IRON MAN AND CAPTAIN AMERICA: HEROES UNITED (2014)

 

 

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

See, now THIS is the middling level of quality I expect from Marvel Animation product. IRON MAN AND HULK, the only other iteration to use the "Heroes United" rubric, was a pleasant surprise, getting some good mileage out of the familiar "heroes must work out their differences to defeat menace" trope. But possibly this worked because, even in the original comics, there hadn't been all that many character-encounters between the Armored Avenger and the Green Goliath. Possibly the writers were challenged somewhat by the breaking of new ground.

In contrast, there's not all that much one can do with the same plot when you combine Iron Man and Captain America, who in the comics have a history of strong alliance, even if neither of them have exactly been best buds at any time. Despite the script's attempts to make Cap a rule-follower and Iron Man a fly-by-the-seat pantser, the characters as portrayed don't really have any substantial differences. The live-action AVENGERS films of the MCU grafted a sort of automatic competitiveness between the two, and UNITED II is clearly riffing on that, though not with the same ideological rigidity seen in the MCU. Here the two heroes are at least seen to like and respect each other despite the competition, but not anything more interesting than that. Given that the two characters have rather disparate backgrounds, someone could have come up with a good "work out their differences" script. But this is not it. In fact, the producers even shoehorn the Hulk into the story in the last twenty minutes, which might be an appeal to those who find the two main heroes a bit too vanilla.

The villains raise other concerns. Whereas I complained that UNITED I dumped a few too many villains into the mix and muddied the story, here the viewer just gets two-- the Red Skull and his subordinate, the Taskmaster-- not to mention a small army of Skull-flunkies, that is. Given that the villains' plot is so rudimentary-- the Skull plans to use Captain America's blood to breed a new wave of Nazi soldier-soldiers-- the story might have benefited from the mastermind having a whole contingent of costumed servitors, more or less on the model of the "Skeleton Crew" stories of the nineties CAPTAIN AMERICA comic. Instead, the Skull gives orders, the Taskmaster fights the heroes while plotting to overthrow his boss, and the Skull outmaneuvers his minion. Big deal.

The Skull himself is a problematic villain. In the comics he's rarely been used well when not authored by Lee and Kirby, the two men who revived him from the dust of his Golden Age incarnation (wherein Kirby had illustrated the character though it's my understanding he did not technically create the crimson headed fiend). Possibly because the DVD is aimed at kids, there's almost nothing said about this Skull's politics, so he might as well be a standard non-political world-conqueror. Even the idea of his hijacking the super-soldier serum doesn't conjure with the Nazi fantasies of "the ubermensch." 

UNITED II is a very safe, very boring DTV, with just a handful of decent animated battles to redeem it.

THE MARVELS (2023)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

While watching THE MARVELS I had a couple of flashbacks, both resulting from my having grown up with Silver Age comics.

First, once I got a sense of the movie's plot, I started thinking, "what a DC Silver Age plotline to find in a Marvel movie." I seemed to be recalling some archaic WORLD'S FINEST plot (not yet pinned down) in which Superman, Batman and Robin faced some extraordinary menace whose proximity caused Superman's powers to go on the fritz somehow. That's what we get in MARVELS, in that the three protagonists-- Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris)-- get their powers "entangled" by the Menace of the Day.

Second, I also flashed back to 1969's issue #17 of Marvel's original CAPTAIN MARVEL comic. In that story, the hero got a makeover from his previous model, from which the 2019 CAPTAIN MARVEL derives a large part of its heroine's backstory. In issue #17, Original Marvel Captain Marvel acquires "nega-bands" which allow him to escape confinement in the Negative Zone and switch places with Earth-teen Rick Jones. Said "bands" play no part in the origin of Carol Marvel. But the basic idea of such wrist-band weapons had been worked into the origin of the Kamala Khan character in her 2022 series.

Now, the plot-thread dangled in MS. MARVEL comes to fruition in THE MARVELS, for Kamala only acquires one "quantum band" that she can use to become a superhero, while the other one is in the hands of "extraordinary menace" Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton). Dar-Benn, the current ruler of the Kree Empire (and based on a very minor Marvel character), undertakes a plan that requires the use of her single quantum band. Her activity sets up the basic Silver Age predicament of the heroic trio: that whenever any of them uses their light-powers, one of the heroines is liable to exchange physical space with one of the others. This situation, I admit, bears only a loose resemblance to the comic-book Captain Marvel switching molecules with Rick Jones, but I mention it as a possible influence on the script of THE MARVELS.

The main purpose of the body-switching schtick is very different from the comic book's purpose, of course. CAPTAIN MARVEL established that Carol Marvel had ties of friendship to Monica Rambeau when the latter was a child, though because of the various complications in Carol's life, she wasn't anywhere nearby when Monica gets transformed into a superhero with even MORE of an aversion to a code-name than Carol has. This transformation is shoehorned into the events of WANDAVISION, patently as a setup to the events of MARVELS. Teenaged Kamala Khan for her part has no previous association with either of these adult heroines, but she's a hardcore fan of the Captain Who Never Speaks Her Own Name. Thus Kamala's thrilled to get brought into the sphere of her heroine, even if it does involve the deaths of numerous alien people and the doom of Earth.

As it happens, Dar-Benn's evil plan also happens to deal with teleportation. In some previously unchronicled event, Carol Marvel destroyed the AI system that governed the Kree's home planet, ostensibly with the best of intentions. This action somehow caused the planet Hala to lose all of its natural resources. So Dar-Benn uses her special armband and various other elements of Kree technology (including a hammer-like weapon last seen in the hands of slain villain Ronan the Accuser) to steal air from one planet, water from another, and the sun itself from the last one. All are planets with which Carol has some relationship, the final planet being Earth. 

The whole "steal the elements" plot is extremely ordinary, and it's not helped by the fact that the character of Dar-Benn is an equally routine villain, thesped by an actress who possesses no screen presence. The body-switching of the three heroines works somewhat better, particularly in a big opening fight where the heroines keep switching places with one another while trying to defend Kamala's family from two Kree warriors. But the script isn't consistent about always having the teleportation-mojo activate. It might have been better had they advanced the notion that the power-use had to reach some critical level before the switch-magic activated. A worse use of the schtick occurs when Kamala disappears because of such a power-usage, and to get her back quickly Carol jets straight up into the sky. This results in her switching places with Kamala, who then falls toward Earth and is only barely saved by Monica.

Oh, and the alien Ferkins supply a sort of space-warp ability too. These feline-looking entities, also introduced in CAPTAIN MARVEL, can sprout tentacles from their mouths and seemingly devour people and things whole, though they can just as easily upchuck the same entities without harm afterward. I could have lived without them, though their presence does lead to the presence of one of the few decent songs in the movie's mediocre score.

