THE THREE FANTASTIC SUPERMEN (1967)

 

 

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

Most "make-it-up-as-we-go-along" films turn out poorly, but at least the first entry in the "Fantastic Supermen" has a certain comic brio that sustains it even throughout the most nonsensical situations.

So the concept here is James Bond crossed with Superman, if Superman only got his bulletproof powers from his costume. FBI agent Brad McCallum (Brad Harris) learns about two acrobatic thieves who wear bulletproof uniforms during their crimes. Brad tracks down the twosome, who also sport the same names as the actors playing them, Tony (Tony Kendall) and Nick (Nick Jordan, though Jordan's original cognomen was Aldo Canti). Unlike the two super-handsome guys, Canti's character is kind of geeky as he's a mute who makes a lot of nonsensical gabbling sounds all through the film. Canti only played this role once, after which other actors played similar roles in subsequent "Supermen" flicks.

Once Brad gets the thieves' attention, he convinces them to work with him and the FBI to ferret out a counterfeiting conspiracy, in exchange for clemency. The cheery crooks agree and they either give Brad a spare costume or he makes his own, for in jig time they've become-- the Three Fantastic Supermen!

So they alternate between "James Bond mode," as they wear plain clothes and follow down clues, and "Superman mode," where they don their costumes, wade through bullets (since the costumes can apparently protect their heads), and get into lots of acrobatic fights. The film's quotient of beautiful women is more appropriate to a Eurospy film than a Euro-super flick, suggesting that Golem, the evildoer behind the counterfeiting plot, has better taste than the usual Euro-super villain.

Though it's unclear as to why Golem (portly Jochem Brockmann, very reminiscent of Gert Frobe's Goldfinger) builds his hideout under a children's orphanage, but it may be that the scripters just wanted to use kids in the film to lure in a kid-audience. Once the Supermen find their way to the hideout, it's revealed that Golem's counterfeiting is just the iceberg-tip. The villain possesses a universal duplicating machine that can make copies of anything, even living humans, and his sci-fi lab easily excels all of the evil lairs of other Eurospy villains put together. Perhaps inevitably, Golem even makes copies of the Supermen and makes them fight their real models-- though as a side-note, the copies degrade and turn into piles of gemstones.

There are a few choice lines here, as when Golem complains that one of the orphan-kids got in trouble because he got hold of a henchwoman's "laser-compact." There's a cute if pointless scene in which one of the heroes wanders into a gymnasium full of pretty women practicing judo and boxing, and though one woman (carrying around a short-handled whip for some unknown reason) calls them the "Acrobatic Resource Team" or something like that, the ladies never appear again. I also appreciated that even by the end of the film, Tony and Nick are still rogues. They make off with a bunch of cash from Golem's lair, and are only foiled because they realize it's all counterfeit.

I don't think the later SUPERMEN films are quite this lively, and I certainly don't remember any of them having as good a villain as Golem.

THE RETURN OF THE KING (1980)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*


I reviewed Rankin & Bass's 1977 THE HOBBIT over two years ago, and since this telefilm was written by the same scripter and directed by the same directors, there aren't many differences in the aesthetic approach of the two films. My problems with the character design and the de-emphasis of  violence are similar though not quite identical.

One matter pertains purely to my classification of works in terms of being combative or subcombative. I consider that because both Tolkien's original HOBBIT and his RING trilogy culminate in scenes of sublime violence, both are combative works. However, the former novel is more episodic and juvenile in its focus. This apparently encouraged Rankin & Bass to play down any potential violence in their HOBBIT, so that I deemed it a subcombative film.

This de-emphasis wasn't really feasible when R&B adapted the final third of Tolkien's epic. Even though the film-script omitted assorted conflicts that had been present in the third section, ranging from the near-slaying of Faramir to the somewhat anti-climactic Battle of Bywater, the animators did reproduce the broad outlines of the Orcs' assault on Minas Tirith and the city's rescue by the Rohirrim. Rankin and Bass are clearly not as emotionally invested in these violent conflicts as they are in their many musical interludes, a few of which actually derive from Tolkien. But they produce a credible version of the most outstanding one-on-one fight in the third book: the duel between the female knight Eowyn (seen above) and the Lord of the Nazgul.

The sequences dealing with Sam and Frodo picking their way through Mordor, dodging Orcs and fending off the obsessed Gollum, aren't nearly so successful. Though the animators devote considerable attention to the weariness of the travelers, the "bigfoot" character-design mitigates against any narrative assertions of suffering.

The most important failing of the two Rankin & Bass outings, though, is that they never comprehend the double-sided nature of Tolkien's work. The animators could apparently understand the author's love of simple, homey things, to judge by the general tone of the musical numbers. But grandeur and the sublime conflict of good and evil were utterly beyond them. In the novel, when Frodo is essentially possessed by the evil of the One Ring, Tolkien presents the hobbit's situation as a spiritual struggle. In RETURN OF THE KING, Frodo's lapses into the Dark Side seem more like an inconvenience than anything. Most of the celebrity voice-casting doesn't especially hurt or harm the diegesis, but Roddy MacDowall's dulcet tones are just a little too over-familiar to produce a distinctive Samwise.

DOCTOR SYN (1937)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological, psychological*

In the early 20th century Russell Thorndike wrote several swashbuckling novels about the 18th-century hero-villain Doctor Christopher Syn.  Syn had been the bloody-handed pirate Captain Clegg in his younger years, but he faked death and assumed a new identity as Syn, vicar of a small coastal village near Romney Marsh in Kent.  Many of the locals supplemented their meager livelihoods with smuggling, and so suffered retribution from the King's soldiers.  Thus Syn determined to help his fellow villagers by managing the smuggling operations under the masked identity of the Scarecrow.  His closest aides also dressed up as boogeymen, the better to make onlookers think them phantasmal spirits.

DOCTOR SYN was both the first film adaptation of Thorndike's series and the last film of star George Arliss.  Arliss, 67 at the time of filming, was in some sense an unlikely choice for the masked crusader, but the film's English producers solved this difficulty by stressing that Captain Clegg has been "dead" quite a long time.  Arliss is never seen clearly in Scarecrow-regalia (though his assistants are glimpsed by the King's soldiers, pretending to be phantoms), and the name of the Scarecrow is only used once or twice.  This Syn even has a grown daughter Imogene (Margaret Lockwood), who lives in the same village but has been raised by adoptive parents without knowing that Syn is her father.  One presumes that he wanted her raised separately to safeguard his identity.  Imogene's mother (who had the same name) was killed by one of Clegg's crew, a manic mulatto, whom Clegg strands on a desert island.  The mulatto survives and is one of the tools that the king's soldiers use in their efforts to ferret out the Scarecrow's identity.  There's a pleasant if disposable subplot about Imogene wanting to marry a man above her commoner station: naturally, by film's end true love wins out over class restrictions, and Clegg/Syn, though technically a criminal, escapes the clutches of an unjust legal system.

