SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (2023)

 

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

Unlike the majority of moviegoers, I found INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE rather predictable, so I didn't bother to see the sequel in the theater. Ironically, aside from one giant demerit, ACROSS is a much more entertaining film than INTO. I notice that though there's one writer who worked on both scripts, there were two new scripters involved with ACROSS-- which has much funnier dialogue, for one thing. (An early scene, in which Spider-Gwen fights a variant Vulture, includes some humorous stuff about the subjectivity of art that may be intended to comment on the movie's own status.) There was still far too much of Miles' family, but at least even they had a few laugh-lines.

Though Miles Morales gets the lion's share of attention once again, there's more focus on his interaction with Spider-Gwen, while most of the other Spider-variants play subordinate roles, including the most virtue-signally one, "Jessica Drew as Black Pregnant Spider-Woman." The confusion of continuities from INTO continues here, but with a greater sense of consequence. Spider-Gwen, Miles learns, has been inducted into a dimension-spanning "Spider Society" oriented on preventing temporary abnormalities. Trouble is, to ride herd on the right running of time, they must sometimes let innocents die. 

The whole "preservation of time" trope is nothing new, and ACROSS' script doesn't bring that much conviction to the theme. But the action is much better executed this time, once more supporting the dictum that animated superheroes will always be able to do things that their live-action "variants" cannot. And nothing proves this better than the villain. Whereas INTO was boring in its choice of providing variations of the most famous Spider-foes, ACROSS took a fairly minor rogue, The Spot (Jonathan Schwartzmann) and made him a visual delight.

Those who have seen the film will easily guess the "big demerit" I mentioned: it's a Part One without having advertised as much. I tend to doubt that there's enough of a story here to justify a Part Two, and I think it likely that the filmmakers just got intoxicated with all the neat things they could do with crazy-ass Spider-continuities. Or maybe they realized that in the last couple of years, the only superhero franchises that have remained strong have been those of Batman and Spider-Man-- and they want to reap what rewards they can from the Spider-franchise, lest even that one go the way of all celluloid.

SON OF SINBAD (1955)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological, cosmological*


One of the original Sinbad's feats was to tie himself to the leg of a giant Roc, which creature was called a "Simurgh" in some versions. On that basis I choose to dub this sort of Hollywood amalgam of Arabic motifs-- Sinbad, Omar Khayyam, the 40 Thieves, and the legendary "Greek fire"-- a "simurghasboard."

Bad puns aside, the most interesting thing about SON OF SINBAD is that it's an example of the uncanny motif "exotic lands and customs" set within a faux-historical period. This stands opposed to my more usual application of the term to either narratives set in prehistoric periods (CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR) or in primitive backwaters within the modern world (just about every Tarzan film).

In the case of SON OF SINBAD, it's not simply that the scripters of the film were ignorant of the temporal difficulties of having the son of Sinbad (the very American Dale Robertson) be best friends with Omar Khayyam (Vincent Price). This conflation is not a simple result of carelessness; rather, SON represents a deliberate lumping-together of Arabic story-motifs, in much the same fashion that makers of prehistory pictures would lump together cavemen and dinosaurs.

SON is usually listed in concordances because a main element of the plot-- which doesn't really bear analysis in itself-- involves the son of Sinbad encountering a weapon unknown to his period or that of Omar Khayyam-- the incendiary explosive "Greek fire." But this is not a marvelous phenomenon, given that it's merely an exotic form of gunpowder. It is an uncanny phenomenon because it appears out of its proper time-frame. At the climax, Sinbad's allies coat arrows with Greek fire and use them to blow up their enemies in much the same way Rambo blasts his foes with dynamite-shafts. It's the same physical phenomenon, but only the former manifestation carries the aspect I've termed "strangeness."

For good measure, the proto-scientist who discovers Greek fire's secret encodes the process for its manufacture within the brain of his daughter, by using a special hypnotic lamp-- hence adding the uncanny phenomenon of "enthralling hypnotism" to the mix.

"Weird families and societies," in turn, is ably represented by an all-female band of warriors, the daughters of the original Forty Thieves, who become Sinbad's allies for the big climax. I'd say that the concept of a band of Arabic Amazons-- all played by glamorous Caucasian girls, of course-- being able to operate in any period of the Islamic Middle East is a greater stretch than the rediscovery of Greek fire. In keeping with SON's avoidance of marvelous devices, the famous cave of the Forty Thieves uses purely mechanical means to "open sesame."

Overall, this is an entertaining bit of Hollywood gibberish, with lots of pretty girls and Robertson ably swashing buckles, at least for this sort of lower-tier product. Vincent Price gets the best lines, intoning pastiches of Omar Khayyam in his usual orotund fashion.

FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON (1982)

 

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

I confess that this sterling review of the featured 1982 South Korean "kung-fu-and-ghosts" flick does a better job of summarizing FIREFIST than I ever could. I flatter myself that I'm usually pretty good at forging my way through nonsense-narratives and gleaning whatever diamonds I can find in the rubbish-- for example, as with my 2023 review of the far superior WOLF DEVIL WOMAN.

FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON-- whose title refers to precisely nothing in the film-- is however not crazy by virtue of its creators' undisciplined energies, but by virtue of laziness. There's very little story in FIREFIST, so what the creators did was just inject lots of sleaze, violence and weird supernatural effects as possible to pad out the running time. 

The A-story is that of Master Liao (Chen Pao-liang). He's some sort of bigwig in his unnamed city, with such enormous wealth and power that he can keep hot and cold running sex-slaves and no one seems to notice. At the start of the film he's already had his minions bury four or five of his latest victims beneath the mountain snows. However, a floating heart emerges from one of the bodies and kills several minions-- and this is the beginning of Liao's many troubles.

The B-story, then, is comprised of two young heroes out to nail Liao for his crimes. Of the two, the female Kun-Kun (Poong Im) is trying to find her twin sister, who may or may not be one of the murdered women. Male hero Ten-Chi (Jae-Young Lee) doesn't really seem to have a motive for his beneficence. I imagine the English cut I saw could have left a lot of motive on the cutting-room floor. But it's just as likely that the filmmakers didn't bother to include any, particularly knowing that one of the producers was Tomas Tang, and one of the other technicians was writer-director Godfrey Ho.These two Hong Kong luminaries have rarely shown any interest in continuity, so yeah, not much reason to blame the dubbing staff.

Amidst all the time-wasting (and boring) sleaze and violence, I found two scenes that justified FIREFIST slightly. In one, the evil Liao dreams that five of his bloody-robed victims spring out of the snow and assail him. The other scene comes at the climax, when Ten-Chi and Kun-Kun have a decent, fairly bloody battle with Master Liao. But supernatural revenge overtakes Liao before the battle's done, and so the heroes are left to pick up the pieces-- assuming their viewers can figure out where all the pieces go.

LUPIN III: THE ELUSIVENESS OF THE FOG (2007)

 

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

One good thing about ELUSIVENESS OF THE FOG is that this TV special proves that LUPIN III just doesn't belong in pure science-fiction situations.

All four members of the Lupin Gang are engrossed in another heist when once more Zenigata shows up with Interpol forces. Fujiko goes off in one direction while the three males take off in another, with Zenigata in hot pursuit. Then a new player, name of Kyousuke Mamoh, opens a time portal that sends Lupin, Goemon and Jigen back to medieval Japan, with Zenigata accidentally pulled along for the ride.

Zenigata ends up having little to do with the story, spending most of his time in a feudal-era lockup. The three super-thieves are greatly confused, not least because they get dropped into a city under siege by a rival city. The respective rulers, Queen Iseka and Prince Ethica, are really decent types, but Iseka's land possesses a magical flame-tower that gives her people heat in winter, and Ethica's people want that power. 

Fortunately Mamoh, a time traveler from a far future era, provides the gentleman crooks with exposition, telling that he's doomed them to perish in an era not their own. His motive is perhaps overly comical: in his own time Mamoh lost his best girlfriend to a descendant of Lupin, so the time-traveler quixotically decided to take vengeance on 21st-century Lupin. 

Or is that the only reason? Mamoh ought to just boogie back to his future world, but he keeps monitoring the Lupin Gang for reasons that the script doesn't explain adequately. Thanks to making some feudal-era allies-- Takaya, a young kid seeking revenge, and Ofumi, a dead ringer/ancestress of Fujiko-- the crooks learn of a prophecy about a treasure that might have the power to return them to their own time. So the quest for this treasure tasks the cleverness of Lupin, the gun-skills of Jigen and the uncanny sword-skill of Goemon. And there's some suggestion that Mamoh wants the treasure too, though it's not clear if he knew about the prophecy when he sent his foes back to this particular time.

The revelations about the treasure involve some sizable time-paradoxes, which depend in part on Mamoh continuing to hang around. So the fittingly named FOG devolves into a morass of meandering coincidences, all of which will of course lead the crooks and their cop-enemy back to the 21st century in the end. The stunts and the comic bits are ordinary at best, though I liked Ofumi, who's more kick-ass than Fujiko usually is (albeit not as amply endowed). So this FOG would be easy to dispel from one's list of good Lupin movies.

THE ONE (2001)

 

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

A lot of modern film-critics hate the concept of multiverses as popularized by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But seven years before IRON MAN, James Wong's THE ONE got there first-- sort of. Wong and writing-partner Glen Morgan, who'd done mostly TV episode work in the nineties, don't really use the concept of a multiverse as anything but a near-infinite hunting-ground for their villain Yulaw (Jet Li)-- and a way of motivating the evildoer's struggle against the hero (also Li).