Speaking of things not needed, Monica adds nothing significant to the story. When she first appeared in the 2019 movie, I didn't mind her getting name-checked, since in the comics she became "the Second Marvel Captain Marvel" for a decade or so. I don't know if the MCU Bible meant for their version of that character to become yet another superhero way back then, though obviously her 2021 transformation in WANDAVISION foregrounded that very intention. Maybe the Bible-writers had the notion that MARVELS would be much stronger as a trio of heroines. But Monica is just another in a long line of MCU heroes with no personality. There's a lame attempt to claim that Monica nurtures an irrational grudge against Carol, though that grudge has no impact on the narrative. Once or twice the Monica character is able to make arch comments on Carol that could never have come from Kamala, but this doesn't change the fact that her character is dull.

The Carol Danvers character is certainly somewhat improved from the previous film, in which I mentioned that she seemed to display no emotions save confusion and anger. But most of that dimensionality stems from her relationships with Kamala and with her supervisor Nick Fury, not her relationship with Monica. Kamala is without doubt the main source of humor in the film, and most of her jokes land pretty well. I can't help speculating that if the writers had omitted Monica, they could have built up some of the storylines originated in CAPTAIN MARVEL. After all, Carol was not defined entirely by her relationship to Monica and Monica's mother: she had some sort of Earth-life before getting transformed into a Kree warrior-woman. But the script keeps harping on the connection with Monica, even though there's a lot more dramatic potential in a heroine being confronted with a starry-eyed fangirl.

The fights and the big cataclysms generally look okay, so I won't be one of those fans who hates on director/co-writer Nia DeCosta simply because she didn't have much experience. I did think all the costumes of the alien races-- mainly the Kree and a weird Bollywood-like people-- were ugly, and I found it tedious that both races were multi-ethnic. Couldn't they all be blue or orange, and still be played by actors of differing ethnicities? 

Despite the unwelcome guest-appearance of Tessa Thompson's "King Valkyrie," the script, authored by three persons with female names, doesn't overdo the "girl boss" theme. There are no offensive reverse-racist comments, but that may be only because there are no major Male White Characters in the story. The transformation of the minor comics character Dar-Benn into a female does feel like an extra maneuver to pile on the XX factor, though. One of the main heroines apparently dies to save the Earth, but a mid-credits sequence not only establishes her survival, it ties into yet another presentiment of an "X-Men Universe" out there. Another sequence hints at a new incarnation of the Avengers, but given that in its opening weekend MARVELS has done very poorly, I'll be very surprised if those plans go through unaltered.

GOD RAIGA VS. KING OHGA (2019)

 

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

Yes, RAIGA VS. OHGA is the awful, bargain-basement streaming-show I watched some months back, that almost caused me to miss the pretty-decent kaiju film that started off the series, REIGO. 

Even though OHGA was made ten years after the other two films in this quasi-series, it looks like something a juvenile FX-expert, such as a young Jim Danforth, might have cobbled together in his garage. Both the puppetry and animated effects for the two battling monsters of the title are abominable.

Further, even though OHGA is, like RAIGA, a lame kaiju-comedy, at least RAIGA had some cute young ladies reciting silly dialogue. This time, what comedy there is is played out between the bumbling members of the Japan Defense Force and two American CIA agents dressed like the Blues Brothers. But it's not even comedy as such, just a lot of infantile horsing around.

This pitiable farce ends with the two title monsters getting slain by a bomb which also causes them to combine into a third form, while a fourth monster shows up to join the fun. Happily, there have been no sequels to this embarrassment, and IMDB claims that writer-director Hayashiya is now working on a project with two new monsters. I'd like to think it could only be an improvement, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

GOTHAM, SEASON 1 (2014-15)

 

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

The first season of GOTHAM could easily be seen as a Batman-centered version of SMALLVILLE, tracing the history of a hero in his formative years. Of course Clark Kent begins to manifest his full range of powers in his late teen years, while GOTHAM's Bruce Wayne is twelve years old when his parents are murdered. Like Teen Clark, Preteen Bruce begins to form a coterie around himself that includes many characters whom the comic-book hero met under very different circumstances. I should note that Christopher Nolan's successful BATMAN movie-trilogy had just ended in 2012, which may have encouraged Warner Brothers to seek a new venue for their Bat-mythos.

GOTHAM shows influence from both the Nolan films and from the dark, violent comics that became dominant from the 1980s and into the present. However, in its five year run the series duplicated a tendency in TV's previous 1966 Bat-series: to wit, both shows were generally at their best when they borrowed strongly from the comic book adventures of Batman, and did less well coming up with their own mythology.

As in many post-Frank Miller Bat-comics, Gotham City is a sewer of a city, where underworld bosses do what they want while most of the cops are paid off to look the other way. Then two significant events transpire within hours of each other. The parents of millionaire heir Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) are murdered by an unknown gunman, and Gotham recruit James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is assigned to the case, along with his newly assigned partner Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue). Gordon promises to Bruce that he will find the killer of the boy's parents, and he extends the same intensity to investigating all crimes that come under his scrutiny. This does not endear Gordon to his partner Bullock, to other cops, or the regular mobsters of Gotham.

Though most of the gangsters are ordinary criminals-- even new creation Fish Mooney (Jade Pinkett Smith), a schemer of operatic proportions-- the first season devotes considerable space to showing how many of the famous Bat-villains rise to prominence in Gotham's world of usually violent crime. Selina Kyle, the future Catwoman, is a 14-year-old street-thief who witnesses the killing of Bruce's parents and become involved with the young heir, his faithful butler Alfred (Sean Pertwee), and with the implacable Gordon. Penguin, rather than being a flamboyant gimmick-villain, combines the nature of a gangland snitch with an oily Uriah Heep personality, showing himself willing to commit any crime to ascend to crime-boss status. Edward Nygma, the future Riddler, is a pathologist working for Gotham's police force, and Poison Ivy is about the same age as Catwoman, also existing on the margins of civilized society.

As different as all of these characters are from their prototypes, they're generally powerful presences who interact in stimulating ways. Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) betrays his boss Fish Mooney but is saved from death by Gordon, bonding the two of them in ways that are not much to Gordon's liking. Selina (Camren Bicondova) and Bruce forge something of a friends-crushing-on-each-other relationship as Bruce begins his own private investigation of his parents' deaths. Nygma progresses from slightly offbeat pathologist with a penchant for riddles to a pathological killer. At the same time, all of their eccentric villainies play out against the backdrop of gangland struggles for power, constantly menacing the city's residents with new outbreaks of chaos.