SYN is directed very smartly by Roy William Neill, later known for his exemplary Sherlock Holmes films.  Neill manages to keep the film moving at a rapid clip with a wide variety of horseback scenes, though there are relatively few scenes of actual violence for this type of film.  To be sure, though, Arliss's Syn does actually engage in one fight-scene in which he beats down a younger opponent and kills the nasty mulatto with a harpoon for good measure.  In contrast to the Holmes films, the uncanny aspects aren't put across with the sort of spooky mood one might have expected from Neill.

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023)

 

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

As I write this, DIAL OF DESTINY looks to be another of many high-priced Hollywood films that will not make back its investment. This is a shame, because it's the first good sequel to the original RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

It's hard to say why the contemporary audience has chosen to bypass what is almost certainly the final entry in the official series. I don't think negative reviews have much power to impede the mass audience's determination to see something they deem potentially entertaining. Thus the most likely conclusion is that many moviegoers just weren't stoked by the idea of seeing octogenarian actor Harrison Ford reprise the role of "tomb raider" Indiana Jones. Despite such viewers having experienced the reality-bending wizardries of which cinema is capable, they just didn't want to see Indy as an old guy. Perhaps negative reviews weighed somewhat in the balance, even when they were as senseless as the one that claimed that the movie was just a bunch of chase scenes loosely tied together by plot. Really? What did the reviewer think the first film was, or any of the previous three sequels? In point of fact, though the plot of DESTINY is no better or worse than those of the other movies in the series, director/co-writer James Mangold and his fellow scribes made their movie far more about giving Indiana a final character-arc, as he enjoys one last adventurous hurrah during the era of the 1960s. 

Once again, Indiana is forced to chase down a valuable archaeological item-- this time, a dial-like device invented by the Greek inventor Archimedes-- while also being chased by a cadre of Nazis left over from World War II, who believe that the device can transport them back in time. During the movie's prologue, Young Indy (a digitally de-aged Ford) learns that half of Archimedes' Dial is in the hands of Nazi scientist Voller (Mads Mikkelsen). In a tour de force of action, the swashbuckling hero manages to steal the incomplete device, later hiding the object in America, though publicly he claims that the Dial was lost in a European river. However, Voller survives the war and manages to get in good with the American government by contributing his technical expertise to the space race. It's not clear why, in the twenty-plus years between WWII's end and the moon landing, Voller and his new crew of Nazi aides don't abduct Indiana and torture him to learn whether he truly lost the Dial. But if the villains had done so, the plot could not have justified its most vital element: Indiana's god-daughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge). 

A lot of fan-reviewers were incensed by this character long before the movie came out, or any information on her character's nature were revealed, and chief among these was a podcaster named the Critical Drinker. Again, I doubt that these fan-reviewers had any great cumulative effect on audience acceptance of DESTINY, but these limited reactions reflect some of the same reluctance to see any alteration in the sainted legend of Indiana.

Once the prologue ends, and the film proper begins in the 1960s, we see that Indiana, who would have to be no less than sixty by that time, finds his life winding down. He's retiring from his collegiate teaching position-- possibly in a forced retirement. His son Mutt (from the third sequel) has perished during the Vietnam War, and the loss has for whatever reason driven a wedge between Indiana and his wife Marion (Karen Allen), who has filed for separation. He has limited options when his god-daughter Helena Shaw re-enters his life. She's the daughter of Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), who helps Indiana steal the half-Dial from Voller, and she talks Indiana into revealing that yes, he really still has the object in question. This becomes the start of a not-so-beautiful alliance, for Helena is something of a conwoman. However, to prevent the Nazis from gaining both Indiana's relic and from finding the Dial's missing section, Indiana must work with Helena, who has in many ways patterned herself on him, more than on her actual (deceased) father.

The Drinker and similar reviewers loudly protested that Helena Shaw was a "girl boss," designed to make Indiana Jones look stupid and ineffectual while trumpeting the glories of liberated womanhood. While there have been many recent movies and teleserials which were guilty of this sin, DESTINY is not one of them. In fact, these reviewers' fierce desire to protect the "legacy" of the fictional adventurer blinded them to Mangold's deeper character arc.

I said that I didn't much like the other three sequels, but the second one, LAST CRUSADE, boasts the greater insight into the Indiana Jones character. The prologue of CRUSADE establishes that as a teenager Indiana found himself in conflict with his stuffy academic father, Henry Jones Sr. (Sean Connery). After Teen Indy tries and fails to prevent the theft of an artifact by a roguish, whip-wielding adventurer, the script heavily implies that Indiana models his own look on that of the rogue, billed as "Fedora." The script does not make explicit why Indy does so, but to me it's clearly a rebellion against Henry Sr.'s domination of his son, whom he calls "Junior." The rebellion all but screams, "You ought to love me even if I'm not the same as you!"

Though DESTINY never mentions Fedora's influence on Indiana, I think it more than likely that Mangold and his aides modeled Helena on the earlier rogue. I said above that Helena seems to have modeled herself on Indiana, who was a much more romantic figure than her bookish looking actual father. The script does not say exactly why Helena took up such dubious activities as the black-market auction of antiquities, which are anathema to Indiana Jones' ethos. But is it hard to believe that she, too, sought to get the attention of her "symbolic father" (the real one having died in the interim) by  rebelling against his ethos, just as Indy did against that of Henry Sr? There's even a slight parallelism in the use of animal-names: Indiana calls his god-daughter by the unexplained pet-name "Wombat," while the heroic archaeologist took his own nickname of "Indiana" from the family dog (again, according to LAST CRUSADE).

I won't say that I fell inextricably in love with the actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge, but I didn't despise her as did the anti-girlboss crowd. I think she did all the stunts and the badinage very well, often reminding me of Karen Allen's Marion Ravenwood from the original RAIDERS. One or more early scripts toyed with the idea of giving Marion some action-scenes in DESTINY, but I think this would have been a mistake, and not solely because actress Allen is in her seventies. I think it was important to Indiana's character arc that he should meet a new iteration of his own rebellious self-image, even though Mangold does not preach this concept to the viewers. Helena may not be the ideal god-daughter, but he allows himself to forget her existence in much the same way that he (arguably) lets his relationship with Marion deteriorate. Helena storms her way into Indiana's life of quiet desperation, and despite a fair amount of collateral damage thanks to their Nazi enemies, the world is better off that the team of Indiana and "Wombat" comes into existence. She even keeps him from losing himself in his passion for the ancient worlds of bygone history, and I for one didn't think the hero was the least bit denigrated for having that moment of weakness.

I should add that none of these high-flown theories would have saved the film for me if Mangold had not presided over the most ambitious assemblage of action set-pieces since Original RAIDERS. But while the original film wins the gold in that department, the other sequels are bronze at best, while Mangold is the only contender for the silver runner-up.

