FENOMENAL AND THE TREASURE OF TUTANKHAMEN (1968)

 

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

I noted in my review of HERCULES PRISONER OF EVIL that Ruggero Deodato, though not cited in that film's credits, claimed to have directed most of the movie, as opposed to official director Antonio Margeritti. The action scenes in that jumped-up Ursus flick weren't very good, but they were better than what Deodato put together for this Euro-super effort. This was his first film as the director proper, albeit under a pseudonym.

Though the titular hero dresses in a all black leotard like Diabolik (though without eye-holes in his mask), Fenomenal (Mauro Parenti) is entirely on the side of the angels. After an adequate scene on a boat, where the crimefighter vanquishes a gang of drug-smugglers, Parenti (or his body double) spends very little time in the black bodysuit, but is usually seen lazing around in his civilian identity, aristocrat Guy Norton. He gets wind of some sort of conspiracy to either steal or duplicate the famed headpiece of King Tut, and I think Gordon Mitchell's character is the ringleader of the plot, but the crooks' aims were very hard to follow. The same was true of the female lead Mike (Lucretia Love), who I think was some sort of adventuress. I don't think the script ever defines her role, but there's a weird scene in which she dresses up in an outfit like Fenomenal's. Guy interrupts her snooping in some room, she judo-flips him, and he belts her. What import the scene was supposed to have, I do not know. And most of the film is like that: stuff happens without context, because Deodato and his scripter-- a one-shot screenwriter, working from an "idea" provided by Deodato-- were lazy bums.

Fenomenal, in addition to being able to see through an eyeless mask, utters a mocking laugh, but he has no personality as such. When out of costume Mauro Parenti performs as ably as a hundred other handsome leading men, but he might have shone better had the script given performers like Love and Mitchell some decent scenes to play against him. Even a fight-scene in a women's steam-room is pretty dull, and FENOMENAL ranks as nothing but a footnote both in the career of Deodato and in the history of Euro-supers.

WARLOCK: THE ARMAGEDDON (1993)

 

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

A few years after WARLOCK enjoyed good profits, a new production team picked up the concept and entirely reworked it, with no connection to the 1989 film save that once more Julian Sands essayed the malevolent starring magician.

Anthony Hickox, fresh off his two crowd-pleasing WAXWORK movies and the second HELLRAISER sequel, brings a lot more visual elan to the project than did Steve Miner. However, the muddled script by Kevin Rock and Sam Bernard-- neither of whom can boast impressive IMDB resumes-- robs the story of any resonance.

The first film imperiled the world with the prospect of "uncreation," but this time the peril stems from a creation, the birth of Satan's son. It's never clear under what circumstances the Satanic offspring can be propagated, but we get a confusing scene back in Dark Ages Britain. We see a band of druids-- who, some will remember, shouldn't believe in Satan at all-- trying to exorcise a woman who's supposed to bring forth a Satan-spawn. I think they're successful, but a group of righteous Christians invade the druid camp. The Christians despoil the Druids of certain runestones they use to keep demons under control, and this means that, at some unspecified future time, Satan's son can be born again. (The dispersal of the gemstones is clearly Rock and Bernard's clumsy emulation of the first film's fragmenting of the Grand Grimoire.)

Whereas the first film actually did show the spell-book sections in different parts of the country, the runestones seem to be concentrated in one little area despite having been scattered back on another continent. From what I could make out, one such runestone happens to be in the possession of a young woman named Amanda, and Satan's demonic spirit somehow impregnates her through the stone, so that she gives magical birth to The Warlock. He immediately speeds off to different, unspecified locations in order to gather all the runestones. By so doing, he can free Satan from some otherworldly prison, leading to the world's "armageddon."

On top of all that, a modern-day cult of druid-descendants exists in America, though they should have no way of knowing that all the missing runestones will also be on American soil. Druid-leader Will also knows that his adolescent son Kenny (Chris Young) is destined to battle the Warlock at some point, so he shoots Kenny with what I assume is a spiritual shotgun. This doesn't kill Kenny (YOU BASTARDS!) but apparently wakes up his psychic talents, so that Will and his aged buddies can begin Kenny's Jedi training. Kenny, whose biggest problem up to this point was getting with his girlfriend Samantha (Paula Marshall), reluctantly accepts his new destiny.

While the hero is being groomed for his new duties, The Warlock gathers more stones and gratuitously kills the owners in various gory ways. And just to give Kenny's girlfriend something to do, she reveals to Kenny that she's having minatory dreams about a strange man, presumably the evil sorcerer. Kenny blows her mind by revealing his brand-new destiny, but some malign force causes a rain of blood to fall from the skies near them-- though there's no indication that the Warlock is anywhere around at the time.

But the writers aren't yet ready for the big confrontation, so they have one of the middle-aged druids, one Ethan, decide to abscond with the cult's special weapons and try to assassinate the Warlock. How does Ethan know where the Warlock is, and how does The Warlock know Ethan's coming, in order to slaughter the foolish fellow? No such details are important; only burning up more run-time and seeming to weaken the good guys.

More random crap happens. Will talks to Samantha, alluding to some strange circumstances surrounding her mother's death, and suddenly Samantha also displays Jedi powers. From the way Will talks about Samantha's mother and Kenny's, I think it's possible the writers might have toyed with the idea that the two young lovers were related in some way, which might've explained their shared destinies as "druid warriors." Samantha now buys into the whole rebirth thing so completely that she asks her priest-father to stick a butcher knife in her gut. When he can't do it, she immolates herself, and sure enough, she is immediately reborn amidst Kenny and the old druids.

After the two teen heroes bedevil the local bully with their powers, they proceed to have sex in the forest, so I guess any ideas of blood relations were scotched. 

Finally the Warlock shows up in Kenny's corner of the cosmos, and they start fighting with magic powers. Two aged druids show up, and just before they blast the villain with mundane shotguns (to no effect, of course), he asks, "Who is the second warrior?" This at least shows he's read the script attentively, so he knows Samantha will enter the lists at some point. Then he loses interest long enough to torture the helpless Kenny, so that he'll point the way to the last stone the villain needs. Samantha shows up with said final stone and lures the Warlock away from Kenny.

Samantha fares no better than Kenny in fighting the Satan-spawn, and so the Warlock acquires the final runestone. Despite the Warlock's having callously murdered numerous people just for looking at him, he doesn't kill Samantha, but just ties her up and launches into his Satan-liberation ritual. But Kenny shows up, and with Samantha's help they screw up the ritual, so that Satan stays in prison. The vengeful Warlock then tries to kill Kenny with the druid knife he got from Ethan, resulting in the movie's only fun sequence, when each of the magicians keep trying to psychically toss the knife at their opponent. The Warlock "dies," but a final sequence suggests that he's still not done. The writers might as well not have bothered, since it sounds like the third installment ignores the events of Number Two.