The strucure of THE ONE is suspiciously similar to the franchise HIGHLANDER, which arguably became more noteworthy as a TV show than as a movie series. The immortals of that franchise went around killing one another in order to reap the power of those slain. In Yulaw's case, he has some metaphysical connection with every other doppelganger of himself in the multiverse, and when he jaunts to other dimensions and kills a version of himself there, his kung fu becomes more powerful. Dimension-protecting agents Rodecker and Funsch (Delroy Lindo, Jason Statham) finally track down Yulaw after he's killed 123 other self-reflections, and now there's only one left, Gabe Law of Los Angeles. Predictably, Yulaw gets free and invades the Earth-dimension.

There's a lot of running around and shooting until the film gets around between the Battle of the Two Lis, and Wong's direction is pedestrian, like the script. Wikipedia notes that the original star was projected to be Dwayne Johnson, and the substitution of Li in the two roles proves at least a moderate improvement. Because Li unlike Johnson is a martial performer, this obliged the script to distinguish the two foes on the basis of martial style, with Yulaw using aggressive, thrusting moves while Gabe uses more organic, cyclical stratagems. The film's ending stresses that Yulaw ends up in a hell of eternal battle while Gabe gets a new chance at love.

The film's most amusing moments are Jason Statham's scenes. Throughout the movie he painfully affects a neutral accent in place of his usual distinctive British lilt. He gets absolutely no chance to show off his own fighting skills in THE ONE, and even gets kicked around by Yulaw. This proves ironic since the two performers are situated as equal martial masters in the 2007 Statham-Li vehicle WAR. One year later, Statham broke out as a headliner in the first entry in the TRANSPORTER series, and I suspect THE ONE is one role he'd like to forget.

BAFFLED! (1972)

 

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

PARTIAL SPOILERS



Aside from the 1952 boxing movie KID MONK BARONI, the failed TV-pilot BAFFLED would seem to be one of the few times Leonard Nimoy was the main selling-point of a film or television project. To be sure, his character of Tom Kovack-- a race-car driver who begins having psychic visions-- forms an ensemble of two with his fellow psychic investigator Michele (Susan Hampshire), but I tend to doubt that Ms. Hampshire had much "name-above-the-title" standing in 1972.

Like most Good Samaritans in TV-land, when Michele informs that someone's life will be in danger if Kovack doesn't investigate his visions, Kovack drops everything in his schedule and flies to England with Michele. In order to gain access to a family manor, Kovack poses as a distant relative to the family, and Michele gets in on some other pretext. The English side of the family also plays to a real American relation, Andrea (Vera Miles) and her middle-school aged daughter Jennifer. They hope to be reunited with Jennifer's estranged father after being separated from him for over ten years. At the same time, Jennifer seems to be manifesting her own psychic powers, and she has a strange, midnight conference with her father, in which he mouths the suggestive lines, ""In some ways you'll have to give up being a child... you'll have to keep a number of secrets from your mother..." At the same time, the man gives Jennifer an odd amulet, which causes her to act more "grown-up," so much so that Michele passes a remark about Jennifer having gone from thirteen to fifteen in the space of a day.

The mystery aspects of the story are typical TV-fare, amounting to a lot of incidents that don't necessarily add up in the final analysis. The amulet-business is one of the least well-explained. The man who gave it to her-- not actually her father, but a masquerading conspirator-- is supposed to be some sort of mystical expert, and yet his main concern in the story is to bilk Andrea out of the family inheritance. The two plots don't cleave together in the least. As if to make up for the deficiency of the mystery angle, the pilot-film does conclude with a pretty good fight between Kovack and his opponent, which suggests that, had the show been bought, it might have been more action-oriented than most TV-shows about occult detectives.

For modern viewers, most of the interest will be gauging whether or not "Spock" could have carried this somewhat bland teleseries. But those viewers will be forever "in search of" the answer to that question.

HONOR ROLL #233

When Leonard Nimoy tried to switch from "ear power" to "sixth sense power," SUSAN HAMPSHIRE came along for the ride.

JET LI's cry: "There can be only The One!"

KYOSUKE MAMOH wanted to destroy Lupin, but he just couldn't find the time.

POONG IM goes down, down, down into a burning fist of fire.

I guess Sinbad must have sailed all the way to the Old West to spawn a son like DALE ROBERTSON.

The best thing about the second Spider-Verse movie was that it was Johnny-on-THE-SPOT.

ZORRO (1975)

 

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

The Walt Disney ZORRO teleseries sparked a fair number of copycat Zorro-productions in Europe throughout the decade of the 1960s and for the first half of the seventies. Of those I've seen, the 1975 ZORRO is the best, though oddly it diverges not only from Disney but from the original 1919 Johnston McCulley text.

