders. However, the woman happens to be Hime, Sawawa's new employer as well as the Princess-ruler of the Monster-Realm. Hime possesses the power to bring back the dead-- though only if the resurrected beings serve her, for the energies of resurrection must be perpetually bestowed by her agency. She brings Hiro back to life, but the boy is semi-aghast to learn that he's expected to serve her forever, alongside her only other guardian, a child-android named Flandre who possesses immense strength. So Hiro moves into the mansion under rather different circumstances, though his dimbulb sister is selectively blind to all the weird things that happen there-- particularly the sight of Hime winning a fatal sword-duel with a mammoth werewolf.

Though Hime talks about wanting to have more servants, the better to administer her duties as Monster-Mistress, she seems to attract only persons who have some contentious feelings toward her-- though possibly this was a strategy adopted to show just how wonderfully charismatic Hime is. 

Riza, sister of the werewolf Hime killed, initially wants to slay Hime in turn, but is forced to become Hime's ally in order to find out who manipulated her brother into rebellion. 

Reiri is a stylish lady vampire who wants to sample Hime's royal blood and who also goes to Hiro's school (she even wears a sailor-suit uniform, the large collar of which expands like a pair of wings when she flies.)

Hime's sister Sherwood, who looks like a grade-schooler and who also has a single android as a guardian, moves to the village and initially quarrels with Hime. 

All of these characters, despite their quarrels with the resurrection princess, become drawn into Hime's orbit because she's so damn competent-- though as later episodes establish, she's actually something of a princess-in-exile, whose royal relatives continually send assassins to kill her. Most of the episodic action of the series deals with Hime repulsing various monster-attacks with the help of her reluctant entourage.

This "heavy lies the head that wears the crown" trope is rather superficial compared to an advanced work on that theme like DANCE IN THE VAMPIRE BUND-- though to be sure, there aren't many manga as sophisticated as BUND. Surprisingly, though, RESURRECTION looks like a harem-manga from the standpoint of having one male surrounded by four or more sexy females. Yet going solely by the anime, almost none of the women are warm for Hiro's form.

To be sure, a lot of harem-anime present the viewpoint character as a simple stand-up fellow with no special abilities. But Hiro is even more of a blank slate than most such figures. Aside from his being related to Sawawa, all one knows is that he doesn't mix well with the students at his new school, and he gets bullied when other kids force him to carry their bags. Some of his ill fortune is caused by his classmate Reiri, since all the guys are crazy for her and thus hate Hiro when Reiri pretends to like him. But there's no real sense that the vampiress really desires Hiro. The same is true for the tough werewolf-girl Riza. She occasionally shows a protective feeling for Hiro, as if she shared Sawawa's sibling-relationship to the boy. The loli-looking Sherwood makes a show of wanting Hiro to become her boyfriend, but this may be nothing but a desire to steal her sister's things. Hime's attitude toward Hiro is unfailingly patrician. She will exert herself to save his life from monsters if she must, but seems to ignore his doglike devotion to her. The bumpers for the opening and closing theme songs are replete with sadomasochistic imagery, my favorite being a two-part scene in which Hiro is tied to a chair near a dinner-table while Reiri, Riza and Hime all bang their utensils in eagerness to devour him. But in the episodes proper, none of the women even have much interest in Hiro except as an occasional toy to be played with. 

Was Mitsunaga trying to undercut all the harem-manga in which some ordinary guy is ceaselessly pursued by a bunch of hot girls? Without reading all of the manga episodes, I can't rule this out. But that is certainly the effect of the anime series; that Hiro is relegated to looking but not touching-- which might indeed be congruent with the original paradigm of masochism as elaborated by its namesake, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. In conclusion, though, RESURRECTION does offer good looking babes and a few visceral cartoon battles, so it's worth a look.

MIRACULOUS FLOWER (1981)

 

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

I only watched MIRACULOUS FLOWER once before now, and had a vague memory that it was close to being as bizarre as WOLF DEVIL WOMAN. I didn't watch it back then with a mind to analyzing its mythic contents, though, so when I placed the film under the myth-microscope, I had to ask myself a salient question. Given that I expressed the desire that WDW had been more coherent so that I could have judged to be a high-mythicity film, might I want to give FLOWER more credit than it was due?

In fact, I placed this film under the microscope twice, for after viewing a dubbed version and making my preliminary conclusions, I also came across a subtitled copy and watched that one as well. I found the latter version added a few details that confirmed my conclusions: that even though Chang Ling provided the story for FLOWER, it was apparently shaped in part by scripter Godfrey Ho (at the time, not yet known for being a schlockmeister) and given stronger form by director Feng Ho. Sometimes that's just the way creativity works, in that even genius needs a helping hand.

