BATMAN: THE DOOM THAT CAME TO GOTHAM (2023)

 

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

Most of the time, the mythicity of adaptations skews lower than that of the original narratives, usually because the adaptation omits details that contribute to the density of the symbolic discourse. But the team of writer Jim Kreig and director Sam Liu improved on a previous Mike Mignola graphic novel with their 2018 GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT project by adding more resonant details. And to some extent a new animation-team repeated the turnaround with an adaptation of yet another Mike Mignola work, albeit one where Mignola served only as one of the co-writers. DOOM THAT CAME TO GOTHAM (the name is a play on an H.P. Lovecraft short story) is only a modest improvement on the original graphic novel. The new DOOM is still at heart an awkward mashup between the Gothic frissons of the Bat-cosmos and the cosmic dread of Lovecraft. But the animators do a better job of making the characters seem more rounded, and they even gave the GN's derivative plot a little resonance with HPL's fears of his protagonists being overtaken by the banes of family heritage.

As in the novel, Gotham City has grown into a sprawling metropolis by the early 1920s. What no one knows-- not even rich magnate Bruce Wayne, who has only recently donned the Batman costume to guard Gotham from evil-- is that the city's origins drank of a poisoned well. Four wealthy industrialists-- two of whom were the fathers of both Wayne and his colleague Oliver Queen-- made a deal with a Lovecraftian "devil," and payment is coming due. Not that the deal seems entirely necessary to the plot. The coming calamity-- the advent of one of the irresistible Elder Gods into the Earth-realm-- is principally stage-managed by this universe's version of Ra's Al Ghul and his daughter Talia, who permit the god's entrance with the help of the usual Wicked Book. Still, the sins of the fathers of Wayne and Queen has some impact on the sons, and though the outcome is no different from what the GN depicts, the movie does a better job of communicating the sense of alienation, particularly thanks to an improved depiction of Oliver Queen.

Most of the crossover guest-stars, The Demon and various Bat-foes, are just par for the course, though the video improves on the book's "blink-and-you'll-miss-her" depiction of Poison Ivy. Talia gets more to do, in that for the first time known to me, the Daughter of the Demon pits her martial arts skills against the Cowled Crusader, in one of the better animated fights from the DCEU.

The biggest change, though, bears the greatest potential for controversy.

DOOM-graphic novel gives Bruce Wayne two wards, both of whom are congeners of Dick Grayson and Tim Drake, and both of whom provide the function of cannon fodder rather than of costumed sidekicks to the hero. DOOM-video keeps Grayson but adds two new characters, though both are "in name only" iterations of standard Bat-allies. One is called Sanjay Tawde-- a play on "Jason Todd"-- and he like the Grayson character is used simply as a Redshirt, which makes for minimal character development. The other is Kai Li Cain, whose name is an Asian-ized portmanteau of "Carrie Kelley" and "Cassandra Cain," gets to survive and take up the philanthropic mission of Bruce Wayne. I won't say Kai Li has a deep character arc, but she does provide the movie with a decent viewpoint character, giving an ordinary person's reactions to the situations into which her costumed guardian propels himself.

Now, I disagree with Sam Liu's rationale for including more POC characters, as recorded in this CinemaBlend article:

Jim Krieg, who’s sort of the head writer, I remember when we first sat down and we were looking at the script and like, ‘Ok, what are we going to do? How are we going to make this work?’… [Jim Krieg] was like, ‘This cast is all white male, for the most part.’ You have two semi-controversial, racist kind of depictions of Ra’s and Talia, but everybody else is white men basically. So how do we mix this up a little bit?…

I completely disagree that there's anything racist about Ra's Al Ghul and Talia, unless one takes the absurd POV that any negative depiction of any person of color must be racist. And I don't think it's improbable that an adventure taking place in an American boom-town founded by White guys should be problematic simply because the majority of the characters are White. But, even though I think the motivations of the animators were dubious, writer Jim Ricci did not make the mistake of importing current-day sentiments into the POC representation-character. Kai Li doesn't divulge many of her thoughts or any of her philosophy, but she's not whinging about the evils of colonialism while hypocritically lining up to get her share of the spoils. Kai Li seems reasonably grounded in the world of the early 20th century, rather than deeming herself superior to everything she encounters.So DOOM is one of the few times that a writer managed to take a character grounded in virtue signaling and to give that character a certain limited integrity.

BLINDMAN (1971)

 

 

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

Despite more lavish sets than the usual spaghetti western (thanks to some American investors) and the qualified benefit of Ringo Starr in a support role, BLINDMAN only received a brief run in American theaters. Presumably it didn't do all that much for star (and co-scripter) Tony Anthony, who had by 1971 managed to come out with three of the four "Stranger" features, nor for director Ferdinando Baldi, whose greatest fame came from his work on 1960's DAVID AND GOLIATH, though he'd work three more times with Anthony.

Despite a general ambivalence from online reviews, though, BLINDMAN is a cut above the usual spaghettis, to say nothing of Anthony's warmed-over "Man with No Name" schtick. One could easily claim that BLINDMAN is just a warmed -over "Zatoichi" story transplanted to the Old West, and indeed, the basic idea of the film doesn't lend itself either to good verisimilitude or good myth. In the Zatoichi movies, the filmmakers go to great pains to make it credible that a blind swordsman might be able to defeat a small gang of Edo-era opponents, particularly at night, given the fact that none of those opponents carry modern firearms. In contrast, there's no real attempt to convince audiences that the Blindman (never called anything else) can successfully navigate around towns he's never visited before-- at least, not without the help of Boss, his "seeing-eye horse." There are a few times where one's supposed to buy that Blindman can shoot down enemies by hearing their movements, but the noisiness of firearms makes such an ability very hard to sell. The opening sequence practically challenges the viewer to accept the improbable. Not only does Blindman manage to use his rifle to ring the bell in a town's church-tower (he does miss, once), he's seen nonchalantly stringing dynamite outside the lodgings of the crooked partner he means to execute, though it looks like the partner could pot-shot Blindman without half trying.

Now, there is some potential for myth in a sightless gunman, particularly since the great majority of spaghetti western protagonists are nearly infallible supermen. Late in the film, the female lead asks Blindman why he pursues his enemies despite his handicap. Blindman says, more or less, that he feels like "half a man" because he's blind, and that the only thing that keeps him from being entirely pathetic is being able to earn a big hunk of money with his skills. So even though Blindman is as money-hungry as most spaghetti-heroes, he's got a slightly more personal reason for his greed.

Yet what distinguishes BLINDMAN as myth is less the hero and more his quest. The gunfighter and his partner were charged with delivering fifty mail-order brides to a group of miners in Texas, but Blindman's partner pulled a double-cross and delivered the women to a Mexican bandit leader named Domingo, who plans to use the brides as part of a complicated assassination scheme. A not dissimilar trope also appeared in 2015's MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and in both movies the hijacked women were stunningly beautiful, which was probably not the case for most real-life mail-order brides. But in a western, the spread of civilization is tied to the dispersal of the Fair Sex, and so, even if Blindman is rescuing the brides for filthy lucre, his activity is still going to serve an altruistic purpose in the long run.