In the first Zorro story, Diego is a Spanish noble whose father has a governmental position in Nueva Aragon, a colony in Spanish California in the early 1800s. Having heard from his father of the rampant corruption in the region by the military, Diego goes to the States to help-- but with an advance plan to pose as a fop while working against the military in a colorful disguise. Diego's motives, when stated at all, involve "noblesse oblige," the obligation of the ruling class to dispense justice to their subjects. In the course of stamping out evil, Diego meets a comely young lass, Lolita Pulido, who has contempt for Diego's mincing persona but falls in love with his swashbuckling identity. 

Unlike the book, ZORRO starts at the beginning, but gives Diego a rather proletarian makeover not unlike the one seen in THE MASK OF ZORRO. Diego (Alain Delon), who knows swordsmanship but whose familial connections are not mentioned, is first seen visiting in Spain, paying a visit to his close friend Miguel de la Serna. In common to Diego, whose clothes are those of a working man, Miguel is richly dressed, and has a fine house, a wife and a young son. Miguel announces that he plans to succeed his late father as governor of Nueva Aragon, after the latter perished of malaria. Worldly-wise Diego informs Miguel that there's no malaria in Spanish California, and cautions Miguel to be wary. However, that very night assassins strike, taking Miguel's life before Diego can kill them. 

Thus, whatever Diego's life was before, he devotes his existence to vengeance for his idealistic friend. He goes to California, posing as Miguel, and assumes the role of governor, though he plays the part with a foppish air. The head of the corrupt military, Colonel Huerta (Stanley Baker), is disappointed that his assassins failed and can find no way to prevent the newcomer from taking charge. 

Diego doesn't have the idea of a double identity in mind until a young boy tells him about some local legend of a crusading bandit whose name is Spanish for "fox." In the mansion of the late governor (i.e., Miguel's father), Diego meets Joaquin, a deaf-mute who served the governor, and the governor's widow, who never encountered Miguel earlier and has zero interest in her supposed nephew. (The aunt plays a minor comic role but is not important to the story.) Diego even gets help from the late governor's dog, Assassin by name, who shows Diego and pseudo-Bernardo the entrance to a secret chamber. Possibly this discovery helps the two decide to become allies in the Zorro project, though the movie never shows this resolution.

Though Diego spends a little time masquerading as a common laborer to suss things out, soon he dons cape and mask and begins his career of battling the tyrannical soldiers. He also meets his romantic interest, Hortensia Pulido (Ottavio Piccolo). She is also becomes a little more proletarian than her book-model, for evil Huerta caused Hortensia's family to be dispossessed of their riches. Huerta also puts the moves on Hortensia, but Zorro's on hand to thwart him there as well. Oh, and in the only real shout-out to the Disney series, one of Huerta's men is heavyset Sergeant Garcia (comedian Moustache), whom Zorro also humiliates.

Huerta sets a trap for the Fox. using Hortesia as bait, but Zorro easily rescues the lissome lady and eludes capture. However, in a subsequent chase, Zorro appears to perish. Huerta celebrates by setting up a wedding for himself and Hortensia. But Zorro re-appears, sparking the downtrodden people to rebel and overcome the soldiers. (One noblewoman even gets into the act, judo chopping a soldier into unconsciousness.) Then there follows a protracted swordfight between Zorro and Huerta, which by its length may have been seeking to equal the run-time of the eight-minute duel in the 1952 SCARAMOUCHE. (To be sure, Huerta loses his sword for a bit and makes up by using both a spear and an axe in its stead, though the antagonists finish up with the traditional rapiers.) I think ZORRO's battle is two minutes longer, but I suppose it depends what scene you start with.

Delon throws a lot of charisma into the heroic role and has a little fun with the fop persona, though the script doesn't do much with that aspect. Baker, in his last role, makes a good villain, and the stuntwork is generally good. Though Zorro rides a horse, there's no nod toward giving the steed a name, as in the Disney show. In fact, the dog Assassin gets more screen time. The movie's only fault is a really corny theme song, which unfortunately is played both at the beginning and end of the film. From a quick Wiki-check it looks like this and a couple of other flicks were the last European Zorros of the decade-- and a few years later, the big franchises to imitate became STAR WARS and MAD MAX, effectively ending Europe's original love affair with the foxy bandit.

THE THRONE OF FIRE (1983)

 

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

Aside from the naturalistic thriller LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH, the only directorial works I've seen from Franco Prosperi have been the two sword-and-sorcery movies with which he apparently ended his movie career. The first of the two, THE INVINCIBLE BARBARIAN, shared the same star as THRONE OF FIRE, Italian actor Pierro Torrisi, billed as "Peter McCoy." Unfortunately, BARBARIAN suffered from a mostly incoherent script. I don't know anything else produced by the two credited writers of THRONE. But THRONE, whatever its flaws, at least makes some degree of sense.