THE ICE PIRATES (1984)

 

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

Would Stanford Sherman's original script, entitled THE WATER PLANET, have made a good film had it been given its original budget of $20 million? On the plus said, around the same time Sherman's script for the 1983 KRULL yielded at least a better-than-average expensive fantasy-film. On the minus side, if Sherman's original script had the same ending as the finished film, in which the fabled Water Planet turns out to be (gasp) Earth, then maybe that story didn't need to be told AGAIN.

Many others have praised the initiating conflict of ICE PIRATES in the film as we have it, allegedly rewritten by director Stewart Raffill once MGM downgraded the budget to a measly $5 million. In a space-opera cosmos, insidious evildoers called Templars (no, the name means nothing here) have cornered all water supplies in the quadrant, forcing people to pay their exorbitant prices. In reaction, a raffish band of ice pirates begins hijacking water-shipments for resale, presumably at a comparative bargain. The leader is Jason (Robert Urich), and he's most often accompanied by his sidekick Roscoe (Michael D. Roberts). All the others get less dialogue and screen time, including such luminaries as Anjelica Huston, Ron Perlman, and John Matuszak.

The water-stealing idea is largely dropped right away, though, which suggests to me that Raffill had zero interest in it. I suspect that the film's only strong myth-kernel came from Sherman, though. When Jason and his hardies raid a Templar ship, Jason spies a sleeping beauty, none other than Princess Karina (Mary Crosby), and decides that he wants her too. Waking, Karina doesn't immediately like being kidnapped, but subsequent events suggest that her brief time in Jason's manly arms leaves some favorable impression. Though the evil Templars capture Jason and Roscoe and sentence them to become castrated slaves, Karina intervenes to save their junk from the scrap heap.

But though she and Jason clearly have a thing for one another already, Karina ostensibly wants the Ice Pirates' help to find her lost father, who alone can guide a rebel faction to the Water Planet, so as to break the Templars' power. However, once Raffill gets all these pieces in place, he promptly upends the board to pursue every goofy space-joke he can think of. He even has a badguy character reveal that the father's already dead. Way to kill suspense, Raffill!

Somewhere Raffill claimed that he never saw STAR WARS, but a long and laborious cantina-scene belies this assertion. Some jokes work, some don't, but it helps that Urich and Crosby have good chemistry, since the only remaining plotline is the flirty romance of Jason and Karina. There's so little sustained fighting in the film that it's barely a combative comedy: Jason only has one desultory sword-fight atop a moving vehicle. In fact, the character played by Huston outdoes him, getting two sword-battles, one of which involves beheading a rowdy and forcing his friend to apologize. The lack of battle shows a weakness that might have been in the original script, for there's no strong villain involved, just a brief scene of John Carradine in an extended cameo. The whole megilla concludes with a labored trip through a time-warp, in which the characters age rapidly, until they exit the warp and return to normal, And then, of course-- "a planet called Earth!"

I liked a fair number of the jokes, but I can't guarantee anyone else would. PIRATES does seem to have generated a minor cult following, though.

TWO ASSASSINS OF THE DARKNESS (1977)

 

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

ASSASSINS is another of many "kung-fu mysteries" in which the protagonists try to solve some puzzle in between wild martial arts battles. I won't say this sort of genre-blend can't be done well, but I haven't seen an exemplar that rang my chimes so far.

An unknown party summons not one but two professional assassins to the same town to kill a particular party. This circumstance breeds hostility between Dagger Kuan (Don Wong) and Chopper Hsiung Fei (Chang Yi), since whoever succeeds in the task is the one who presumably will get paid. Though Dagger and Chopper initially contend with one another, eventually they settle down to figuring out who's pitted them against one another. They meet a number of enigmatic characters, particularly Hua (Lung Chung-erh), a kung-fu female who pursues Dagger and tries to see whether he's amenable to being tied down. Wong's Dagger character does get the lion's share of attention over Chang's Chopper, since Dagger does get a moment where he reflects on the unpleasantness of his trade.

I frankly didn't pay close attention to all the characters thrown at me, as my main attention was focused upon sussing out ASSASSINS' qualification as a metaphenomemal film. At first this chopsocky seems barely qualified, as two other killers try to knock off Dagger by hitting with wheeled carts with retractable knives. However, at the climax the two assassins, having been given various revelations by Dagger's teacher, find their way to the main villain, a white-bearded old guy (Shao Lo-Hui) who, for once, is NOT supposed to modeled after the familiar figure of Pai Mei. He unleashes the movie's biggest and most well executed stratagem: a dozen or so acrobatic fighters wielding ropes with metal claws on the ends, which they can also use to weave into a great big hero-trapping net.

Even though Dagger and Chopper are killers, they still seem like straightforward chopsocky heroes throughout the length and breadth of ASSASSINS. This is also the first movie I've seen in which Lung Chung-erh plays a somewhat villainous role, and she meets a bad end to boot.

HONOR ROLL #200

 Even though SHAO LO-HOU is the main villain, the two heroes are still contract killers, and so "heroic villains."

Pirate ROBERT URICH only has ice for you.

Whether she's a "girl boss" or not, PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE remains the only heroine ever to share the center stage with Indiana Jones.

In GEORGE ARLISS' day it was pretty rare for anyone to play a hero after passing the 5-0 mark. Now-- not so much.

FRODO BAGGINS returns to finish out his heroic saga, even though the previous two parts came from a different studio.

Can ALDO? Or CANTI?

BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME FOUR (1997-98)

 

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

I've long meant to review what many consider the best superhero cartoon series of all time, BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, but as it happens, I decided to start with Vol 4 (which is actually the totality of Season 3). I may amuse myself by working backward. I'm not willing to write standalone reviews of the episodes, but instead include mini-reviews in order to broadcast, with notations of (G) for good mythicity, (F) for fair, and (P) for poor.

HOLIDAY KNIGHTS (F)-- this three-part anthology episode on a Christmas theme features a very bad Joker episode (complete with the third season's ultra-simplified version of the villain), a mediocre encounter between Batgirl and Clayface, and a better than average romp in which Batman has to deal with those voluptuous vixens Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy (though no one makes the Xmas-friendly "Harley and Ivy" joke).

SINS OF THE FATHERS (F)-- Though Dick Grayson was Robin for the first two seasons, the producers decided to follow the lead of the comics, graduating the now adult Grayson to the role of Nightwing and giving the Robin monicker to the new kid in town, Tim Drake. Tim gets involved with the Bat-world through his father's association with Two-Face, whose blackmail plot is somewhat de rigeur. He also meets the new Robin but for some reason doesn't realize that this can't possibly be the same kid-hero he used to fight.

COLD COMFORT (G)-- Mister Freeze, a generally mediocre villain in the comics, gets a great conclusion here, following his appearance in BATMAN AND MR. FREEZE: SUB-ZERO. Batman's desire to find new connections through his Bat-family is opposed to Freeze's desire to prey upon Gotham's citizens by eliminating their deepest hopes and dreams. 

DOUBLE TALK (F)-- The Ventriloquist is freed from the asylum, as he's been freed from Scarface, the dummy through which he's committed his crimes. But is Scarface really gone?