ARMAGEDDON is one of the stupidest sequels I've ever seen, even beating out HOWLING II. Even the one or two references to occult lore, like the shamanistic idea of "spirit-death," are handled so ineptly that they lack any symbolic content. All of the supernatural killings are equally lame, making the Warlock into a deadpan Freddy Kruger. This is particularly ironic, given a Wikipedia quote in which Sands said he did the role specifically because it wasn't a "slasher" type of horror film. He must not have read ARMAGEDDON's script too closely, but at least he knew better than to get burned again, for in the final chapter another actor took over the role of the mad magus.

THE GOLDEN ARROW (1962)

 

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

Almost of the magical elements of GOLDEN ARROW have strong antecedents in the 1924 THIEF OF BAGDAD, with the exception of the one for which ARROW is titled. There is a mystic bow-and-arrow in the 1940 THIEF OF BAGHDAD, with which the hero Abu slays the villainous Jaffar, but the one in this Italian-made fantasia has a very different function. To the credit of the five writers who produced the ARROW script, their magic bow provides an interesting variation on themes introduced by the 1924 Fairbanks fantasy.

In the 1924 film, the Thief of the title is a wily rascal whose career of thievery comes to an end when he falls in love with the caliph's daughter, and she with him. Since fabulously wealthy rulers have come to Baghdad to sue for the princess' hand, commoner Ahmed can only distinguish himself by seeking out a great treasure in a faraway domain. ARROW keeps this basic structure, in that its hero Hassan (the very un-Arabic American actor Tab Hunter) also competes with royal potentates for the hand of a princess, here named Jamila (Rosanna Podesta). However, unlike Ahmed, Hassan is a prince who doesn't know his true ancestry.

Hassan, who has been raised since childhood amid a bandit-tribe, comes to Damascus pretending to be yet another prince from a foreign land. His purpose is purely pecuniary: he intends to abduct Jamila and hold her for ransom. But before Hassan can put his plot into action, he has to submit to a test given to all of the suitors: to attempt drawing the great Black Bow and firing the sacred Golden Arrow. The drawing of the bow doesn't just demonstrate strength, as with a similar weapon in Homer's ODYSSEY; the one who can fire the arrow also shows his merit to be king of Damascus (currently ruled by a Grand Vizier, one Baktiar). None of the other suitors can draw the Black Bow, but Hassan, who only takes part in the contest to cover his real plans, surprisingly does so. Further, the golden arrow doesn't act like an ordinary arrow, for it zooms off into the distance, far out of Damascus. Later Hassan will learn that the bow and arrow worked for him because he really is the heir to the Damascus throne, though later the hero will have to seek the arrow (instead of treasure) to prove his right to kingship.

Hassan, being loyal only to his thief-tribe, signals his hidden allies to attack, and the surprise assault overpowers the Damascus guards. Hassan and his fellow bandits successfully escape the city and hole up at some desert oasis. However, once the hero sees Jamila without her veil, he falls hard for her. He ends up betraying his kindred and sending Jamila back to her royal palace.

This act of selflessness comes to the attention of Allah's heavenly minions, who are called "genii" in the English language translation, perhaps because "angels" might seem out of place in an Arabian fantasy. Three rather comical genii descend to earth and, after convincing Hassan of their true nature, inform him that he is the rightful heir to the Damascus throne, and that his father was slain by none other than evil Grand Vizier Baktiar. The genii want Hassan to secure his kingship by recovering the lost golden arrow. Hassan agrees, but only if they spirit him to Damascus so that he can see Jamila again. After the lovers plight their troth, the genii whisk the hero off to faraway lands to prove his mettle, which is generally in line with the course of Fairbanks' Ahmed. The genii aren't supposed to help Hassan, though the hero, being a bit of a rogue, manages to trick the genii into using their magic on his behalf a couple of times.

Meanwhile, following a subplot from the original THIEF, Jamila's other suitors clamor for her to decide between them. Like the original princess, this one tells the other rulers to compete for her hand by retrieving marvelous prizes. But in a related subplot, one of the rulers has his army stationed outside Damascus, planning to invade the city no matter who wins the contest.

Though Hassan's journey to a fantasy-domain serves roughly the same plot-purpose as Ahmed's quest, the writers and director Antonio Margheriti drop the ball here, at the very section that the film ought to be ramping up the fantasy-content. ARROW's budget was not on the same level as the American THIEF, but Hassan's adventures in fantasy-land-- meeting a queen with some subjects who can turn into flame-beings, or another queen in a land where time has stopped-- seem desultory at best. Hunter's Hassan is tempted by the beautiful women, but his exploits are low-energy and unable to sustain a sense of magical wonder. 

He does recover the golden arrow, so the genii obligingly whisk him back to Damascus (using a very comical method I'd rather not comment upon). Once Hassan is back in Damascus, he takes another leaf from the book of the 1940 THIEF, gaining access to a flying carpet (a gift supplied by one of the competing suitors). He then flies forth to attack the enemy troops with his bow, since the golden arrow can strike down opponents and then return to the bow to be fired again. The arrow doesn't kill anyone, though, and neither do Hassan's allies the three genii, who collect a bunch of pottery-jars from the city and drop said jars upon the heads of the troops. Amazingly, these limited assaults drive the whole army away, after which Hassan avenges himself upon the enemy commander and the Grand Vizier by hurling them into a pit of mud.

Though ARROW can't sustain a sense of wonder as well as the two classic THIEVES, or even the 1961 Steve Reeves remake, it's a diverting enough fantasy. Hunter occasionally manages to sell the audience on Hassan's roguish character, but not so much on the hero's passion for his lady, and the beautiful Podesta comes up short in that department as well. Again, the idea of the golden arrow that represents Hassan's kingship-- which I could loosely compare to the Persian idea of a movable kingship-glory, the Khvarenah-- is the most intriguing element in this very mixed bag of Arabian tricks.

ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS (1966)

 

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

While I've yet to see more than half the oeuvre of writer-director Jesus Franco, I'm going to go out on a limb and state that ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS-- filmed in France and Spain under the title CARTES SUR TABLE-- is his only above average film within the mythos of adventure. Almost immediately afterward, Franco's next adventure-offerings were either modestly competent (the "Red Lips" duology) or extremely poor (THE BLOOD OF FU MANCHU). In the seventies his works became progressively more erratic in nature, though assorted films in the horror-genre have their partisans. But if his slapdash psychedelia worked on occasion for horror, for adventure I think it's likely that Franco never again got better than average, as with 1986's GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS. 