Not so Domingo and his allies. In addition to the usual hordes of grimy bandidos, Domingo's anti-familial endeavors are also supported by his real family, brother Candy (Ringo Starr) and sister Sweet Mama (Magda Konopka). The latter's name suggests something very like a brothel-keeper, and though it's never explicitly said that this will be the fate of the kidnapped women, Sweet Mama clearly has no problem with enslaving norteamericano women for her family's benefit. Younger brother Candy has a more involved backstory: he's in love with the blonde daughter of a Caucasian rancher living in Mexico, and eventually Blindman will use the rancher's daughter (Agneta Eckemyr) to lure Candy to his death. (Surprisingly, Blindman never seduces the lead female, who remains unattached by the story's end.)

Though the hero's back-and-forth struggles against the villains aren't substantially different than if they were fighting over gold bullion, the fact that the "gold" is in femininity gives the plot more immediacy, as well the opportunity for comedy. Ar one point, the bandidos have taken such a shellacking from the one-man, no-eyed army that they agree to load the fifty brides onto a train, so that Blindman can transport them back across the border. However, since Blindman can't see the faces of the brides, the bandits substitute forty-nine old, decrepit women from the town-- and Sweet Mama, who captures Blindman. Indeed, even though there's a long, macabre scene in which Domingo mourns his slain brother, the script places much more emphasis on the bandit leader's diabolical sister. In another scene, Blindman humiliates Sweet Mama by tying her to a stake in the middle of town, and when she spits on him, he bares her breasts-- though ironically he's one of the few heroes who can't enjoy such a spectacle. Later, Sweet Mama meets her own end when she ambushes the blind hero and almost strangles him with her bare hands, forgetting that Blindman's lack of sight doesn't affect his muscles.

A subplot involves Blindman saving the Mexican general whom Domingo plans to kill, and how Blindman later profits from that bit of generosity. The general even makes it possible for Blindman and Domingo to square off, sightless hero against sightless villain-- and yet, for a comic conclusion, the general then takes the brides for himself. Blindman thus doesn't quite get to ride off into the sunset with all the gold like most spaghetti saviors, but the very atypicality of the ending makes the flick all the more appealing. 

THE MATRIX (1999)

 

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

As I write this review I've just watched MATRIX through for the first time since my 1999 screening, and am starting to re-watch the two sequels from 2003.

I liked the first MATRIX in the Day, but I didn't burn to see the saga continue, as I did with STAR WARS. I liked the sequels as well, and didn't experience the same disappointment expressed by the hardcore fans who'd become more invested in the cosmos supplied by the writer/director team of the Wachowskis. When I've finished the two sequels, I may revise this opinion, but I think the drop-off for some viewers was that the first movie had one Big Reveal, and that thereafter, there could only be various Little Reveals. 

Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) believes himself to be a computer programmer living and working in 1999, the same era as his non-diegetic audience. A series of cryptic encounters with both the government and with a counter-insurgency group lead to the Big Reveal that Anderson's 1999 existence is a vast computer simulation. The simulation is the creation of A.I. machines that have taken over Earth in or around 2019. These machines have consigned most of humanity to serve as power-sources, more or less reversing the way machines provided power-sources to human beings. Members of the insurgency are mortals in the real world who can access the simulation and create avatars with such exotic names as Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss). Superior programming allows these avatars to manifest incredible athleticism and virtual super-powers, and Anderson has the potential to become a "savior" whom they name "Neo." If Anderson/Neo cannot counteract the simulated reality of the A.I., the real-world human civilization of Zion will fall to humankind's rebellious creations.

I won't chart any of MATRIX's plot-developments, because plot is not the movie's strength. Rather, the Wachowskis produced a script layered with constant references to the symbolic/cultural realities in which humans exist in addition to their physical presences. The aforementioned name for the real-world human conclave is the same as that of a Jewish name for a paradisical city. Morpheus is the Greek god of sleep, while Trinity is the Christian term for the interlinked religious concepts of heavenly father, earthly Son and a spirit that in various ways mediates between those realms. Most famously, Morpheus offers Anderson a choice between two pills, one that will allow him to forget everything and return to the Matrix simulation, and the other which will enhance his understanding of his existence in both real and simulated worlds. And he glosses the pills with references to Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

In the original MATRIX, the Wachowskis tapped into much of the paranoia of Philip K. Dick, whose delusory tropes Hollywood had already adapted and crossbred with the traditions of the hyperkinetic action-thrillers of the nineties. But the Wachowskis also filled their fictive universe with all sorts of oracular pronouncements that were largely foreign to Dick's modernism. Almost everything everyone says appears to have two meanings. Even a minor seeming comment by the support-figure Cypher when he tells Neo, "So you are here to save the world; what do you say to something like that"-- is both a song-quote and a foreshadowing of Cypher's status as a Judas.

Closely allied to what I like to call the movie's "Zen hyperviolence" is the broad idea, expressed in Asian martial arts, of training one's body to perform feats unthinkable to ordinary existence. The fact that the Matrix is an unreal simulation provides a different context for feats like "bullet-dodging," and yet the script constantly treats Neo's mental efforts as if they were physical achievements. Not for nothing did the Wachowskis enlist Hong Kong fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping to train the actors so that they could appear to become marvels of fluidity and prowess. 

To repeat my one reservation, I suspect that once the Wachowskis completed exploring their Big Reveal, they didn't really have any more tricks up their sleeves. But I am impressed with the creators' initial melding of martial arts, Zen enlightenment, and A.I. simulations within a story devoted to humans regaining control of their own illusion-- necessary though the illusions may be.

WER (2013)

 

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

I'm not all that enamored of "found footage" films, but WER is a different sort of animal. There are some werewolf films in which the diagnosis of the monster's nature can take the better part of the film. But this movie, directed by William Brent Bell and co-written by Bell and writing partner Matthew Peterman, keeps the audience guessing as to how far it will go in the depiction of the monster, who's almost constantly under the scrutiny of videocameras for the majority of the story.

Living in France as an expatriate American, defense attorney Katherine (AJ Cook) takes the case of Talan Gwynek (Brian Scott O'Connor), an exceptionally hairy fellow accused of having savagely attacked three tourists. Katherine, along with her aide Eric (who may have some romantic interest in her), commissions the aid of animal expert Flemyng because there's some doubt as to whether the tourists were killed by a human or by an animal. Katherine and Flemyng had a romantic encounter years ago but they broke up, so that some tension remains.

