THE WITCHES ATTACK (1968)

 

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

This was the last luchador film directed by Jose Diaz Morales, and whereas THE DIABOLICAL AXE and BARON BRAKOLA were adequate entries in the low-stakes Santo series, ATTACK loses points for being an aimless remake of SANTO VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN, with witches substituted for vampires. But it gains points for once more spotlighting the charms of the recently deceased glamour-girl Lorena Velasquez.

After a confusing dream sequence, where dreamer Ofelia (Maria San Martin) envisions Santo fighting with witch-spawn, the movie reveals the plot of evil witch-queen Mayra (Velasquez): to capture Ofelia and sacrifice her to Satan. (His infernal majesty makes an appearance here, even as he did in VAMPIRE). I wasn't clear as to why Mayra thinks Ofelia is the ideal sacrifice. But in a small way this idea makes more sense than the plot in VAMPIRE, which as I noted involved the head vampire wanting to join Satan in hell and needing some innocent to take her place.

Ofelia's dream is taken seriously by her boyfriend, who calls upon the Silver Mask to investigate. In ATTACK's best scene, Mayra utilizes a fairly original gambit: sending her right-hand woman Medusa (Edaena Ruiz) to seduce Santo. But the luchador nobly refuses such base temptations. He doesn't manage to keep the witches from abducting Ofelia and spiriting her to their lair, but from somewhere the hero produces a giant cross and sets the witches on fire whenever it gets near them. This is very likely a borrowing from 1960's HORROR HOTEL, and one reviewer claimed to have seen (as I did not) a clip from that film worked into the ATTACK continuity-- which I think quite possible. 

In contrast to VAMPIRE, where Velasquez barely moved out of her vampire lair, the leading monster-lady at least ventures forth to use some hypnotic mojo on Ofelia, to make her remove a protective cross. The only other notable item about ATTACK is that the lobby card I reproduced above looks like either a borrowing from Henry Fuseli's painting THE NIGHTMARE, or from some other movie poster that uses the painter's imagery.

TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION (1927)

 

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


This silent Tarzan film-- adapting (not very accurately) Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1923 novel of the same name-- was deemed lost for many years, but a French copy was found and duly released in subtitled form.

Though it's a handsomely mounted film, it seems to have been conceived as a more or less standard jungle-adventure in which Tarzan and his wife Jane are inserted with cumbersome effects. Actor James Pierce was selected by Burroughs for the role of Tarzan, but Pierce proves a stiff and uncharismatic hero for modern tastes (though Burroughs' own daughter married the fellow, and he did continue to act for many years). Though the novel includes many melodramatic twists and turns, some of which call upon the ape-man to rescue his equally famed mate, Jane has little to do in the 1927 film. She, Tarzan and Tarzan's sister-- a character invented purely for this film-- participate in a caravan seeking a legendary city full of diamonds but inhabited by sun-worshippers with a bent for human sacrifice.

Surprisingly, the narrative focus seems to be on sister Betty Greystoke-- seen in the still above, being rescued by her brother while she's garbed in her sacrificial regalia. Betty also has a romance going with one of the white hunters. This was a plot-thread that Burroughs had used in other books: once Tarzan and Jane were safely married, the author often created subplots that threw another heterosexual couple into one's arms. However, though that seems to be the intent of the film's early part, Betty's romance with the white hunter never becomes nearly as important as her role as the Girl Tarzan Saves.

The sun-worshipers are just a standard tribe of savage natives, whose origins are not explored, and the climactic action scenes are no better than fair. The one major plot-thread taken from the novel-- that a man resembling Tarzan impersonates the ape-man for a time-- is underused in favor of meandering jungle scenes. Boris Karloff has a small role as a bad native, but he has no scenes of moment. Two years later, there appeared a far better Tarzan film, TARZAN THE TIGER. It not only portrayed a much more charismatic hero, it also made use of the same tribal villains that had appeared in the GOLDEN LION novel, and who were tossed aside in this film for a bunch of bland sun-worshipers.

MINDWARP (1991)

 

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

The script for MINDWARP-- one of three DTV films produced for the short-lived Fangoria Films label-- was executed by the same writing-team that worked on 2003's TERMINATOR 3, John Brancato and Michael Ferris. I've seen MINDWARP dismissed as nothing more than a gore-film, and I must admit it was surely structured so that FANGORIA magazine would be able to play up the grottier sights. But as with T3, the script shows the authors' strong familiarity with the tropes of sci-fi.

Young woman Judy (Marta Martin) lives in a computer-controlled biosphere beneath the surface of a future-Earth ravaged by atomic warfare. Because the small population of the biosphere can't be permitted to travel in the polluted "Death Zones," the populace is kept "plugged in" to the computer's fantasy-scenarios. Judy's mother is perfectly happy to pass her days in such dreams, but Judy rebels. She wants to know more about her missing father, but her mother won't reveal anything. However, when the computer learns of Judy's rebelliousness, it exiles her to the surface.

The inexperienced young woman is almost slain by mutated, cannibalistic humans called "Crawlers," but a lone hunter named Stover (Bruce Campbell) rescues her. He just has time to explain some of the exigencies of living in the real world, when the two of them are attacked and abducted by Crawlers.

Instead of being devoured, Judy and Stover are taken before the Seer (Angus Scrimm), a masked but non-mutated human who's managed to control the mutants with a phony religion. Unfortunately, not only does the Seer's concubine Cornelia (Elizabeth Kent) resent the presence of a potential female rival, the Seer turns out to Judy's missing father. Further, since even a lot of non-mutated humans are sterile, Judy's dad is willing to commit incest in order to propagate.

In many ways MINDWARP feels like a slightly less sleazy version of a Roger Corman space opera. As Stover, Bruce Campbell provides the fighting-scenes, but though Martin's Judy has no combat-skills, she puts a lot more moxie into her dramatic scenes than do most B-film actresses. 

To be sure, there's a "Big Reveal" at the end, in that Judy wakes up from another fantasy-scenario, back in the biosphere, so nothing that happened to her on the surface actually transpired. Nevertheless, even though the combative elements of the movie take place in the heroine's imagination, I still deem MINDWARP a combative film.

LADY DEATH (2004)

 

 

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

I didn't follow Lady Death's comics-career in the nineties. The extent of my thought about her was that though she was one of the many "bad girl" protagonists of that decade, I thought her costume was sexy without being over-the-top.