The show's writers may have also followed SMALLVILLE in constructing various long-range plot-lines, many not resolved in Season One. At the same time, to allow for at least the illusion of closure, Gordon and Bullock are allowed to solve a handful of crimes, though the violence is so prevalent that these victories often seem hollow. There is a certain amount of humor, sometimes of the gallows variety, but romantic attachments, particularly in the life of Gordon, prove fragile. He's first seeing a young woman, Barbara Kean, who ends up becoming a menace, and at the end of the first season he's dating one Leslie Thompson (who in the comics becomes the go-to doctor for The Batman). Like most soap operas, the writers constantly keep emotions and events jacked up to Warp Eleven, so there are almost no quiet, naturalistic moments to speak of. 

Most of the original characters are of questionable value. Fish Mooney seems to have been intended to be a kick-ass criminal, but Smith's acting is so over the top that she's never believable. Barbara Kean, who may have borrowed both of her names from separate Bat-characters, goes much too quickly from a normal woman to an insane-o. Short-term villains like The Goat and the Balloon Man, while never as awful as the worst of the foes from '66 BATMAN, are generally forgettable.

In short, the first season is at its strongest in dramatic scenes between principals Bruce, Gordon, Selina, and Alfred. Penguin is an interesting variation on the original, in that the very first Penguin comics-story talks about his alienation due to his physical appearance, though almost every other appearance of the "Birdman Bandit" has been more comic in nature. The first season is also fairly restrained in terms of marvelous phenomena, which are mostly confined to bizarre chemical concoctions like the Scarecrow's fear gas. 

THE JADE FOX (1980)

 

 

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

There's a reason hardly anyone has reviewed this Taiwanese "gimmick-socky" online, because the way the script introduces characters makes it almost impossible to follow. I suppose the dubbing could be at fault but I have a feeling that director Kao Pao-Shu wasn't very invested in the material. 

I know that it's another Ming Dynasty fantasia, in which various factions are struggling for power when a new heir ascends to the imperial throne. The main menace to the country is a female martial artist, Shu Shen (director Kao) who maintains her own estate with numerous acolytes. The one online review says that Lin (Lo Lieh) is one of her allies and that they're trying to steal a vital map from the noble highwayman Jade Fox (Tien Peng). Somehow a female martial artist, Zheng (Lung Chung-erh), gets mixed up with these characters, and she's got some little boy following her around, though I couldn't tell if they were related or if she'd informally adopted him. There are a lot of energetic fights, particularly with Zheng, which are the only reason to watch, though no single fight is a standout. As for the gimmicks, there are a few items like poison gas sprays but the main device is seen both at the beginning and end, in that Shu has a special palanquin she rides in that can sprout spikes and iron cage-bars.

I suppose Jade Fox is the hero but both Tien Peng and Lo Lieh are dull, which is really a rare thing for Lo Lieh. Lung Chung-erh's lively kung fu is the main attraction, though her character is wildly inconsistent. Probably FOX is most significant for being one of the few female-directed chopsockies. Kao Pao-Shu has a long list of acting credits going back to the 1950s, and I suspect she got into kung fu films as a latter-day career move. Of the eleven movies she directed, I did see one other, a Hsu Feng vehicle called WIN THEM ALL, and since I didn't think that was hard to follow, I tend to think that FOX was just another tossed-together trifle

I COME IN PEACE (1990)

 

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

I assume that Dolph Lundgren's blossoming stardom led to I COME IN PEACE getting theatrical release, even though in many ways it seems like a cookie-cutter "cops vs. alien marauder" concept. I say "seems" since PEACE-- sometimes appearing under the bland re-titling "Dark Angel"-- is really fairly clever for a Big Noisy Action Film. Possibly the clever touches stem from the co-scripting of David Koepp, who would go on to greater fame with the 2002 SPIDER-MAN and the 2008 Indiana Jones comeback.

Jack Caine (Lundgren) is busy trying to root out a Houston drug cartel known as "the White Boys." As triggering as the name would be today, the vague connotation seems to be that these drug-lords are all upscale criminals, who wear suits and ties as they kill people-- including Caine's partner. Caine devotes himself to finding the killers, though his project is complicated by the fact that several of the gangsters are killed by some mysterious weapon.

Unlike Caine, the audience gets to see that the gangster-killer is Talec (Matthias Hues), a hulking, red-eyed alien armed with a ray-gun and a flying discus weapon much like Xena's later "chakram." Talec steals a shipment of heroin from the White Boys and then begins going around seizing Earth-dwellers, into whom he injects the drug. Talec then harvests endorphins from the bodies of his victims, with the intention of collecting a huge stock before he returns to his extraterrestrial domain. The audience also sees a second alien, a star-cop named Azeck, trying to capture Talec, but without success.

Caine then receives some unwanted assistance from a by-the-book FBI agent, Arwood Smith (Brian Benben). Caine is assigned to team up with Smith on the investigation, and the two law officers spar for a good portion of the film on procedural issues, though Caine usually wins, partly because he recommends following his "instincts" rather than being guided by regulations. Caine is naturally the one who becomes increasingly convinced that the perp has some sort of technology unavailable to regular humanity, while Smith plays the doubting Thomas. However, though Smith is usually the butt of jokes, he's also seen to be a tough and resourceful officer despite being a head or more shorter than his "partner." Caine and Smith get close to the truth-- particularly when a wounded Azeck appears to explain Talec's modus operandi, prior to Azeck disintegrating his way out of the picture-- but it's just at the point that their superiors start trying to shut them down.

Despite some interference from intelligence agents wanting to scarf some alien tech, the main battle is primarily between Caine and Talec, with occasional help from Smith and Caine's girlfriend. One of the amusements of PEACE is that the hulking Hues is shot to look bigger than Dolph Lundgren (the two were both 6'5", though Hues was an amped-up bodybuilder), much the same way Lundgren towered over Stallone in ROCKY IV. The title arises from a nonsense-phrase that Talec utters before he kills his victims-- suggesting that he doesn't actually know what "I come in peace" connotes-- though it leads to one of the nineties' best action-movie comebacks when Caine replies, "And you can go in pieces, asshole!"

HONOR ROLL #213

 MATTHIAS HUES comes in peace and goes in pieces.

Don't go for any rides in the palanquin of KAO PAO-SHU.

Since the Bruce Wayne of GOTHAM was too young to growl properly, BEN MCKENZIE did the gravelly Bat-voice in his stead.

OHGA Boogie Woogie.

THE MARVELS might have been half decent had it not been tied to the millstone known as TEYONAH PARRIS.

I liked the cartoon RED SKULL better than that of Hugo Weaving.

DAREDEVIL (2003)

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

Moviemaking is such a complex process that almost every film ever made represents at least one "road not taken." The 2003 DAREDEVIL, written and directed by Mark Stephen Johnson, probably never had any commercial alternative but to emulate the celebrated run of Frank Miller on the Marvel comic. But, as I'll note at review's end, the biggest road not taken was not so much Johnson's strategy of adaptation as the way his approach became sidelined in the 21st century's development of big-budget superhero films.