Chang's character starts out with the name Ah-Shuang Leng but I'll call her May since that's the name she ends up with. May lives her first eighteen years moving from place to place with the woman she believed to be her mother, though later it will be revealed, in best "lost child" fashion, that May's caregiver is her nurse, who saved her from the destruction of her family. As the nurse dies in their isolated hideout, she tells May that she must seek out a mysterious being called the Happy Fairy in order that May can realize her destiny. The nurse also tells May to take along the nurse's walking-stick, and to burn it when she learns her true history.

May isn't too bright at this point, for she drags the corpse of her "mother" with her, thinking all that Mom needs is a doctor. The subtitled version left out some scenes where she encounters some villagers who tell her how stupid she is not to recognize an dead body. After burying the only parent she's ever known, May chances across an itinerant scholar nicknamed "No-Dust" Shueh for keeping his clothes clean of even tiny smudges. May travels with the young man until he reaches his father's estate, and they part. However, when May beds down for the night in a nearby stable, she happens to hear some warriors planning to attack the Shueh residence. May hastens to Young Shueh's house, and when the warriors attack, they're easily repelled.

Young Shueh's father, Shueh the Elder, is so grateful he offers to adopt the footloose girl, and she accepts. Thus she's on hand to witness another attack, this time by the boss of the warriors, Lonely Walker. Walker and Elder Shueh discuss how the former has been endlessly seeking the last of the May Family, and he accuses the elder of treason, so they fight. The elder is defeated but a masked mystery swordsman appears and defeats the villains before departing. Elder Shueh doesn't recognize his savior, but May knows it's Young Shueh. She forces him to admit that he secretly trained himself in kung fu, and May blackmails him to teach the skills to her. In the ensuing months he does so, and the two of them become close enough that Elder Shueh suggests that his natural son and adoptive daughter might marry.

Up to this point May has been well and truly diverted from any greater destiny, but a strange female intercedes to remind May of her nurse's prophecy. May leaves the estate with the walking-stick of her supposed mother. While staying at an inn she has the occasion to use her new fighting-skills to incapacitate a drunken rapist (who could represent the Dark Side of Male Sexuality).

When May journeys to the mountainous realm of the Happy Fairy, she meets a strange old anchorite who claims that she's destined to kill him for having slaughtered the Family of May. May doesn't know what he's talking about, since she's always had the family name of her "mother." She forges on till she finds a bridge over a deep gorge. Here she's attacked by a masked robber who throws her walking-stick into the gorge and knocks her out. The strange woman seen earlier-- none other than the Happy Fairy-- appears to drive off the robber. When May comes to, she's filled with self-pity for losing the stick, and tries to jump into the gorge to kill herself. The Fairy talks May into becoming the Fairy's servant for a year, after which she can still kill herself if she likes.

For the next year the Fairy subjects May to a lot of peculiar torments, which seem nonsensical but are standard kung-fu practice for building up the spirit through adversity. While putting May through these rigors, the Fairy also narrates the story of the slain May family, and May finally begins to connect the dots. She also finds out that one of the attackers gave the family advance warning, which was the only reason May alone was spared.

A year later, of course, the Fairy challenges May to take the big leap off the bridge, and though May declines at first, she finally does jump. But her adversities have given May enough spiritual power to save herself, and she recovers her mother's stick as well. Having finally accepted her family history, she obeys her nurse's injunction to burn the stick. But inside the wooden casing is a sword, the winsomely-titled "bowel-cutting blade," the very thing that the enemies of the May Family wanted to get hold of. This bounty is the real reason why Lonely Walker kept searching for the last escaped May, to obtain the sword-- but it also means Elder Shueh was complicit in the deaths of May's lineage.

May doesn't need formal sword-training to take on a bunch of her family's killers, first at a waterfall, then on a snowy mountainside. Then she's confronted by Young Shueh, who is in a sense both her brother and her potential lover, and who seeks to protect his father. She gets past him, but upon reaching the Shueh estate, she's filled with remorse, since she can't help thinking of the elder as her real dad. She's so filled with emotion that she kowtows to Elder Shueh, bruising her forehead-- and yet she still engages him in combat. Young Sheuh joins the fight, but the Happy Fairy shows up to direct May's attention to her real quarry-- a certain enemy who's been hiding in plain sight.