Going only on a Wikipedia summary, the comic-book character sounds like she owes something to Marvel's 1970s character THE SON OF SATAN. Said character in turn owed much to the book ROSEMARY'S BABY, in which Satan had relations with a virtuous mortal woman and conceived a child-- but in the Marvel feature, the offspring grew up to battle his infernal progenitor. In the original comic book for Lady Death, the horrific heroine starts out as Hope, the adolescent daughter of a 15th-century Swedish nobleman, Matthias, and his virtuous but deceased wife. Unknown to the innocent girl, her father is a demonologist who intends to use her as a pawn in a war to oust Lucifer from Hell and take control. Eventually Hope is hurled down to perdition and becomes transformed into Lady Death, who battles both Lucifer and her evil father.

The movie keeps the broad outline of this origin but seeks to whittle down the number of characters. Now Matthias merely poses as a mortal ruler, but in truth he's Lucifer in disguise, and his imposture is part of some involved scheme to persuade Hope to rule in Hell as an ally. This contrivance never tracks very well. In his mortal ID the Devil arranges for Hope-- who only wants to marry her boyfriend Niccolo-- to be burned at the stake as a witch, knowing that only by resorting to appealing to the power of Hell can Hope save her mortal life. Hope ends up in Hell, but when her father's true nature is revealed, she rejects his patronage. He responds by tossing her out of a window and into a raging torrent, which doesn't exactly make Matthias/Lucifer sound like much of a master planner. Hope survives, and with the help of a Satanic rebel, she takes control of a contingent of Hell's zombie denizens. Transformed into the white-hued Lady Death, she eventually storms Lucifer's castle and battles him in a lively swordfight, to gain control of Hell.

The animation is merely competent, while the script by Carl Macek-- largely known for providing English scripts for dubbed anime productions-- is pedestrian, in that we never see even good basic melodrama in this daughter-father conflict, not even on the level of the aforementioned SON OF SATAN series. A few lines suggest that Hope, in her desperation to survive, has turned her back upon the world of the living, and that, in a sense, Lucifer has succeeded in convincing her to spend her life in Hell, even if it's as his opponent. But at no time does the character do anything but go through the motions of her "heroine's journey." The lack of humor, except for a few jocular lines from a jester-demon, adds to the general inertia of the narrative. DEATH was the only original release from now-defunct ADV Films, an early pioneer in releasing anime for American consumption. 

SHIRA THE VAMPIRE SAMURAI (2005)

 

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

And now, because no one at all asked for it, here's yet another micro-budgeted straight-to-video production with lousy locations (warehouses, forests) and about three actors with some name-value (James Lew, Adrian "T.J. Hooker" Zmed, and star Chona Jason).

The title is the only thing that provides some amusement value. It allows one to ask the metaphysical question, "Is it more absurd to imagine a young 16th-century Japanese woman being transformed into an immortal vampire, or to imagine that the same female somehow got special dispensation, in masculinist feudal Japan, to receive some sort of samurai training?" I'd say the latter, all the more so since the murky script could have dumped the whole samurai angle without losing much.

We begin with a few scenes explaining how young Shira became a half-vampire. Shamed by being vampire-bitten, she tried to commit seppuku, which somehow interrupted the normal vampire transformation. Unlike Blade, from whom Shira has patently been copied, Shira doesn't have a mad-on for the bloodsucker who changed her. We just get a swift transition to the 21st century, during which Shira has somehow hooked up with a bunch of vampire slayers (one of whom is a Van Helsing descendant). The group's activities come to the attention of king-vampire Kristof (Zmed), who thinks he can conquer the world if he masters the process of creating half-vampires.

That's about it for plot. There are a lot of pedestrian dialogue scenes, particularly between Shira and her mortal boyfriend, interspersed with routine fight-scenes. I had no expectations of good dialogue, of course. But I had seen Chona Jason do some decent fight-scenes in a couple of low-budget (but not THIS low-budget) productions, one of which was 1995's DRAGON FURY. But it seems that Jason was at her best providing support-roles, since even the modest potential of her lead role is undermined by her leaden performance. IMDB only lists one more movie credit for the actress, so she may have moved on what one hopes were greener pastures.

DORORO (2019)

 

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

Since I rated the mythicity of the live-action DORORO as more concrescent than that of the original 1967-69 manga series by Osamu Tezuka, I had some curiosity as to whether an anime series could achieve any similar feat. I had no access to the 1969 anime adaptation, but I did to this one from 2019-- which, from my partial readings, seems to have borrowed not only from Tezuka but also from a 2016 manga-reinterpreation of the original Tezuka material by another artist. I didn't attempt to re-read all of the manga iterations, but sampled bits and pieces from each series.

Because of that sampling, I noticed that the creators of the 2019  DORORO had a reasonably original take on the character of Hyakkimaru, the paraplegic samurai who shares top billing in the feature alongside his young (only apparently) male companion Dororo. As a child, Hyakkimaru's warlord-father Daigo sacrifices his own son to numerous demons in exchange for his realm's prosperity. Each demon takes a body part from the infant, leaving him no more than a lump of dying flesh. A highly skilled doctor not only saves the life of the discarded infant, he outfits Hyakkimaru with artificial limbs and trains him to use his psychic senses to perceive the world around him, in lieu of his lost sense-organs.

Now, when the two manga-artists depicted Hyakkimaru at the outset of each feature, the samurai is seen as being fully able to act the part of a normal human, despite having been deprived of his normal abilities. But the writers of 2019 correctly perceived that it should be almost impossible for a person lacking most of his senses to segue so easily into emulating the way normal humans interact. Thus, though the 2019 Hyakkimaru possesses the same motives as other versions--to slay all the demons who stole his body parts, in order to get them restored to his maimed body-- he shows so little affect as to make Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry seem like a bon vivant. The slow re-acquirement of his humanity from episode to episode is thus something that the acerbic Dororo can nurture while they ply their demon-hunting trade.

In addition to killing many diverse demons to restore his human attributes, Hyakkimaru is also drawn, little by little, into a conflict with the father who sacrificed him, and with the son whom Daigo did not sacrifice, Tahomaru. Tezuka's manga kills off the second son of Daigo in his only episode, so that the climactic confrontation is between Hyakkimaru and his father. The 2019 anime repeatedly pits the two brothers against one another until the climax and raises more ethical issues as a consequence. For instance, though Tahomaru is moral enough to realize that Daigo committed a terrible crime, that crime resulted in the prosperity of the warlord's realm, and thus Tahomaru feels that preserving the realm necessitates the slaying of the unfortunate sibling.