ROBOTS, to continue using the Americanized title, isn't any classic of its kind, even within the superspy subgenre. But the film feels as if its makers-- Franco, co-writer Jean-Claude Carriere, and the producers-- all of whom also worked together on DIABOLICAL DOCTOR Z-- sought to give their film a quirky vibe very unlike the countless Eurospy flicks, with their formulaic imitations of the James Bond franchise. Since the star of ROBOTS was Eddie Constantine, famous in France for portraying the wisecracking, Bogart-esque detective Lemmy Caution, the filmmakers probably sought to emulate the general feel of the Caution flicks. They also get in some jabs at the Bond franchise, while still using a lot of Bond's sci-fi tropes in a freewheeling manner.

Mysterious assassins, marked by their darkened-looking skin and funky eyeglasses, start launching suicide attacks on major political figures. (These de-humanized, remorseless killers are the "robots" of the title.) Interpol determines that the assassins may have some association with a city in Spain-- not sure which city-- but they have no other clues, except that all the assassins share one quality, a rare (and made-up) blood-type called Rhesus-Zero. So the spymasters get a bright idea. Instead of just sending any agent to Spain to investigate, they need to send someone who has the Rhesus-Zero blood-type, on the theory that the assassin-controllers will check the agent's background and decide to pursue him for addition to their ranks. The entire Rhesus-Zero farrago was probably just Franco's way of giving the spymasters a motivation to select Al Pereira (Constantine) as their only choice for the mission. The fact that the spymasters don't plan to tell Pereira that he'll be their stalking-horse allows Franco to portray Interpol as manipulative SOBs.

But before Interpol can approach Pereira, the retired agent is abducted by agents of Red China, led by inscrutable Lee Wee (Vicente Roca). They seek to induce the ex-spy into traveling to sunny Spain to be their pawn, using the exact same game-plan as Interpol, though the Chinese are considerably more forceful in their recruiting. Pereira fights his way free, only to experience deja vu all over again when Interpol makes their offer. Though suspicious, Pereira agrees to the assignment.

While the ex-agent travels to Spain, meeting on the way comely brunette Cynthia (Sophie Hardy), the viewer gets to see the assassin-makers at their HQ, where the masterminds control a few dozen robotic stooges, all of whom have darkened skin and whose zombification is partly attributable to those funky glasses. The masterminds are British ex-pats Lady Cecilia (Francoise Brion) and Sir Percy (Fernando Rey), and they in turn work for some greater organization, the Inner Circle, destined to remain obscure since ROBOTS had no sequels. Cecilia has already scouted the new agent in town and knows about his Rhesus-Zero blood, so of course Al Pereira becomes number one on the Inner Circle's hit parade.

What ensues resembles the chase-attack-chase structure of the Eurospy flicks, but with humor that actually works. One expects to see a lot of teasing sexy badinage between the hero and the leading lady. (Finding out that Cynthia also has Rhesus Zero, Pereira says something very French, like "it's all the rage.") But I for one didn't expect a clever "body, body, who's got the body" comic routine in the middle of a Eurospy flick. (This is also one of the few Franco movies that even has anything like a "second act;" most of his films have a first act, then a repetition of the first act, and then the third act.)

Constantine is very good with both his witty rejoinders and his fists, and Hardy is fine even though, once it's revealed that she too is Interpol, she doesn't seem to be much of a femme-hero. Lee Wee and his henchmen hang around Pereira, waiting for a chance to swipe the robotizing-tech, and they end up being more helpful to the hero than any of his Interpol comrades, though Pereira ends up having to blow the Chinese spies up. (This involves some of the Bond-like gimmicks with which Interpol outfits the hero, though these weapons aren't all they seem to be, like almost everything else in the movie.) I even liked the inclusion of a comic relief in the form of a cheery Mexican tourist who has nothing to do with the spy-jinks but keeps trying to knock the hero's block off. And though a lot of Franco finishes are half-baked, Pereira's climactic battle with the Inner Circle is as good as those of a couple of Bond-films of the decade.

I'll probably never see all of Jess Franco's films, or want to, but I doubt that he ever made a better adventure-flick, or even enough decent flicks to edge ROBOTS out of a "top five Franco playlist."

DRAGONBALL Z: THE TREE OF MIGHT (1990)

 

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

The third DRAGONBALL Z cartoon-flick cycles back down to the mediocrity of the first movie, though this time the movie's main villain, one Turles, does hail from the original manga. I may have read the original story long ago, but TREE OF MIGHT feels as if its writers simplified it down to the basics, so as not to involve the continuity of the animated teleseries.

According to this movie, main hero Goku has yet to encounter any persons of his native race, the Saiyans. He's been living on Earth, entirely unaware of his heritage and begetting his half-Saiyan offspring Gohan on Earth-girl Chi-Chi. Then along comes the star-cruiser of Turles and his small coterie of henchmen. Turles' only interest in Earth is to plant the mystical Tree of Might, which can suck all the energy out of a planet. The Tree then converts this energy into a fruit, and anyone who eats the fruit will have his body infused with great power. (Possibly the manga-artist drew on Asian folklore-tales involving magical fruits for this science-fiction reworking, but no exact parallels suggest themselves to me.)

Unfortunately, as with the first anime-movie of the franchise, the fight-choreography is unexceptional and there's no great drama between Goku and this evil scion of the hero's race. Turles succeeds in draining a lot of Earth's energy and eating the Tree's fruit, thus putting the hero on the ropes. But for some reason Goku can drain enough energy out of the Tree to defeat Turles, which feels a bit of a cheat.

As in the last two entries, the wish-power of the Dragonballs barely has any direct impact on the story.

ROLLER BLADE (1986)

 

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

As of this writing there have been six sequels to writer-director Donald H. Jackson's bizarre future-vision. I personally preferred his work on 1988's HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN, but I must admit that ROLLER BLADE is the more boldly demented concept.

So it's far in some post-apoc future, and all we know about the ruined cityscapes is that both good guys and bad guys constantly travel on roller skates. (Not a roller blade anywhere to be seen.) Sandra Crosse (Suzanne Solari) is supposed to be one of the good ones, and she's more or less the featured heroine. This may be because twice in the film she shows the uncanny ability to balance on one rollerskated foot while kicking assailants with the other skated foot, which is probably a non-existent talent. 

Sandra (whose character would only appear once more in the first sequel) is more or less the outsider through whom the viewer meets the most extraordinary society of this future world: the Bod Sisters, a group of hot nuns who zoom around on roller skates but who refuse to kill their enemies. After Sandra is injured, she seeks sanctuary with the nunnery, and they use a magical crystal to heal her wounds. Sandra then joins the flock.

However, the Bod Sisters have an enemy, an evil mutant named Doctor Saticoy, who wants to steal their crystal to tap its darker powers. Saticoy is certainly one of the more memorable villains of cheap eighties DTV flicks, for he not only wears a metal Doctor Doom mask, one of his hands has been mutated into a talking creature, as if a living hand-puppet had become grafted to his wrist.

