THE NEW ADVENTURES OF BATMAN (1977)

 

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

It's tough to find much to say about these 16 mediocre Filmation cartoons, in marked contrast to my review of the 17 stories the same company did in 1968, also starring Batman, Robin, and Batgirl and featuring many of the well-known Bat-villains. I'm sure Filmation re-used various drawings from the 1968 series in this one, but I wouldn't have minded that, had the second cartoon emulated some of the clever writing as well. Further, I mentioned that I liked a lot of the 1968 voicework. But the 1977 show showed its poverty of imagination by having the same fellow, one Lennie Weinrib, execute almost all of the villain-voices. True, Adam West and Burt Ward were hired to re-enact Batman and Robin for the first time since the live-action show ended in 1968. But their participation added little, because the scripts were so incredibly pedestrian. Even the zany third season of the live-action show gave the Dynamic Duo more good lines to utter.

The show is notable, or notorious, for reviving the DC character Bat-Mite, an extra-dimensional imp. He wore a Bat-costume and strove to be a hero like his idol but proved generally incompetent. He'd been gone from the comics for ten years, since Bat-Mite's sort of humor was perceived as childish by long-time fans of Batman comics. But Filmation, who were going after little kid-viewers, never met a goofy mascot the company didn't like. And though the comics-version isn't very good either, his main appeal was creating chaos with his magical abilities. This Bat-Mite can barely do anything but very minor feats, and worse, for five or six episodes he actually uses a terrible catchphrase: "I was only trying to help!" I'm tempted to think that the deliberately bad catchphrase used by child-actress Baby Doll in an episode of BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES-- "I didn't mean to!"--might have been inspired by this real mediocrity.

The classic villains are poorly executed, and the new villains are all worthless, with one slight exception. Keeping current with the media fascination with "moon rocks" brought to Earth by 1970s space ventures, an astronaut (the show's only significant Black character) becomes physically and mentally altered by radiation. He begins transforming into the crazed Moonman and seeks to avenge the plundering of the lunar orb by causing the moon to crash into Earth. In the last three episodes of the series, the original Bat-Mite concept  -- that of an imp with near-illimitable magic powers-- gets funneled into Zarbor, a native of Bat-Mite's dimension who can perform all sorts of miracles. He enlists the help of four Bat-villains-- Catwoman, Clayface, Joker and Penguin-- for some dastardly plan in the show's only two-part story-- and then he gets his own episode as the series wraps up.

I suppose the sociological significance of the teleseries is that it was produced at the height of the "anti-violence" crusade in children's cartoons. In my review of the 1968 cartoon I noted that Batman and Robin made free with their fists while Batgirl didn't get much fight-action. But all three heroes are "neutered" of their violent aspects in the 1977 show, and the very minimal fighting here is all done with gimmicks. But one might say that Batgirl still gets the short end of the stick, since Bat-Mite constantly crushes on Batgirl in between his assorted screwups. 

THE MAGIC CARPET (1951)

 

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

I saw CARPET long ago and remembered little about it but the unusual presence of Lucille Ball in a Hollywood "Arabian knockwurst" (my term for all the low-budget Oriental fantasies that got ground out like sausages). While producer Sam Katzman was never known for excellence in any genre, I have found that a couple of his Oriental sausages were silly fun, such as THIEF OF DAMASCUS and THE SIREN OF BAGDAD. Additonally, CARPET's director was Lew Landers, who produced some favorite horror-films, such as the 1935 RAVEN and THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE. Unfortunately, this flick, which as far as I can tell was Katzman's first venture in Arabian Nights terrain, is ordinary in every way.  

At least the film starts off with action, as some Caliph (let's say it's in Baghdad) getting assassinated on the same day he proclaims the birth of his newborn son. The Caliph's court is massacred and a usurper named Ali (Gregory Gaye) takes over, along with his vizier Boreg (Raymond Burr) and Ali's capricious sister Narah (Ball). However, a servant escapes with the newborn with the aid of the titular flying carpet. The dying servant leaves the infant and the carpet with a virtuous couple, and the carpet is squirreled away while the couple raises the boy as their own over the next twenty years. The child grows into the man Ramoth (John Agar), and once he's an adult Ramoth is mighty wroth with the tyrannies of Caliph Ali. In approved Zorro fashion he fabricates a masked identity, The Scarlet Falcon (though he's not often seen masked) and organizes a resistance movement.