This series may be somewhat more organized than the original manga, but DORORO is still very episodic, and nearly none of the demons are memorable presences. One exception is a sprite who's capable of making humans speak and act in reverse of their actual intentions. This leads to some very welcome comedy when a young woman tries to talk Hyakkimaru into marrying her, and he, under the sprite's influence, agrees. Dororo, who's been crushing on her partner for some time (though she thinks he's been fooled by her boy-imposture), is of course enraged by this seeming betrayal.

In many ways, the demons' evil is eclipsed by that of humans. The lords and their samurai warriors are responsible for much suffering to protect their power, but people on the lower rungs of society are only intermittently more ethical. Tezuka's anti-war philosophy is conspicuous here, but I can't claim any of 2019's ruminations rise to the level of strong literary myths. The series' strongest trope relates to Hyakkimaru trying to retain his moral nature despite all the carnage he must wreak to regain his physical humanity. I can't say that these ethical moments ascended to a level I would call "mythic," just as the villainies of human beings are also fairly pedestrian. Still, the final episode of 2019 does give Dororo and Hyakkimaru a better closure than did the original Tezuka work. 

 

HONOR ROLL #244

 HYAKKIMARU rejects the term "differently abled."

"Hey, CHONA JASON, you got your samurai in my vampire!"

LADY DEATH was designed as a substitute for the "little death."

Is it a future-apocalypse, asks MARTA MARTIN, or is it Memorex?

JAMES PIERCE will never be caught just lion around.

Don't ask me which witch is EDAENA RUIZ.

DOOM PATROL (SEASON 1, 2019)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

Of the various jejune devices this show's first season uses to ironically "deconstruct" its superhero subject matter, one of the most tedious is the fact that all 15 episodes have titles that stick some word or words in front of the word "patrol." Thus all the episodes have titles like "Jane Patrol," "Ezekiel Patrol," and even "Doom Patrol Patrol."

I have a title that I think would have applied equally well to all the episodes of the first season (and probably the other seasons as well):

"Snark Patrol."

History: DC Comics' original superhero title from the 1960s, THE DOOM PATROL, was a straight superhero-adventure title with large doses of comedy relief and with heroes who were all damaged in some way-- a cyborg with a human brain, a radioactive man swathed in bandages, and so on. In the late 1980s, British writer Grant Morrison, ostensibly a fan of the original series, produced a wild absurdist take on some of the original teammates, as well new additions. The Morrison tenure had ironic aspects to it, but its focus emphasized dazzling flights of the imagination.

Not so the four seasons of the DOOM PATROL teleseries. The writers incorporate various ideas from Morrison in the course of the first season, but shoehorned into a clunky plotline in which the four members of the current Patrol-- analogues of the comics-characters Robotman, Crazy Jane, Elasti-Girl and Negative Man-- are forced by supercriminal Mister Nobody to seek the missing scientist who brought them all together, Niles Caulder, a.k.a. The Chief. But at no point do the scripts incorporate any sense of wonder at all the bizarre entities the Patrol encounters. Instead, the writers substitute a repetitive "what the fuck now" attitude about everything, including the protagonists' own revelations about their own inner demons. 

The most I can say for the series is that once or twice a given episode improved on something I found weak in Morrison's original run. For instance, in keeping with the "gloom and doom" mood of eighties comics, Morrison changed the beneficent figure of Niles Caulder into a manipulative monster who changed the heroes from ordinary humans into freaks so that he The Chief could play God. In the interests of making the Chief viable for an ongoing series, the writers kept that trope but gave the Chief a somewhat altruistic reason for his actions. Still, the occasional improvement does not make up for all of the heavy-handed snarkiness.

More interesting for me than the series proper are speculations about why PATROL turned out so badly. The show was one of the last projects for the streaming service DC Universe, which perhaps inevitably ran out of money and was absorbed into HBO Max during PATROL's run. Prior to PATROL, two of the big-name producers attached to it-- Greg Berlanti and Geoff Johns-- had worked on a four-season series, TITANS. But since that was based on a more typical superhero title, its showrunner Greg Walker played things straight.

I won't put the whole burden of badness on the PATROL showrunner Jeremy Carver, since he was probably told by his superiors to incorporate more absurdist humor into this adaptation. But in the final analysis, he's probably mostly responsible for the repetitive tone and the lack of imagination. But then, DOOM PATROL is hardly the only superhero project of the 21st century to suffer from indifference to the sense of wonder.

Wrapping up, I may not like most of the characters, but all of the actors comported themselves well, particularly Diane Guerrero as Jane. There are some "woke" touches to the first season, such as blather about toxic masculinity (some of which is also found in Morrison) and in making the Jane character Hispanic for no particular reason. But those nods to political correctness didn't damage the storylines as they have many MCU streaming shows, and if I had to choose the lesser of two evils, I suppose I'd have to choose boring snark over tedious lectures.

THE BATMAN VS. DRACULA (2005)

 

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

I don't remember getting much out of the 2004-2008 animated series THE BATMAN, but it would be interesting to re-watch it some day, now that it's not nearly so overshadowed by the nineties series. I recall mildly liking this DTV film, though, and I think it's more rewarding a second time around. 

One of the better aspects of VS. is the romance-subplot between Bruce Wayne and Vicky Vale. According to IMDB, the lady reporter -- a Golden Age Bat-romance given greater visibility by the 1989 live-action movie-- did not appear in any of the episodes of the regular series. In this DTV, she and Bruce seem to have been acquainted for some time and may have even dated. Rather like the Vicky of the movie, the heroine is more interested in Bruce Wayne than in his masked alter ego, and at one point, while looking at an old article on Young Bruce's bereavement, she comes just this close to figuring things out. It's a much more soulful moment than the comics character ever attained.

Of course, the dust-up between the Gotham Guardian and the Lord of Vampires is the main focus. Yet the subplot of Batman's inability to have a normal life-- something faithful Alfred comments on more than once-- serves as a counterpoint to the hero's dedication to serve as a costumed super-dad to the entire city of Gotham. I'm not wild about the visual design of either Batman or Bruce Wayne, but the script does credit to the overall mythos of the crusader.