French police captain Pistor liases with Katherine's team, and reluctantly gives them permission to interview Talan under extreme security. The almost unspeaking man responds to Katherine's empathy, but gets a little too grabby and is restrained by police-- though Talan inadvertently scratches Flemyng with one of his "talons." Eric researches possible medical irregularities about the client and brings up the possibility that he suffers from porphyry, which induces excessive hairiness. In addition, Katherine suspects that Pistor is anxious to convict Talan for the murders because the cop has some link to a land-scheme involving the Gwynek family.

Most werewolf films don't allow anyone but the viewing audience to witness the creatures' transformations, but Talan not only transforms in front of numerous witnesses, he slaughters several police with displays of super-strength and escapes. Later, when the fugitive is cornered in a hotel, he again repels a dozen or more French cops, seeming almost immune to gunfire. But the manhunt for Talan is complicated by a new wolf in town, for now Flemyng begins to suffer from the werewolf disease-- and he ends up fighting the other animal-man at the climax.

The script's broad implication is that the werewolf condition is some rare disease triggered by moonlight, though no rationale for all the superhuman abilities is presented. But the action and gore scenes are well-realized, and I didn't really mind that there wasn't a lot of character development. WER is a good basic werewolf movie with talented performances by the principals and a fresh angle. As in many "found footage" movies, there's some suspicion about the process of making any definitive conclusions based on the nature of filmed evidence, and this translates to a general uncertainty about the validity of governmental power.

DEAF MUTE HEROINE (1971)

 

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

DEAF MUTE HEROINE is a simple but fairly evocative swordplay-film glossed by the protagonist's physical impairment. In contrast to most if not all martial arts films about blind fighters, being deaf and mute doesn't convey the sense of the hero being uncanny.We never know why deaf-mute swordswoman Ya Ba (Helen Ma) takes up the dangerous profession of bounty hunter, but she's more than able to compensate for her disability by wearing reflective gauntlets on her wrists, allowing Ya to see behind her when necessary.

In truth we don't see Ya at the work of bounty hunting, though. Early in the film she steals a set of priceless pearls from a gang of robbers, possibly with the idea of getting out of the bounty life-- though because Ya's mute, she's never able to communicate anything about her past or her future plans. In the process of stealing the pearls, she kills the brother of sexy gang-leader Ching Ching (Shirley Huang), and for the rest of the film Ching Ching's forces assail the lone swordswoman. (To be sure, I don't think Ching Ching mentions the brother again.) 

At one point Ya gets a shot at normal life. She's wounded by one of Ching Ching's many poisoned throwing-daggers, but a humble cloth-dyer takes her in. As Ya recovers, the two of them fall in love, but, big surprise: domestic happiness is not in Ya's destiny.

Though Helen Ma is admirably stoic throughout the film, the main appeal is the well-staged fights, almost entirely involving swords. In the early half of the film, the swordplay seems mundane. However, in the latter half, both Ya and Ching Ching display uncanny wuxia skills, being able to hurl objects like blunt poles hard enough to penetrate human bodies. In one scene, Ya hurls a flat straw hat at Ching Ching like a discus, but the villainess catches it and throws it back so that its edge cuts into the wall of a nearby hut. The battle of the swordswomen is excellent, and it ends, oddly enough, with the villainess getting hanged by the neck, which is one mode of execution I've never seen in a chopsocky. However, there's a male bandit also chasing after Ya, and he provides the long climactic fight, and even forces her to fight without her sword for a bit. DEAF MUTE HEROINE is severly underwritten, but at least it doesn't bring in an overabundance of side-characters, like a huge number of Hong Kong films of the period.

THE GREAT YOKAI WAR (2005)

 

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

I have not seen any of the earlier Japanese films on which THE GREAT YOKAI WAR is said to have been based (much less a novel that may have been an influence). I have seen other films by YOKAI's director and co-writer Takashi Miike, and since he's better known in the West for working on grim yakuza dramas, it's a little surprising to see him helming a cinematic salute to Japan's incredible array of yokai (a.k.a., "monsters," "goblins," what have you). But Miike came back and directed a sequel in 2021, so he must have found the experience reasonably congenial.

I dilate on the origins of the YOKAI story because I wonder whether one of the earlier versions was a little more organized. If I was going to grade the film purely on costume design, YOKAI would shoot up to my top fantasy-films of all time. As far as I can tell all the traditional monsters-- kappas, snow women, tengu and many more I don't know by name-- are played by human actors in extraordinarily detailed costumes, possibly with minimal CGI for things like women with stretchy-necks.

However, the main story, in theory, is about how a modern middle-school boy named Tadashi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) ends up being a hero, Kirin Rider, who unites dozens of ghoulies and ghosties to fend off a common threat. But after a few scenes establishing Tadashi's colorless home life (he's a child of divorce and bullied at school), he's pulled into the yokai world and even gets hooked up with a Japanese super-sword. The narrative drive pretty much reduces Tadashi's character arc to the minimum necessary.

Was there any way this could have been avoided? Well, Tadashi's main enemy, the demon Kato (Eysushi Toyokawa), nurses a bitter hatred toward humanity because they throw away things like old shoes. I *think,* going by the subtitled script, that the intent was to reference the Japanese belief that a sort of spiritual nature arises from the commonplace objects with which human beings interact. There might have been some way to work this belief into Tadashi's backstory, so that he had some way to relate to Kato's enmity. Instead, Tadashi remains a cipher who just follows the promptings of the helpful yokai. Similarly, Kato perversely embraces modern technology-- which would have been a major factor in eradicating traditional animistic faith-- by transforming various yokai into mechanical monsters, kikai.

There are some minor arcs of minor characters-- a yokai in love with Kato, a yokai beloved by a comedy-relief reporter-- but none of them gell particularly well. I liked the inclusion of some of the esoteric bits of Japanese lore-- though Tadashi doesn't grok ancient folklore, his grandpa sure knows beans about, well, beans in Nipponese legend-- but they do come at the non-Nipponese as out of nowhere. The fight-scenes are good but none of them stand out nearly as well as those fabulous fright-costumes.

The movie ends on a quasi-cliffhanger, which is apparently resolved in the 2021 sequel.

HONOR ROLL #217

After she played an assassin named Gogo, CHIAKI KURIYAMA essayed a different breed of monster.

Well, at least HELEN MA could see evil.

BRIAN SCOTT O'CONNOR shows beastly manners.

Sometimes I think KEANU REEVES should have taken the Blue Pill after all.

From drummer to western stooge, RINGO STARR never seemed to catch a break.

TALIA AL GHUL shows Batman her fancy footwork.

THE DIABOLICAL AXE (1964)

 

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

Though there had been some earlier references to Santo as a "legacy hero," DIABOLICAL AXE is the first time that the luchador gets an origin mixed with equal parts of The Phantom and Captain Marvel.

First comes a prologue taking place in 1603, where we meet both a contemporary version of Santo and a mysterious axe-wielding wrestler called The Black Hood (Fernando Oses), but not that much detail is revealed right away. Then the story segues to present-day, where Santo is minding his own business, battling some opponent in the ring before a cheering audience. The Black Hood appears in the ring, axe and all, and tries to chop Santo to death. The hero fends off the apparition, who shows himself immune to security-guard bullets before disappearing.