All the familiar swashbuckling tropes are dutifully hauled out. A beautiful young woman named Lida (Patricia Medina) joins the rebellion against the Falcon's wishes, and of course the two fall in love, though she doesn't prove to be much of a fighter. Ramoth gets a chance to infiltrate the Caliph's palace by curing Ali's long spate of hiccups (don't ask), but I'm blamed if I remember what comes about because of this action. I also forget how Lida becomes a member of Narah's harem, which leads to a minor set-to when Narah slaps Lida. (Medina claimed in an interview that Ball hit her for real.) Neither the hero nor the villains seem to do much of anything but run through the motions, until the moment that Ramoth is informed of his heritage and of the secret weapon of the flying carpet, which the hero uses to overcome the villains and be united with his lady love. Oh, and Ramoth gets to swordfight Boreg, so there's that.

Though I imagine the use of the carpet was inspired by the climax of the 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD, the extremely paltry special FX probably didn't inspire even the most uncritical viewers in 1951. Some of the lead actors in these knockwursts have brought a little charisma to the formula stories, but John Agar is horribly dull in the role, and even Medina, who played many such exotic roles, can't do anything with her part. Of the three villains, Ball gets the best lines and is almost the only reason to see the movie, which premiered days before the launching of her successful I LOVE LUCY teleseries. Ostensibly Ball, who had never quite hit her stride on the big screen, had to complete some obligation to Columbia Pictures and accepted the role even though she knew CARPET was junk. Her breakthrough as a TV comedienne gave her a second life in cinema, though she still dominantly worked in TV. But for what little it's worth, this moldy oldie is the only time actors like Ball and Agar delved into the domain of the superhero-adjacent fantasy.  

VAMPIRES (1996)

 

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


1996's VAMPIRES (I'll pass on using the possessive "John Carpenter's") is like his BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA an ensemble-like film in which one major character leads a bunch of lesser sidekicks against a common enemy. In my mini-review of the original book by John Steakley, I found that the author went so overboard with his nattering about the male bonding between the kickass vampire killers that he neglected to make their battle against a "super-vampire" compelling. Carpenter seems to have kept about the first three-fourths of the book's main plot and deep-sixed most of the rambling asides I didn't like.

This time, while main hero Jack Crow still works with a bunch of male vamp-hunters, most of them aren't given much to do in the non-action scenes, which is all to the good. The one exception is the character of Montoya, who becomes Crow's primary buddy. James Woods and Daniel Baldwin make all the "cowboy samurai" stuff go down easy, and Carpenter ups the ante on the action-scenes that the original author neglected. That said, no one in the film is particularly appealing, even within the sphere of the "tough professional" ethos being evoked here. VAMPIRES also failed to "stake" any claims at the American box office, and despite an energetic Woods performance, doesn't seem to have taken on cult status as yet.

LUPIN III: ISLAND OF ASSASSINS (1997)

 

 

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

Though the Lupin Gang often provokes battles with gangsters and megalomaniacs by ripping them off, this time a major player declares open hostilities on Lupin for reasons not revealed until the final half-hour of this telefilm.

Though there's a little bit of comedy fanservice in ISLAND, the script is darker and more violent than the majority of Lupin projects. The first scene opens like many other capers: Zenigata shows up at a ritzy party, having received Lupin's announcement of his intent to rob the place. However, when cop meets robber, Lupin reveals that he didn't send the message but got one himself. Then the mysterious dispenser of the messages appears and shoots Zenigata, showing none of the playful restraint of the gentleman thief. And while Lupin doesn't get a good luck at the shooter, he identifies the gun as a Walther P-38 that Lupin owned years ago and lost under involved circumstances. Zenigata survives by dumb luck but gets sidelined into the hospital. 

The gun is a callback to previous Lupin continuity and was of enough significance to fans that the filmmakers' Japanese name for the movie was MEMORY OF THE WALTHER P-38. In my opinion, the mystery of the missing pistol pales beside the script's emphasis on the island-domicile of the mystery-man. Somehow, even though the island is guarded by satellite-lasers, Lupin manages to send Fujiko undercover, joining a cabal of assassins, The Tarantulas, who serve a variety of political masters. Later Lupin himself also infiltrates the island without much trouble and meets Gordeau, the apparent leader of the Tarantulas.