The visual design of Dracula is-- okay. He looks like a cadaverous version of Chris Lee, but with more angular features, but like the novel-version he possesses a wider variety of powers than the Hammer Dracula. He is, like some of the movie versions, unable to move about in daytime, but he enlists two of Batman's most prominent villains as his servitors. The Joker gets literally vampirized, meaning that before the movie's over Batman must find a vampirism-cure to return the Clown Prince back to his normal fiendishness. The other servant, the Penguin, functions more as a Renfield-type pawn, and provides some needed humor amidst all the posturing of the two bat-adversaries. 

In an interesting rewrite of the Dracula legend, this version of the Count was married to Carmilla Karnstein, a female vampire in Sheridan LeFanu's CARMILLA, a novel which debuted a little over thirty years before Bram Stoker's famous work. One guess what current Gotham resident just happens to resemble the late Carmilla.

Given that Batman is physically outclassed by his supernatural foe, he's able to use an assortment of quasi-scientific weapons, as well as traditional lore, to defeat the monster. It's a strong, lively end-fight, and if I get around to re-watching the series I'll be curious how the regular episodes handle their fight choreography-- very different from BATS, but with an equal appeal.

PLANET ON THE PROWL (1966)

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

PLANET ON THE PROWL is the third entry in Italy's so-called "Gamma One" series, preceded by THE WILD WILD PLANET and WAR OF THE PLANETS. Both of these are decent cheapjack soap-opera, but though Film #3 takes place in the same future-Earth environment, the characters of the first two films are jettisoned in favor of a new cast. all of whom manage to be even less well-defined than the first group. 

Unfortunately, even though schlock-meister director Antonio Margheriti helmed all four films, he or another producer decided to dust off a SF-trope that had become hoary even by 1966: a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with the Earth. As the asteroid comes closer, the planet suffers cataclysms, forcing the Earthpeople to send a spaceship to deal with the cosmic intruder. Suffice to say that even the astronauts don't seem to have any sort of plan in mind, they manage to destroy the asteroid, which may or may not be a living thing. In place of good action, there are a lot of scenes of actors clambering over phony asteroid-parts. There is one fistfight between the ship's commander and a subordinate, and that's about it for PROWL.

GOTHAM SEASON FIVE (2019)

 

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

Season Five improves somewhat on the shitshow of Season Four in three respects. There are fewer episodes, so there's less gratuitous slaughter. For the same reason, the writers didn't have time to introduce any waste-of-space new characters like Sofia Falcone, though they can't be bothered to do much with the villains already in play and so glut Gotham City with their ramshackle versions of Bane, Nyssa Al Ghul, Magpie and The Ventriloquist. Thirdly, the scribes shook up the routine of urban adventure somewhat with a very compressed version of a nineties comic-book arc about Gotham being turned into an isolated, resource-deprived "No Man's Land."

There are a few other improvements resulting from the writers' desire to tie things up. Though they shunt Mister Freeze and Firefly off stage, never to be seen again, and make only cursory use of Scarecrow and Mad Hatter, they finally get some actual use out of Poison Ivy. In the last episodes of Season Four, Maybe-Joker Velasca shoots Selina merely to twist Bruce Wayne's tail, and Selina's doctors tell Bruce that his girlfriend will probably remain crippled. Ivy provides some handy plant-magic that heals Selina's injuries and makes her into something of a preternatural badass, out to gain revenge on Maybe-Joker. 

Similarly, Tabitha, though left alive at the end of Season Four, is quickly dispatched by Penguin in Five's first episode. This stratagem at least gives Barbara Kean a slightly more coherent storyline-- that of vengeance on Penguin-- than the idiotic arc from Season Four, with her aspiring to take over the League of Shadows. She's not any better as a character, though, and she's in no way improved by the far-fetched notion that she inveigles Jim Gordon into sleeping with her. This results in Psycho Barbara becoming a brand-new Baby Mama, thus driving a new wedge between Gordon and Lee Tompkins-- who suddenly have decided that they're back to having feelings for one another. 

Other plotlines are about the same. Riddler's dopey split personality arc gets finessed into an equally dopey one about his committing mass murder thanks to Hugo Strange. Penguin plans to leave the ruined, depleted city at first-- and Selina and Riddler both plan to join him, at least in theory-- but all three change their minds for cockamamie reasons. 

I commented earlier that whatever inspiration Bruce Wayne takes from Ra's Al Ghul in this series is at least an improvement on Christopher Nolan's wretched take on their relationship in BATMAN BEGINS. In the case of Nyssa Al Ghul, she's no better or worse than Nolan's Talia Al Ghul in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, out to avenge the slaying of Ra's by Bruce and Barbara. Maybe-Joker lacks any of the impact he had in earlier seasons, despite an attempt to align him with Real-Joker with a sort of "secondary origin story." But neither that, nor the injection of a "Definitely Not Harley Quinn," yields any strong moments.

The only arc in Season Five that works reasonably well is the one between Bruce and Selina, which leads me to believe that for the writing-staff this was the "true north" around which all the nonsense coalesced. During a plotline in which Ivy enthralls Bruce and makes him do her bidding, Selina thinks the boy billionaire plans to leave destitute Gotham of his own accord. Thus, she whales the tar out of him, thinking he means to leave her behind. Though Bruce comes back to his senses in that scene, Selina's suspicions turn out to be prophetic, for in the next to last episode, Bruce does leave Gotham, and her, behind. Ten years later, during which time Gordon has become commissioner and is thinking about retiring, Bruce comes back as the Dark Knight, having presumably honed his skills enough to be Gotham's foremost protector. A rooftop scene between Selina and the newly forged Batman establishes the dynamic of her scofflaw ethics and his dedication to duty for the Bat-mythos that is to come.

At one point I loosely compared GOTHAM to SMALLVILLE, but I should have specified that this was only in terms of the final episode of both serials, where the costumed hero comes on stage for the final moments of the final episode. But SMALLVILLE was a show whose creators wanted the readers to be invested in the characters' lives. Too often, the writers of GOTHAM seem like Hugo Strange, performing sadistic experiments on the subjects of their narrative experiment.

The fact that the writers managed to keep the Bruce-Selina relationship reasonably intact for five seasons recalls a similar storytelling strategy in another series: LOST, which, for all its chaotic revelations held true to a central plotline regarding the fate of Jack Shepherd. Now, the stories of LOST frequently wrote philosophical checks that the writers' intellectual accounts could not cover. But at least there was an attempt to find some significance in the lives of the LOST characters, however unlikeable some of them were. I don't think the showrunners of GOTHAM ever had that much investment in the Bat-mythos. GOTHAM can be lauded for having provided a lot of fine actors with the chance to strut their stuff on a Bat-stage-- even if the stories signified, if not nothing, far less than the lowly funnybooks on which they were based.