Santo is attacked a second time, and again he fights off the unknown attacker, with a little help from a ghost (Lorena Velasquez), though this time the Black Hood leaves his axe behind when he vanishes. Santo takes the object to his fellow scientist Zanoni (bet you didn't know wrestlers could double as scientists). Together they figure out that the strange hooded man hails from the 17th century, though it helps that the lady ghost, one Isabel, shows up to give them some basic info. Zanoni just happens to have been working on a time-device that can project a subject's spirit back in time, so that he can just watch things he wants to see, just like in a movie.

It's revealed that when the Black Hood lived in 17th-century Spain, he lusted after Isabel, who was engaged to a young man. The Hood pledged himself to a devil called "Ariman," who levies the usual soul-bargain to help the evildoer conquer Isabel. The demon rather pointlessly gives the Hood a bunch of riches to charm Isabel, but the latter never even uses them, preferring to kidnap the reluctant young woman. Her unnamed suitor can't find her, and indeed Isabel eventually dies in captivity. The suitor seeks help from a mystic named Abraca (as in "abracadabra"), and the magician plays Shazam, transforming the man into the silver-masked fighter against evil, Santo. In this persona the hero captures the Hood and has him burned at the stake for satanism, but the villain turns into a bat and escapes. Instead of hanging around to further persecute the 17th-century hero, the Hood decides to wing all the way to the 20th century and menace 1960s Santo-- who isn't literally related to the earlier hero, he just uses the same magical mask. (There we get the "Phantom" legacy trope.)

And so Santo comes back to the 20th century, vowing to finish off the Black Hood and free the spirit of Isabel. But he still doesn't know where to start. In the next encounter with the Hood, the villain kills Zanoni, who somehow metamorphoses into a reborn Abraca (sort of the opposite of Shazam's death in the original CAPTAIN MARVEL comics). The Hood escapes. Abraca goes off somewhere too. Santo fights another bout, and this time the Hood expands his talents by possessing Santo's opponent, though Santo still wins the fight. However, the Hood does succeed in killing Santo's girlfriend, who (maybe not coincidentally) saw Santo without his mask (though this figure was not played by the real Santo actor). Santo finally figures out that the Hood's HQ must be the place where Isabel died, and Abraca sticks in his nose one last time to warn the hero of the Black Hood's attack. The Hood perishes, Isabel's spirit is freed from bondage, and Santo goes on to his next adventure.

There's some good myth-hero potential here, but the script, co-written by Oses, is careless and the direction of Jose Diaz Morales, who directed two other lucha-films, uses too many long shots to generate tension.

ESPIONAGE IN TANGIER (1965)

 

 

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

According to a comment on IMDB, ESPIONAGE IN TANGIER appeared at just the right time to profit from the James Bond craze, and it was one of the first of the numerous Eurospy emulations of the Bond formula. This is without a doubt the only distinction of this boring formula flick.

Argentine-born Luis Davila stars as globetrotting agent Mike Murphy (originally Marc Mato), and most of the other actors are either Spanish or from Spanish-speaking countries, including one of Murphy's attractive but underused female leads Perla Cristal. (The other, Jose Greci, was Italian.) Davila handles the heroic chores adequately but with no particular sense of style, and no one else gives more than a cursory performance.

An altruistic professor named Greff invents a hand-held disintegrator ray, expressing his hopes that this will somehow lead to world peace. Of course the mastermind of some criminal syndicate, a fellow named Rigo, steals a major component of the weapon in order to sell it to the highest bidder, and Murphy immediately gets on the trail.

As is frequently the case, the hero performs no real detective work; his appearance on the scene provokes the main villain to send killers after him, and so finds himself drawn into the evildoer's clutches, as well as those of his female assistants, both of whom had previous affairs with Murphy. The script, co-written by director Gregg Tallas, labors to make Murphy seem like a ladykiller over which both ladies are batty, but he's like a dull version of Mike Hammer, slapping around one of the girls and torturing a henchman with an acetylene torch. The ladies are also dull, not even given attire to play up their sexiness. Rigo is a bland villain, who only has a few routine gimmicks-- a water-filling room, a chair with automatic cuffs. No one utilizes the disintegrator ray again until the very end of the movie, and it's with less than spectacular results. 

Tallas directed one other Eurospy, ASSIGNMENT SKYBOLT. I haven't screened it yet, but it's got to be better, 'cause it can't get worse than TANGIER.

PALE BLOOD (1990)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS


PALE BLOOD is one of the many "good vampire" films that proliferated in the 1990s, made more palatable by the stylized direction of Chinese director V.V. Dachin Hsu and her co-director Michael Leighton. Even for a vampire drama, it's a bit on the slow side, and doesn't wrap up all of its plot-points.

As the film starts out, Los Angeles has seen three women die exsanguinated, leading to the press rumor of a "vampire killer." At the same time, a Romanian citizen named Michael Fury (George Chakiris) arrives in L.A. and makes contact with a local woman, Lori, who works for an investigative firm. The dialogue clarifies that Fury has engaged the firm to look into the killings, but Lori has very little to reveal to Fury, at least about the serial killer. She goes into much greater detail about herself, telling the pale-fleshed Fury that she's a big fan of vampires. Fury denies the existence of the undead, but not much later, it's made clear that Fury is the real thing. He's one of the last of his kind, and he takes umbrage at someone, real or phony, spreading the idea of a vampire murderer.

As it happens, the L.A. vampire is a phony, a loopy video director named Van Vandemeer (Wings Hauser) who has killed the women for a publicity stunt. Just as Fury seems composed and continental, Vandemeer is twitchy and obnoxious-- but the killer is also smart enough to detect the presence of a real vampire on his tail, and he uses some ingenious devices to turn the tables and to imprison Fury. The film does end with a somewhat unequal combat between the killer and the undead avenger, though I'd still judge the film as combative since Vandemeer is a classic "trickster villain."

The most egregious plot-problems are with Lori. She's more or less the "Mina" of this tale, who's devoted to the good vampire while he gets his (non-fatal) blood-sucking jollies with the appropriate "Lucy." Then there's a puzzling scene in which she's apparently learned enough occult stuff that she can cast visions to Fury-- though it's by no means clear that she intends to do so. The climax also reveals an additional layer to Lori's character, but the script doesn't play fair by including any hints of the big revelation.

The duel of heroic vampire and remorseless human killer is made more palatable by the skillful performances of Chakiris and Hauser, respectively playing "passive" to "active" to good effect.

BRAVESTARR-- THE LEGEND (1988)

 

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

While no company wants to fail, if that's what fate has in the cards, it;s generally best from the POV of posterity to go out on a high note. 