Gordeau has a unique means of keeping his subordinates: he has each of them imprinted with an indelible tattoo impregnated with poison, and each assassin who leaves the island on a mission must return to breathe the curative gases of the island. The villain applies these poison-tattoos to both Lupin and Fujiko to control them. Fujiko doesn't have much to do after this, while Jigen and Goemon largely function as rescuers at the climax. To be sure, all of the thieves aren't purely motivated by vengeance, for the Tarantulas are supposed to have amassed an immense treasure from all of their contract killings. Just for some side-titillation, Lupin also become interested in one assassin, an embittered young woman named Ellen, though he seems almost avuncular toward her, even when she tries to outfight him.

Eventually, the mystery of the Walther comes back into play, and the viewer learns that Lupin lost the gun to his first criminal partner, whose name is never revealed. This individual has been hiding on the island under another name, though the big reveal doesn't carry much impact. Ellen doesn't get a happy ending, and Goemon has one of his more eyebrow-raising scenes when he uses his katana to slice and dice a bank of computers. 

Technically Lupin and Fujiko don't get cured of their poison tats after sinking the Island of Assassins, but I doubt anyone cared about that particular continuity-point. Zenigata provides most of the comedy with his attempts to escape the hospital and return to trailing Lupin.

RETURN OF THE KUNG FU DRAGON (1976)

 

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

I've invented a new term for the type of chopsockies that mix in plenty of wild magical phenomena with all the hand-to-hand battles-- "the chopwackies." In 2023 I designated KUNG FU WONDER CHILD as a contender for one of the craziest, but this Polly Shang Kuan vehicle may rival it.

The core of RETURN is not the return of a single "dragon," but of four kung-fu champions out for vengeance on behalf of their slain parents. Golden City, the capital of a paradisical island, has its rightful rule usurped by an evil tyrant, General Tsen-kun, and his evil but unnamed wizard. Their forces slay the rulers and their most faithful kung-fu bodyguards, but a female heir and two children of two bodyguards are sent away. The girl-child of the third bodyguard is raised by Tsen-kun as if she were his own seed. Given the name Ma Chen Chen, the young woman (Shang Kuan) becomes a child of privilege, for all that she's a kung-fu prodigy.

Far off on some mountain, the real princess (Sze-Ma Yu-Chiao) has been training in the martial arts until reaching the age of nineteen, at which point she leaves and sets out to gather together the offspring of her parents' former officers. Frankly, though Ma and the princess get more scenes than the two male descendants, the princess doesn't really have much to do once Ma finds out about her true heritage. The director and writer seemingly have no interest in the drama of Ma's situation-- there are no scenes in which the heroine upbraids her false father, though she does kick him once at the conclusion-- and Ma is instantly on board with the revenge project, helping the exiled royal find the other two fighters.

I think the logic of the story, such as it is, is that because both the general and the wizard have all sorts of metamorphic powers, only these four warriors can match the villains in this regard. There's not really a plot as such; just one wild flight of fancy after another. At one point the wizard creates a gigantic projection of his own hand, but when Ma burns the giant hand, the phantasm dissolves and the sorcerer cries out in pain. Later Nameless Wizard creates a kaiju-sized beast to tear through the city, but one of the male warriors "giganticizes" himself and battles the creature briefly. There are some wild scenes wherein huge wheels and horses' hooves fly through the air, and most of the time it's impossible to tell who's doing what. The only scene that stands out for me, even though I just finished watching the streaming version an hour ago, shows the general trying to manifest some sort of magical force-screen to protect himself from a big metal wheel.

One asset distinguishes this chopwacky from KUNG FU WONDER CHILD or even Shang Kuan's ZODIAC FIGHTERS a couple years later: this time the lead actress has a strong heroic persona that makes RETURN dopey fun to watch. It would be fair to say that even though Ma Chen Chen has no depth, she does have a certain swashbuckling style that makes her fight-scenes enjoyable. For that reason, I consider that Shang Kuan is the only real star of this show, while her allies are supporting characters.

Curiously, the streaming version I watched had its English dubbing drop off in the last ten minutes. But RETURN, for all its weird sights, doesn't boast any memorably goofy dialogue to match the magical phenomena.

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: DARK FURY (2004)

 

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

DARK FURY is a cartoon featurette of slightly more than half an hour, prepared as a DVD extra for the live-action CHRONICLES theatrical feature. PITCH BLACK's director David Twohy provided the basic story.

The narrative takes place almost immediately after the wanted murderer Riddick (Vin Diesel) escapes the desert planet with two other survivors, the female adolescent Jack (Rihanna Griffith) and the Imam (Keith David). They're seeking to be picked up by the authorities, though Jack and the Imam have agreed to conceal Riddick's identity in repayment for his having saved their lives. Instead, a strange ship full of battle-ready mercs brings the refugee vessel aboard with a tractor-beam. Riddick kills several of the mercs until one henchman forces him to surrender by threatening Jack's life.