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940)

  

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

Just to get the encomium out of the way, the 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD remains the greatest magical fantasy ever committed to the cinematic medium. Not even the excellent 1924 Douglas Fairbanks original, on which the 1940 film is modeled, equals the Alexander Korda production for visual spectacle, subtlety of wit, and fine performances. From start to finish the Korda movie feels as if it were spun out of a web of Jungian archetypes, not painstakingly assembled from the prolonged efforts of the producer and his crew over the course of two years, frequently interrupted by the realities of a horrific world war.

Michael Powell, one of the credited directors of THIEF, said in his autobiography that the true author of the movie was not any writer or director, but Korda himself. I acknowledge that the producer's love of spectacle and adventure informs the film from start to finish. And we'll never know that much about the mundane origins of the movies, since, as critic Bruce Eder explained on the Criterion DVD, most of the production notes have been lost to the mists of time. All that said, I have my considered opinion as to who shaped THIEF to meet Korda's specifications. Of the two writers in the official credits, one, British comedian Miles Malleson (who also portrayed the film's dotty old Sultan), was primarily there to provide dialogue according to Eder. That suggests to me that the primary person responsible for re-forging the scenarios of the 1924 film into something pleasing to Alexander Korda was probably the other credited writer, Korda's fellow Hungarian Lajos Biro. Korda had already worked with Biro on several features, not least co-scripting THE DRUM, Korda's second movie with Indian actor Sabu. Biro, a highly regarded novelist and playwright, seems to added many levels of symbolic complexity to the already impressive script for the 1924 original.

Almost every review comparing 1924 to 1940 starts by remarking on the fact that Douglas Fairbanks is at once Ahmed, the titular Thief of Bagdad, and the romantic lead, *and* a martial hero. These functions in the Korda film are divided between Sabu's character Abu, both the titular thief and a young man in love with the idea of heroism, while the romantic lead is Ahmed, King of Bagdad (John Justin). Reviewers don't mention quite as often that in the early part of the 1924 film, Ahmed has a partner of sorts, a fellow thief who performs a few of the same narrative functions as the 1940 Abu. Since the helper-thief has no name in the 1924 film (though he does in the movie novelization), I'm going to dub him "Abu" as well, the better to bring out some of the narratological parallels between the original and the free-form adaptation.

Both Abus function to help the two Ahmeds gain access to the princess, the main bone of contention between the romantic lead and the villain in both films. 1940 Abu has clearly been built up to spotlight the burgeoning popularity of Sabu in his previous two Korda films, and he takes on the role of martial hero as well. 1924 Ahmed, to compete with the villain (and two other, almost superfluous suitors) for the princess' hand, must go on a dazzling journey into magical netherworlds to gain a prize in order to win the suitor-contest. 1940 Abu takes over the function of journeying into magical worlds, and one of his most impressive feats, scaling the Kali-like statue of the Goddess of Dawn, is borrowed not from the feats of 1924 Ahmed but from the deed of a nameless minion, commanded to climb a similar statue by one of the competing suitors. 

Other comparisons abound, such as the motivations of the respective villains. The Mongol Prince of 1924 doesn't actually care about the princess; he mainly wants to conquer Bagdad and add it to his empire. Jaffar of 1940 (Conrad Veidt) is, like the romantic lead, completely in love with the beautiful and unnamed royal (June Duprez), and Jaffar's main reason for usurping Ahmed's rulership of Bagdad is to bring the Princess under his sway. But the most important comparison is that while the 1924 THIEF is full of gorgeous spectacles meant to be looked at, the structure of the 1940 THIEF is all about the actual dynamics of what human beings see, and how they relate to what they see.

Biro, my theoretical architect, probably built on a key idea of both movies, that the romantic lead falls in love with the princess at first sight, as does she with him. But in 1940 one of the first visuals presented to the film-audience is that of an enormous eye, an oculus, painted on the front of a sailing-ship. The visual of the oculus dissolves into the face of the ship's commander Jaffar, first seen aiming his steely gaze at the audience, the lower part of his face masked. 

This intro contrasts with the introduction of romantic lead Ahmed, first seen as a blind man begging in the streets of Bagdad with his faithful dog. We later learn that Jaffar both blinded Ahmed and turned his companion Abu into a dog, and then turned them loose as an "insurance policy" against the return of the then-missing princess. (All this takes place as part of an "in media res" structure within the Korda film, which is utterly unlike the Fairbanks template.)

Despite the fact that the Sultan has gone to great lengths to prevent anyone from seeing his daughter, Jaffar is also given a "first look" of the princess to parallel that of Ahmed. In various ARABIAN NIGHTS, male protagonists may fall in love with a female from seeing no more than a portrait of the female's beauty. That's the way Ahmed encounters the Princess of Basra, seeing her from afar and being instantly stricken with fairy-tale love. Jaffar, as he later tells the Sultan, also sees the Princess from afar, but through the medium of a crystal. (Another seeing-crystal, the Eye of the Goddess, will later be instrumental in Jaffar's undoing.) But whereas Jaffar goes to the Princess' father to make a deal for her hand, Ahmed, with Abu's help, gains access to the hortus conclusus where the Princess gambols with her serving-maidens. So Ahmed penetrates her female space, in a broad sense, but he does so to give her a close-up look at HIM. Even his playful pretense of being a genie is not a real deception, since it only lasts a few seconds-- and even before Ahmed begins his imposture, the Princess is clearly discontented with her hothouse-flower confinement. When Genie-Ahmed asks why she doesn't run from a supposed supernatural being the way her maids do, her significant reply is "I want to look." 

It should be said that although 1940 Abu is just as skeptical about all this lovelorn stuff as was 1924 Abu, the former bases his opinion far more in his own personal desires. Though apparently 1940 Abu has lived his teenaged life scavenging off the solid citizens of Bagdad, his encounter with Ahmed, the dispossessed king of the city, seems to fire Abu up with the desire to become a seeker of the world's wonders. Ahmed's enthrallment with the Princess dashes Abu's dreams, but he remains loyal to his boon friend, though, truth to tell, the former King of Bagdad is sometimes a bit of a prig. The curse of blindness and canine-ness are cancelled out when the Princess falls under the control of Jaffar, The two heroes then pursue Jaffar, but their wizardly foe uses his magic to separate them, rather than leaving them together, as he did before. (Ironically, though Jaffar's insurance policy required his keeping Ahmed alive, he could have killed Abu with no consequences to his plans.)