Like a lot of sword-and-sorcery movies, THRONE takes place in a polyglot world, one mingling pagan and Christian references, and both are used to justify a larger-than-life pattern of "dueling destinies." The first destiny begin when a widow named Azira (Beni Cardoso, confusingly billed as "Benny") has a supernatural visitor. She's later said to be a witch, and though there's no evidence of this, maybe that's why her visitor feels free to impose himself on her, telling her that they're going to spawn a son who will rule the world. This sounds like it's right from the ROSEMARY'S BABY playbook, but strangely, the fellow making it with Azira is not Satan, but Satan's messenger Belial (Harrison Muller). I'm not sure why the writers chose to settle for a functionary to spawn a mortal king of evil. But in any case Azira and Belial conceive a child named Morak, who in his adulthood will also be played by Harrison Muller.

However, a good magician named Antar figures out the lay of the mystic land, and he brings into being-- with very little details presented-- a heroic avatar of good, Seigfried (McCoy). The audience doesn't see the upbringing of either Morak or Seigfried, which may be all to the good, given that how badly those tropes worked out in BARBARIAN. 

So we fast-forward to adulthood for hero and villain. Morak gathers an army and assails the castle of the rightful king, killing everyone except the king's nubile daughter Valkari (Sabrina Siani). Morak wants to force Valkari into marriage to secure his reign, but there's an additional hurdle involved. To master the realm, Morak must not only marry into the rightful bloodline. In order to gain total sovereignty, the usurper must also sit upon the Throne of Fire, a magical item of furniture sent to Earth by the high god Odin. Moreover, the Throne--which will literally burn up anyone who sits upon it without being entitled to do so-- can only bestow sovereignty to the princess' usurper-husband on a special date: "the day of the night of the day"-- which cryptic riddle Morak doesn't know how to interpret.

(Incidentally, in Nordic myth the hero Seigfried is the grandson of Odin, and his lover is a valkyrie-- and that Seigfried possesses two of the powers that this Seigfried will eventually receive.)

Complicated? Sure, but once the script puts across this setup, the rest of the film is largely decent if not exceptional action-fodder. Seigfried, knowing that Morak's plans hinge upon marrying Valkari, infiltrates Morak's castle and tries to abscond with the princess. However, Morak's guards overpower the hero and consign him to a "pit of madness" beneath the castle. (Maybe a subsection of the Hell occupied by Morak's never-seen-again daddy?) The doughty fighter manages to battle his way past a handful of low-budget menaces and finds his way into the castle's dungeon-- and to his surprise, he also finds his father Magician Antar in one of the cells. Seigfried believed Morak had killed Antar, but it seems Morak kept the wizard alive to interpret the cryptic prophecy. The swordsman wants to liberate his dad, but Antar insists that rescuing Valkari has to be their priority. Antar uses magic to endow his son with the twin powers of invisibility and invulnerability, though he will lose both powers if struck by fire.

Invisible Seigfried enters Valkari's boudoir and tries to talk her into leaving with him. Being no fool, she gives him a little static, but finally agrees to his plan. Unfortunately, for some reason Morak's listening in on their conversation, and in the process of convincing Valkari, Seigfriend reveals his vulnerability (also a minor feature of the original Seigfried tale). Hero and princess make some limited progress in their escape, but Morak shoots Seigfried with a flaming arrow, and that's the end of the champion's super-powers. 

A little later, while Seigfriend languishes in prison, Valkari manages to escape by using both guile and her considerable sword-skill. Morak releases Seigfried so that Morak's forces can follow the hero to the princess, and this ends Valkari's brief freedom. Back at the castle, Morak sentences Seigfried to be killed in an arena by a big bald fighter, but doesn't stay to watch, so of course Seigfried wins the bout and escapes again. Yet his efforts to prevent the marriage, amusingly enough, are aided by the marital priest taking his sweet time with the ceremony. Meanwhile, the prophecy's mystery is solved-- the assumption has to take place during the just commencing eclipse. But the marriage is averted and guess who ends up roasting his chestnuts on the Throne of Fire.

There's no great depth in the script's cherry-picked myth-tropes, but at least they don't undermine one another. McCoy and Siani are both good-looking heroic characters and they have some OK fight-scenes. My verdict on the movie: if one wants a decent if very basic sword-and-sorcery flick, THRONE is worth sitting through.

BATMAN: BAD BLOOD (2016)

 

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

Though there was one more Bat-film that was issued under the "DCAMU" rubric, that last entry, BATMAN: HUSH, appeared three years after this DTV release. In contrast, SON OF BATMAN, BATMAN VS. ROBIN, and BAD BLOOD all came out in three subsequent years, and all focus in differing degrees with the period during which "Fourth Robin" Damian Wayne. son of the Crusader by Talia Al Ghul, became a sometimes unruly member of the Gotham Bat-family. Thus all three together become a rough "Damian Trilogy," even though they select assorted sequences and motifs from different comics-stories. Despite this shared focus, though, the three movies fail to express common themes and are occasionally wildly divergent in characterization. 