When I saw the film in theatrical release, I found that it compromised the Miller material by trying to cram too many developments into a movie of about 100 minutes. (A later-released "director's cut" was no improvement since it became bogged down in a side-plot, and so my review is only of the theatrical release.) On my recent re-watch, though, I found that Johnson had managed to give his version into a basic "hero's journey" structure, which, if not blindingly original, showed a better grasp of superheroes than many later productions.

In this film, the journey of blind lawyer Matt Murdock, a.k.a. the athletic Daredevil (Ben Affleck), progresses from the state of an unhappy, lonely vigilante to the ethos of a protective "guardian devil" of New York City. The psychology of the principal characters is never as elaborate as that of Miller, but Johnson does appreciate some of the darker undercurrents of the hero. Like Bruce Wayne reacting to the deaths of his parents, Daredevil fights crime in order to master the environment of evil which brought about the death of his boxer-father. To be sure, Johnson sets up his hero with the possibility of finding a specific killer, but this approach is dropped in favor of a more generalized crusade against crime. (This wouldn't be so much of a problem had the movie not ended with a showdown between the hero and the killer of his father.) Nevertheless, the blind lawyer-- who is capable of amazing athletic feats thanks to his super-senses-- doesn't get much satisfaction out of his crusade. The audience doesn't know how long Daredevil has been pursuing vengeance in the city, where most residents consider him a myth. However, the hero is seen as willing to kill for justice, or at least to let evildoers be slain by circumstance, as when he fails to rescue a rapist from the path of a subway train.

Murdock's conversations with his priest (with a name like Murdock, could the hero be other than Irish Catholic?) and his lawyer-partner Foggy Nelson (Jon Favreau) reveal his guilty feelings about continuing his campaign. He wants to avenge his father's death, but he seems to have no future, particularly with women in his life.

Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner) changes that. In the comics this somewhat murky heroine has an involved Freudian character arc that barely exists in Johnson's script, and she and Matt Murdock meet in college, Johnson understandably brings Elektra-- the martially trained daughter of a rich Greek businessman-- into Murdock's life at a time when he needs a breath of fresh air. Murdock and Elektra "meet violent" by having an impromptu hand-to-hand martial match on a kids' playground, but in no time they've graduated to passionate lovers after one or two dates. 

In the comics Elektra's father is a diplomat, which has some impact on her becoming skilled in martial arts. But here Dad is doing dirty business with the Kingpin of Crime (Michael Clarke Duncan), thus drawing a rough parallel to Murdock's father, who became entangled in criminal enterprises. When Natchios tries to withdraw, Kingpin decides-- rather vindictively for a crime-boss supposedly motivated by "business"-- to terminate both Natchios and his daughter. The crime-lord calls in the services of Bullseye (Colin Farrell), an assassin who kills his prey with the use of skillfully thrown objects, such as shurkiens and razor-edged cards.

Bullseye's assassination attempt succeeds with the elder Natchios, but Elektra survives. The bereaved woman doesn't see Bullseye, only Daredevil, who attempted to block Bullseye's murderous intentions. As a result of this rather chock-a-block encounter, Elektra wants to kill the red-suited adventurer for having slain her father, while Bullseye wants Daredevil dead for having caused him to "miss." This leads to a triptych of climactic battles: Elektra against Daredevil, Bullseye against Elektra (with fatal results for the latter), and Daredevil against Bullseye. For a cherry on top, Bullseye also subdues the Kingpin but doesn't kill the crime-lord when he has the chance, which is clearly meant to signal a newfound devotion to higher justice over vengeance. Thus, even though Daredevil has loved and lost, he's a more complete person than he was before.

Johnson plays up romance more than the comics did, and so that character-arc becomes rushed due to time constraints. Still, both the playground-fight and an evocative moment where Murdock "sees" Elektra through the medium of falling rain are nicely executed. Because Elektra's arc is so adumbrated, there doesn't seem much of a reason for her to dress up in a costume to attack the hero, nor is there any explanation as to why she wields a pair of sais as her chosen weapons. The fight-scenes in general are good but never quite great.

Additionally, Garner does the athletic performance well, but her take on the character is mixed at best. Bullseye in contrast is both well conceived and well acted. Instead of being an ice-cold killer as in the comics, Bullseye is amusingly twitchy in his ability to be annoyed by any small grievance, and Farrell, employing his own Irish accent, makes the character memorable even without a standard costume. Duncan is physically imposing but his character is underwritten. Favreau supplies excellent comic relief, and allegedly he later got the job of directing the 2008 IRON MAN thanks to making contact here with co-producer Kevin Feige. (The latter, prior to his regular status with the MCU, seems to have been something of a jobber with a specialty in superhero-films throughout the early 21st century.) Finally, Affleck has many good moments as the guilt-obsessed crusader, though there are also some scenes where the actor seems to be phoning things in. 

Though DAREDEVIL is far from a great superhero film, it shows a strong concern for capturing the essence of the comic-character's appeal and translating it into film. Feige defended the film in its day, but once IRON MAN took off, he evidently decided that his "road" from then on would be to follow a much lighter, less substantive view of superhero dynamics-- to say nothing of his increasing tendency for political virtue signaling. Since DAREDEVIL was only a modest success, making back just twice its budget, it's understandable that it didn't offer filmmakers a formula for financial success. But I still prefer the film to many of those that followed.

LUPIN III: PRISON OF THE PAST (2019)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

This movie-length LUPIN TV special has very little of the over-the-top comedy seen in the more extravagant entries. Thus I label PRISON an "adventure" rather than a "comedy," the term I applied to (for instance) the loony-tunes MYSTERY OF MAMO. In fact, PRISON's script barely ever takes advantage of the fact that its characters are cartoons, and with minor alterations could have been turned into a heist film starring living actors.

After Lupin and his pals once again twist Zenigata's tail in a teaser-story, Lupin becomes intrigued by a news-story about Finnegan, a "gentleman-thief" almost as famous as Lupin is. Finnegan is due to be executed soon at a maximum-security prison in the small European kingdom of Dorrente. Lupin suggests to Jigen and Goemon that if they liberate Finnegan, he can reward them with access to the loot from his numerous robberies. However, a lot of other crooks descend upon the Dorrente prison with the same idea in mind, and some are in league with the always chimerical Fujiko. In fact, one of them, a loudmouth named Dynamite Joe, owes Finnegan a debt, and so does the usually reticent Jigen.

The script leads the audience into thinking that the primary antagonists will be the prison's warden Lorenza and her mysterious masked swordsman-aide, name of Verte. But in a novel twist, it's the man the thieves came to rescue who's calling the shots from his prison cell. Not only does Finnegan have the warden and her aide under his thumb, thanks to having Dorrente's king in custody, he's actually selling other prisoners to arms-dealers and oligarchs, who will pump them for information about their own ill gotten gains. 