Whereas 1924 Ahmed enters the world of wonder to win the hand of his Princess, 1940 Abu does so to be reunited with his friend. Abu chances to unbottle a Genie (Rex Ingram), who, for many viewers, is the highlight of the film, and who has no real analogues in the 1924 original. The Genie, resenting his having been confined to a bottle while others were free, announces his plan to kill his liberator. Abu's wits allow him to get the upper hand, and the Genie falls under the boy's control, at least until Abu wishes three wishes. The titanic jinn then inducts Abu into the wonder-world, to gain the only prize that can locate Ahmed: the Eye of the Goddess. But before Abu can get the Eye from the Goddess' statue, he must venture inside "the belly of the female beast." Is the spider a representation of hostile femininity? Why not? 

So Abu gets his own seeing-crystal, and uses it to find Ahmed. But they quarrel, partly because Ahmed can think only of his Princess, and Abu rashly uses his last wish to send Ahmed, alone, to Bagdad. This allows Ahmed to interrupt Jaffar's last-ditch plan to bend the Princess to his will, with the "blue rose of forgetfulness." However, though the plot is foiled, Jaffar finally decides to cut his losses, and cut off Ahmed's head.

But rashness isn't always wrong, when it comes from the heart, as it were. What transpires oddly reminds me of some versions of the European fairytale "The Princess and the Frog," wherein the Frog is transformed back into a prince not by a kiss, but by the Princess throwing the ugly amphibian against a wall. Abu flings the Goddess-Eye against a cliffside, and that unleashes a torrent of magic, catapulting the little thief into the Land of Legend. Though Abu has the chance to be a ruler in that world (even if he apparently would only be ruling a bunch of stately old men), he uses his thief-skills again, to abscond with two vital weapons, with which he overcomes Jaffar.

This long post could have been many times longer if I tried to explicate all the complex symbolism I attribute to Lajos Biro. I've also been obliged to skimp on celebrating the note-perfect performances of the main players, all of whom also mold themselves to be virtual folktale archetypes, but with all sorts of witty modern touches. No magical fantasy before the 1940 THIEF comes close to its mythic power, and only a tiny number of other fantasy-films even touch the border of its flying carpet.

WRESTLING WOMEN VS. THE KILLER ROBOT (1969)

  

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

Depending on one's viewpoint, WRESTLING WOMEN VS THE KILLER ROBOT is either the last, or next to the last, of the "lady wrestler" films of the 1960s, all helmed by "Mexploitation" director Rene Cardona. I have not re-screened NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES, also from 1969, for some time, but I recall that it seemed far more focused upon its anthropoid monster (just one rather than several) more than the luchadora of the story. But ROBOT is certainly the last lady-wrestler movie from Cardona that featured two luchadoras for the price of one.

Sadly, ROBOT may not be the worst of the five teamup films, but it's still a very paltry finale. One of the five, SHE WOLVES OF THE RING, I have not reviewed here because it's a purely naturalistic drama about lady wrestlers, but the only one that stands out is the first one, DOCTOR OF DOOM. In fact, the script for ROBOT reworks a handful of scenes from DOCTOR to pad out the 1969 movie, which is mostly an uncredited remake of "The Cybernauts," an episode of the 1960s teleseries THE AVENGERS.

The evil Doctor Orlak (Carlos Agosti) and his assistants seek to invent the perfect robot servant. I'm not sure why he chose to change a regular human into a brutish ape-man, which wouldn't seem to have much to do with cybernetics. He decides he can improve his inventions if he kidnaps a bunch of scientists to help him, so he sends out his single "killer robot" to track down such unwilling aides. This robot looks almost exactly like the one from the AVENGERS episode, a tall man in a trenchcoat but with silver-metal facial skin. 

Trouble is, one of the kidnappees is the uncle of a tough lady wrestler, Gaby (Regine Torne), so she and her cop boyfriend join forces to find the victims and rescue them. Gaby's roommate and fellow wrestler Gemma (Malu Reyes) joins the crusade, as does the cop's comical partner. This might sound promising, However, because the killer robot is almost indestructible, the ladies' wrestling moves aren't any more effective than gunfire. Gaby and Gemma finally penetrate Orlak's laboratory, where Orlak reveals that he's also stolen a device from a second AVENGERS episode, "Return of the Cybernauts:" said device being a bracelet that can make a normal human act like a robot. However, the cops and the lady wrestlers devastate the lab and rescue the abducted scientists.

Orlak then escapes to a second lab, where he somehow transfers the power of his ape-man (strangely named "Carfax") into the body of a female slave, whom he decks out in metal garb so that she too will be a "killer robot." This robot, name of "Electra," challenges Gaby in the ring, but Gemma realizes that Electra is an automaton and comes to Gaby's rescue. Happily, Orlak is ringside, controlling Electra with a transmitter, so that the cops manage to shoot him down and end his menace. 

All of this recycling might be bearable, except that the action scenes are subpar, even those in the ring. I can't escape the feeling that Cardona was completely played out on the topic of female fighters and simply didn't try all that hard. 

HONOR ROLL #243

 MALU REYES and REGINA TORNE have the honor, if one can call it that, of providing the last teamup of cinematic Luchadoras.

SABU wants to sue Disney's Aladdin for ripping off his story.

CAMREN BICONDOVA learns that it's not always fun for the cat to walk by itself.

Only OMBRETTA COLLI knows where the cool planets go prowling.

A very gaunt DRACULA takes on a very pumped Batman.

DENISE GUERRERO was doomed to remain in this series for all four seasons.

BATMAN: DEATH IN THE FAMILY (2020)

 

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

If I were judging this release purely for the titular Batman sequence, I'm not sure I could even rate it "poor." It's not really a narrative at all; just a recap mostly consisting of footage from the 2010 feature UNDER THE RED HOOD. It was somehow tied to an interactive game, and I don't review games. FAMILY itself is more like a commercial for a story than a story itself.

However, I imagine the true purpose of this collection was to monetize four short cartoons that DC Comics produced in collaboration with HBO Max. Though the stars of the four shorts are well-known in the comics community, they're non-entities to the casual buyer-- hence, bundling these four actual stories with a faux Batman offering. Something similar was done with the collection SUPERMAN/SHAZAM, which also included shorts featuring the Spectre, Jonah Hex, and Green Arrow. For what it's worth, FAMILY's offerings are on the whole much better than those on the SHAZAM collection, and the worst one is out of the way first. 