Filmation Studio had many high and low points in its twenty-something years of existence. The last animated teleseries from the company, the "space western" BRAVESTARR, recapitulated in almost equal measure most of the studio's good and bad habits. But the main problem with the teleseries was that, unlike most celebrated toys-made-into-cartoons, the toy line didn't appear in stories until a year or so after the series had run its course from 1987-1988. Then, as if to gamble on a big-screen version of their last effort, Filmation rolled the dice with BRAVESTARR-- THE LEGEND, something of an "origin story" for the show's heroes and villains.

I concur with one online review to the effect that the animation on this project was the best the company had ever produced, particularly in the opening scenes, which loosely riff on the Superman story. A mysterious father-figure of Native American ethnicity, later given the name Shaman, has just escaped some great catastrophe in a spaceship. Shaman's only companion aboard ship is an unnamed young man, also a Native American, in a cryosleep-capsule. However, though the audience doesn't know anything about the relationship between the two, Shaman uses the ship's equipment to send the capsule down to a planet inhabited by a society of galactic marshals, while providing a soliloquy, for the benefit of the viewing audience, about how the young man will someday become a great hero, implicitly the Marshal Bravestarr of the title.

While I can see why the filmmakers wanted to put off a long origin-tale to keep from slowing down the story, here it's better to explicate the backstory right off. Prior to the catastrophe, the Shaman lived with his people, the Amerindian-looking "Tribe," on an unnamed world. The Tribe was attacked by monstrous "broncosaurs" under the control of a huge bull-demon (I think) named Stampede, who was seeking some sort of power-source controlled by the Tribe. But Stampede's attack causes the power to run wild and destroy the whole planet, and all of the people except Shaman and Bravestarr, though Stampede escapes to another planet, later to be named New Texas. 

After Shaman deposits the roughly teenaged Bravestarr on Marshal-world for his training (which we never see), Shaman pursues Stampede to New Texas, planning for some reckoning in the distant future. At the time the planet is sparsely populated by a handful of "Kerium miners." Stampede, aware of Shaman's arrival, decides to suborn an evil mortal as his right-hand man, and finds a convert in a miner named Tex, who betrays his partner McBride and leaves the latter to perish in the wilderness. Stampede transforms the evil miner into Tex-Hex, a nasty zombie-looking magician, and Tex-Hex begins gathering other evildoers into his circle. Shaman finds and saves McBride, sending him to a medical planet for assistance. This action ensures that other members of the galactic society learn of McBride's discovery of huge veins of the precious mineral Kerium, resulting in a "Kerium rush." The settlers of New Texas are imperiled by the influx of lawless emigrants and from Tex-Hex's gang, so they send for a marshal.

In "real" movie-time, Marshal Bravestarr's advent to New Texas follows the origin-teaser. He arrives in tandem with two other passengers: "good prospector" McBride and his adult daughter J.B., a feisty young woman who's also been assigned to New Texas, but as a galactic Judge. In an incident that probably could not have appeared on the TV show, Bravestarr and J.B. first meet when he seems to be ogling her butt from afar.

Once on New Texas, Bravestarr's life is just one character-intro after another. He gets hassled by Tex-Hex and other roughnecks but trounces them easily, in part because he has special animal-powers that are never well explained. (Had they been a bequest of the power-eruption that destroyed the Tribe's world, that would've been another good Superman-trope, but I don't think the powers' origin is specified.) He meets a diminutive comedy-relief furball, "Fuzz," who belongs to the indigenous Ewok-ky "Prairie People" of New Texas; eventually Fuzz will become Bravestarr's deputy. After some more flare-ups with the local owlhoots, Bravestarr eventually meets Shaman, who reveals his extremely indirect role as a director of the hero's fate.

Shaman's main function in the story is to direct Bravestarr to go looking for a special weapon. This results in the hero's most compelling encounter, when he meets Thirty-Thirty, the last surviving "Equestroid," an anthropomorphic horse-man with cyborg-parts (which may have something to do with his ability to assume a four-footed horse-form). Bravestarr thinks he's supposed to claim Thirty-Thirty's weapon, a big blunderbuss, and they have a really good fight-scene, one of the best in animated features and certainly the best one Filmation ever produced. Once the two formidable badasses have taken each other's measure, Shaman belatedly reveals that the "weapon" he referred to was a partnership-- and Thirty-Thirty makes it his business to become the marshal's partner-in-law-enforcement (but not a deputy, since after all, he also functions as the marshal's horse). 

Stampede finally decides to launch a major offensive on the townsfolk and their protectors, using both his outlaw-pawns and a herd of animated bull-skeletons. Prior to the big end-battle, Bravestarr and J.B. put aside their squabbling to engage in some prolonged tongue-wrestling, which I think is also a first (and a last) for Filmation. After all that set up, the final battle is a little underwhelming, but that may be because the movie's a prequel and must leave all the principals in the status quo that dominates the series.

One online review asserted that Stampede may not be a demon, but the last survival of an alien race, possibly related to the "broncosaurs" wiped out on the Tribe-planet. But he definitely functions as a Satan-figure, while Shaman is something of a Merlin who counsels the hero in his adventures. So Stampede, Bravestarr, Shaman and Thirty-Thirty are all the last members of their respective tribes-- which trope I relate to the Western trope of the "Vanishing American," the idea that Native Americans more or less faded away before the relentless vitality of the European immigrants. If LEGEND had done more with this trope, I would have graded the movie's mythicity higher.

Despite some good character moments between Bravestarr and his two strongest allies, the judge and the horse-cyborg, Bravestarr himself is no Superman. He varies between being a smart-ass and an "aw shucks ma'am" Westerner, and though he's a de facto Native American, he has no connections with the vanished culture of the Tribe. Thus he often feels like a White guy in "Redface," except for his gimmicky conjurations of his animal-powers and his occasional conferences with his perceptor Shaman. Had the writers thrown in a few scenes of his tutelage on the marshal's planet, this could have communicated the hero's ethical compass, in roughly the same manner as SUPERMAN comics did with stories about Young Clark Kent's Midwest upbringing. This was a fault with the TV series as well, and the problem may spring from the fact that the series allegedly started from producer Lou Scheimer's desire to develop a western-themed space opera because he took a liking to a prototype "Tex-Hex" character from his animated GHOSTBUSTERS teleseries. Bravestarr's journey to hero-dom ought to be a main concern of the movie. Instead, when this plot-thread appears at all, it feels like an afterthought.

LEGEND received a limited theatrical release, but it probably would have had to enjoyed STAR WARS popularity to have reversed Filmation's fortunes. But even with its flaws, LEGEND provides a good monument to the company's history of providing a variety of both decent and mediocre fantasy-entertainment.

MOONLIGHT SWORD AND JADE LION (1977)

 

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

Here's another of many HK films in which the FX team couldn't resist injecting some modern-day technology into the medieval goings-on, even though almost all the other metaphenomenal content is uncanny.