YOU SCRATCH MY BACK (P)-- Catwoman like Joker gets a visual makeover for the worse, so that she looks like some sort of anime elf. She wants to make a score, but to do so she pretends to romance Nightwing. Will Nightwing poach on his surrogate father's territory? Will Batgirl be jealous? Who cares? Nice fight in a motorboat (but, sadly, without any motorboating).

NEVER FEAR (F)-- This time the Scarecrow, instead of making his victims afraid, immunizes them from fear, and threatens to subject all of Gotham to the treatment, which will turn the city upside down. When Batman and Robin tackle the villain, Batman gets exposed to the no-fear gas, and Robin has to keep his mentor from going over the edge.

JOKER'S MILLIONS (P)-- The original comics story of the same title, created by David Vern and Dick Sprang, is a small masterpiece, but this episode is an overheated, tone-deaf adaptation. For once the Joker re-design isn't the worst thing around.

GROWING PAINS (F)-- Robin sympathizes with a runaway girl his own age, but she has a unique relationship with the shapechanger Clayface. Excellent concluding fight-scene.

LOVE IS A CROC (P)-- Baby Doll, a poorly conceived second-season villain, lures the super-strong Killer Croc into a partnership, but things go sour when she wants to take things to the next level.

TORCH SONG (F)-- Fifties villain Firefly makes his first appearance on the series, with an origin somewhat amended from the original. This time the villain turns evil because he's thrown over romantically by "torch singer" Cassidy. The episode ends atypically, focusing on the singer's trauma even after Batman defeats Firefly. Cute moment where Batgirl (who is Batman's partner just as often as Robin is) quotes PINKY AND THE BRAIN and Batman doesn't get it.

THE ULTIMATE THRILL (F)-- Roxy Rocket, created for the comics by Paul Dini, makes the transition to animation with a slam-bang daredevil theme focused Roxy's love of danger, a love she thinks she shares with the Caped Crusader. Penguin appears in a small role, but happily reverts to his classic 1940s design. 

OVER THE EDGE (P)-- For most of the episode, it appears that Batgirl has died, causing Commissioner Gordon to launch a vendetta against the Bat-clan. But since the viewer knows that it can't really be happening, the revelation that it's all Batgirl's fear-dream, induced by Scarecrow, is underwhelming.

MEAN SEASONS (F)-- In a story drawing upon one-shot comics villain "The Manikin," Batman contends with a villainess who also borrows the seasons-theme of Calendar Man. Calendar Girl has a grudge against various Gotham power brokers, whom she considers to have exploited women. But a satire of sexism hardly registers as valid coming from a cartoon with bouncy babes like Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn (even if the New Catwoman lost all her cleavage). 

CRITTERS (P)-- Did any Bat-fan ever want to see the Bat-clan fight a bunch of super-sized farm animals? Farmer Brown and his daughter Emmylou attempt to solve world hunger by using steroids to gigantize various "critters," but a judge considers the process unsafe and bans Brown's experiments. Brown claims the ban will ruin his fortunes, yet years later he's somehow got enough cash to continue his experiments in secret, until he can unleash a horde of American kaiju on Gotham. He even builds a rocket into a farm-silo to bombard the city with giant bugs. So where'd he get the MONEY?? Bullock shows his age by referring to Brown as "Snuffy." Emmylou herself takes steroids and gets strong enough to beat down Batgirl.

CULT OF THE CAT (F)-- Elfwoman is still not very appealing, but at least this time she displays some of her romantic ambivalence toward the Bat. She steals a sacred cat statuette from a cult devoted to cats, and the cult's agents try to kill her, forcing Batman to get involved. When she's captured by the cult, she insinuates herself into the good graces of the cult leader-- but when he tries to kill Batman, the Princess of Plunder saves him, yet escapes to loot again. The cult-leader is named Thomas Blake, which in comics is the non-secret ID of Batman's other cat-themed foe, The Cat-Man.

ANIMAL ACTS (F)-- This one's good mostly for re-uniting Dick Grayson with his old stomping-grounds. Trained animals commit crimes in Gotham, so Batman, Robin and Nightwing check out the local circus, where Grayson once performed on the high wire. Turns out that the Mad Hatter has extended his mind-control powers over the beasts, and even though his scheme is improbable, there are enough Carroll-quotes to smooth things over. Grayson is reunited with an old circus gal-pal, Miranda Kane, whose surname is probably a shout-out to another DC aerialist, Kathy Kane, the first Batwoman.

OLD WOUNDS (G)-- This is a good condensation of the many psychological factors that led Dick Grayson to abandon the role of Batman's partner Robin and to take the new identity of Nightwing. In real time he encounters Batman and the current Robin, and the young hero senses the conflict between the ex-partners. When Drake's alone with Grayson, Grayson tells the story. Some tension between Wayne and Grayson stems from the mere fact of Grayson becoming a grown man, but in contrast to the comics, the other major factor was that in college Grayson had a romance with Barbara Gordon. Though neither of them knew that the other had a secret ID, Batman ferrets out Batgirl's identity without her knowledge. When Barbara seeks out Bruce Wayne to talk to him about his ward's troubled state of mind, Wayne shows his trust of the new heroine by revealing to her the true ID of himself and his partner. Not only does Grayson-Robin object to this disclosure, he believes that Batman manipulated both of them into being his pawns, and that ends the partnership. The story ends, but events reveal a side to Batman that Robin overlooked.

THE DEMON WITHIN (F)-- Batman and Robin help Jason Blood when the witch-child Klarion separates Blood from his alter ego, the super-powerful Demon, and begins using the Demon as his personal servant. 

LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT (P)-- The writer of this story claims that he never saw the Frank Robbins comics-story in which three kids relate "blind man and the elephant" impressions of who and what the Batman is like. I don't disbelieve the writer, because the basic idea seems fairly obvious given the many mutations of the crusader. But there's nothing to this story but simple homage, first of Dick Sprang, the quintessential Golden Age Bat-artist, and then of Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. After two of the three kids tell their stories, they stumble across Firefly trying to burn down a theater, and the real Batman shows up in all his glory.

GIRL'S NIGHT OUT (F)-- Why is it "girl's (singular)," given that the episode is focused on two girl heroes teaming up? Batman's seen briefly leaving town but he tells Batgirl to seek out Superman in order to battle the Kryptonian's enemy Live Wire. Instead, the Man of Steel's cousin takes the message, and Supergirl shows up to help Batgirl make it a "girls' night." But Live Wire forms a somewhat fractious alliance with Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. Lots of nice fight-scenes, without a codpiece in sight.

MAD LOVE (G)-- Aside from the Joker's crappy re-design, this is a fine rendition of Paul Dini's Eisner-winning story of the same name. This tale was instrumental to redefining the weird but somewhat affectionate liaison of Joker and Harley into a relationship of total dysfunction.