On the surface the ship appears to be simply capturing wanted men, storing them in cryostasis with the intention of collecting bounties on the criminals. But when Riddick and his companions encounter the master of the ship, Antonia Chillingsworth, they learn that she has a weird artistic fixation regarding death. She's freezing the wanted men into icy sculptures, with no intention of turning them in. Somehow, Antonia knows who Riddick really is, and she gives him the chance to fight some creatures in an arena, to show off his deadly skills before she makes him into a permanent artwork.

FURY is by-the-numbers action, with no real characterization of either old or new characters. Famed animation director Peter Chung works in some of his customary visual tropes, but none of the designs stand out. The cartoon's sole appeal lies in Diesel's sober readings of his standard tough-guy lines.

HONOR ROLL #250

ROBERT B RIDDICK gets animated.

Though she plays a princess, SZE-MA YU-CHIAO rates lower on the heroine scale than starring fighter Shang Kuan.

Lupin III tries to stomp out some TARANTULAS.

JAMES WOODS becomes Cross.

JOHN AGAR and LUCILLE BALL make a weird pair, even in an old Arabian Knockwurst.

BAT-MITE makes his mediocre cartoon debut in this mediocre cartoon.

THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS (1996)

 

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

I don't often subscribe to the "lightning in a bottle" theory of creativity. It often sounds like the idea that creative works are born more of inspiration than the more mundane perspiration. But in the case of the 1994 CROW, James O'Barr original comics-concept of an undead avenger melded perfectly with the diverse talents of director Alex Proyas and his writing-team. The film's success spawned three more feature films and a TV series, and most of them are just OK formula-fodder. The first sequel, though, proves the worst of the lot, hurt by the filmmakers' attempt to copy the original only in broad strokes.

One of the sequel's big mistakes was to bring back one of the few surviving support-characters, the child Sara, as an adult character (Mia Kirshner), a tattoo artist who finds life in Los Angeles no more pleasing than her earlier existence in Dreadful Detroit. The fact that she simply trades one bad phase of life for another in effect jinxes the audience's investment in the film, much the way the death of Newt undermined ALIEN 3. There's so little advantage gained from using her as a link to the first "Crow-avenger" that writer David S. Goyer would have done better to start fresh. She only supplies the New Undead-- the significantly named "Ashe" (Vincent Perez) with some minor guidance in his new role in the scheme of things, as well as applying some rather inconsistent face-paint to keep Ashe roughly in the Eric Draven mold.

I don't know how responsible director Tim Pope was for the visual look of the film-- he claimed that the studio had interfered with the filming of ANGELS-- but he certainly got the nod because he'd proven himself as a successful maker of music videos, so I tend to think that for the most part the film looks the way he wanted it to look. But where Proyas' Detroit looked fearful and imposing, Pope's L.A. just looks mean and depressing. (Maybe not that far from the L.A. of this century...)

Goyer's other main idea of a major change-up is that Ashe is killed with his young son instead of with a girlfriend, though there's nothing all that compelling about the loss of Ashe's offspring. The lack of a romantic connection also gives Adult Sara a chance at a somewhat doomed relationship with the hero, which also proves desultory. The killers, just like the first film, are another gang of bizarre drug-dealers, led by a flamboyant nut named Judah Earl (Richard Brooks). And whereas Top Dollar had his weird half-sister reveal to him the secret of the avenger's powers, Judah has a blind prophetess, given the fairly predictable name of "Sybil." It's possible Goyer and Pope thought they were being deeply symbolic with their assortment of prophets and tattoo parlors, but all of these references are entirely meretricious.

On top of all that, the action scenes aren't that impressive either, while at the climax, Ashe reveals a new power just because it's convenient. So CITY OF ANGELS belongs to the long list of sequels that utterly failed to put across even a formulaic notion of a series-concept. After this, Pope mostly concentrated on more music videos, while Goyer worked on a lot of projects within the superhero idiom, albeit with extremely uneven results.

DRAGON SHOWDOWN (1966)

 

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

Long ago I saw on TV the English language version of this Japanese film, entitled MAGIC SERPENT, which allegedly had ten minutes cut out. This version aired on streaming with subtitles, suggesting that it represents the original cut of the Japanese production. Thus, I'll review it using the streaming title, even though the new English title also doesn't represent the literal Japanese title. I'm also informed that SHOWDOWN is a very free adaptation of a popular Japanese story, "Jiraiya," and indeed the hero of the movie changes his original name to Jiraiya over halfway through the story, so I'll refer to him by that name throughout the review.  