There is a "jade lion" in the story, and a criminal type wants it to "control the kung-fu world" or something like that. But heroine Chiu Siu Len (Angela Mao) doesn't use a sword, but a spear, and most of the time she utilizes that weapon more to bludgeon than to stab. Chiu, orphaned long ago, is asked by her teacher to go looking for her teacher's lost brother. Somehow finding this individual may help Chiu find the slayers of her parents.

This Taiwanese chopsocky doesn't attempt to meld martial arts with mystery-solving, Chiu just runs around stirring up trouble, and various criminal types seek to kill her. One of her enemies (Wen Chiang-Long) is slipped poison in order to make him fight Chiu, but the heroine's dominant opponent is Su Yen (Lung Chung-erh). Her personal fights with the hero are compromised by the weapon Su wields-- some sort of odd stick with a whisk attached. She fares better using other menaces. One is a group of women wielding what look like artificial flowers mounted on staffs, with the flowers able to sprout needles or to explode like grenades. Later Su traps Chiu in a hall of automated menaces. Most of the mechanisms are uncanny, like a metal tube that shoots acid. But then the FX people threw in a flying razor-edged top, which means that this part of medieval China excelled in gyroscopic science. 

Mao receives a fighting-assist from an ally played by Don Wong, but he doesn't alleviate the incoherence. MOONLIGHT's only virtue is that Mao does a better than average amount of fighting, even if there are no big standout scenes. That puts MOONLIGHT in the middle range of the actress's films, better than the ones in which she only has one or two battles. (One exception: RETURN OF THE TIGER, a Bruce Li flick in which Mao has one standout scene, beating up a gym full of opponents.)

BLADE OF DOOM (1982)

 

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

This cheap Taiwanese chopsocky enjoyed about half a dozen different titles, so I chose to watch the one entitled BLADE OF DOOM because the promos claimed that heroic martial artist Snowy White (Tien Peng) had a special sword that other swordsmen wished to steal. But it seemed to me that the sword played  only an incidental role. 

BLADE is one of many dozens of flicks in which the hero has something or does something that draws a dozen or so opponents into his orbit, usually trying to kill him. BLADE's only distinction is that three separate characters (TIen Ho, Chan Sing and Chi Kuan Chun) want to duel Snowy just to avenge past defeats, with scant reference to his formidable weapon. There's also a gang of thieves, "the Weirdo Gang," who want a martial arts book in Snowy's possession. One of Snowy's few allies is swordswoman Windy (Shih Szu), and some of the men who want Snowy dead are willing to fight to protect him so that they get to kill him later.

Some effects in this incoherent mishmash are uncanny, like a blowpipe that projects mini-grenades. Others are clearly marvelous, like a female vampire who touches a soldier so that he apparently explodes (it's hard to judge because of the director's swift cutaway). In fact, for all the action-elements, director Chang Peng never succeeds in getting across even basic excitement here. He did somewhat better five years earlier with the equally random but somewhat more compelling SHAOLIN KUNG FU MYSTAGOGUE.

I must admit there's an unintentionally funny scene toward the end, when Windy finds her own father initially caring for, and then trying to kill, the vampire girl, and the dad claims that the vampiress is Windy's "stepsister." Nothing much comes of the revelation, not even a particularly good fight between Snowy White and the vampire (whose name is also "Snowy!") Tien Peng is the only redeeming element in the whole mess.

HONOR ROLL #216

 What ho, TIEN HO!

Who would notice WEN CHIANG-LONG when Angela Mao is on the screen?

MARSHAL BRAVESTARR wasn't able to "marshal" a big enough audience to save his movie.

GEORGE CHAKIRIS comes back from a dead career to play an undead vampire.

Being the only Argentinian star of a Eurospy flick is about the only distinction for LUIS DAVILA.

Just don't axe BEATRIZ GONZALEZ any questions about this movie.

THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EL SUPERBEASTO (2009)

 

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

I'm happy to add the TV-film adaptation of SUPERBEASTO to the short list of movies that "are better than the book." I reviewed the TPB collection of Rob Zombie stories here, and while Zombie's original concept had some merit, he blew it by reeling off his list of transgressive jokes with no more style than Stephen Colbert reading Trump routines from his teleprompter.

The big change seems to be that for the STARZ-financed movie Zombie collaborated on the script with his friend, comedian Tom Papa (who also voices the titular Superbeasto). In essence, HAUNTED follows the rough outline of the first story from the TPB. But the sheer quantity of jokes has been roughly quadrupled, making it a lot more likely that the viewer won't see all of them coming. Further, some of the plot developments of the original story have been finessed in a way one doesn't often see in stories devoted to lots of blood and guts and T and A. I can't necessarily credit Papa with all of the improvements, but that's what I tend to believe anyway.

I confess I've never read Jarry's famous play UBU ROI, but I thought the main character sounded a bit like Superbeasto. So I looked the play up on Wiki, and found a critic who called Jarry's world "a domain of greedy self-gratification." That applies to the HAUNTED WORLD as well. El Superbeasto is a vain, self-centered ex-wrestler who dwells in a world of weird monster-people and spends most of the time looking for bimbos in bars. He has a sexy sister, Suzi X (Sherri Moon Zombie), who's some sort of patch-eyed superspy (think Nick Fury with tits). I suppose she's the closest thing to a standard hero in HAUNTED, though I'm not sure her heroics aren't just an excuse to unleash her bloodlust. She sometimes tries to get her brother to help her on missions, and he usually blows her off because he's busy screwing around, in one way or another.

This time, though, Superbeasto hears the clarion call to heroism while engaged in pursuing a particular piece of trim, exotic dancer Velvet Von Black (who's a white girl, despite spouting ghetto lingo and being voiced by Rosario Dawson). Velvet is kidnapped to become the bride of Doctor Satan (Paul Giamatti), the ultimate shrimpy scientist desperate to prove his manhood. Superbeasto isn't much better, since he's mainly concerned with earning some carnal gratitude from Velvet. When all the principals converge, lots of sex and violence ensues. Oh, and the climax-- the storytelling climax, I mean-- is made much better by giving the evil doctor the power to change himself into a Godzilla-sized devil-man. 

Other improvements include Suzi X having to fight off a horde of Nazi zombies to keep them from saving Hitler's brain. I'll give away a funny scene in which another horde of zombie soldiers are thwarted by the conundrum of whether a new Nazi regime would be the Third or the Fourth Reich. Papa and Zombie together also get a lot more mileage out of Suzi's robotic aide Murray, who's modeled on the frowny-faced automaton from the serial THE PHANTOM CREEPS. Other celebrity voices include Dee Wallace, Geoffrey Lewis, Rob (DARKWING DUCK) Paulsen, Laraine Newman, Sid Haig, Cassandra Peterson, and Tura Satana. With respect to Satana, the few lines she reads for a cartoon character-- quite logically named "Varla"-- provided the actress with her next-to-last role before she passed.