Fujiko eventually joins the side of the other accidental altruists, though the martially skilled Lorenza has more to do in helping Lupin's mob thwart Finnegan. Verte for his part participates in a subplot with Goemon to answer a question I'm not sure anyone posed before: why does a samurai, possessed of near-supernatural sword-skill, choose to hang out with professional thieves, even if they are great exemplars of their craft? Oh, and to further complicate all the prison-shenanigans, Zenigata and his assistant Yatagarasu are obliged to cast lots with the Lupin gang to survive the chaos.

Though PRISON boasts fewer SF-devices than many other LUPIN-entries, the prison itself has a fair share of marvelous tech-devices, not least a handful of guard-robots. And Finnegan's betrayal of his fellow crooks solves Jigen's dilemma of owing him for past favors, proving that sometimes there can be honor among thieves.

TIME RUNNER (1993)

 

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

Despite a title connoting action, TIME RUNNER is one of the dullest adventure-flicks I've ever encountered. It even beats out the previous record-holder, TERMINATION MAN. 

I'm sure the three writers are mostly responsible for this state of affairs, churning out a tired, predictable script about future-warrior Michael Raynor (Mark Hammill), traveling back to his own birth-year to prevent an alien invasion in his year of 2022. He goes on the run from Earth-authorities, trying to prevent the invasion (I think) by rooting out alien spies who were hanging around the US in 1992. In fact, one such spy is a major US senator (Brion James), whose last name happens to be "alien" spelled backwards.

There's some rigamarole about how the aliens want to eliminate Raynor by finding him when his younger self is still in his mother's womb awaiting birth. But why bother? Raynor has a few fighting-and-shooting scenes, but he doesn't have any master plan by which he can permanently foil the invaders. It looks like the ETs and their human pawns could just end the hero's existence by getting a good shot at him.

Brion James at least gets to chew some scenery, while poor Rae Dawn Chong has another nothing support role. Director Michael Mazo brings no gusto whatever to any of the action scenes, but a few years earlier he'd helmed both of the looney Canuck EMPIRE OF ASH flicks, and a couple of years later, he directed a competent if unexceptional "Die Hard" rip called CRACKERJACK. So maybe he made a lackluster movie because there was nothing he could do with a waste-of-time script. 

The best thing connected to this movie was a pithy review-comment by Michael "PSYCHOTRONIC" Weldon, where he said succinctly, "Mark Hamill! Fire your agent!"

TOTALLY SPIES!: THE MOVIE (2009)

 

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

One year before Disney issued its "high school spy-girl" TV series KIM POSSIBLE, Television Francaise got there first with the antic adventures of Alex, Sam and Clover in TOTALLY SPIES. When the French series reached American shores in translated form, it enjoyed a good measure of popularity. Allegedly the show still may come out with more episodes, but in 2009 the studio released this movie, which serves as something of an origin for the comic spy-girls.

The three teen girls don't know each other as they're due to enter their freshman years at a Beverly Hills high school. However, they just happen to cross paths in a shopping mall when the super-secret agency WOOHP decides that the three untrained teens need to have their superspy potential tested. Without even intending to audition, Sam, Clover and Alex pass the test, which involves the girls having to "log roll" atop a colossal sushi roll.

WOOHP commander Jerry Lewis, an older balding man, strongarms the teens into accepting membership in the agency, which includes their getting trained in martial arts and donning colorful spandex uniforms. Jerry alludes to a mission involving "mysterious disappearances," but the script spends over half an hour acclimatizing the young women to their double life as superspies and as high school freshmen. The good girls have their first run-in with "mean girl" Mandy, their continuing school nemesis from the series. The heroines also meet a domineering principal, Mrs. Skritch, who harasses the girls but must be written out at the movie's end because she's not in the series proper. (Skritch does contribute to one of the few funny high-school jokes, when the girls avoid her while dancing to "Walk Like an Egyptian.") 

Finally the main plot gets going, and it concerns a mysterious mastermind who is brainwashing young people with a device called "the Fabulizer." The spy girls track their enemy to his orbiting space station and learn that the evildoer is failed fashion-model Fabu, who plans to eliminate most of Earth's population to promote his "fashion paradise" of brainwashed subjects. The girls get initially trounced by Fabu's henchman Yuri and captured. A male WOOHP agent also sneaks aboard the satellite, but he's willing to let the girls go hang so that he can get the credit for taking down the mastermind. However, in a surprising development, wimpy looking Fabu outfights the WOOHP agent. However, the teen spies break free, clobber both Yuri and Fabu, and save the world before returning to their usual school routine.

I grade the mythicity in SPIES "fair" just because the writers keep the silly situations focused on the fads of 21st-century youth culture. A fair number of jokes land, and the animation is colorful and lively given its TV-level origins, so SPIES is worth a look if one is in the mood for this sort of farce. 

SCOOBY DOO / WWE: WRESTLEMANIA MYSTERY (2014)

 

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


This, the twenty-second direct-to-video "Scooby Doo" film, is one of many such films in which the cartoon characters encountered fictionalized versions of real-world celebrities: the next year would also see a crossover with KISS, who in that film may or may not be superheroes.

As is usually the case in such films, one or more of the regular characters are suddenly revealed to be avid fans of the visiting celebrity or celebrities. Unsurprisingly, WRESTLEMANIA posits that Shaggy and Scooby are diehard fans of WWE wrestling, and so are in hog-heaven when events take the Scooby Gang to a major bout in "WWE City." Over a half dozen real-life celebrity wrestlers-- John Cena, Triple H, Kane-- voice the cartoon versions of themselves, as does the WWE's famed emcee/promoter Vince McMahon. The gang's visit to WWE City is very close to being a movie-long commercial for the ostensible virtues of WWE in particular and big-time wrestling in general. Initially only Shaggy and Scooby are devotees, but Daphne is soon converted to wrestling-fandom by John Cena's manly muscles, and even rational Velma gets into the sport. Fred, while diffident about Daphne's affections for Cena, remains a good enough sport to speak no discouraging word.

What saves WRESTLEMANIA from being nothing but an extended ad is the movie's monster, the fearsome Ghost Bear. While no one who's seen a Scooby Doo flick expects anything but the usual hokey resolution, the script and the animation devote some time to building the backstory of the ursine menace. Said backstory even includes ties the Bear in with the luchadore ancestor of a current WWE fighter, Sin Cara, which to my mind was an attempt to tie in modern glamour-wrestling with the thrills and spills of the Mexican wrestlers-- to say nothing of superhero wrestlers like Santo and the Blue Demon. Further, while many Scooby-pics have the juvenile heroes chased around by some counterfeit terror, WRESTLEMANIA has the gang pursued by the Bear into a system of caves under the city, and the flight is actually choreographed with some attention to making it fairly scary.