Jiraiya is a small child when usurpers-- the evil Daijo and his magician-ally Orochimaru-- slay Jiraiya's father Lord Ogata and Ogata's court. Some retainers escape with the child, but Orochimaru changes himself into a giant dragon and pursues the party. However, a huge eagle descends, claws the dragon's face, and bears Little Jiraiya away.

Ten years later, Jiraiya has become a young man (Hiroki Matsukata) living in forest-seclusion with his master Hiki, who has taught the young man both magic and swordcraft. Hiki changed himself into the eagle that saved the son of Lord Ogata because he had formerly been the tutor of Orochimaru (Ryutaro Otomo) before the latter turned his skills to evil. All of his life, Jiraiya has been honing his skills to overthrow the slayers of his family, and one day, the usurpers locate him. A small band of ninjas assault Jiraiya in the forest, but he defeats them all, in part through the use of magic in which his head detaches from his body-- easily the most memorable scene in the movie.

Once the ninjas are vanquished, Jiraiya also stumbles across a cute young woman nearby. He takes her presence for granted when she tells him she just happened by. In due time this will be revealed to be a falsehood, for the woman, name of Tsunade, is actually the offspring of Orochimaru. She's never met her father, though, and to some extent she attaches herself to Jiraiya so that she can get a chance just to meet the parent she never knew, just for her own peace of mind.

Like a lot of similar revenge-dramas, the first and third acts, depicting first the reason for revenge and then its culmination, are the strongest. The filmmakers adequately fill in the second act with incidental stuff-- Orochimaru seeking out Hiki and killing him, the introduction of a young boy with his own grudge against Daijo-- but not much of it is very memorable. But SHOWDOWN delivers a slam-bang kaiju finish, with Orochimaru's giant dragon fighting a giant toad conjured up by Jiraiya-- with the extra added attraction of a giant spider whipped up by Tsunade.  

Matsukata, who assumes a rather cheery attitude when not in battle, makes a good contrast with Otomo, whose dourness recalls that of the celebrated Toshiro Mifune. The FX are the main attraction, but I grade the mythicity as "fair" for having reproduced even the broad outlines of a famous myth, whether from folklore or literature. I was rather surprised that in one scene the soldiers of Daijo are shown bearing flintlock rifles, which presupposes contact with the Western world. This feels like a slight violation of the setting, since everything else in the movie invokes a world dominated by archaic magical beliefs. But for all I know, some literary versions of the original Jiraiya story may have crossed that line first. 

BRUCE LEE AGAINST SUPERMEN (1975)

 

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

One might think there would be some stupid fun to get out of a kung-fu mash-up of Superman, the Green Hornet and Kato, and Italy's long-lived franchise The Three Fantastic Supermen. But not so, unless one happens to be a devotee of films exploiting the legacy of action-hero Bruce Lee (i.e., "Brucesploitation").

The Bruce-imitator this time up is Bruce Li, who appears early in the film dressed as Kato for one scene, in which he's also called that name. Some reviews claim that Li then becomes a second character named "Carter." I think it's more likely that the producers of the film meant to have Li be their version of Kato for the whole film, but got nervous about inviting the wrath of foreign lawyers for their unsanctioned use of the Green Hornet franchise. So for the rest of the film, Li dresses in more or less regular clothes (though suggestive of Bruce Lee attire) and is called by the semi-sound-alike "Carter." Carter like Kato remains in contact with a costumed fellow named "Green Hornet," but he mostly hangs around in a car monitoring the situation, dressed in a domino mask and a red union suit with a hornet on the chest. 

Carter is called upon to fight a criminal gang that purposes to abduct a famous professor, Ting, who's supposedly invented a way to feed the world's millions at nearly no cost. (We hear about this miraculous process but don't see it, so I don't count it as relevant to the film's phenomenality.) After Carter fends off the gangsters a few times, the gang's leader Tiger seeks help from a mysterious kung-fu practitioner, Superman, who hangs around wearing a black leotard and a white cape, as well as teaching his kung-fu to two nameless, similarly attired students. These are the characters I believe to be functional stand-ins for The Three Fantastic Supermen, even though the Hornet and maybe one other minor character are the ones wearing something like the distinctive red leotards of the Italian heroes.