The only name actor in the film is Michelle Bauer, but since she was a couple of years away from becoming a cult performer, she was probably only in the cast because she, like the majority of the women, were willing to get naked frequently. Perhaps needless to say, all of the acting is bad, and made worse by the fact that Jackson didn't record any dialogue, but looped in dubbed lines later on.

The one interesting thing about BLADE is that Jackson plays his absurd premise straight all the way, which is why I categorize the movie as adventure rather than comedy. Oh, and for once it's not the nudity alone that sold the series to its fans looking for the next "so bad it's good" hit. Certainly there were dozens if not hundreds of softcore skin films in the eighties alone-- and how many of them generated six sequels?

HONOR ROLL #192

 Skate or die, SUZANNE SOLARI!

"I love being a TURLES," sang absolutely no one after seeing the villain's one DRAGONBALL Z appearance.

James Bond never had to cope with attacking robots, like EDDIE CONSTANTINE did.

As a fantasy-hero TAB HUNTER left audiences hungering for a return of Douglas Fairbanks.

Psychic girl PAULA MARSHALL makes war upon The Warlock.

MAURO PARENTI's "Fenomenal" is anything but a phenom.

THE FLASH (2023)

 

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

Since I'm not a big fan of comics-writer Geoff Johns, I didn't bother to read his 2011 FLASHPOINT serial before reviewing the DTV film JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE FLASHPOINT PARADOX. (In that review, I wasn't even sure if I'd given the comics-series a look previously, but now I'm pretty sure I did not.) But after seeing THE FLASH, I decided I ought to give the original story a look for points of comparison.

Thanks to the efforts of director Andy Muschietti and writer Christina Hodson, THE FLASH is not a straight adaptation of the Johns story after the fashion of PARADOX. The main story is still about how Barry "The Flash" Allen tries to change the past in order to save his mother from an untimely death, and so brings into being a new timeline dominated by death and destruction. But there's a much stronger emphasis on the ethics of seeking to change the past, as opposed to "doing the Curly shuffle" with various icons of DC Comics, as was the case with both the Johns original and the DTV adaptation.

The script keeps only the most essential characters from the Johns story: the Barry Allen Flash and versions of Batman and Supergirl (who takes the place of her cousin Superman). As a means of showing the doomed nature of the alternate timeline, Johns jury-rigged a rather repulsive conflict between Aquaman and Wonder Woman. That goes out the window in favor of a reprise of General Zod's invasion of Earth from the 2013 MAN OF STEEL, which, though not a good movie, at least possesses some cinematic resonance by virtue of being the launchpoint of the DC Extended Universe. This alteration gives Supergirl a stronger role in the last third of the movie than Superman had in the original tale. However, Kara Zor-El appears too late in the narrative to have any impact as a character, and the actress never gets a handle on what she's given to do.

FLASHPOINT's most vital character interaction is between Flash and the Batman of the new timeline, and the movie follows this formula, though in place of the comic's "Thomas Wayne, Batman," we have "Michael Keaton Batman," who exists in a world with no other DC superheroes, at least until Batman and Flash locate the aforementioned Kryptonian visitor. I avoided most reviews of FLASH, but accidentally heard one fellow claim that Keaton isn't in the movie that much. On the contrary, the Keaton Batman has substantial screen time, more than the other two actors who essay the Caped Crusader. And acting-wise Michael Keaton has a very good chemistry with both of the Flashes...

Ah, I didn't mention that part. The largest new wrinkle in the script is that the Barry Allen from the timeline where his mother Nora Allen died "teams up" with the Barry Allen from the timeline wherein Nora lived. This leads to lots of comic byplay in which lead Ezra Miller has to play both Barries with loads of FX-shots. It may be that this came about from the writer's desire to give Original Barry someone other than Batman to talk to. Not all of the plot-twists of the Two Barries pan out, particularly a subplot in which Original Barry wants to imbue Alternate Barry with speed-powers for no clear reason. Still, Miller does an exemplary job of keeping the two Barries distinct from one another.

The movie also ups the stakes of the original story's game. Alternate Barry, imitating the unwise actions of his "sibling," tries so often to change bad aspects of his timeline via time-travel that his efforts start having a "Crisis on Infinite Earths" effect, causing separate universes to collide and obliterate one another. This leads to a clever montage of references to other DC "universes"-- those of the 1950s Superman show, the 1966 Bat-series, Earth-Two Flash, and others, including a very special "Superman Who Never Was." It's a given that Original Barry gets his act together and forswears his attempt to change the past, and this climax certainly has greater dramatic heft than anything in either FLASHPOINT narrative.

I wasn't terribly invested in the Ezra Miller Flash as he appeared in either BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN or in JUSTICE LEAGUE. But his quirky, motormouth persona here meshes well with the chaos of competing timelines and universes. So maybe, whatever the real-world chaos of Miller's existence, the studio was actually right not to cancel him this time.

ARCADIA OF MY YOUTH (1982)

 

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

The 1980s was the first time that Japanese manga and anime made significant inroads into the U.S. market, and I had a pretty good vantage point from which to assess most if not all of the major developments in that cultural exchange. However, even though the content and technical excellence of Japanese animation outstripped most American cartoons of the early to mid eighties, not everything was equally appealing. I for one never warmed to the acclaimed work of Leiji Matsumoto.

I was mildly interested in Matsumoto's famous works, GALAXY EXPRESS 999 and the various CAPTAIN HARLOCK exploits, but I always felt they lacked "heart." From my viewpoint Matsumoto's approach to "big themes" like war and bereavement was a trifle too generalized, and so ended up feeling pretentious.

The 1982 movie ARCADIA OF MY YOUTH is a case in point. Since I may never get around to reading Matsumoto's original Harlock manga, ARCADIA provides something akin to an "origin story" for the iconic character, though at times I felt Harlock was a bit too much of a mouthpiece for the author's lofty anti-war rhetotic.

ARCADIA actually gives the viewer the origins of the family that spawned the futuristic space-opera captain. By "family" in this case I mean only male progenitors from two eras of the twentieth century, for in no era does Matsumoto linger on detailed familial relationships. The earliest male Harlock is an aerial explorer of mountain ranges in WWI Germany, with no explicit associations to the ongoing martial conflict. The second Harlock appears during the WWII conflict, flying a plane for Germany but not allied to the Nazi cause. By chance the pilot stumbles across a Japanese exchange student, a flight technician named Toshi, and the two men bond over their shared desire to see flight technology used to conquer space, not in pointless turf wars. Harlock does Toshio a service and the Japanese scientist swears that someday his descendants will repay the debt.