BLOOD derives several tropes from the interlinked Grant Morrison serials DEMON STAR and GOTHAM'S MOST WANTED, which focused less on Damian than on the long and complicated relationship between Batman and his sometime love Talia. The Talia character, appearing in the 1970s slightly before her more famous father Ra's Al Ghul, has for the past fifty years been portrayed as angel or as devil by various DC raconteurs, and in Morrison's case, he chose "devil, but with an explanation." Unfortunately, the three DTV Bat-films, perhaps because of over-focusing on Damian, don't come close to consistency, ranging from "angel" in SON, no appearance at all in VS., and then to "devil" in BLOOD. 

I gave VS. a high rating, a just-barely-fair rating to SON, and BLOOD falls in the middle. Since both SON and BLOOD were indebted to Morrison, I suspect that his take on the Bat-verse is just too far-out for DC's animation-scripters to assimilate, not least because the same writer who did a good job on VS. did a mediocre job on BLOOD. 

Though Talia is at least roughly as "devilish" as she is in the Morrison comics, DeMatteis dispenses with any explanation for her evil, except for a line where Damian claims she's all about "control." To be sure, her opposite number Batman isn't exactly an indulgent father either-- that, indeed, was the main theme of VS.-- and in fact for most of BLOOD he's under the brainwashing aegis of Talia, which undermines whatever point the script might've had about contrasting the two approaches to familial dynamics. The script musters a couple of weak lines about how Batman can bring diverse heroes together through their shared pain and trauma, but this idea remains stillborn.

Talia's master plan is strictly Superhero Villainy 101; using electronic brainwashing techniques (facilitated by The Mad Hatter) to manipulate key figures in government. Her deviltry is just a backdrop for tensions between Damian and Nightwing (who masquerades as Batman while the genuine article is Talia's prisoner) and for the animated debut of "the Kate Kane Batwoman" and Batwing. The latter was one of Morrison's creation for his Batman run of the 2010s, while Batwoman, DC's first starring lesbian heroine, had appeared in 2006. Both debuts are decently if not imaginately handled. The biggest indulgence of the BLOOD script is that De Matteis injects far too many unnecessary costumed crooks into the mix, particularly in the movie's first half-- villains who are, as Batwoman herself points out, "C-listers." One wonders why a magisterial master planner like Talia would have bothered with such mediocrities, when she has her own League of Assassins (redubbed "the League of Shadows" thanks to one of Chris Nolan's lesser sins).

Once one gets past the movie's first half, there's some decent interfamilial drama and some decent action, particularly hand-to-hand battles between Talia and Batwoman and between Nightwing and the brain-fogged Batman. But it's a bit of a slog to get there, although this time out, I confer top voice-acting honors on Sean Maher, whose Nightwing provides the glue holding together all the disparate pieces. Amusingly, three years after this uncertain paean to "Bat-family values"-- which at least bore some similarities to Morrison's theme-- BATMAN: HUSH ends on the image of Batman's trauma pushing members of his family away, rather than uniting them.

WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND (1983)

 

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

Although Enzo Castellari's WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND is just a cheapjack MAD MAX imitation, I've certainly seen much duller ripoffs, such as 1991's DUNE WARRIORS. At least there's some goofy inventiveness in the gimmicks used in the rival vehicles of this post-apoc world, even though a couple of online reviews correctly pegged the cars themselves as being like glorified "golf carts." In fact, I might have nudged the mythicity of WARRIORS up to "fair" if the scripters-- mainly Castellari and Tito Carpi (who seemed to do better with softcore sex romps)-- had delivered on the sociological conflict suggested in the opening.

Once again a nuclear catastrophe has reduced civilization to scattered enclaves of human habitation, and once again these pre-industrial settlements are preyed upon marauders who have a variety of tricked-out supercars to take the place of plain old riding-horses. This time the marauders are called "Templars," and in keeping with that name they have a quasi-religious mission: to annihilate all life. Their leader (George Eastman) calls himself "One," which results in a hilarious scene with his subordinates chanting, "One, One, One."

Some post-apoc flicks have a stranger-hero who comes from nowhere and intervenes to save the settled people for no particular reason. But this script's hero-- Scorpion, played by an Italian actor with the faux-English name "Timothy Brent"-- used to be a Templar, and it really bugs One that this guy rides around in his own funny-car, knocking off other Templars. Why? If there was a reason, Castellari left it on the cutting room floor. The only incident that comes close to furnishing an explanation takes place after One captures Scorpion. A visually confusing sequence makes it look like One may be committing rape on the hero. But in their performances neither Brent nor Eastman communicate anything like a quarrel about erotic fixation, such as viewers may find in the marginally better RED SONJA.