CHEMISTRY (F)-- It's the old "set up the rich guys and gals with phony mates in order to knock off the Richies and get their money" trick. Poison Ivy comes up with her unique take in that her pawns are plant-people infused with her hypnotic pheromones, in order to make certain that the Richies are irresistibly seduced. Bruce Wayne himself is one of the victims, so Robin and Batgirl must snap him out of it.

BEWARE THE CREEPER (G)-- For some reason everyone in this Gotham knows how the Joker was created in a chemical plant accident, so reporter Jack Ryder goes to the plant for a retrospective story. Joker and Harley show up to rain on Ryder's parade, and Ryder goes for a swim in a chemical bath. However, he comes out as The Creeper, whose only similarity to the Joker is that both do a lot of laughing. The comics-version only laughed maniacally to unnerve villains, but this Creeper, able to take prodigious leaps from building to building, was designed to be a cross between Jim Carrey's MASK and a Tex Avery wolf. Creeper decides he'll take hilarious vengeance on Joker, and for good measure tries to steal his girl partner. Batman and Robin work out the Creeper's origins and reverse the transformation, though not before the addled avenger nearly drives Joker crazy. This episode boasts two cool sex-jokes. There's an obvious one when Creeper, rendered unconscious by Batman, collapses atop Harley and gets pillowed by her boobs. More subtly, Harley tries to please Joker by baking herself into a huge gooey pastry, and explicitly says, "Wanna try some of my pie?"

JUDGMENT DAY (F)-- At least the final episode of the series is a decent one. The Judge, a robed vigilante with his face obscured, begins preying on such Gotham villains as Two-Face, Penguin and Killer Croc. Some Gothamites like the idea of an avenger who, unlike Batman, gets rid of evildoers for good, and one of them is a corrupt politician seeking to profit from the Judge's crusade. The Judge's identity is a decent reveal, the fights are pretty good, and this is one of the few third-season tales in which neither of Batman's partners appears. There's an amusing sequence in which four career villains-- Harley, Mad Hatter, Riddler and Ventriloquist-- appear on TV to blame all their actions on Batman, and to claim Gotham owes them money for their mistreatment.

DOOMSDAY (2008)

 

 

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

"I had this vision of these futuristic soldiers with high-tech weaponry and body armour and helmets—clearly from the future—facing a medieval knight on horseback."-- Neil Marshall.

I don't know anything about English writer-director Neil Marshall's reading-habits, but the scenario he concocted for DOOMSDAY sounds like he was raised on a diet of JUDGE DREDD comics. This futuristic adventure-comic was notable for having its hero run across all sorts of fanatical cultures, usually based on the most tenuous sociological concepts.  

In 2008 (the same time as the film's debut), Scotland is infested with a killer virus. England quarantines the entire territory, which for some reason makes all other countries mad at England-- a counter-intuitive touch these days, after current audiences' experiences with Covid and the way China skated clear of blame. About thirty years pass, during which English intelligence keeps satellite watch on the isolated Scots. Despite the quarantine, the virus begins to infect English citizens. Motivated to seek any kind of cure, intelligence agents discover that the Scottish people, though devolved to savagery, don't seem to be suffering ill effects any more. Since a noted Scottish doctor named Kane (Malcolm McDowell) resided in the country at the time of the quarantine, government officials speculate that Kane may have developed a cure. They decide to send a covert task force into Scotland to find and interrogate Kane, a force commanded by Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), herself a former native of Scotland, who has personal motivations for entering her old haunts.

Sinclair and her men soon butt heads with the savage Scots, most of whom look like a cross between eighties Punks and the reavers of a MAD MAX film. Most of the English soldiers are killed, but Sinclair, two of her command, and a young Scots native escape the marauders. Young Cally (MyAnna Buring of WITCHVILLE) happens to be one of two grown children of Kane, the other being Sol, leader of the marauders.

The knights-in-armor part of the story commences when Cally leads Sinclair and her remaining aides to Kane, who for some unknown reason has decided to concoct a whole subculture based on the Arthurian mythos. Kane not only doesn't want to go back to England with Sinclair, he tells her the only "cure" is natural immunity. He then imprisons his daughter and Sinclair's two allies, and sentences Sinclair to fight an armored executioner. Sinclair wins the fight, and she leads her remaining team into an "escape from Scotland" in road- warrior conveyances. 

There are some subplots about dirty dealings in the government, a few of which involve Bob Hoskins in a glorified support-role, but as social commentary DOOMSDAY is less insightful than the average JUDGE DREDD comic. Without giving away the precise ending, I'll just say that it depends on Sinclair switching allegiances in a manner that Marshall utterly fails to foreground.

DOOMSDAY flopped at the box office, but it does have some above-average action-scenes, even if some go over the top even for this type of picture. (Could even a male hero be strong enough to punch an armored knight in his visor and not have his hand broken?) Mitra projects a good deal of heroic elan, though, and she showed this same quality to good effect in UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS, though she has yet to essay a really memorable heroine.

FIRE MONSTERS AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1962)

 

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

A quick classification matter: though FIRE depicts an Ice Age in which cavemen exist alongside weird variations on dinosaurs, I don't consider this type of film to be marvelous, for reasons I explained in my review of THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR. All of the flick's monsters, as the above Italian title shows, originally had no "fiery" context, and the only flaming menace in the movie is an exploding volcano, which actually works against the villains, not the hero.

Said hero was named Maciste in the original, and this seems to be the chronologically earliest adventure of the do-gooder, who as in most other movie-iterations just pops up out of nowhere to help the oppressed. The (very bad) American dub devotes one line to giving the muscleman the name "Maxxus," and claiming that he was the son of Hercules and a goddess, though throughout the film none of his feats of strength are truly "Herculean." So I'll call the hero Maciste instead.

Fleeing the frozen wastes of migrating glaciers, the shaggily-clad Sun Tribe finds its way to an uninhabited valley and decide to build their new home there. There's a tiny bit of badinage between young chieftan Idar and his impending bride Raya, mostly regarding his lack of urgency about their marriage, but then the two are threatened by a big lake-reptile. Maciste (Reg Lewis) appears on the scene and from many miles away hurls a spear that transfixes the nasty beast, thus earning the tribe's gratitude. Then off goes the stalwart fellow, seeking other wrongs to right.

While he's conveniently absent, the equally-shaggy Moon Tribe attacks the Sun Tribe, killing many of the men and absconding with the nubile women. Whereas the noble sun worshipers dwell out in the open, the devious moon worshipers inhabit a series of caves adjacent to a volcano. At first it seems that the bulky Moon chieftain Fuan (Andrea Aureli) wants to enact a Rape of the Cave-Sabines by letting his men ravish the females. But then Fuan relates that the true purpose of the captives is to serve as sacrifices to the moon-god.

Maciste, alerted to the raid, finds his way into the caves via a waterway, but he's wounded by a water-monster. He emerges in one of the caves, where he's found by Moah (Margaret Lee), who is the one maiden whom Chief Fuan most desires. Maciste later moves a big stone to admit the vengeful Sun-People, and a battle breaks out between the tribes. Once the women of the Sun Tribe are freed Maciste again moves the big stone and most of the good primitives escape.