Generations later, Earthmen have indeed conquered space, but 30th century sentients are just as petty and acquisitive as their forbears. The future-world Harlock, a dead ringer for both of his 20th-century ancestors, serves in Earth's space-forces, but he and his battle cruiser are away from Earth when a green-skinned humanoid race, the Illumidas, does a blitzkreig over the entire planet Earth, conquering it with apparent ease. Harlock and his human allies mount a resistance movement. They receive some help from the Tokargans, who seem to be humans who colonized another world and who rendered some vague help to the alien llumidas. Harlock's movement gets a great shot in the arm when he encounters the 30th century descendant of Toshio. This scientist, also named Toshio, just happens to have built a great space-cruiser, far more powerful than Harlock's old vessel, and from then Harlock and his crew work to liberate Earth as a fighting-force of one ship.

This sounds like heady space-opera, but Matusmoto is so focused on the fated encounter of Harlock and Toshio that he barely expends any energy on depicting the supporting characters, much less establishing even a general outline of this fictive universe. The villainous aliens, who ought to inspire antipathy in the audience, are just stock tyrant-figures, and so don't furnish the hero with worthy foes. The movie ends with Harlock washing his hands of the puppet governments on Earth and heading for the stars, though I don't know if future installments followed that same pattern, since the Harlock saga in both manga and anime went through many mutations.

It's impossible not to observe that the interaction of Harlock and Toshio draws its resonance from the 20th century alliance of Germany and Japan. I don't think Matsumoto sought to justify that conquest-based alliance in any way, but there's something a bit spongy in the way the script avoids mentioning any "bad Germans" or "bad Japanese" in the WWII segment. Yes, there's no doubt that many virtuous individuals of both nationalities who were caught up in the hostilities. But while I don't believe in endlessly harping on the sins of the past, Matsumoto's larger-than-life romanticism seems to be perilously close to disavowing the specific horrors of 20th-century war in favor of a very generalized anti-war stance. The movie's ending also seems something of a disavowal: "you Earthmen refused to fight for yourselves, so that frees us up to forget you and go off on astounding adventures." One's mileage may vary, of course.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES (2023)

 

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

The most positive thing I can say about this new iteration of the famous D&D franchise is that it's a much better mindless adventure than either the wretched 2000 theatrical release or either of the DTV sequels.

As the subtitle suggests, despite the titular thieves' overt intention to steal for their own benefit, they end up Doing the Honorable Thing and saving the denizens of their fantasy-world from catastrophe. Said thieves are Edgin (master planner for the gang and a former member of a knight-like clique called "bards"), Holga (warrior woman), Simon (noob sorcerer), and Doric (shapechanging elf)-- respectively portrayed by Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis. 

I'm not going to dwell on the specific plot-devices that bring the four together, except that it all hinges on the A-plot of Edgin's attempts to be reunited with his estranged daughter Kira, who's been adopted by former thief Forge (Hugh Grant). Forge, not content with keeping Edgin away with Kira, is also party to an insidious conspiracy with a malefic guild of sorcerers. Edgin, in addition to wanting his daughter back, is also focused on obtaining from Forge a "tablet of resurrection," with which he hopes to bring his slain wife back to life.

By now, any time a viewer sees a character get a chance to "do over" reality for his own benefit, said viewer should expect that "you can't always get what you want" to be the theme song of the day. The other three characters all have very minor arcs, none of which are memorable. But one can generally ignore the pedestrian characterizations of the heroes, because the filmmakers manage to harry them from pillar to post as they go around questing in this or that dungeon and fighting this or that dragon. Forge's sorcerer-allies are the true villains of the movie, and though there are some slow moments here and there, HONOR delivers a slam-bang finish, with the noble thieves fighting gladiatorial menaces and various CGI monsters.

I'd probably spend more time recounting plot-points if the writers had spent any time building their fantasy-world, but I understand why they would not, given that the very name of the franchise doesn't suggest Tolkienesque complexity. (For instance, why are Edgin's order of "bards" associated with musical instruments? Is there some reason that they combine aspects of knights and troubadours?) My biggest complaint is that even though Holga's fight-scenes are very good, Holga herself is made up to look rather grotty. Since the actress herself has shown her ability to clean up well, I half suspect that her grungy appearance was some misguided attempt to avert PC condemnation for, god forbid, sexualizing a lady barbarian in a fantasy-film.

THE AVENGERS (1998)

 

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

In my same-day review of a 1960s AVENGERS episode, I noted one of the main appeals of the series:

...a lot of the stories seem dedicated to the proposition that, if outsiders think the English are stodgy while others think them eccentric, it's better to be thought the latter than the former.

Perhaps this is merely my own justification as to why I think the 1998 attempt to revive the Steed and Peel franchise failed so utterly. Though the credited writer of AVENGERS was British while director Jeremiah Checkick was the next best thing (i.e., Canadian), neither of them seemed to get that much of the TV show's appeal was how faithfully it appealed to the sheer artifice of English cultural tropes. The result was an AVENGERS that felt like any old American-made splashy summer action movie.

The filmmakers compounded this tone-deafness by attempting to sell their recreation as an "origin story" for Steed (Ralph Fiennes) and Peel (Uma Thurman). In the sixties teleseries, one never knows how Steed recruits any of his civilian assets, except for the very first season, which depicted the origin of Steed's partnership with one David Keel. The later seasons, in which the assets are "just there" at Steed's behest, served to give the show a sense of flamboyant escapism, in which Steed and his civilian buddies could drop all references to routine daily life in order to run off and investigate peculiar murders.

Instead, Macpherson's script shows "meteorologist" Emma Peel being brought to account by Steed's unnamed government agency because she's suspected of sabotaging Project Prospero, the government's attempt to control the weather. In the real world, being suspected of traitorous activity would probably get one dumped in a cell without a trial. However, Steed, who instantly takes a liking to the foxy maybe-widow, talks his boss into letting Mrs. Peel share the investigation with him. 

Narrative continuity was certainly savaged by the studio cutting the film to present a shorter (and potentially more profitable) running time, so audiences may never know why the real villain-- mad scientist August de Wynter (Sean Connery)-- is the one behind all the sabotage, or why he somehow created a clone of Mrs. Peel in order to lay the blame on her. Still, Chechick and Macpherson not only made the bad decision to mold their version of the franchise into an origin-story no one wanted, they also build up a "will-they-won't-they" romance between the co-stars, which contradicted the sexual ambiguity in the original Steed-Peel relationship.