After Scorpion kills a small band of Templars, thus drawing down reprisals from One, he hangs out at some small enclave, where he's hero-worshiped by a little blonde kid who barely figures into the story. The hero also encounters Nadir (Fred Williamson, but not with his own voice). Nadir has even less of a raison d'etre than Scorpion, seemingly existing just to walk around with a souped-up longbow that fires explosive arrows. The two macho dudes seem to have a slightly acrimonious relationship, but again, there's nothing like backstory in the English language version. Oh, and Scorpion rescues a hot chick (Anna Kanakis) from some Templars, but she too has no function in the plot and could have been excised easily.

Williamson offers a little verve despite being dubbed, more so than stone-faced Brent. But the main attraction is watching countless stupid-looking cars tool around the desert, equipped with flame-throwers and buzzsaws and so on. The cars are often filmed in slow motion as if the director wanted everyone to contemplate their glories the way Shelley meditated on skylarks and mountains. I'm sure Castellari did so just to make sure he didn't have to shoot many retakes. But all of these artless cars do make WARRIORS stand out from a generally undistinguished pack.

FEARLESS FRANK (1967)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


FEARLESS FRANK is an undercooked mess with the intention of being a superhero satire.  It was the first starring film for actor Jon Voight and the second writer-director outing for Philip Kaufman, both of whom would fortunately go on to much better things.

When I saw the film on television in the 1970s, I'm sure I disliked the bare-bones look of the project. Today I find the minimalism of the project one of its few charms. However, any good will that the film builds up today is quickly dissipated by Kaufman's script. Strangely, though the same writer-director would collaborate on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, here Kaufman labors rather tediously to convince his viewers that all the familiar tropes of superhero films are fundamentally stupid. There's nothing wrong with this in a satire, but FRANK's analysis of superhero melodrama has less wit and content to it than an episode of Jay Ward's DUDLEY DO-RIGHT cartoon.

Frank is a country boy who plans to seek out the big city and make his fortune, not unlike Voight's more celebrated character from 1969's MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Before Frank even makes it to the city, the city comes to him, in the form of a pulchritudinous woman named Plethora (Monique van Vooren, the titular villainess of 1953's TARZAN AND THE SHE-DEVIL.)  She's running away from an obnoxious crime-lord known only as "the Boss," who is served by a Dick Tracy-esque contingent of weird henchmen with names like "the Rat," "the Cat," "Screwnose," and "Needles" (portrayed by famed naturalistic author Nelson Algren). The Boss' henchmen catch up with Plethora just as she appeals to Frank for help, and the hoods shoot Frank to death before he even knows what's going on.

Frank is brought back to life by a scientist known only as the Good Doctor (popular character actor Severn Darden). The Doctor also gives Frank superpowers-- flight, super-strength, and invulnerability-- and sends the naive Frank out to be a crimefighter. Initially Frank accepts this injunction with a sort of blase good humor; he doesn't even seem to remember getting killed.  Over and over Frank shows up as the Boss' goons commit crimes and trounces them easily.

The irate Boss retaliates. Faced with a superhero, he rings up a mad scientist named Claude, who promptly cooks up a robotic duplicate of Frank, usually called "False Frank." Claude cautions the crooks not to interact with False Frank, as it may impair his ability to be a super-killer.  Unbeknownst to the crooks, Plethora sneaks into the lab. Though she shows no further desire to escape the Boss-- in fact, she even helps him commit a crime or two-- she mistakes the robot for the young man who died for her. She doesn't precisely have sex with him, but she lavishes some affection on the automaton.

Meanwhile, back at the Good Doctor's lab, relations between Frank and the scientist deteriorate.  Frank gets tired of being sent out on superheroic errands all the time; further, the scientist's daughter Lois-- one guess what famous character she was named after-- takes a shine to Frank. One night Frank barges into Lois' room, and after a cutaway that reads "Wham! Pow!" in imitation of the BATMAN teleseries, the two have made love-- though oddly, Lois seems to be seducing Frank rather than the other way round.

This begins Frank's fall from grace. He wins a fight with the robot, which fails to drain away Frank's energy, possibly because Plethora sapped the automaton's killer instinct.  The robot escapes but then allows itself to be put in jail. Frank loses any of his beneficent characteristics-- perhaps the robot absorbs them?-- and slaughters a bar full of tipsy patrons. The Good Doctor passes away, and Frank ultimately takes a literal fall and is destroyed. Yet the robot assumes his heroic stature and prevents mad Claude from destroying the whole city.

Though FRANK was almost surely Kaufman's attempt to latch onto the popular satirical coattails of the BATMAN series, Kaufman doesn't show much wit in his deconstruction of superhero tropes. It's enough for him to point out, "this or that trope is silly" and nothing more. In contrast, the BATMAN show had a far more trenchant ability to play inventively with the very absurdities it mocked.