There are a lot of kung-fu films that are more visually arresting than FLOWER, but not that many that combine so many of the tropes so beloved in Chinese/Taiwanese entertainment-- colorful, operatic characters and settings; torturous familial conflicts, ethereal magic combined with blood-and-guts, and loads of skullduggery and hidden motives. Chang Ling acts up a storm here, both in the dramatic and kinetic senses of the word. She only does a little hand-to-hand fighting in the rapist scene, but her skill with sword-fu is phenomenal. I don't subscribe to the Joseph Campbell theory of "the hero's journey" as representing an insuperable pattern, but it's interesting to see that the creative people behind this now obscure Taiwanese film conformed to the basic premise of the Campbell formula, long before it become common coin in STAR WARS analyses.

BABYLON 5: IN THE BEGINNING (1998)

 

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

"A slave is immune to the fear of dying, because to die is merely to end the cycle of pain."

This quasi-Hegelian comment on the relationship of slaves to their masters' tyrannies is spoken by the Narn diplomat G'Kar (Andreas Katsulas). Profound though it is, this theme has very little to do with the main story of BEGINNING, though some of the action that transpires in the main plot comes about because of the actions of the Centauri ruler Londo (Peter Jurasik), G'Kar's persistent rival, whose people enslaved the Narn.

Londo provides the telefilm's frame story. BEGINNING was broadcast prior to the serial's fifth and last season, so a great deal of continuity had been established during the previous four seasons. But the viewer of BEGINNING does not necessarily need to know a lot of backstory, for the frame story takes place far down the timeline, when Londo is an aged ruler, telling his story to a pair of fascinated children. What he relates is writer-director J. Michael Straczinski's history of the great Human-Minbari War, a tragic conflict that precedes the construction of the Babylon 5 stations. 

The people of Earth provoke the war to some extent, making an uninvited incursion upon Minbari space, albeit against the advice of a younger Ambassador Londo. However, on balance the battle stems largely from cultural misunderstandings. Londo's later actions aggravate the war, for which his older self is duly regretful. G'Kar has a small role selling Centauri weapons to Earth in the hope of framing Centaurians as collaborators, while Delenn (Mira Furlann) is in the position of launching the war on her side-- an action that proves ironic later, when she ends the conflict due to a perceived metaphysical connection with the human race. There are also some linkages to the Vorlons and a "war against the shadows" conflict that played out in the series proper.

Though this is a more mature take on armed conflict than most space-war movies, the script is never more than adequate in expounding its theme, aside from that one line from G'Kar. The character-arc of the Jeff Sinclair character from Season 1 is referenced via the use of archive-footage, and the character of Ivanovna, who became first officer in Season 2, also makes an appearance during the tale-telling. The film concludes in "real" future-time with a teaser involving Old Londo, Delenn, and John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner), the character who took Sinclair's place in Seasons 2-5. I assume the teaser had some payoff in Season 5 but am not motivated to research the matter. 

GET MEAN (1975)

 

 

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

GET MEAN is the last of four spaghetti westerns starring Tony Anthony as "The Stranger." My recollection is that the first three were fairly straightforward western adventures with no metaphenomenal content, with Anthony doing his take on Clint Eastwood's famed "Man with No Name." However, by 1975 Euro-westerns were allegedly losing steam at the box office, and Anthony, who had co-produced the other three "Stranger" films, took this entry into the realm of metaphenomenal comedy. He probably didn't mean for the fourth "Stranger" to be the last installment, but it was just as well in my view, since MEAN fails as comedy or as adventure. 

For this film Anthony teamed up for the second time with director Ferdinando Baldi, who had helmed Anthony's best opus, 1971's BLINDMAN. However, the tone of MEAN had more in common with Baldi's 1967 musical spoof-western LITTLE RITA OF THE WEST, which I described as a "silly farrago of comic scenes." 

As if to suck in an audience expecting a regular western adventure, the opening is fairly grim. The Stranger is being dragged across the desert by a speeding horse, which only comes to a halt upon entering a ghost town. The horse promptly dies and a small group of Spaniards, whose presence in the town is never explained, releases the Stranger. It's suggested that they knew their respective paths would cross, because the Spaniards have a mission for the Stranger. They want him to accompany their princess Elizabeth (Diana Lorys) back to Spain, where she's supposed to lead her people against an invading force of "barbarians." The Stranger initially wants no part of the contract, despite the Spaniards' promise of a hefty fee. However, out of nowhere a barbarian, sporting a Viking-like appearance, shows up and picks a fight with the Stranger. After beating the intruder, the Stranger agrees to the deal.