In the midst of this debacle, it's not surprising that the actors aren't able to communicate anything but empty gestures. Ralph Fiennes strives with might and main to make his Steed seem like a cultured English gentleman who can drop all pretense of gentility for a sword-duel, but his performance never seems natural. Uma Thurman apparently appreciated the iconicity of Emma Peel, and so tries to duplicate the character's wry humor, but the script gives her mostly witless lines. She handles the sexy stuntwork adequately, though. Connery blusters a lot but his character is an empty mad scientist stereotype, and it's not even clear what he wants to do, in contrast to a weather-controlling analogue in the AVENGERS episode "A Surfeit of H20." The closest thing MacPherson comes to the TV show's constant mining of eccentricities is a scene in which a group of Wynter's colleagues conceal their identities by dressing up in teddy bear costumes. Yet this attempt at weirdness just comes out of nowhere, while in the TV show, there's always some method behind even minor madnesses.

As an homage to the cult TV show, the Chechick-Macpherson AVENGERS is a total bust. I suppose I thought it was modestly entertaining back in the day, but only if I viewed it as just a splashy summer action movie not connected to any previous franchise. 

THE NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN (1975)

 

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

WONDER WOMAN, one of the first successful live-action superhero TV shows following BATMAN '66, was, to be charitable, unimpressive. I tend to credit its run of three seasons to the immense charisma of Lynda Cater as the titular heroine, and maybe a little to the composers to the catchy-if-corny theme song.

Certainly the ratings success of the 90-minute-format pilot was not due to the phlegmatic work of director Leonard J. Horn, for whom ORIGINAL was his final effort. And though the writer of the episode, Stanley Ralph Ross, almost certainly got this job due to his experience from working on the Bat-series, ORIGINAL's script is so sloppy that I have new appreciation for Lorenzo Semple's oversight as the executive story editor for BATMAN '66. 

Ross sustains none of the wit seen on the Bat-series; it's pure corn all the way-- and disinterested corn as well. The setup is reasonably efficent: Nazis want to sabotage a vital bombsight innovation in the U.S., and pilot Steve Trevor (Lyle Waggoner) flies out to foil an aerial raid on the bombsight-factory. Trevor succeeds but has to jettison from his plane. He lands on Paradise Island, which, for no reason we're ever told, happens to be located in the mysterioso Bermuda Triangle.

Once we meet Princess Diana, her mother Hippolyta (Cloris Leachman) and the rest of the island's populace of hot young women, Ross's sloppiness goes into overdrive. Diana says something about how it's been a "thousand years" since the Amazons saw a man, which would mean they went into island-exile back in the 4th century A.D. Hippoluta later says, more correctly, that it's been "thousands of years," but why the exile at all? The script doesn't really say, though there's a dim suggestion that it was because Hippolyta had some unhappy love affair (though it's not quite said that Diana was the fruit of that union). When Hippolyta gives a very abbreviated account of the exile, Diana seems not to know what she's talking about, or even that she's immortal. Yet much later in the story, she claims to have been familiar with "Rome and Greece." I don't resent the producers dropping unwieldly concepts like the Greek pantheon of gods, but they should have made Wonder Woman's origins internally consistent.

A little better is the use of a sporting contest to decide which Amazon returns Trevor to his world; this goes pretty much like in the comic, though with far less spectacular action. Once Diana wins the contest, there's not much explanation as to why Hippolyta has made her a special costume, much less an optional skirt that can be removed in favor of bikini briefs. (This was, to be sure, an element of the comics: WW started with a skirt that was quickly replaced by shorts.) The only hint of an explanation is that the costume includes an "Amazon belt," which I think was supposed to prevent Diana from aging once she was off the island, and maybe to allow her to keep her fantastic super-strength. But this too is inconsistent; during her real-world adventures Wonder Woman can lift a car, but she has to struggle to defeat an ordinary female Nazi-- probably because the producer wanted a good long catfight. The belt seems to be the only actual borrowing from Greek myth, insofar as one of Hercules' labors included the hero's acquisition of "the girdle of Hippolyta," and this trope was incorporated into the comic-book origin of Wonder Woman.

The plot is the usual tissue of coincidences-- those Nazis sure did have an extensive fifth column, even if it consists of less than fearsome figures like Stella Stevens and Red Buttons. For that matter, Trevor's blossoming romance with his "angelic" savior gets short shrift, and Wonder Woman's fight-scenes are only impressive insofar as Lynda Carter is impressive. She only makes a few "women's lib" comments-- these being the only reason the pilot earns even fair mythicity-- but because Carter is at once sweet and authoritative, she sells the importance of the feminine mystique to the winning of the World War. To the best of my recollection, for the rest of the series, Carter remained pretty much the only strong point of the show, even if she became far less impressive when not garbed in Amazon array.

KING KONG (2005)

 

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


When I first saw Peter Jackson's KING KONG in the theater, I couldn't be too analytical about it, having been bored out of my mind with the way Jackson padded the film with almost an hour-long boat-trip to Skull Island. Now, watching the film again on DVD, I could ignore a lot of the padding and focus on the essence of Jackson's foredoomed attempt to remake a classic.

While watching the pacing of Denham and Co. once they arrived on the island and began to see the great ape who was "king in his world," I found myself making comparisons between Jackson and George Lucas-- and not favorable ones. Jackson succeeded for the most part in translating Tolkien's Ring trilogy to film, and in retrospect I think Jackson's approach on LORD OF THE RINGS was one of the few times a major director has emulated the way George Lucas might have handled the story, at least in Lucas' better moments.

Lucas, it should be said, has been imitated to death in terms of his content, but rarely in terms of his directorial style-- probably because the Lucas style is such a patchwork, working really well at times and very poorly at others. Jackson's KING KONG-- his first project after Jackson finished his first Tolkien trilogy-- emulated Lucas' less admirable moments. All through KING KONG I found Jackson arranging his big action-sequences-- Kong's battle with two tyrannosauri, the ship's crew being attacked by multiple creepy-crawlies-- with a sense of mind-numbing overkill, not unlike the way PHANTOM MENACE subjected audiences to one of the most tedious race-scenes in a major cinematic release.

Because Jackson is so concerned with mounting snazzy CGI-scenes, he shows absolutely no ability to duplicate the strange visual poetry of the 1933 original, or even 1976's more political reading of Kong. The dreamlike racial fantasies of the 1933 film were of course impossible in 2005. Not only are the islanders no longer Africans-- most of them are made up to look like the Maoris of New Zealand-- but Kong's "apeness" is highlighted. There's no sense that Kong the Dumb Ape cherishes some unfeasible romantic fantasies toward Ann Darrow; he simply becomes attached to her, in the acceptable way that an ape might become attached to a beloved companion. A long and tedious "let's get acquainted" scene between Ann and Kong establishes that their bond is not that of eros, even one-sided eros-- but the bond of humor. (The side of Naomi Watts doing a soft-shoe dance to impress the big ape was actively depressing to me.)