Like the KISS crossover, this one too ends in the combative mode, as the Ghost Bear is defeated in the ring by several WWE wrestlers. For that matter, in a development similar to one in 2009's SCOOBY DOO AND THE SAMURAI SWORD, the physically incompetent Great Dane gets a sort of power-boost, so that Scooby Doo too is able to take part in the Ghost Bear's defeat. But for the same reasons I discussed in SAMURAI SWORD, I regard Scooby's power-boost as atypical for his normal modus vivendi.

SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS (1989)

 

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

Luigi Cozzi might never have made a really good movie in his long career, but give him credit: he always seemed to be TRYING to entertain, rather than just cranking out routine potboilers.

SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS is slapdash, yet not routine. There's just one mythic thread in the story that allows me to rate its mythicity as "fair," but SEVEN's main appeal for most viewers will be its over-the-top approach to the swashbuckling tropes of Arabian Nights movies, borrowing from 1940's THIEF OF BAGDAD and 1958's THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, though the main influence is Cozzi's earlier movie ADVENTURES OF HERCULES, one of two films he did with actor Lou Ferrigno, who also plays Sinbad here. It's because of the borrowing from ADVENTURES that I call SEVEN a Cozzi movie. He wrote the script with two other credited writers and was supposed to direct the project as well. But due to scheduling conflicts, Enzo G. Castellari (a director better known for war movies and westerns than for fantasies) helmed SEVEN, and Cozzi was later enlisted to edit the raw footage into the surviving movie.

The trope dominating SEVEN is what I called, in my ADVENTURES review, the "jigsaw quest," wherein something important is broken into two or more segments, with the result that the protagonists must exert themselves to assembling all the pieces again. However, it's impossible to judge from the English dub of SEVEN whether the original Italian script was any better in terms of explication. Over the course of the movie, I just barely cobbled together the idea that in Sinbad's time the city of Basra is a paradise without crime or evil, *possibly* due to its possession of the five mystic Gems of Basra. The evil vizier Jaffar (John Steiner), in addition to swiping his name from the villain of the 1940 THIEF, plans to gain control of the gems and use them to conquer the world. But Jaffar can only do this-- I think-- if he can cause the Princess of Basra Alina (Alessandra Martines) to become his willing bride, since she apparently has some unspecified connection to the gems. To this end Jaffar uses his magic to brainwash the King of Basra and all the soldiers of the city, and then he sticks Alina in a brainwashing machine that looks like a huge blood-draining device. Doesn't brainwashing cancel out the "willing bride" part? Oh well, this is just Cozzi swiping wildly from the part of the 1940 THIEF in which 1940 Jaffar uses a magic rose to make a princess fall for him-- though that evildoer at least really loves the young woman he's endeavoring to seduce.

But Alina's will can't be broken by the machine because she nurtures an undying love for her distant swain, Prince Ali (whose name is oddly similar to her own). Moreover, she knows that Ali is on his way back to Basra alongside the musclebound captain of a sailing ship, Sinbad (Ferrigno) and his merry crew, which includes a dwarf, a Viking, and a Japanese samurai who quotes Confucius at one point. When these heroes arrive in Basra, Sinbad goes alone to the royal palace, where Jaffar traps him in a pit of snakes. A little later Jaffar's guards capture the other crew-members and consign them to a torture chamber.

The inevitable escape of the heroes show some cool touches of originality. Sinbad, instead of fighting the snakes, talks to them, emphathizing with their lot in life under such a cruel master, and-- they allow him to make a rope of their bodies so he can climb out of the pit! You won't see anything like that in a Syfy fantasy film. Then, when Sinbad barrels into the torture chamber to save his friends, there's a cool muscle-tussle in which a guard, every bit as beefy as Ferrigno, wraps a chain around Sinbad's chest and tries to crush him. All of the bad guards end up in a pool of piranhas (guess they weren't any of the brainwashed victims?) and the heroes retreat from Basra in their sailinig-ship.

Jaffar sends skull-headed warriors to attack the ship, and of course the warriors repulse the attack. But the fiend's other action is more problematic. In theory he should want to keep the mystic Gems of Basra close to the palace, in case he's able to break Alina's will. Instead, he decides he will send four of the five gems (I think either the original writers or the translators lost count) flying off to  dangerous areas of the world. so that Sinbad and company will get destroyed by various perils. (A surviving still shows Jaffar conferring with one of the menaces, as if he personally teleported himself to that locale to arrange things.)

The pattern here is the same as in ADVENTURES OF HERCULES: when the heroes defeat a monster, they harvest one of the gems from him/her/it. The story is rendered somewhat incoherent in that for some reason Jaffar magicks Sinbad's crew back to their ship and out to sea, so that Sinbad's last couple of endeavors are solo missions. (I assume the idea about Jaffar's intervention was a belated, flimsy justification for the crew having disappeared from a large part of the movie.) Most of the monsters-- a stone sentinel, ghost knights-- are dull, and the only one that's a little interesting is an adventure with some island-dwelling Amazons. To be sure, they're not very impressive women warriors, since they capture the crew with traps, while their queen Farida (Melonee Rodgers, seen above) mesmerizes Sinbad with her hootchie-kootchie. It might have seemed more on point to have Ali tempted by Farida, since his resistance would have mirrored that of Alina. But the script never gives Ali even one strong moment, even when a minor character claims she intends to duel Ali, though no such duel transpires.

In his solo wanderings Sinbad makes two new allies, a tough girl named Kyra (Stefania Girolami) and her dotty wizard-dad. (Stephania shares her last name with Ennio Girolami, the guy playing the Viking, and both are allegedly the children of substitute director Castellari.) The wizard helps re-unite Sinbad and his crew, now possessed of all the mystic gems, so that they can launch a frontal assault on Jaffar. The sorcerer has one last card to play, conjuring a duplicate Sinbad to match biceps with the original. But of course the good guys win and Jaffar faces the fate of-- being forced to resign his position as vizier???

I don't know how seriously to take any of the writeups on the film. One makes it sound like Castellari produced a bunch of unusable raw footage, far more than needed for a feature film, and Cozzi was called upon to edit it. Another story is that SEVEN was supposed to be a four-part telefilm, which might explain Castellari having produced a huge amount of footage, but the story as it exists doesn't seem to have enough plot content for a serial work. 

Ferrigno doesn't produce any stellar acting, but he looks like he's having a good time, just because his hero can smile and crack bad jokes instead of just grimacing at the cameras. John Steiner may or may not have provided his own dubbing but he wins the Snidely Whiplash Award for turning up the acting-amps to Warp Eleven, making old Conrad Veidt seem positively subdued. A female muscle-star of sorts, Teagan Clive, appears only for a handful of scenes in which she provides Jaffar with someone to talk to, but she doesn't do anything more, much less getting into her promised duel with Prince Ali. But though Teagan doesn't get to show off her stuff, Martines, Girolami and Rodgers provide a nice sampling of pulchritude.