With no sense of transition, the Stranger and Elizabeth arrive in Spain, which looks just like the American terrain they just left. They witness a battle between the invading barbarians and another group called "Moors," who are either Elizabeth's people or allies of them. The script makes no attempt to map out who's who or where anyone came from, but the Moors-- all of whom have such Spanish names as Diego, Alfonso and Sombra-- take Elizabeth and leave her protector dangling from a tree. However, he's rescued by a motley group of fighters loyal to the princess. The Stranger wants his money for transporting Elizabeth, but the loyalists say he can only get it is if he liberates Elizabeth, who can lead him to "the treasure of Rodrigo."

The barbarian invasion gets forgotten for the most part as the dubious hero beards the evil Moorish leaders in their own court. After a lot of folderol, the Moors agree to release Elizabeth for a share of the treasure, and the Stranger is appointed as her surrogate to descend into some mysterious caves.

Up to this point I might have classified the film as "uncanny" in depicting Spain of the late 19th century as populated by barbarians and Moors. But the caves harbor restless spirits, who invisible hit the hero in the face and howl at him, so that the Stranger almost feels like he's turning werewolf. He briefly exits the caves and gets chased by a bull, is "blackfaced" by a gusher of oil, and finally does find a treasure of sorts, though he has to kill a knife-wielding maniac to get the object.

But the Moors don't like the thing he brings back, claiming that it's a cursed necklace. They try to sacrifice the Stranger, but he escapes, after which he decides to unlimber his special weapon, a four-barrelled shotgun, though Thoth only knows where he was hiding it. The Stranger takes out all of his enemies and finds the treasure for good measure, enabling him to return home.

Whatever his performance in the earlier installments, Anthony's not very heroic here; with his cherubic face he seems less like a gunfighter than a smart-ass kid. The leading lady has nothing to do but to act imperious and get verbally shot down. All of the best scenes go to the three villains, who are respectively a big dumb ox, a simpering gay guy, and a hunchbacked schemer who deems Richard III his hero. A few barbarian character float in and out of the story at random, and a trio of homely barbarian women figure into the movie's only memorable absurdity. At one point, as if to comment on the female/male fight in BLINDMAN, the three barbarian girls overpower the Stranger and almost kill him, except that one girl gets turned on and tries to kiss him. The interruption allows the Stranger to whip a net over the lot of them, as well as his fruity enemy Alfonso, who happens by so that the hero can pass a comment on "women who act like men and men who act like women." The action-scenes are OK but none of the intended comedy is funny. 

DARK LADY OF KUNG FU (1981)

 

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

Well, once again I have to issue a correction. I said here that I thought the Chang Ling film MATCHING ESCORT preceded WOLF DEVIL WOMAN, but I mixed up the former film with a yet earlier film, CHINA ARMED ESCORT, also sold under the title MY BLADE, MY LIFE. This post by the late Todd Stadtman asserts that the order of films that Chang Ling both wrote and directed begins with the film reviewed here, DARK LADY OF KUNG FU, and that this was in turn followed by WOLF DEVIL WOMAN. In a separate review Stadtman attests that Chang also acted in a film she did not direct, MIRACULOUS FLOWER, which was in 1981 and therefore previous to MATCHING ESCORT. Therefore I guess MATCHING was Chang's starring swan song, since most of the rest of the listings on IMDB look like support roles. 

The database also asserts, contra Stadtman, that LADY appeared in 1983, not 1981. This is only important because I'm going to scoot out on a limb once more, and claim that LADY shows Chang as still being in her creative growing pains, though she had acted in eighteen films, as well as becoming a Big Name thanks to a Taiwanese TV show. I remarked upon my sense that WOLF DEVIL WOMAN was a very free-form adaptation of a famous wuxia novel (which I know only from summaries). This also appears to be the case with LADY, which loosely adapts THE BLACK BUTTERFLY, a 1968 Shaw Brothers film about a woman dressing up in a butterfly costume to play Robin Hood (which film I also have not seen).

Well, Chang does dress up as a black butterfly and she does play Robin Hood, but I couldn't discern in the dubbed version I saw either the conflict in the 1968 film, or any conflict at all. When her characters appears as The Black Butterfly, she poses a lot, gets in a couple of short martial fights, and flies around (possibly with some sort of kung-fu super-power, though of course the flying is supplied by "wire-fu.") Beyond that, I could not follow that part of the plot. There's a surly guy named Shadow (Tien Peng) who may want to make love to the costumed heroine, though it was hard to tell. There was a magician in there somewhere, but he may have been a fake one. Possibly there was no main villain, just the sense that the heroine's Robin Hood act was justified by social inequities. (I think it all takes place in some medieval era, but even that was hard to gauge.)