Maciste himself is captured and buried up to his neck in the ground. While the Moon-worshipers sleep, Moah tries to rescue Maciste, but Fuan catches her and subjects her to the same torment. However, as if in sympathy with "rock-born" Maciste, the volcano erupts, shattering the ground that imprisons the hero and his new GF. The Moon-People are forced to flee the caves, but this makes Fuan determined to take over the home of the Sun People after killing them all. Fuan even enlists an even more primitive tribe to help them out, but it avails him nothing against Mighty Maciste. When all the slugging is done, Maciste starts to fade into the sunset, but Moah shows more gumption than some other leading ladies by following her man wherever he chooses to go.

FIRE was Reg Lewis' only entry into boulder-shoulder heroics.

GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER (1971)

 

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

I didn't like SMOG back in The Day, because I didn't appreciate having my giant monster fantasies mixed up with environmentalist messages. But then, in 1971 I may not have appreciated that the original Godzilla film had much to do with humans taking responsibility for having unleashed another sort of doomsday weapon.

On re-screening SMOG I found myself greatly impressed with director Yoshimitsu Banno's colorful visual style, possibly forged during his duties as an assistant director on four Akira Kurosawa features. This is significant for two reasons. First, Banno was not given a very large budget, though he avoided the sin of the previous film in the series, GODZILLA'S REVENGE, with its penny-pinching re-use of earlier footage. Second, all three previous directors of Godzilla films-- Ishiro Honda, Motoyoshi Oda, and Jun Fukuda-- had always depicted the monster's exploits in a very straightforward manner, with few if any stylistic flourishes. So Toho Studios was taking a chance with Banno, not unlike Hollywood in the same era experimenting with its Young Turks (though in 1971 Banno was forty years old).

Because Earth-people have allowed pollution to get out of control, Hedorah, an alien being from a sort of anti-universe invades and begins feeding on industrial wastes. Hedorah then exudes his own gaseous wastes, poisoning innumerable human beings. Godzilla, perhaps sensing a threat to his own environment, gives battle to the intruder. However, the slimy shit-creature far outdoes Mothra in his ability to metamorphose into new combat-forms, and in one such form, he nearly slaughters the King of Monsters.

Although most of the humans are nugatory characters, they are able to render aid to Godzilla with a weapon very like one their ancestors used against him: a giant electrical fence. Godzilla wins, but will humanity learn its lesson this time?

Though SMOG is the film in which Godzilla first used his atomic breath to shot himself backward like a rocket, the monster-battles have a kinetic intensity rare in films of the period. The only human who registers as a character is a young boy, Ken, who has a precognitive dream that only Godzilla can save the world, but his presence doesn't make the story as sentimental as it would in a Gamera flick.

For reasons pertaining to employer prejudice Banno was never given a chance at another Godzilla film, even though in the Japanese box office SMOG did slightly better than REVENGE, and indeed all Godzilla films after DESTROY ALL MONSTERS hovered around the same $6 million BO, with the exception of MEGALON for some reason. Fortunately, before his passing Banno was treated as a prophet with honor outside his own country, functioning as an executive producer on the three Godzilla movies from Legendary Films.

DRAGON FURY 2 (1996)

 

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

Okay, here's the sort of forgettable junk that isn't worth the time it takes to dismiss it.

There's a mention on IMDB that the script by the credited writer was so bad that the main actor and other personnel tossed it and concocted their own story. Suffice to say that they didn't succeed in making anything better than awful.

Mason (Robert Chapin) is once more the hero, despite having died at the end of the first film. I'm not sure that the first FURY showed that he had traveled back to his own time, but assuming it did, he's taken in by a future-doctor who puts his body into cryostasis for the next 15 years, and then for unstated reasons decides to revive Mason. But Mason, though hale and hearty once more, has lost his memory and flees the doctor's helping hands.

The real reason for the fifteen-year sleep is to provide Mason with a new romantic partner, one with slightly incestuous overtones. Future-warrior Crystal Blu (Cathleen Anne Gardner) heads a group of rebels against the authority of an evil overlord, Molech (Mike son-of-Chuck Norris). Whereas there was a troop of "dragons" fighting the overlords in Part One, now all the dragon-swordsmen serve Molech. There is no reference to the plague or the medical dictatorship from the first film.

So amnesiac Mason wanders around until a minor dragon-warrior finds him and invites the badass blonde to join Molech's team. Mason does become one of the dragons because he has no reason not to. Eventually Crystal fights with the new Molech-servant and then manages to knock him out and take him back to rebel HQ. The aforementioned doctor tells her at some point that Mason was trained by Crystal's late father, and this revelation leads the young woman to sleep with the time-displaced dead man. There's another assault on Molech's fortress, and Crystal dies to give Mason a good reason to duel Molech. Oh, and there's a cute young girl who has psychic predictions, which don't make any difference to the plot, which again is non-stop fighting, but with far inferior direction this time.

The only half-decent thing about FURY 2 is the logo, in which the Roman numeral "2" is formed by two side-by-side swords.

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989)

 

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

CRUSADE is a frustrating finish to the eighties "Indiana Jones" trilogy. Whereas the first two films hewed closely to the idea of Jones as a tomb-raider who found supernatural life in the sanctums of dead memories, CRUSADE's mystic McGuffin, the Holy Grail, is a pile of inconsistent hogwash. 

On a DVD extra, director Steven Spielberg claimed that co-scripter George Lucas was fixated on the idea that the Grail-- an artifact produced by Celtic storytellers riffing on the Christian idea of communion-- ought to appear in CRUSADE. Supposedly Lucas also came up with the idea that the cup from the Last Supper could grant immortality to those who drank from it. This isn't consistent with any Grail myths I've encountered, but possibly Lucas and his collaborators could have jury-rigged some connection between the Grail's gift of immortality and some other Judeo-Christian myth, like that of the Wandering Jew. But not only did the writers of CRUSADE half-ass the concept of the Grail, they undercut the villains' reason for seeking the artifact by revealing at the climax that the bad guys could never have used the object in their quest for power in any way.

So the metaphysical value of CRUSADE is minimal at best. It's also undermined by Spielberg's conceit that the Indy-series was his take on the Cinematic James Bond, which led to a lot of mediocre sub-Bond scenes in CRUSADE (such as a tedious speedboat chase, in which a gang of killers, later revealed as "good guys," chase Indy and his female ally). The path to the Grail is entirely too easy, despite some de rigeur tomb-traps for the hero to solve, and the return of Nazis as the main villains only generates a few decent moments, both comic (Indy's encounter with Hitler) and adventurous (a decent but overlong scene with Indy fighting a tank full o' Nazis). However, the movie's saving mythopoeic grace is that it provides a psychological "origin" for Indiana Jones, in marked contrast to the first two films' silence about the hero's background.