Lastly, despite all the supernatural wonders of SEVEN, in terms of phenomenality it falls into the domain of the uncanny, because the whole thing is a story told by a mother (horror actor Daria Nicolodi) to her little girl. This story-within-a-story probably started out as a shout-out to the original Arabian Nights, despite an utterly false claim in the movie's prologue that SEVEN is based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. But just as I esteem SEVEN slightly for its sloppy but colorful swipes, I have to give props to a prologue that would perpetrate such a hoax in the name of Poe, one of the great hoax-lovers in all Western literature.

HONOR ROLL #212

Evil wizard JOHN STEINER cranks up the villainy to Warp Eleven.

The grapplers of THE WWE must grapple with getting second billing to a bunch of meddling kids.

ALEX, CLOVER AND SAM-- the Early Years.

In place of Chewbacca, this time the only sidekick Hammill gets is RAE DAWN CHONG.

You risk an explosion if you tell DYNAMITE JOE he has the same name as an obscure American comics-character.

COLIN FARRELL may not strike a total bullseye with Bullseye, but he's more on target than most MCU villains.

THE "NEUTRON THE ATOMIC SUPERMAN" SERIES (1960-1965)

 

PHENOMENALITY: (1-3)*marvelous,* (4-5)*uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

Since the majority of these lucha-flicks have mad science of some sort, I'm assigning them the cosmological function. I do so with some reservations, since I only watched two English-language versions of the five Neutron films, while the other three were in their makers' native language of espanol.

I did see all five in dubbed-English versions way back in the 1960s. But while there are a lot of dubbed or subbed Santo movies floating around, the Neutron dubs seem more elusive. That said, I got the urge to re-visit the series after reviewing EL ASESINO INVISIBLE, which in the U.S. was falsely marketed as being a Neutron flick, though the superhero-wrestler of ASESINO didn't even look like "el enmascarado negro." At first I thought I might just review the two dubbed versions available and leave the others till later. But frankly, the third one in particular seemed so slipshod that I doubted this series would ever get circulated in full. So I'm including my impressions of the three undubbed Neutrons.

The first three films in the series are all directed and co-written by Frederico Curiel, whose most enduring credit may his screenplay for 1962's THE BRAINIAC, a slow-moving horror movie with a visually impressive monster. Neutron the Atomic Superman (who despite his hyperbolic title is just a tough guy) is similarly the best thing about his films, or rather his outfit is. He wears a black mask, gloves and trousers, leaving his arms and hairy torso bare. I don't think performer Wolf Ruvinskis, a Latvian immigrant to Mexico, was especially good in the stunt department, but he certainly looks tough as he wades into four or five guys at a time.

The three Curiel flicks follow a rigid template that might have been partly borrowed from the 1938 serial THE LONE RANGER. In that chapterplay, five different stalwarts are suspected of being the Masked Man, and the serial concludes with an unmasking once the trouble is over. All three Curiel scripts focus on a lovely young woman named Nora (Rosita Arenas) and three young swains who all court her but are good friends with one another. The first film, NEUTRON THE BLACK MASK, may be suggesting that one of the three men is Neutron, who has no origin and has already set up shop as local superhero before the movie starts. I can't be sure, though, since this was one of the non-English flicks. In addition to this possible "who's-the-hero" schtick, Curiel burns up time with a lot of talky scenes and night-club performances, since Nora happens to be a professional singer. Not only has Neutron been around for a time, so has his arch-nemesis Doctor Caronte, a mad scientist who dresses all in white in contrast to Neutron's ebony attire. Caronte lusts to obtain the secret of the "neutron bomb," which may or may not have something to do with his enemy's cognomen. Unlike most mad scientists, Caronte can actually hold his own against his more martial opponent, and on top of that he has a cackling dwarf assistant and a small army of shaggy-haired zombies. Aside from all this potential, though, Caronte still seems like a weenie.

Possibly the first film didn't do that well, since it was another two years before the producers made the follow-up in 1962. However, after that a Neutron movie came out annually for the next three years. NEUTRON VS. THE DEATH ROBOTS, which I saw dubbed, recycles most of the same tropes of the first film. The "robots" of the title are just a new collection of Doctor Caronte's zombies, and although Caronte has his best fight with Neutron here, overall ROBOTS is pretty dull. Nora, the boys and the night-club performers all put in their time once again.

I saw the last Curiel film, NEUTRON VS. THE AMAZING DOCTOR CARONTE in a dubbed form, but damned if it wasn't harder to follow than any of the undubbed versions! I think Caronte discovers some sort of magic spell by which he can transfer his mind into the body of another scientist, possibly with the object of getting hold of the neutron bomb formula. Neutron appears to get killed, but we find out later that Caronte's holding him prisoner. Another guy, I think one of the three swains, dons Caronte's costume and fights brain-swapped Caronte. 

Nora and her boyfriends go bye-bye for the fourth film, NEUTRON VS. THE MANIAC though we still get night-club performances for some reason. Inheriting the director's chair is one Alfredo B. Crevenna, a journeyman with an impressive sixty-year career that includes a number of recognizable Mex-horror films and the last two Santo entries. Though there are still a number of talky scenes, Crevenna is far Curiel's superior in terms of staging dramatic scenes, and Neutron gets three solid fights while he's trying to stop a weird slasher-killer. This was undubbed, but I got the impression that the slasher is a put-up job by a schemer and his henchmen. No mad science this time, but I can't call this one psychological since I didn't follow the dialogue. Beauties Gina Romand and Rita Macedo prove easy on the eyes, and Chucho Salinas, who played the comic relief in the first two Luchadoras films, essays a near-identical role here. Measured though the choice may be, MANIAC is the best of this quintet.

The final film in the series, NEUTRON BATTLES THE KARATE ASSASSINS, is again directed by Crevenna, though KARATE is not as visually distinctive as MANIAC. Like MANIAC the final Neutron eschews a lot of wild scientific inventions; this time the crusader faces a band of assassins who only execute their victims with karate blows (hence, conforming to the "weird society" trope). In addition to the script reverting to too much talk and not enough action, with or without Neutron, there are also too many scenes in what I guess are supposed to be dojos, though they just look like regular boxing gyms. Chucho Salinas plays the same comic relief as in MANIAC, while familiar faces Ariadne Welter and German Robles do their best to add a little charm to the tedious proceedings. 

Maybe because Neutron's outfit makes him look like "rough trade," the producers might have done better to involve him in darker, more violent adventures. As it is, he just comes off as a rather colorless Santo imitator. 

ELECTRA ONE (1967)

 

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


Though I enjoy Eurospy flicks, they tend to be undistinguished visually. Thus I was rather surprised when I saw director Alfonso Balcazar's ELECTRA ONE making far more use of artful close-ups to create his Bond-on-a-budget.