Chang seems much more invested in Black Butterfly's alter ego, though to be sure, the two characters are not definitely seen to be the same person. For most of the film, Chang appears dirty-faced and dressed in rags as "The Monkey King," an adult urchin who leads a gang of younger urchins in a life of pickpocketing. Again, there's not a clear plot here. The urchins run around making mischief and mocking authorities, at least one of whom wears a huge, obviously phony mustache. There's probably a lot of Chinese verbal humor in these exchanges that can't be translated adequately, so maybe in Taiwan all these scenes were screamingly funny. There's no plot in the Monkey King section either, and one review claimed that Chang is perceived as a guy in both roles, even though the Butterfly wears a lot of rouge on her face.

There are one or two memorably nutty scenes, like Monkey King taking a bath in what looks like a giant clamshell. But if one could transform craziness into light, LADY would be a tiny bulb, while WOLF DEVIL WOMAN would be a congeries of stars. So my guess that Chang decided to go full-tilt crazy with WDW after a fairly ordinary flick remains somewhat on target; I just had the wrong "earlier film."

HONOR ROLL #182

 TIEN FENG wishes he could swat a certain butterfly.

Time's not on TONY ANTHONY's side.

In the beginning, BRUCE BOXLEITNER created the heavenly space station and all its earthly pleasures.

No jokes about CHANG LING's masterpiece, one of the few chopsockies to achieve mythic status.

You might think being a resurrected dead kid would be bad enough, but HIME and her fellow monsters devotes their lives to making the guy's unlife even more miserable.

J'ONN JONZZ's crisis was that he wasn't popular enough to get his own alternate-Earth doppelganger.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: DOOM (2012)

 

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

In preparation for this review, I reread the comic on which DOOM was loosely based: a four-part storyline entitled THE TOWER OF BABEL. In it, eco-freak Ra's Al Ghul plots to destroy half the earth's population so as to correct the imbalances of human dominion. But to keep the Justice League from interfering, he springs various traps on the heroes, immobilizing or almost slaying them. Eventually the Leaguers escape and thwart the villain's plot, but the big surprise is that the traps were devised by Batman. The generally dull story hammers home its point with a decided lack of subtlety: that Batman's obsession with contingency plans causes him to betray the trust of his fellow heroes, resulting in his (temporary) expulsion from the League.

Writer Dwayne McDuffie keeps the general outlines of the comic's plot, but adds in many more elements that make the story fun in the mainstream superhero tradition, while playing down the angst-fest elements. Superman, Wonder Womam, Flash, J'onn J'onzz and Green Lantern are still assailed by special "dooms" designed for them by Batman-- who's given a separate death-trap not of his devising. But the prime mover is immortal schemer Vandal Savage, who simply wants to decimate Earth's population to make it easier to conquer. Savage forms his own "Legion of Doom" to spring the traps on the heroes. Naturally each trap is delivered by a major enemy of each respective Leaguer: Metallo, Cheetah, Mirror Master, Malefic, Star Sapphire, and Bane. The greater part of the fun is seeing each evildoer's familiar tics as they spring the death-traps on their nemeses. For instance, the film's version of Mirror Master is more threatening that the comics version usually is, and though there's no backstory for Star Sapphire, McDuffie at least alludes to the complicated relationship between the villainess and her green-clad opponent.

Cyborg is also added to the story as a "wild card" to counter Savage's master plan, and an opening sequence pitting the heroes against the Royal Flush Gang, apparently just a throwaway bout, ends up having a hidden relevance to the main plot. Despite all the improvements, DOOM is still just a good basic superhero movie. There's still a dramatic scene at the end between Batman and the heroes he's indirectly betrayed, but it's shorter and pithier than the comics-version. This was the last DC animated project McDuffie completed before his untimely passing, and the film is dedicated to him. I won't say that I thought McDuffie was one of the great writers of either comics or cartoons, but I'm glad his final DC project turned out so well.

THE SNAKE, THE TIGER, THE CRANE (1980)

 

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

Here's yet another cheap Taiwanese chopcocky bolstered by the insertion of  a few HK name-stars, and with just a touch of uncanny phenomena thrown into the mix. The movie's only noteworthy for a starring role for Nancy Yen, who played a supporting role in Angela Mao's SCORCHING SUN, FIERCE WIND, WILD FIRE.

The flick's alternate title EMPEROR OF SHAOLIN KUNG FU may be closer to the Chinese-language title, though it's not really any more accurate than the one with all the animal-names. The film does start off with an unnamed emperor, though he must be a pretty punk emperor given that his fortress-city is taken over by a few dozen bandits led by one Li Tzu Chang (Wang Hsieh). The emperor's something of a punk too, since before the bandits even take the city, he thinks it's "honorable" to commit suicide, and to take all or most of his retinue with him. Only his daughter Chang Ping resists this plan, though her father tries to kill her, but only manages to slice off one of her arms. She escapes the takeover anyway, and from then on, Bandit Chang keeps on the lookout for the only member of the royal family who got away.