Surprisingly, "Sergeant Rock" was directed by BATMAN alumnus Bruce Timm and co-written by Walt and Louise Simonson. But not only is it one of the hoariest conceivable plotlines-- WWII commandos must bust into a Nazi installation to destroy a super-weapon-- it jerks around the mythos of DC's venerable soldier-hero for no good reason. A Nazi assault apparently wipes out all of the soldiers serving in Sergeant Rock's unit. Rock (Karl Urban) immediately wants to return to the field-- which no sane commander would allow. But in this case, Rock is supposedly the only one who can lead a squad consisting of three grunts changed into traditional Hollywood monsters by Allied science. The cartoon never uses DC's name for this "weird war" series-concept, The Creature Commnandos, but that's who the characters essentially are. The effect is that of mingling the peanut-butter realism of Sergeant Rock with the chocolate escapism of this goofball Monster Squadron. There's some okay action as the unit breaks into the Nazi fortress with ridiculous ease, but even that virtue is cancelled out by the dopiness of the second hoariest cliche, that all of Rock's missing buddies have been turned into zombies. 

The second short, "Adam Strange," is only better in terms of including a couple of exemplary action-sequences. Most of the action takes place on some planet's asteroid mining-colony, and the colonists there are bracing for an attack by alien spider-creatures. The colonists barely pay attention to the local town drunk, but flashbacks soon establish that the drunk is actually the former hero Adam Strange (Charlie Weber), whose adopted planet Rann was invaded by the Hawk-soldiers of Thanagar. (This is a reference to a comic-book sequence to a martial conflict between the two worlds, though it's no more than a toss-off reference here.) For some reason the Zeta-Beam that normally transports Strange from Rann to Earth screws up and deposits him on the asteroid, where he gets drunk over the loss of his wife and child. Eventually he proves his mettle as a hero again, and the Zeta Beam arrives to take him back to Rann, for what one assumes is yet more heroic destiny.

Even viewers who know nothing of the nature or genesis of DC's "Phantom Stranger" may be get some amusement from this short. Short recap: though the titular character originated in the 1950s, he gained his greatest fame when revived by DC in 1969. A handful of these revival-adventures gave the mysterioso hero a small following of hippie-like supporting-characters, and it would seem that scripter Ernie Altbacker decided to get the most of the phantasmal protagonist's "Age of Aquarius" associations. Indeed, it seems to be the Late Sixties when twenty-something Marcie is lured to a mysterious mansion by a group of rebellious young acquaintances. The dark-clad Stranger (Peter Serafinowicz) appears to utter dire but very vague warnings to Marcie (though not to the other young people) against the mansion's owner. Marcie blows off the mystery-man's counsel and finds herself charmed by her host, the urbane Seth (former Lex Luthor Michael Rosenbaum). However, the Stranger's admonitions are borne out: Seth is some sort of demon-creature who's already drained his minions of their lives (which I guess is why the Stranger doesn't try to save them). Director Bruce Timm does a fine job with all the hallucinogenic Day-Glo imagery and with the concluding battle between Seth and the Stranger. The script's only big flaw is that Marcie's character changes to suit whatever the writer wants to have happen.

The finale episode is "Death," starring the incarnation of a not-so-grim Reaper who looks like a young Goth girl (voiced by Jamie Chung), which incarnation was first introduced in Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN cosmos. In this short, a young would-be artist name of Vincent (how *appropriate*) meets the capricious young woman and never realizes until the end that he has an "appointment in Samarra" with her. Writer Marc De Matteis succeeds in capturing the voice of the comic-book Death, but the story as a whole will probably be predictable even to those not familiar with the comics. There's an irrelevant subplot about Vincent's "inner demons" that isn't given a satisfactory resolution. Nevertheless, the relative ambitiousness of this episode and that of the Stranger outweigh the banality of the other two, and result in the higher mythicity rating.

ZEIRAM (1991), ZEIRAM 2 (1994)

 

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

When I saw ZEIRAM the first time on DVD sometime in the nineties, I thought it was a reasonably good action-movie, even given its limited budget. This time, though, screening it on streaming TV, I found myself constantly noticing lots of bland talking-heads scenes, designed to burn up time at very little cost.

The plot has a simple cat-and-mouse structure. Interplanetary bounty hunter Iria (Yuko Moriyama), aided by her living-computer partner Bob, sets a trap on modern-day Earth for an alien marauder, Zeiram. I never did catch why Zeiram wanted to come to Earth in the first place, but take that as a given. In order for Iria and Bob to keep from revealing their presence, they construct a headquarters in an abandoned Japanese building. and further create a "Zone," looking like an empty faux-city, in a subsidiary dimension. However, this process requires energy, so the two ETs siphon it from the local electrical company. Before Zeiram arrives, two doofuses working for said company stumble across the HQ while looking for the power-drain. Inevitably, the two goofs get mixed up in the crossfire between alien marauder and ET bounty hunter, with Iria trying her best to keep the innocents from being annihilated. 

Though Moriyama isn't the most charismatic Japanese actress to play a standard tough girl role, there's no doubt that she's the focal character of the story, despite its being named after her monstrous opponent. Still, Zeiram himself is the most memorable element of both this movie and its sequel. The alien, a towering, robot-like entity, wears a large helmet that I believe is meant to suggest, at least to the original Japanese audience, the huge straw hats sported by cinematic samurai. In a combination of old and new, Zeiram is seen to create one or two mini-monsters when he feels like it, and he has some sort of extensible tendril with a Kabuki-like face on the end. This was a clear callback to the 1979 Alien, who could extrude a tongue with little snapping jaws on the end. Zeiram is presumably intelligent but he acts like nothing more than a relentless "alien terminator," without being nearly as much of a chatterbox. At the big climax he's reduced to a skeletal form which, while more attenuated, recalls the first TERMINATOR film, with the killer robot turning into a fleshless metal form.