Few heroes of adventure-serials had childhoods, but CRUSADE opens on a teen-aged Indiana (River Phoenix) on a Boy Scouts expedition in 1912 Utah. Young Indy witnesses a gang of tomb- raiders stealing a precious cross from an ancient burial site. Affronted by the theft, Indy steals the cross from the thieves and flees. The crooks, led by a whip-wielding fellow whose garments are a near-match for the later "look" of the mature Indy, give chase. The youth manages to reach the home he shares with his father, archaeologist Henry Jones (Sean Connery, though he's not "on camera" for the character's first appearance). Professor Jones is too engrossed in his intellectual obsession, the search for the Holy Grail, to listen to his son, and so does not even get involved when the villains-- who have convinced the local authorities that they are legitimate archaeologists-- reclaim the valuable cross. The leader of the robbers, billed only as "Fedora," gives Young Indy a consolation prize: his own fedora, which is implicitly the same hat that Mature Indy continues to wear throughout all later adventures. The mature hero is then seen in 1938-- the time of the film as a whole-- recovering the cross from the thieves' employer, though significantly, the roguish Fedora is not seen among the hero's 1938 opponents.

This prologue artfully encapsulates Indiana Jones' psychological dilemma without becoming over-explanatory. Though Indy shares his father's fascination with the archaic world, he also resents having been neglected by his father for the sake of research. (CRUSADE contains the only mention of Indy's unnamed mother, who has died of influenza by 1912 and whose absence presumably widens the gulf between father and son.) Since Professor Jones is, as Indy says later, a "bookworm" who never does research in the field, Indy rebels against his aloof father by becoming a globe-hopping adventurer who raids tombs rather than reading about them (though ironically in his one scene before his college class, Indy tells the students that most archaeology is done "in the library.") Indy never becomes a thief as such, though his appropriation of ancient artifacts is justified by contributing the items to academic scholarship, and he emulates Fedora as a means of forging his own identity. CRUSADE also reveals that Indy coined his own nickname after that of a prized pet dog, and this too was a way of distancing himself from his given name of "Henry Jr," and thus distancing himself from Professor Jones as well.

When 1938 Indy learns that a wealthy entrepreneur hired Professor Jones to seek the Grail in Venice (and later Turkey), the hero goes in quest of his missing father. Indy and his other father-substitute Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) journey to Italy and meet the professor's colleague Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody). After Indy and Elsa escape an assault for fanatics of a modern Grail-cult, the two of them pitch more than a little woo.

Indy and Elsa travel to Austria to rescue Professor Jones while Marcus travels to Turkey to seek the help of another RAIDERS luminary, Sallah (John Rhys-Davies). Indy learns that both Elsa and Donovan the entrepreneur are working for the Nazis. In due time the hero liberates his father from the villains, and Indy takes Professor Jones to join with their friends, and presumably to unearth the Grail before the bad guys get it.

In the many exploits that follow, Indy gets to be "the dad," shepherding his bookworm father through life-and-death situations, though once or twice Professor Jones manages to acquit himself by saving the day. Indeed, Connery plays so well against the "type" he established both before and after James Bond that Henry Jones Sr may well be Connery's best single performance, thanks to tapping his capacity for broad humor. One humorous moment is the revelation that Elsa slept with both men in her quest for information, though only Daddy Jones saw through her deception. But in the final scenes at the Temple of the Grail, both father and son get to show the depths of their feelings by rescuing one another from death, thus giving the audience the expected warm fuzzies-- though one never does learn just why Professor Jones was so obsessed with the Grail.

Though Elsa Schneider sides with the villains, she shares the Jones' obsession with archaic mysteries, making her loosely comparable with the similar figure of Rene Belloq in RAIDERS. But she also clearly falls for Indy to some extent, betraying Donovan in an end scene, though the allure for the archaic brings about her doom. One of CRUSADE's last lines has Professor Jones claims that he's achieved "illumination" as a result of his quest, but the line is so arranged that the audience knows he's referencing his newfound appreciation for his son's independence. Though both Joneses drink of the Grail's water, this incident proves the limits of the immortality-magic. Henry Sr is seen to have passed away in KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL and Henry Jr has clearly not become immortal in that film, much less in DIAL OF DESTINY, the film (as I have argued) does the most to build upon the psychological origins of Indiana Jones.

HONOR ROLL #199

 "Heh, heh, heh, her name is, ALLISON DOODY."

CATHLEEN ANN GARDNER only had one role and she was still more impressive in that film than her co-star, Chuck's boy Mike.

If you pull HEDORAH's finger, you may kill a whole Japanese city.

Only one muscleman-film for REG LEWIS, and maybe he got out just in time.

MALCOLM MCDOWELL has had many better roles than playing a minor villain to a hot soldier-babe.

In the comics, Tim Drake is the third ROBIN, but in the cartoon, he moved up to the second string.

THE MASK (1994)

 

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

Though I vaguely remember reading the original "Mask" character published in the nineties by Dark Horse Comics, that iteration made very little impression on me. I remember thinking that the original humor was fairly dark and violent, so it's probably all to the better (particularly for the career of Jim Carrey) that the movie-MASK is much more family-friendly. Indeed, the film practically seems like a love letter to the wild slapstick tone of Tex Avery, whose cartoons had undergone a renaissance of sorts, partly due to 1988's ROGER RABBIT. LIke ROGER, MASK depends on the jarring interaction of live-action and animation, though this time, all the animated effects stem from one entity, who has near infinite power to overwrite the restrictions of reality. 

Downtrodden bank clerk Stanley Ipkiss (Carrey) lives a life of quiet desperation. The one bright spot in his dull life hinges on a meeting with Tina (Cameron Diaz), a glamorous nightclub singer who seems to reciprocate he feelings for her. Then Stanley finds an archaic wooden face-mask. When he finally dons it, it molds itself to his face, and he transforms into a green-skinned, zoot-suited mischief-maker with the power to alter reality. I don't think he's ever called "The Mask" in this film, though later on this becomes his de facto "superhero name." He immediately uses his abilities to humiliate some of the people who tormented him, though with a cheery elan that keeps his deeds from seeming mean-spirited. Eventually Stanley is exposed to the theory that the mask may be a creation of Loki, Norse god of mischief, though this is never decisively confirmed.

The Mask becomes a crimefighter (of sorts) by accident: he witnesses a gang of robbers escaping a bank with their haul, and he simply rips off their loot so he can purchase tickets to see Tina's next performance. (Not sure why a magical being needs to buy tickets to anything.) This action earns the enmity of the gang-boss behind the robbery, one Tyrell, while a police detective, Kellaway, becomes suspicious of Stanley's involvement with the weird green trickster.

The Mask intrudes on the nightclub where Tina sings, which happens to be owned by Tyrell, who also happens to be Tina's domineering boyfriend. The Mask makes fools of Tyrell's goons and sweeps Tina off her feet, despite the fact that she's never seen him before. (She and everyone else seem to take the presence of a metamorphic being pretty much in stride.) Stanley, however, begins to fear that his own humanity may get subsumed by the Mask's influence.