Ping shields herself for a time in a Buddhist monastery, which might be where the "Shaolin" part of the title comes in, since someone apparently teaches her martial arts and swordplay. Ping finally leaves the monastery and tries to rally a rebel force against the usurpers. However, though she's pretty good as a one-armed swordswoman, she sucks at finding good allies. Twice she makes alliances, and twice her efforts at rebellion fail. She is reasonably liberated for a feudal princess, for in order to get revenge, she's even willing to sleep with one of her commoner allies, though she doesn't end having to do so.

In the last third of the movie, Ping is so badly routed that she takes refuge in a small village, where she pretends to be a madwoman so that no one will suss out her identity. In this identity she meets Tu the Butcher (Carter Wong). Tu just happens to be desperately looking for a bride to satisfy the wishes of his dying mother, and he convinces himself to marry the comely crazy lady to that end. Not surprisingly, Ping likes Tu's filial devotion-- she didn't exactly have a great parent herself-- and also appreciates that he shares her antipathy for Bandit Chang. So the princess marries the commoner and implicitly enjoys a wedding-night so that she has some hope of bearing his child before he fights Chang.

The final battle in which Tu and Ping team up against Chang is just so-so, and things aren't even much livelier when Chang unleashes his one uncanny weapon, mini-grenades that look like black marbles. (Compared to some of the weird weapons I've seen in HK films, marble-bombs are pretty meager fare.) Slightly more interesting is the tragic turn of Ping's marriage, for Tu dies and she apparently does not conceive by him, since she spends the rest of her days as a wandering nun teaching martial arts. Nancy Yen gets the best dramatic scenes, though her fight-stunts aren't even as good as the ones in her Angela Mao movie.

BABYLON 5: THE GATHERING (1993)

 

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

THE GATHERING was the pilot telefilm that launched the series BABYLON 5, in which writer-director J. Michael Straczinski began to articulate his vision of a space-opera cosmos, which illustrated Henry Kissinger's assertion that "diplomacy is the art of restraining power." The site of all these diplomatic efforts, made between the members of five major spacefaring races, takes place on Babylon 5, the fifth in a series of such space stations.

Straczinski does not tell the audience why four previous space stations perished, and only teases out some of the details about past military actions between humans and Minbari, or between Narn and Centauri. GATHERING is naturally more concerned with involving the audience in the perspectives of the characters forming the ensemble. The Earth characters, who administer this orbiting U.N. building, consist of commander Jeff Sinclair (Michael O'Hare), security chief Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle), and first officer Takashima (Tamlyn Tomita). There are, strangely, no Earth-diplomats in the initial telemovie of BABYLON 5, so in essence Sinclair and his crew are charged with catering to the needs of all the human and alien visitors to the station. Many travelers simply come with mundane motives like trade, but of course the emphasis on the cloak-and-dagger activities of the diplomats. At the start of the movie the representatives of three races have evidently occupied the station for some time; these are Delenn of the Minbari (Mira Furlann), G'Kar of the Narn (Andreas Katsulas), and Londo of the Centauri (Peter Jurasik). But one last representative is about to join the crowd: Kosh of the mysterious Vorlons, who are never seen in their true forms, only in ornate containment suits.

Straczynki wisely chooses a familiar type of TV-storyline to ease the audience into this involved world: a murder-mystery. The moment Kosh enters Babylon 5, he's dealt a near-fatal blow by an unknown assassin. Visual records suggest that Sinclair committed the deed, but of course he must fight to prove his innocence. But for obscure reasons the diplomats have the power to sit in judgment over the accused party, and they vote to turn Sinclair over to the Vorlons. Garibaldi and Takashima find enough clues to lead them to the true culprit, though Sinclair himself has the honor of capturing the assassin. 

Though Straczinski lays a long-term plot involving Sinclair having been tampered with by Minbari science, this would not flower until a later season. At the end of the first season, Michael O'Hare left the series and his role as station commander had to be taken over by a new character, though O'Hare would return for three episodes in later seasons to conclude his story-arc. Tamlyn Tomita and her character both disappeared after this pilot-film, and by good fortune she left no dangling plot-lines. Jerry Doyle's Garibaldi is similarly underdeveloped in the pilot, but here he fulfills one function that's constant throughout the series: his expertise on twentieth-century culture, allowing him to function as a touchstone for modern audiences. 