CHOPPER CHICKS IN ZOMBIETOWN (1989)

 

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

Given the title alone, one might hope that CHOPPER CHICKS IN ZOMBIETOWN would prove a rousing "so bad it's good" gonzo flick. And writer-director Dan Hoskins (who has only one other credit on IMDB) supplied all of the ingredients. But the resulting "dish" feels undercooked.

Take as contrast another "motorcycle mamas" flick from the same year, David O'Malley's EASY WHEELS. Though the gang of femme-bikers undertake a weird mission-- abducting infants to found a Lesbian Nation-- they have a common cause, because they're all lesbians opposed to "heteronormative" society.

In ZOMBIETOWN, though, only the leader Rox (Catherine Carlen) is a self-described "dyke," and the other five members of "the Cycle Sluts" are only linked in having tragic backstories of some sort, which are implicitly the reasons they took up life on the road. One may loosely assume that Rox came across all of them and invited them to join her merry band. But since Rox is not sleeping with any of them, and treats them all with contempt rather than feelings of deep sisterhood, one wonders why Rox bothered in the first place.

Despite the primacy of Rox in the hierarchy, the movie centers upon her "number two" girl Dede (top-billed Jamie Rose, three years after headlining the teleseries LADY BLUE). The film opens on the Sluts motoring their way through the American Southwest and deciding to stock up on supplies in the small town of Zariah. Dede doesn't want to visit Zariah, and it's soon revealed that it's the home town she ran away from, complete with her early reputation (she was the town's homecoming queen) and her former husband Donny (an early non-starring role for Billy Bob Thornton). In addition, most of the residents hate the bikers on sight and want them to leave, though one of the younger babes manages to arrange an Afternoon Delight with a local boy.

But both the Sluts and the solid citizens are placed in mutual peril when the mad mortuary owner (Don Calfa) and his dwarf assistant lose control of the revivified zombies that Mortuary Guy has been using to work the local mine. The zombies begin besieging the town, and when they're not doing the Romero schtick of eating brains they run through the motions of acting like they're still alive. 

The Sluts have the chance to simply get on their bikes and ride away,. However, one of them surrenders her life to oppose the zombies. This is Jewel (Vicki Frederick), whose backstory implies that she may have had a child by her own dad. Her deflected maternal instincts on behalf of living people cost her life, but her sacrifice places the rest of the Cycle Sluts in the position of becoming reluctant heroes. They also end up rescuing a bus full of blind orphans (just to hit all the hero-cliches) and enlisting the help of the mad scientist's dwarf. He too has a sad backstory, since the scientist promised he could make the little guy regular-sized. He supplies the heroines with another Romero-derived nugget: that the zombies stop moving if you punch, shoot, burn or bludgeon their heads off.

There's not nearly enough action to allow ZOMBIETOWN to compete even with EASY WHEELS, much less even the original, cheaply-made NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. But there are some decent zombie-clobbering scenes and a fair number of jokes land. Rose and Carlen are the only perfomers who get any decent acting-scenes or action-scenes, including the obligatory "catfight for supremacy." 

The feminist elements in the script are somewhat undermined by the tongue-in-cheek attitude, but, when all's said and done--

Still better than THE MARVELS.

HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN (1988)

 

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

In my latest viewing of this prime cut of delicious pulp meat, I noticed that at the end of the credits, the filmmakers pay homage to four directors. All were veterans of the Golden Age of Serials, and all four worked on one of the three FLASH GORDON serials. 

In the last interview of FROGTOWN's late co-director Donald G. Jackson, he mentions his affection for serials generally and the character of Flash Gordon as one of the many "superheroes" he likes. The director doesn't mention the credit-sequence, so it could just as easily have been the contrivance of his co-writer Randall Frakes. Jackson does mention that Frakes tended to inject much more sexuality into his scripts than did Jackson, and so it may be that the homage was code for FROGTOWN's continuity with both the lusty tone of the early Alex Raymond comic strip and at least the first of the Gordon serials.

I don't think many SF apoca-flicks are as obsessively focused on sex as FROGTOWN. Even MAD MAX FURY ROAD, which also uses the same trope of trying to re-populate the decimated world with a coterie of fertile women, is positively abstemious by comparison. In fact, I prefer the way Jackson and Frakes represent their hero Sam Hell (Roddy Piper) as a raffish, self-interested "thief and scavenger" who just happens to have the devil's charm with respect to seducing women AND a high sperm count. So the remnants of the American government (never seen) empower Medtech, a unit of all-female military physicians, to bring Sam together with as many fertile ladies as possible.

However, the apocalypse spawned a race of bipedal, intelligent frog-people, who inhabit the titular Frogtown. The froggies' leader Commander Toty (strangely, not "toady") has taken a group of fertile women prisoner. One might think Medtech would not risk their sperm-bearing prisoner by making him join a mission to liberate the breeding stock, but one would be wrong. Further, they also place Sam's gonads in peril by outfitting him with a shock-codpiece to ensure his obedience to the unit-commander, Lieutenant Spangle (Sandahl Bergman).

Of course the entire rescue-mission farrago is designed to force a tough hero and a tough heroine into constant propinquity. Every time Sam gets out of line, Spangle plays the ultimate "punishing female" by zapping his balls-- though, not paradoxically, she wants them for her own use, even though implicitly she's not able to breed like the women she's rescuing. The trip to Frogtown is so rife with tongue-in-cheek foreplay between the two that it's as much fun as the main adventure.

Since Frogtown is male-dominated, Spangle is obliged to reverse her "domme" status and to become the subservient property of her "owner" Sam. This plan goes south when Commander Toty takes Spangle prisoner for some interspecies intercourse and consigns Sam to a torture chamber. Sam, even after escaping the torturer, also has to deal with a female froggie who's warm for his manly form. Sam rescues Spangle-- who, in fairness, does her share of ass-kicking-- and in due time the fertile girls are saved as well. There are some minor plots with a traitor-human selling arms to the batrachian "Indians" and Sam meeting an old friend, a prospector named Looney Tunes (western actor Rory Calhoun), but they're adeptly handled, never slowing down the main plot, which is the romance of alpha-dogs Sam and Spangle. 

FROGTOWN provides both Piper and Bergman with their best acting-roles, in large part because it gives them so much opportunity for comedy. Bergman even gets to show up a little of her terpsichorean talents as Toty makes Spangle execute the "Dance of the Three Snakes." Even the crappiness of the costumes for the mutant frog-people-- not believable in any way-- contribute to the humor. I suppose fans of Piper's wrestling-career might be disappointed that he mostly fights with guns in FROGTOWN, but that lack didn't bother me. I've seen the movie's two sequels and found them utterly forgettable, which is a testimony to the strength of the Jackson-Frakes script. 

DEATHSTALKER IV: MATCH OF TITANS (1991)

 

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

Howard R. Cohen, who wrote the first and third DEATHSTALKER films (but not the second funny one), got the chance to both write and direct the Stalker's last exploit. MATCH OF TITANS also offered actor Rick Hill, returning to the role he originated in the first film, as the brawny barbarian who can't be troubled with anything like a normal first name. 