This Kong, unlike the more negligible character from the 1976 film, is as much of a badass as the 1933 original, though as I said Kong's fights with his dinosaur adversaries suffer from serious overkill. In my review of the original film I opined that the final conflict between Kong and the biplanes suggested the "knightly code of honor" common to WWI pilots. I will say that Jackson does present the foredoomed conflict between the ape and the fighter-planes with more energy than the slack conclusion of the 1976 KING KONG. But the nature of the conflict is in my eyes severly undermined by making Kong nothing more than a big animal. Even though Jack Black dutifully speaks the classic final line, there's no real sense that Beauty killed this Beast.

It was CGI-overkill that raped this ape.

HONOR ROLL #191

NAOMI WATTS tries to tame her big monkey without resorting to sex appeal.

"All the world was waiting" for LYNDA CARTER, they just didn't know it earlier.

RALPH FIENNES, despite being English, was terrible at being "terribly English."

Being past his prime for rom-coms, HUGH GRANT took up the sideline of being both a thief and a betrayer of thieves.

"You can trust your carnage to the man who wears the scar:" that's CAPTAIN HARLOCK.

Though I liked EZRA MILLER, two Flashes was a Miller too many.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE (1991)

 

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

On watching the first two TURTLES live-action flicks, I see that they anticipated the pattern of nineties BATMAN movies. The  BATMAN franchise got two good films done before the pinheads in marketing ruined the franchise by insisting that violent superhero films ought to be more vanilla in order to avoid offending parents. The TURTLES franchise got one tolerable movie with barely anything like "real violence." Nonetheless, immediately the same kind of people who turned down the first movie for distribution put on pressure to make the terrible terrapins even more limited in their capacity for carnage. Thus Movie Number Two-- OOZE, for short-- avoids having the heroes use their signature weapons for the most part, fighting with fists and feet only. 

Behind-the-scenes meddlers are almost certainly the reason the script went awry as well. The first movie's script was largely the product of one Todd W. Langen, credited with almost totally rewriting a rejected script by a Bobby Herbeck. Langen must have been largely responsible for keeping the jokes under control and injecting other complementary emotions, like fear for loved ones or romantic aggravations. But in OOZE the four Turtles become four joke-machines, without even the minimal distinction between their respective characters.

In addition, all the support-characters suffer accordingly. Casey Jones is omitted, and there is much less for both Splinter and April O'Neil (now played by Paige Turco) to do. Shredder returns from his untimely death at the end of the first film, but his conflicted relationship to Splinter, the one who witnessed his first criminal deed, is gone. In the old Shredder's place is just a standard villain seeking revenge on the heroes. His vengeance is now possible because Shredder (now played by Francois Chou) obtains a supply of the evolution-enhancing drug known as Ooze, the thing responsible for changing Splinter and his four "sons" into humanoids.

In fact, the film's only plotline concerns Shredder using the Ooze to create two new animal-humanoids whom the Turtles can only defeat with strategy rather than martial might. Originally these two hard-hitting mutations were going to be versions of two characters from the TV cartoon, but the owners of the franchise prevented that, resulting instead in two new monster-pawns.

There are two new characters. One is Keno, a martially skilled young man who becomes a Turtle-ally, but though actor Ernie Reyes Jr. displays genuine fighting-abilities, as an actor he's dull as dirt. In contrast, there's also a goodguy scientist named Perry, also a Turtle-ally, and though his lines aren't that great, actor David Warner delivers them with great panache, making him the standout performer of this bland outing.

The spongy plot could be forgiven if the jokes were any good, but most of them are predictable and pedestrian. And not only has the violence been made more vanilla, the producers' devotion to that ideal is shown by their inclusion of a long "ninja rap" song by none other than... Vanilla Ice.

WARLOCK (1989)

 

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

I saw a few complaints about the FX used in this low budget thriller, but I didn't agree. I'd much rather have a lean, clever movie with dodgy effects than one in which the CGI wonders have been so inflated that the writers let them do all the work.

In some ways the first WARLOCK-- followed by two "sequels in name only"-- resembles a lot of the old serials. The mission of the heroes is to stop a fiendish villain from gaining access to a weapon capable of dominating (in this specific case, of destroying) the world, and most of the story is a cat-and-mouse game, with the good guys trying to stymie the villain's efforts.

This time both the evildoer and one of his opponents hail from Boston in the late 1600s. The otherwise unnamed Warlock (Julian Sands) has been captured, in part by the efforts of vengeful warlock-hunter Giles Redferne (Richard E. Grant). However, on the eve of his execution, the Warlock escapes with the help of a demon.

However, the demon sends the Satanic sorcerer to 1980s Los Angeles, where he lands in the apartment of Kassandra (Lori Singer) and her roommate. Instead of being grateful for their ministrations, the Warlock kills Kassandra's roommate and departs to find out why the demon diverted him to a future era. The Warlock is charged to find the Grand Grimoire, a master spell-book which pious Christians could not destroy, and so divided it into three sections in order to keep the tome out of the hands of evildoers. 

By some unexplained magic, Redferne is able to follow the Warlock to Kassandra's era, and despite her general reluctance he's able to enlist the young woman into joining his cause, to keep the Warlock from assembling the grimoire and using it to bring about the ultimate blasphemy; uncreating the created world.

WARLOCK's direction by Steve "FRIDAY THE 13TH" Miner is efficient but unremarkable. The real star of the show is the script by David Twohy, which shows great resourcefulness in providing a system of magic that seems like something out of seventeenth-century America. The idea of sympathetic magic, for example, underlies a counterspell in which involves removing the shoes from the Warlock's feet, so that when he flees, his opponents can slow him down by driving nails into his footprints. I can't say that all of Twohy's clever concepts cohere into a greater whole, though, which would have boosted the movie's metaphysical mythicity to a higher level. But I'm pleased to see that I found the movie just as entertaining the second time as the first. Since I barely remember anything about the sequels, which I plan to re-view, that may not bode well for either of them.

KUNG FU WONDER CHILD (1986)

 

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

Although the film begins with an evil sorcerer stealing the souls of two righteous kung-fu warriors, this perilous situation is nothing but setup to allow CHILD's four protagonists all sorts of opportunities to bounce weird magicks off one another or to play pranks on their enemies. I saw one review that thought that the dubbed movie might not been intended as a comedy, but I don't doubt this for a moment. 

The first protagonist is one of two relatively serious characters. Chiu Hse (famous kung fu diva Yukari Oshima) sees the bad wizard capture her grandfather and sister (all three of whom can use  wild cartoon-animated magical powers). Chiu gets away, and proceeds to look for some way to liberate her relatives. At the same time, the bad wizard gets mad at the film's other somewhat serious character, a young man named Hsui (played by cross-dressing actress Lam Siu-Law). Hsui escapes the magician's wrath by taking refuge at a kung-fu dojo where his own grandfather works as cook. At the dojo Hsui falls in with the film's overt clowns, whose names I have not located. It hardly matters since the two are meant to be equally silly, and a lot of their anile jokes involve peeing, farting, and playing pranks on one of the more serious students at the dojo. (Somehow I got a very CADDYSHACK vibe out of their hijinks.) Anyway, Chiu meets cute with these three "boys" and they end up fighting the sorcerer with their magical kung-fu skills.