Arguably, though, the three humanoid diplomats generate the most dramatic tension. G'Kar and Londo don't have any important scenes together, but as the series progressed, these representatives of rival races would have a long and complex relationship. Even here, both actors play their scheming characters with flamboyant vigor. Delenn has a more minor role, as her role in the human-Minbari role will only be teased out in the series proper. The sociological interactions are of course the pilot film's main focus, though there are some cosmological myth-motifs related to alien biology that are arguably more thorough than those on the competing space-station show DEEP SPACE NINE.

INU YASHA 4: FIRE ON THE MYSTIC ISLAND (2004)

  

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

The last, and least, of the Inu-Yasha animated movies revisits one of the faults of the first one; that of unnecessarily working in the supporting characters of Kikyo (Inu-Yasha's ex-lover) and Sesshomaru (Inu-Yasha's hostile half-brother). In fact, both Kikyo and a magical doppelganger thereof show up, as the titular hero ends up sword-fighting the latter. Since Kikyo is never seen wielding any weapon but bow and arrow, this is at least an unusual scene within a very tepid entry.

The nicest thing I can say about MYSTIC is that Takahashi herself did her share of weak episodes, some of which also involved cute child-characters, and that MYSTIC is not any worse than any of these, since "so-so Takahashi" is still better than average.

So there's this vanishing island called Brigadoon-- er, Horai Island. The locale was originally a refuge for a group of demons and humans who wanted to live in unison, along with any half-demon children arising from their alliance. However, during one of the times when the island temporarily manifests on Earth, a quartet of demons called "The Four War Gods" invade Horai and take over. The next time the island appears, only a handful of half-demon children survive on Horai. This happens to be the period in which Inu-Yasha and Kikyo are still sorta-lovers, and they visit the island for some reason. The tempestuous hero mixes it up with the Gods, and one claws him on the back. This leaves marks that don't fade fifty years later, when the demon-boy is hanging with his future friends, none of whom ever remark on seeing the wounds on occasions when Inu-Yasha had his shirt off. Inu-Yasha and Kikyo escape the island before it returns to limbo, and later they have their big misunderstanding, so that Kikyo dies and Inu-Yasha enters a demonic coma for fifty years.

While fighting a giant turtle, Inu-Yasha and his four buddies come across the recrudescent island and make contact with the kids, who haven't aged a day. The Four Gods have remained the same too, and they recognize the dog-demon as a prey who escaped them. So it becomes the business of the good guys to sort out the baddies and help the innocent.

None of the villains or their victims stand out from one another, except in the sense of having different names. This is highly unusual, since even the most ordinary anime works manage to get some comedic or dramatic mileage out of individual situations. The five heroes aren't much better off, though Rumiko Takahashi made the protagonists so distinct that it's hard not to do interesting things with them. MYSTIC comes close, though. Inu-Yasha, always testy when people expect him to act the hero that he really is, has a few good moments clouting smart-mouthed kids, and Shippo can always be depended on for some comical cowardice. But there are no good romantic vibes between Kagome and her canine swain, while Sango and Miroku are practically interchangeable hero-types. Original design-work is pedestrian, and despite a few decent mood-scenesm the action is more limited than those of the TV series.

MYSTIC, in short, has no fire in its creative belly, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it even to hardcore enthusiasts of the series.

THE ONE ARMED SWORDSMEN (1976)

 

 

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

I can't resist giving ONE ARMED SWORDSMEN a "fair" rating just for the lovably wonky idea of trumping the legendary success of 1967's ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN by teaming up two single-armed sword-wielders against a mystery killer who's ALSO missing an arm. The notion smacks of a comical undercutting of the whole martial tragedy of a skilled swordsman forced to cope with his unique handicap by making the handicap ridiculously prevalent. And yet, SWORDSMEN is played mostly straight, with co-stars Jimmy Wang Yu and David Chiang playing the titular swordsmen, who sport different names from the characters the actors played in, respectively, the first two SWORDSMAN flicks (Wang Yu) and in 1971's NEW ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN (Chiang).

The film is also a detective tale in which a young boy witnesses a masked killer slay a martial arts master. The innocent youth is not slow to disseminate the news to the local communities that the master was slain by a one-armed man, and, in marked contrast to the fate of America's "Fugitive," everyone believes the story without question. Thus when two unrelated one-armed swordsmen happen to wander into this territory, they sometimes get attacked by officious individuals. When both swordsmen easily thwart these attacks, a lady restauranteur (I think played by one Viola Ku Yin) tricks one of the swordsmen into attacking the other, on the supposition that the other guy's the true killer and is making trouble for the innocent fellow.