Balcazar did most of his directorial work on spaghetti westerns, at least one of which was a collaboration with ELECTRA'S central actor George Martin. Martin never made another Eurospy film, which is a minor shame, since he projected a little more charming insouciance than most actors in similar roles. His character is a little different, too, for he's not a spy, but an international thief known as "the Lynx" (though he goes by the single name "Gary" during mundane encounters). Moreover, he actually has a romantic arc atypical of Bond-imitators.

ELECTRA ONE is named for its villain, though there's no explanation as to why a middle-aged schemer would use a code-name modeled on an archaic Greek heroine. The film opens by quickly establishes the nature of the villain's menace: he uses an insidious formula to make a U.S. military officer go berserk and almost trigger a nuclear-missile launch. Many Eurospy films toss out some devilish device or fiendish formula to motivate the hero against the villains, and then they proceed to forget about it. Some films, like THE SPY WHO LOVED FLOWERS, content themselves with just talking about the gizmo. ELECTRA ONE's opening at least establishes the possible peril of the dingus, even if most of the rest of the film has the hero chasing around after an antidote.

While the Lynx is performing a heist-job, he crosses paths with the henchmen (and one henchwoman, the gorgeous Rosalba Neri) of Electra. They've killed the scientist who concocted the antidote, but his lovely female assistant Monica (Vivi Bach) has the formula with her. Gary the Lynx gets hold of the formula and tries to get as many bidders as possible to pony up for it. However, Gary's also more than a little smitten with Monica, so that he ends up defending the formula against Electra instead of merely turning it over to the highest bidder.

The action is nicely handled, but there are no gadgets aside from the insanity-formula and its antidote, though Electra does have a secret base. Neri, despite her status then as a prime Euro-babe,  doesn't get to do much of anything.

BUNRAKU (2010)

 

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

  


BUNRAKU exists in a vague future society poised between the culture of the American Old West and samurai-era Japan.  Unlike many future worlds in the MAD MAX vein, where technology has been wiped out, the opening voiceover explains in quasi-mystical terms that in keeping with cosmic verities the world just finally gave up all firearms and embraced only non-technological weapons: swords, arrows, and a few other martial-arts devices.  And yet the inhabitants of this "East/Westworld" do have access to other types of technology, as when the villain Nicola rigs a card-game by using remote devices to spy upon the cards held by his opponents.

The best way to explain the sociological matrix of BUNRAKU might be to say that it's KILL BILL as written by the Coen Brothers.  The main theme is still vengeance, not of one character but two: the nameless western boxer "Drifter" (Josh Hartnett) and the samurai warrior Yoshi (Gackt), who seek redress of their grievances against Nicola (Ron Perlman).  However, as the two heroes are guided by a helper-ally (bartender Woody Harrelson) in their battles against Nicola's horde of assassins and henchmen, some if not all of the characters frequently spout rather windy bits of philosophy, meant to imitate the soulfulness of samurai films and spaghetti westerns.  In this respect writer-director Guy Moshe is not successful: while Tarantino brought his own weird perspective and sense of humor to the genre-remixings of KILL BILL, Moshe's "deep thoughts" on topics like "the destiny of a warrior" never seem more than pedestrian.

That said, BUNRAKU is still a good action-movie mashup.  While the fight-sequences aren't quite bracing enough to turn Jet Li or Jason Statham green with envy, the choreography is better than average and things are never allowed to get dull-- except maybe when Demi Moore, playing Nicola's pregnant concubine, is on the screen; try as she might, Moore can't do anything with her marginal and forgettable character.  As with many "male bonding" films the unison of Yoshi and the Drifter very nearly takes precedence over their many colorful fights with Nicola's men, though on occasion director Moshe allows certain plot-contrivances to come about simply because it suits his humor, rather than any logic.

Perhaps the film's most amusing genre-commenting moment appears when the bartender attempts to illustrate his concept of the hero's journey to the Drifter by essentially retelling the origin of Marvel Comics' Spider-Man using a pop-up book.  No character who actually resembles Spider-Man ever makes an appearance, of course, but there is a dead ringer for J. Jonah Jameson.  It's hard to hate a film that goes to that level of obscurity to stoke fannish flames.

ANTHAR THE INVINCIBLE (1964)

 

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

Director Antonio Margheriti, often celebrated for his horror movies, didn't work on many peplum adventures. ANTHAR, given the irrelevant American title DEVIL OF THE DESERT AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES, is a largely ordinary example of this subgenre, though it does sport much better color photography than many such products from the subgenre's waning days.

Evil warlord Ganor is one of the more direct sword-and-sandal villains, for he and his warriors simply attack Baghdad, kill its king, and announce that they're the new bosses in town. Ganor imprisons the king's son as a possible hostage to ensure good behavior and tries to force the king's daughter Soraya (Michele "HATARI" Girardon) to marry him to cement his claim to the throne. Soraya jumps out a high window into a river that carries her away from the city.

Lean muscleman Anthar (Kirk Morris, who'd done a half dozen such movies previous to this) is fishing with his young mute friend, sometimes called "Mute," when the two spot the floating, unconscious form of Soraya. Having a hot princess fall into his lap instantly moves Anthar to revolutionary sympathies once he's heard her sad story. However, to provide the hero with an added complication, some slavers show up, knock out Anthar and spirit off Soraya.

The extra complications don't add much to the story, which might have been much improved with a little more focus on the romance of princess and commoner, since said romance eventually develops out of next to nothing. Eventually, when Anthar does rescue Soraya again, his next move is to try figuring out some way to rescue her brother and thus to lead a rebellion of loyalists. There's a quick scene of a messenger who reveals to hero and heroine that a rebellion has been in the works all the time that Anthar's been busy saving the hot princess, so that's a big help.

Despite the fine photography, Marghreriti doesn't offer many cool fight-scenes, one of the signal appeals of the subgenre. Anthar has just two decent strength-stunts, one of which consists of ripping a metal door off its hinges and tossing it at bad soldiers. Slightly better is a scene in which Anthar gets dumped into a narrow pit inhabited by a nasty rhinoceros. Of course if the beast simply charged the hero from a suitable distance, things would have been all over for Anthar. Fortunately the rhino just trundles slowly up to meet the strongman, who wrestles with him briefly before a friendly hand lifts Anthar clear.

The movie's one redeeming scene takes place in a maze of mirrors, which for unstated reasons Ganor has had constructed in the palace at Baghdad. Viewers get a quick object lesson of Ganor executing a nobody in the maze, and then at the climax it's Anthar's turn. The strongman simply smashes all the mirrors, and when Ganor is at his mercy, the coward falls out of a convenient window, saving the hero from bloodying his hands.

Morris is a personable non-entity, which is more than I can say for any other character in the movie, and the mirror maze is inventive. Otherwise, ANTHAR is a very "vincible" piece of formula entertainment.