Though the film occasionally drifts back to the mission of saving the trapped souls, from whom the evil one can boost his already formidable powers, most of the time the script just trundles out one crazy thing after another. An outdoor bath that gets iced over, trapping its occupant. An animated dragon. The heads of the trapped spirits poking out from the jars they're imprisoned within. A face-hugger right out of ALIEN. And toward the beginning, there's a rotten-faced "hopping vampire" who actually has two vampiric kids who hop along after him when he tries to attack Chiu, who mostly kicks the hell out of him. But all the vamps disappear after that one scene, apparently because the script is determined to just keep throwing wild and crazy stuff at the viewer.

The profligacy of these miracles reminded me a bit of Chang Ling's 1981 WOLF DEVIL WOMAN, but none of the four protagonists are strong enough to dominate the struggle against the villain, and the overall mood is too jokey for anything to really seem at risk. CHILD can best be appreciated as a wild phantasia with no particular point beyond diverting images.

TARZAN'S REVENGE (1938)

 

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


TARZAN'S REVENGE-- which really doesn't center on the ape-man taking "revenge" on anyone-- is said to be "based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs." I suspect that this was producer Sol Lesser's roundabout way of adapting elements from both the first Tarzan novel and from MGM's far more successful launching of its Tarzan-franchise, 1932's TARZAN THE APE MAN.

Like the classic MGM film, a great deal of the film centers on the reactions of the heroine to the fantastic persona of Tarzan; like the Burroughs book, the heroine comes to Africa with members of her family.  Before we meet heroine Eleanor (played by swimming-medalist Eleanor Holm), we meet her nasty fiancée Nevin.  Though Eleanor's father has come to Africa to take live captive animals back to an American zoo, Nevin can't resist taking pot-shots at any animal that comes in his gunsights.  When the audience also learns that Nevin was picked-out by Eleanor's Boston-Brahmin mother, this in itself is enough to condemn Nevin as a no-good.

Eleanor has more in common with her father: both of them are curious about the exotic world of Africa.  While traveling aboard a cruise-ship, Eleanor's curiosity is aroused by another passenger: a wealthy Arabian chieftain named "Ben Ali Bey." When she presumes to look in on Bey's cabin, the Arab sees and admires her.  He pays her court by sending her jewels, proving the old adage that "when you look at the jungle, sometimes the jungle looks back at you." Bey seals his status as a villain when he thrashes a clumsy porter in Eleanor's presence; she responds by swiping his cane and whacking him with it. This seals her fate: Bey arranges with a dissolute guide to have the zoo-expedition guided toward Bey's jungle-bailiwick.

The first half of the film is more concerned, though, with showing what a rotter Nevin is: not only does he continue shooting animals, he's weak and cowardly as well. Instead of helping Eleanor when she gets trapped in a mud-hole, he runs off to get the porters to do the heavy lifting.  This of course sets things up so that Tarzan, the "real man's ape-man" is primed to come down and rescue Eleanor-- though no one in the expedition believes her story of a mysterious near-naked rescuer and his pet chimp.  Though the chimp is never called "Cheetah," this one's comic relief is no less tedious than that of the MGM ape.

Tarzan also rescues Eleanor when she falls afoul of a lioness, whom Tarzan spares because the animal was only seeking its cubs.  Finally Tarzan finally performs his "jungle seducer" function and abducts Eleanor from her group.  In contrast to the strong erotic vibe of the first couple of MGM Tarzans, this production downplays the romance angle, though the ape-man and his quasi-Jane do indulge in a little healthy swimming together.  When Eleanor's worried father and the rest of the expedition find her again, she memorably says, "At first I was frightened, but after that I really believe I began to enjoy myself!"

In the rather dull climax, Bey makes his move and abducts Eleanor for real, intending to make her part of his harem. Tarzan rescues her and hurls some of the pursuing black natives into the mouths of hungry crocodiles. Eleanor throws over Nevin for Tarzan, and the disgruntled fellow tries to pot-shot Tarzan. The ape-man roughs him up, and Eleanor remains in the jungle while her family goes back to America with their captive animals (something the MGM Tarzan probably would not countenance).

REVENGE is a good basic Tarzan film that boasts an attractive heroine and some decent commentary on Nevin's slaughter-happy tendencies.  Its biggest problem is the actor playing Tarzan. Glenn Morris made his mark as a track-and-field decathlon competitor.  But he lacked charisma, even the rough sort of personality seen in Johnny Weismuller's initial outing, so it's not surprising that Lesser, who made many more Tarzans, never called upon Morris again.

DRAGONBALL Z: LORD SLUG (1991)

 

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

Now that I'm on the fourth of the DRAGONBALL Z movies, I see that they're all of a piece in their inability to fully capture the appeal of the manga and anime serials. Because they're all very short, there's only enough time for a quick setup, the hero's confrontation with the villain, and a generally desultory battle which said hero Goku wins. There's little room for the fun character interactions of the serials, though so far WORLD'S STRONGEST came the closest to emulating the serials' model.

Unlike the first and third movies, though, the fourth, LORD SLUG, at least has a decent villain, as well as another one original to the movies, though later he showed up in the anime. Slug isn't at all complex-- he's pretty much the standard world-conqueror-- but as a "Super Namekian," he's something of an evil parallel to Goku's friendly rival, the Namekian Piccolo. He also kills a henchman flagrantly at the opening, which is always the mark of a decent evildoer. Another opening gambit is that Slug gets hold of the Dragonballs and summons the wish-dragon in order to gain both youth and immortality. Garlic Jr did much the same thing in the first film, but Slug is a much more formidable fighter, and he can even turn into a giant-size version of himself, just as Saiyans can under the right circumstances.

Though the action's very basic, the script does toss in a few curves. For one thing, this is the first movie that allows Goku's wife Chi-Chi to kung fu a couple of henchmen before she's rendered unconscious, so at last she gets to do something besides nag her husband and son. One of Slug's minions has the revolting ability to spawn small, impish copies of himself from his back, after which he sends the imps flying to suck the energies of prospective victims. Finally, though all of the movies give Goku's son Gohan some minor business to perform, this time Piccolo teaches Gohan how to prey on a Namekian biological weakness, which adds a little spice to the formula. This is the first of the "Z" movies in which Goku assumes his "Super Saiyan" form, though I have no idea as to how that manifestation fits in with the main manga-anime continuity.