ZEIRAM 2 is just more of the same. Some time after Iria's destruction of Zeiram, she pursues other bounties on other worlds, and then accepts an assignment on Earth, where she and her computer-assistant Bob hope to meet up with the two Earth-shlubs they befriended on their previous visit. Iria is assigned to test a combat-robot, but when the robot goes berserk in her presence, she and Bob eventually figure out that the robot has a "Zeiram unit" inside it. This might have been a good time to explain just what the original Zeiram was, and what relation this "unit" has to the original. But no, the writer and director, the same ones from the first flick, can't be bothered with such minor matters. To be sure, the action this time is better, possibly due to a somewhat better budget. And I must admit that the two electrician guys have slightly better characterization, enough that I could tell them apart. Anyway, for the rest of the film Iria finds herself contending with "Zeiram 2," but though the robot somehow manifests a "face-tendril," the menace lacks the visual impressiveness of the original antagonist. Both movies, though, are mediocre compared to the best action-cinema Japan can offer in any decade.

VENUS MEETS THE SON OF HERCULES (1962)

  

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

The VENUS title is less representative of the actual movie than the Italian one, which translates as "Mars, God of War," but I'm using the English-language "Son of Hercules" name this time because it's more amusing. VENUS seems to be the only peplum on the resume of director/co-writer Marcello Baldi, though his two billed co-writers had considerable experience on other such fantasy-adventures. Nevertheless, Baldi produced a story that had a fair amount of potential, but missed the mark, possibly because of his inexperience with or disinterest in this subgenre.

Of course, since I watched an English-subtitled version, it's possible that the movie's biggest failing, that of exposition, is the result of someone cutting vital scenes. But I doubt it. VENUS just seems incoherent in too many scenes, ergo my "disinterest" remark.

A Greek city, Telbia, is besieged by invaders from Black Africa and in danger of being overthrown despite the best efforts of the ruler Antarus (Massimo Serrato). Then, as if heaven hears the desperate please of the Telbians, a single man in golden armor descends to Earth and routs the enemy forces. This warrior proves to be none other than Mars, God of War (Roger Browne), but he doesn't explain himself to the local bigwigs. He beholds enemy soldiers threatening a beautiful young vestal virgin named Daphne (Jocelyn Lane), and rescues her. Mars and Daphne exchange a few sentences and he runs off.

Now, though a lot of peplum-films may be bad overall, usually they're pretty good about explication, about explaining who's laying evil schemes and who's presenting noble resistance. But though Baldi finds time to establish that Antarus wants to seduce Daphne despite her consecration to Venus, he never establishes just why Mars decided to come to Earth. The broad implication is that he saw Daphne from afar and saved the city just for her benefit, though no one actually says this.

Instead, after various time-wasting scenes in which Antarus' mistress shows her jealousy of Daphne (though this "bad girl" never does anything truly evil), Mars seeks out Daphne at the Temple of Venus. Mars appears to still have godly powers, for he approaches the temple as an invisible man. But when he enters the shrine and encounters Daphne, he makes a vague statement about having surrendered his immortality. The poor girl barely has time to process all this when the other vestals learn that a man has trespassed upon their sacred grounds. Mars and Daphne try to hide, but suddenly phantom versions of Daphne manifest, confusing the war-god. These turn out to be sendings from Venus herself, and she spirits Mars away to her celestial palace. This puts Daphne in dutch, for Antarus is happy to condemn her for violating her virgin status.

Venus finally confronts the "son of Hercules," though she continues to keep the image of Daphne. It's not clear what relationship Venus and Mars have in this story, though one presumes that they've had sex, as in at least one famous myth-tale. She tries to seduce Mars in that form, and at least one online reviewer thought she succeeded, though I did not. However, as long as he's in Venus' palace, the mortal-ized Mars doesn't seem to be able to do anything to get free. Eventually Venus sends Mars back to Earth, some time after Daphne's been tormented in a closing wall-trap with spikes, and then condemned to be devoured by a monster plant. Mars finally crosses swords with Antarus and his men, but Daphne is accidentally slain. However, the actual father of Mars in myth, Zeus/Jupiter, takes pity on his son. The high god sends a heavenly chariot to Earth, transporting both Mars and the spirit of Daphne to Olympus, where one presumes they will become Olympian deities.

The poor execution of the story doesn't keep me from rating the movie "fair" in mythicity, since the basic idea seems to be that of a goddess manifesting through her worshiper, a frequent trope in Greek myth. The sequence of Mars held captive in Venus' chamber is well-handled, with Venus claiming to be "all women." It's just a shame that this is the movie's sole effective scene.

LUPIN III: DRAGON OF DOOM (1994)

 

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

I believe this Lupin TV-movie, DRAGON OF DOOM, was meant to be a comedy, but in truth, it's one of the least funny ones I've seen so far.

The setup sounds like it might be fairly Lupin-centric. Crime-boss Chin Chin Chu engages the Lupin Gang to go hunting treasure in the sunken shell of the Titanic, and Lupin is particularly interested in doing so, because his ancestor Arsene Lupin had planned to rip off the Titanic at some point, only to be frustrated by the ship's destruction.

However, the Lupin part of the plot proves minor, and both Jigen and Fujiko have only nominal roles. (Fujiko's betrayal of her fellow burglars is so predictable, I just wanted it to be over quickly.) DRAGON turns out to be centered upon the background and concerns of Goemon the samurai with the blade that can cut metal.

Most of the LUPIN shows I've seen don't expatiate upon the nature of Goemon's sword, but DRAGON is explicit in claiming that the blade was forged in the early 20th century by a master Japanese blacksmith, out of some rare super-metal. However, the blacksmith also crafted a dragon-statuette of the same metal, but the statue was stolen and placed on the Titanic for resale elsewhere. Chin, who's served by a team of ninjas, wants that metal for the usual nefarious reasons. 

However, Goemon's not on the side of his homeboys this time. He's been contacted by a childhood friend, Kikyo, who's also become a ninja, though apparently on the side of the angels. She wants to keep the dragon-statue out of Chin's hands, and Goemon's nostalgic (though probably non-romantic) feelings for the young woman cause him to attempt getting the item from Lupin's group. But Kikyo's got her own agenda, and it ties in with the fact that her ancestor was the ones who stole the statue in the first place.

Goemon's scenes with Kikyo include some strong sentiment, though the vagueness about Goemon's exact feelings for her weaken the drama a little. The samurai has a good scene slicing a plane in half, but the only strong scene for the other members of the ensemble is one when Chin imprisons them in a room filled with "madness gas," so that Jigen fights with Goemon and Fujiko attacks Lupin. Lupin manages to save the day there, though. However, his defeat of a "boss ninja," ostensibly to save Goemon the trouble, is underwhelming.