Of course, almost any time producer Roger Corman made a sequel to anything, it became "old home week" regardless of the personnel, because Corman usually recycled footage from the original and other works. This time both the original DEATHSTALKER and the separate flick BARBARIAN QUEEN are worked into the new story, although MATCH arguably does so less than many other such productions.

In a plot-line loosely derived from the third movie, Deathstalker's looking for an old buddy, Aldilar. It seems that the hero at some point acquired a magical sword (not mentioned in the three previous films), but Aldilar accidentally took the magic sword with him and left behind some mundane blade. Deathstalker interrupts his search for his sword-swiping friend long enough to help out a maiden beseiged by nasty soldiers. He wanders a bit more and hooks up with a second swordsman, Vaniat (Brett Baxter Clark), and a little later they save hot blonde Dionara (Maria Ford) from some marauding pig-men. Dionara informs them that she's on the way to participate in a tournament at the castle of Queen Kana, so the two studs go along with her, Deathstalker still hoping to find his sword.

I may as well note at this point that Dionara has an ulterior motive for seeking out Kana, because Kana usurped the rule of Dionara's parents and forced Dionara into exile. I mention it here because though Dionara reveals this backstory to Deathstalker later, the heritage of this "warrior princess" has nearly no dramatic impact.

So the three wanderers enter the tournament and begin fighting people, which is the only good thing about MATCH. It might sport bad performances and a plot from hunger, but at least Cohen almost always has sweaty, scantily clad men and women on screen. Almost all of the female warriors wear leather halters and skirts, and the most avowedly lesbian one ends up in a death-match with Dionara.

The three heroes are all pretty dull, even when Sralker and Dionara take a few moments to swap spit. The best scenes go to the villainous Queen Kana (Michelle Moffett). The evil queen in Cohen's previous Stalker-opus talked a little bit about torturing the hero endlessly, but Kana sells the sadism better. She specializes in drugging male contestants, implicitly having dominant sex with them (not shown), and then turning them into stone-faced slaves. BTW, Stalker does eventually find both his magic sword and his lost buddy, the latter having been "petrified" by Kana.

While the sleaze factor registers high, no one in the cast can fake-fight his or her way out of a paper bag. But it's worth mentioning that even though Maria Ford is one of the worst in this respect, she got better. In 1994 she starred as a curvaceous kickboxing cop in ANGEL OF DESTRUCTION, an above-average American chopsocky, and she made effective appearances in about a half dozen junk-films.

GODZILLA MINUS ONE (2023)

 

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

First off, the title. I assume that the English subtitle "Minus One" means roughly the same as the Japanese subtitle, "Zero." Both are indicators that MINUS is a reboot of the Godzilla franchise, reworking even some aspects of the original 1954 template. The most important revision is a particular thematic element constant to every other Godzilla film ever made-- but more on that later.

The film is set both in Japan during both the last years of WWII and the early years of Japan's recovery, and focuses on the turmoil-filled life of viewpoint character Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki of GREAT YOKAI WAR fame). Koichi has been ordered to attack the Allied forces in a suicidal kamikaze plane, but he diverts from his mission and lands on a flight maintenance island. There he and his fellow soldiers have a close encounter of the worst kind with a twenty-foot-tall dinosaur, whom the local islanders have dubbed "Godzilla." Koichi has a chance to attack Godzilla (though viewers will later learn such an assault would have proven futile) but freezes, so that almost all the other soldiers perish. 

Later, like thousands of other Japanese, Koichi must attempt to eke out a living in a devastated country. He acquires by accident a family made up of two other victims of the war: Noriko, an adult the same age as Koichi, and Akiko, an infant war orphan whom Noriko rescued from death. The three of them survive, an ersatz nuclear family, thanks to Koichi getting a job as a mine-sweeper, destroying mines left in the sea by both American and Japanese forces. But while all this is going on, the American government continues to make atomic tests in the Pacific. And in just a few years, the twenty-foot terror returns, but now he's as tall as twenty stories, and gifted with atomic dragon-fire. Plus which, because he's bigger now, he wants more territory-- the very epitome of lebensraum, even for a creature that implicitly feeds mostly on fish.

While Godzilla is filled with mindless rage at the puny gnats in his path, Koichi's civilian life is filled with survivors' guilt and self recriminations over his failure to perform his military duty. The King of Monsters devastates the Ginza area where Koichi lives, and not only is the Japanese government incompetent to handle the crisis, the U.S. government refuses to intervene. (I guess in this world the U.S. never stationed any forces in defeated Japan immediately after the war.) Japan's most formidable foe can only be defeated by an allegiance of Japan's disenfranchised military men-- and Koichi gets a chance to redeem himself for his past inaction.

With the possible exception of the 1954 original, Godzilla is never more terrifying than he is here, stomping humans underfoot and reducing destroyers to scrap. But even though he gets a power upgrade from atomic radiation, he no longer seems to incarnate the horrors of nuclear power. He's also altered from a near invulnerable juggernaut, whose hide can't even be injured by missiles, to a somewhat more organic creature who can be wounded yet who can regenerate most somatic damage-- which is one of the things that gives the Japanese the chance to beat him without inventing brand new super-weapons. This Godzilla seems more like a continuation of the war's chaos, since in this iteration Japan doesn't even have the chance to rebuild itself and to be seduced by the attractions of Western society. 

Though MINUS is one of the few films in which the Big G's only foes are embattled humans-- the last one being 2016's SHIN GODZILLA-- I believe it's the only one in which the humans are not represented by scientists and military organized by the power of government(s). This is the big thematic change instituted by writer-director-effects guy Takashi Yamazaki, implying that governments are utterly impotent to deal with crises, and only the Common Man can possibly put down the menace.

In a logical sense, I reject this conceit. But it's a great idea in terms of rethinking the usual implications of most stories about Earth facing down giant monsters, aliens and the like, and even the specific generative text directed and co-written by Inoshiro Honda. Numerous critics have asserted that Honda worked anti-war messages into many of his popular movies, and there's some truth to that. But it's also not hard to discern, in the Godzilla films alone, an admiration for the power of governments to muster vast forces of technology and manpower against a monumental threat. Yamazaki never expresses any admiration for the Japanese government. He doesn't specifically condemn the WWII militarists who placed the country on the path of conquest, and in this he slightly resembles a lot of Japanese pop culture that makes similar elisions. Still, the imputations of the government's impotence stands as an overall denunciation. MINUS doesn't sing the praises of anything but the average Japanese citizen trying to live his life. 

Despite this radical take on Godzilla movies, I'm not sure Yamazaki's approach could work a second time, even though the ending of MINUS sets up yet another potential sequel. I'm glad the movie's enjoyed a strong U.S. box office, but it might not be the best model for future big-monster movies.