Only in two instances does Kaufman manage a little originality. First, his script essentially swaps the traditional roles of the "gang moll" and the "scientist's daughter," for the former generally functions as the "good girl" in redeeming False Frank, while the latter acts the part of the "bad girl," polluting Frank with a sexual consciousness. Second, although the robot's last-minute savior-act conforms broadly to the combative mode-- even if he has to usurp the main hero's role to do so-- the robot then gets in a boat with Plethora, Lois and the Good Doctor's assistant and sails away, having nothing more to do with superheroics. Kaufman gets in just one semi-good line about how the hero is "leaving us all to find our own endings," but it's the only time his satire comes close to a thematic statement; almost everything else strikes of laziness and unjustified conceit.

GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (2024)

 

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

When I reviewed GODZILLA VS. KONG, I remarked that I wouldn't have minded if the series ended there. To my surprise, EMPIRE is actually better, even though the conflict no longer focuses upon a "Clash of Franchise-Titans."

Two broad improvements: fewer inconsequential humans and more development of the Monsterverse. The 2021 film was all about establishing the boundaries of the Titans with regard to each other and to the human population. EMPIRE is about the formation of new societies out of the legacies of old ones. One will find no similar tropes in either the 1954 GODZILLA or the 1933 KONG. The first is about an apocalyptic beast  who almost devastates ordered society thanks to having assimilated the power of humanity's most apocalyptic weapon. The second is about the last vestiges of a primeval world surviving on the periphery of the civilized one, with the one doomed to die upon encountering the other. 

The medium for continuing an ancient legacy is EMPIRE's crossbreeding of GODZILLA '54's concept of a monster-filled under-earth with an even older sci-fi idea of the "primeval super-science culture." The 2021 movie fairly broadcast the likelihood that Kong would not truly be the last of his kind, so the revelation of a tribe of semi-intelligent giant apes in the Hollow Earth comes as no surprise. But the EMPIRE script-- which shares only one of the writers from 2021-- doubles down on the Big Reveals, for the under-earth also plays host to a tribe of telepaths with some sort of crystal-technology. 

Given their links to the moth-Titan Mothra, this vaguely Polynesian-looking tribe shares some literary genetics with the primitives of Infant Island in the Tohoverse. But the Hollow-Earth natives turn out to be distant relatives of the Iwe, the human occupants of Skull Island. The 2021 KONG wiped out the Iwe, except for sole survivor Jia (Kaylee Hottle), who was adopted by Titan-exert Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall). Jia's only significance is that she shares a psychic rapport with Kong in that they're both the only intelligent survivors of Skull Island. EMPIRE's script is far from subtle in showing the loneliness of both Kong and Jia, deprived of a society of common heritage. But at least Jia becomes a bit more sympathetic this time out, though of course the audience's main concern is for Kong. 

The natives initiate the action, sending forth a distress signal. This draws a exploratory team of humans to investigate, consisting of Ilene, Jia, comic-relief blogger Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry), and a new character, "monster-doctor" Trapper (Dan Stevens)-- oh, and a redshirt who gets killed early on. Godzilla also seems to sense something in the offing, since he devours a French nuclear plant to empower himself. Upon meeting with the proto-Iwe, the explorers learn that eons ago Godzilla confined the ancestors of the ape-tribe to Hollow-Earth, much as Kong self-exiled to that world to avoid trespassing on Godzilla's territory. Now the scurrilous simians, led by the malignant Skar King, have found a new access to the surface world, which they plan to conquer once more-- in part thanks to their having enslaved a dragon-like Titan that can breathe freezing gas. The only thing that can stop the rebellion of those damn, dirty apes is an alliance between Kong and Godzilla, and that's only possible if Jia can mind-meld with Mothra to broker a peace between the rival monsters.

To be sure, the main virtue of EMPIRE is that  returning director Adam Wingard and his FX team sell the audience on an endless series of battles between quarrelsome colossi (including a mini-Kong who has an occasional nasty edge, so that he's not repugnantly cute). But I like the fact that the script gives us a Hollow-Earth reflecting the two main phrases of the "lost world" trope: one where the lost world is inhabited by degenerate brutes, the other, by shining, though still fallible, angels in human form. 

Jia and Ilene are still flat characters, but this time the script gives them one interesting bit of business: Ilene fearing that her adoptive daughter will immediately run off to join her eons-old kindred. But Bernie and Trapper get all the clever lines because they're not confined to performing simple plot-functions. If there's a third film in the series, maybe the writers will manage to jettison all of the dullards.

HONOR ROLL #232

 If Kong was the king of his world, was SKAR KING-- the king of his scars?

They don't make heroes more fearless than JON VOIGHT.

FRED WILLIAMSON was not the main hero of this film but he was the only actor for whom I had even mild praise.

Lesbian BATWOMAN might've wanted to engage in something other than a chick-fight with Talia Al Ghul.

BENI CARDOSO (confusingly billed as "Benny") brings an evil force into the world.

ALAIN DELON anticipates aspects of the "Banderas Zorro."