Betrayed by a confidante, Stanley's jailed by the police (though I don't know how they would prove he could transform into a green-skinned cartoon) and Tyrell gets hold of the mask. The gangster takes on the artifact's powers and immediately becomes a super-being, but he's still a small-time thinker. He puts the snatch on Tina for her alienated affections and plans to blow up the night club for some reason I didn't follow. Stanley has to call upon his inner hero in order to battle for Tina's safety, recover the mask's power and defeat Tyrell's gang. Stanley is reunited with Tina and casts away the magical artifact, though it returns in the box-office flop SON OF THE MASK.

The movie's a fairly formulaic comedy, but most of its jokes and stunts land fairly well, so director Chuck Russell was right to push for a light-hearted approach to the material. Though the franchise was never became a success in any other iterations, the movie's main significance is its status as one of the many films of the 1990s to prove that films in the superhero idiom could appeal to a general audience once given a budget that allowed for expensive FX.

JILL THE RIPPER (2000)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I first saw this film on TV under the lame title TIED UP. However, its original title, JILL RIPS, is even worse, though that was also the title of the film's source-novel. I can endure the alternate title JILL THE RIPPER better than either of these, so that's what I'll go with.

There could be immense psycho-mythic potential in a femme-centric take on the often fictionalized story of Jack the Ripper. In most fictional adaptations, the Ripper kills to express his misogynistic hatred of the female sex, and at least one or two films, such as 1971's HANDS OF THE RIPPER, have centered upon Female Rippers with an animus toward some or all men. I have not read the Frederic Lindsay novel, and there are not many online reviews of it, but what I've seen makes clear that it does focus on an apparent Female Ripper. The movie seems to have gone off in its own tangent, though, for descriptions of the novel mention nothing about BDSM content. Cross-breeding the Ripper legend with the demimonde of the BDSM trade sounds even more promising than just a Female Ripper, and at times director Anthony Hickox seems to be shooting for a Hitchcockian treatment of such transgressive subject matter.

Matt Sorenson (Dolph Lundgren) was forced to resign from the Boston police force after an incident in which he tormented prostitutes by forcing them to walk to the precinct in pouring rain. Implicitly the guy has major issues with the Oldest Profession, which may or may not signal issues with women as a whole. There's no indication that he's had a wife or girlfriend, but he does love his brother Michael, whose body is washed ashore with strong indications of BDSM usage. So Sorenson becomes a vigilante out to uncover the killer's identity, even before other such victims begin showing up. He has some friends on the force that feed him clues about the investigation, but one of the weird things on Sorenson's radar is that shortly before Michael's death he married a woman named Irene (Danielle Brett). In fact, the first time Sorenson sees her, he desires her before knowing that she's his brother's widow.

If you think Irene's just there to be a Love Interest, then you aren't paying attention to Hickox's clear signals that she's Something More. Sorenson, though, moves heaven and earth to infiltrate the BDSM world on the theory that one of the professionals killed Michael. and in keeping with the Lundgren persona he gets into a fair number of head-busting fights. The hero's biggest struggle is with the idea that his brother was involved in this seamy lifestyle, for the fetishes of pain and bondage apparently hold no attraction for Sorenson, not even after he's forced to play the part of a customer and must endure some choice whiplashing.

RIPPER's big problem is that Hickox and company aren't able to side with either Sorenson or the mystery killer, nor chart a path that would show the dramatic conflicts of both parties, the way that other director with the similar last name managed to do. At times Hickox seems to be advocating Sorenson's view that the demimonde is a place of endless corruption, which would align RIPPER with the mythic POV of the average Charles Bronson film. Yet there are also numerous references to female disempowerment at the hands of the old boy's network, so that when the agents of that network manage to rein in the Female Ripper, there's certainly no feeling of cathartic celebration at the monster's demise. So in the end, RIPPER fizzles out in the psycho-myth department, and doesn't come off much better than your average erotic thriller, except for better visuals and a strong performance by the male lead.

GHOSTBUSTERS (1984)

 

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

The original GHOSTBUSTERS is a fine idea executed just adequately, generating a lot of smiles from me but not nearly as many laughs as I expect from the best comedies. The obvious durability of the concept seems to depend less on execution than on originality. There had been spoofs of supernatural sleuths and monster hunters before-- notably Roman Polanski's 1967 FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS. But the script by GHOSTBUSTERS co-stars Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis showed audiences how to bring monster-catchers into a high-tech era, using zap-guns and containment canisters to restrain paranormal bogeys, rather than old-fashioned circles of salt.

The characters played by Ramis and Aykroyd, Egon Spengler and Ray Stanz, are the source of all the tech the Ghostbusters use to bring spirits to heel. However, Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) is largely responsible for forcing the cloistered academics to get out of their comfort zone and become heroes. It's not clear how Venkman, who often projects the aura of a skeptical con-man, became associated with the two paranormal experts during their adumbrated academic career, or why he even thinks there are enough malignant spirits in New York City to make ghost-busting a profitable enterprise. Maybe Venkman only does so because he got an early look at the movie script, which shows a spike in hauntings in the Big Apple for reasons no one initially figures out. Not until very late in the movie does Egon figure out that a particular New York high-rise was constructed to be a gateway for Sumerian demons. But such is the comic chemistry between Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis, with additional reinforcement from belated addition Winston (Ernie Hudson) and wacky secretary Janine (Annie Potts) that most moviegoers didn't care about script consistency.

The script does introduce the haunted building by way of two of its occupants: musician Dana (Sigourney Weaver) and her nebbishy neighbor Louis (Rick Moranis). Dana calls upon the Ghostbusters to solve the mystery of her haunted icebox, but when Venkman fails to deliver anything but his attempts to hit on her, she shuts the door on further ghostbusting. However, the plucky parapsychologists find no shortage of bizarre apparitions to trap. One of the ectoplasmic entities was later dubbed "Slimer" and became a regular cartoon character. In any case the Ghostbusters become heroes of the city for their successful spirit-catching.

Since the demon-gateway isn't revealed for some time, the writers spend a lot of time showing how its heroes get hemmed in by small-minded bureaucrats, one of whom irresponsibly releases all of the Ghostbuster's imprisoned revenants. Since said bureaucrat represents the EPA, his role may speak to the idea that the organization's real-world reps were something less than conscientious in their agenda. But all the ghosts are just window-dressing for the Big Bad, the Sumerian demon Gozer, who will bring about the end times for humanity.

Though Venkman is destined to get in good with hot leading lady Dana, the script also indulges in a nerd's sex-fantasy. Both Dana and Louis get possessed by low-ranking demons and implicitly have sex with each other in order to open the gateway for Gozer. Just try to get away with that sort of thing in a modern "comedy."

The original GHOSTBUSTERS has a number of decent, often quotable jokes (though I may be the only viewer not amused by the appearance of the "Stay Puft Marshmallow Man") and provides Murray with one of his best "sympathetic cynic" roles. The original movie, though not a classic of comedy, is nevertheless one of the more significant franchise-starters of 1980s cinema.