The martial arts here are never better than fair, and given that Wang Yu and Chiang are billed as co-directors, I suggest that they had more interest in playing off one another as characters. All we really learn about the two battlers is that Wang Yu's character is the more serious-minded guy while Chiang's character is a little more jokey, promising to duel Wang Yu to death, but only under the most propitious circumstances. Some of this byplay is fun. Then at some point the heroes pretend to fight in order to draw out the true killer, who somehow manipulated others (like the lady restauranteur, who hangs out in the story till the end for some reason) so that the swordsmen would kill each other.

There's a fair amount of energy expended on the mystery angle, but it's only a means of getting the heroes to seek answers at a local Buddhist temple. This turns out to be the place where the killer has taken refuge, leading to a final (mostly bloodless) death-duel.

I've established that warriors with just one arm don't make a movie metaphenomenal, but there are some minor diabolical devices here, as the masked killer uses some "ninja-tricks" at the start, while at the conclusion he employs the old Lotte Lenya "knife-in-the-shoe" trick to exterminate someone else. So because of these briefly seen devices, this minor effort fits the pattern of the uncanny chopsocky.

LUPIN III: JIGEN'S GRAVESTONE (2014)

 

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

Some of the same crew who executed the excellent telseries A WOMAN NAMED FUJIKO MINE, which centered on the mysterious bandit-broad in Lupin III's life, executed this shorter study of Lupin's frequent partner-in-plunder Daisuke Jigen. What information I have suggests that GRAVESTONE was an OVA but had a theatrical release anyway. Possibly, since the OVA is in two parts, with a cliffhanger ending in Part 1, the two sections were separately made available for rental in Japanese venues.

The FUJIKO series purported to describe the ways in which all four series-principals-- Lupin, Jigen, Fujiko, and the samurai-crook Goemon-- first crossed one another's paths, before they became a loose association of accomplished heist-artists. GRAVESTONE does not seem to immediately follow the events of FUJIKO, though. Apparently at least a year or two have passed since the events of that series, since GRAVESTONE's opening suggests that Lupin and Jigen have worked together long enough that their association has proved profitable. Fujiko is in the story as well, though arguably she plays more of a side-role this time, with the strongest emphasis being placed on the relationship of Lupin and Jigen. Goemon is only indirectly referenced, while bloodhound Zenigata only makes a token appearance at the end (as does one other LUPIN luminary I'll decline to specify).

The gist of the complicated plot is that in the past Jigen attempted to run security on the life of the Princess of East Doroa. Jigen failed to keep the princess from being slain by the famed assassin Okuzaki, whose skill with guns is said to rival Jigen's own. Later-- actually, the opening scene of the movie-- Jigen teams with Lupin to make a heist in the same country, which is undergoing many tensions with neighboring West Doroa. Jigen learns that he's to be Okuzaki's next target, and this leads the two crooks-- with minimal help by Fujiko-- to begin their own unorthodox investigation of scurrilous doing in East Doroa.

Okuzaki, in contrast to his usual assassination techniques, does challenge Jigen to a gunfight, which Jigen loses, albeit because of his enemy's special equipment. Lupin and Jigen escape the assassin, and at some point find themselves invading the sanctum of Okuzaki's boss, who's captured Fujiko during her attempt to rob him. This allows for some Lupin-Fujiko byplay, which serves to keep the Lupin-Jigen interaction from being overdone.

The "gravestone" of the title is one that Okuzaki erects to warn his adversary of his impending death. But no viewer believes for a moment Jigen will die, and indeed he even gets the chance to redeem his initial failure to outdraw the assassin. The threat of death is only psychologically pertinent in that it strengthens the bond between the two male super-thieves, even if they go to absurd lengths to deny that bond. Once Jigen knows that he alone is being hunted, he considers it a matter of pride to face his enemy alone, and refuses any help from his crime-partner. Lupin of course makes an excuse to involve himself, and Jigen doesn't really mind getting the help, as long as he's played the lone wolf. It's eminently clear that they admire one another's skills, even if they're occasionally combative over minor offenses, and the GRAVESTONE script gives the duo the chance to show their allegiance without being sloppy.

The movie would qualify as "uncanny" just for the imputation of the two gunmen being able to pull off stunts like shooting so that their respective bullets collide. There are some other tech-items involved, though the only one of note appears in the prison where Fujiko's held by the assassin's boss. For some reason the boss menaces the lady thief with what looks like a crude robot with a drill-bit in its crotch, though the drill is so large that its use would pretty much annihilate any person with whom the robot tried to have congress. This scene may have been thrown in just to satisfy fans who expect to see some sexy hijinks in LUPIN entertainments, and I don't object to that; only that the actual scene is rather underwhelming.