When the filmmakers aren't wasting time with extraneous car-chases and a bathroom catfight between two jealous women, a few of the kung-fu fights between Carter and Superman are watchable but unmemorable. No one has super-powers or special gimmicks, except that Superman has some spiked gauntlets on his wrists. There are some incoherent scenes of Carter fighting what look like costumed mimes, but there's no fun to be had in this dull potpourri. To say the least, the illicit use of franchise-names for characters bearing no resemblance to the originals does not constitute a crossover, only one of the dumbest attempts of a cheapjack film to coast on the success of both fictional and non-fictional icons.

SHINOBI GIRL: THE MOVIE (2015)

 

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

The only thing I slightly like about this cheapjack item is the subtitle. "Shinobi Girl-- the Movie?" As in contrast to-- Shinobi Girl the absolutely-nothing-else?

OK, OK-- from what IMDB tells me, it looks like the material for this "movie" may have appeared as an 8-episode TV series in some venue *somewhere.* But that "logic" still doesn't justify a "The Movie" indicator.

SHINOBI just barely qualifies as a "superhero-adjacent" film. Noriko (Alexandra Hellquist) gets raped by a Wall Street executive (the film barely mentions the event) and so decides to don masked ninja-gear and launch a crusade against "one percenters" in defense of the 99 percent. The man she killed was the husband of Tiffany Brooks (Molly Fahey), and Tiffany sends various henchmen, led by her hot bodyguard Raven in pursuit of the vigilante. Oh, and just to prove how evil the "one percent" is, Tiffany and her cohorts hold slave-auctions in the basement of their Wall Street complex, the slaves being downtrodden 99-percenters.

What follows are various badly choreographed battles, both with swords and with fists, where Noriko-- nicknamed "Shinobi Girl" by the media-- appears mostly alongside other hot girls with no acting talent, all in nondescript locales like garages and office buildings. There's one odd scene where Noriko seems to appear out of nothingness to thwart a bad guy, but since she has no super-powers, one must assume this was supposed to be a "ninja trick."

Damn, now NINJA CHEERLEADERS begins to look pretty good after I suffered through this tripe.

PITCH BLACK (2000)

 

 

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

Twenty-four years after its debut, PITCH BLACK is still a very serviceable "survival-drama," and that's to the credit of director/co-writer David Twohy and co-writers Ken and Jim Wheat. The latter two are credited with the original story, but they don't seem to have been directly involved in later continuations of the "Riddick franchise." Many of their earlier screenwriting credits were sequels to earlier concepts, so it's ironic, though not unexpected, that they apparenty weren't to keep control of their own idea. But then, the movie PITCH BLACK wasn't as significant for launching the fairly minor space-hero Riddick than for propelling thirty-something actor Vin Diesel into "name above the title" status.

In a spacefaring future, a transport ship is struck by meteoroids and disabled. Its pilots are forced to make a crash landing on a desolate planetoid, where they're able to breathe the atmosphere. That's about the survivors' only piece of good fortune, for the planet is a desert seemingly devoid of other life, kept in perpetual daylight by three suns. One organic life-form hides beneath the ground, a swarm of manta-like monsters that pick off survivors when they get the chance. The survivors make their way to an abandoned geological station, whose scientists were apparently slain by the creatures. The survivors have a chance to escape by fixing up the geologists' ship, but they also learn of a ticking clock: that when the suns eclipse, the multitudinous mantas will come forth and devour them all if they can't get away first.

The outward menace of the planet and its monsters, though, didn't make the movie a sleeper hit. Though most of the survivors are either pilot-personnel like Carolyn (Radha Mitchell) or ordinary passengers, two of the survivors are opposed to one another: an alleged cop, Johns (Cole Hauser) and his prisoner, a murderer named Riddick (Diesel). This dangerous individual gets loose during the crash landing, but Carolyn begins to wonder if Riddick or his captor are the greater danger. The writers somewhat tip their hand as to Riddick's potential heroism when they have one passenger, a girl-masquerading-as-a-boy named Jack (Rhianna Griffith), express admiration for the strange, powerful fugitive. Once the script suggests that "the crook" Riddick may be the more appealing figure, there are no surprises when he assumes a quasi-leadership figure and kills the corrupt Johns (actually a bounty hunter, not a cop).

Though Griffith and Keith David (playing a practical-minded Muslim holy man) add spice to the drama, BLACK's main sociological myth is that of "altruism vs. self-interest." Riddick initially seems to be the incarnation of the latter, while Carolyn-- a junior officer thrust into the default position of ship's captain-- represents the former. However, Carolyn's position of altruism evolves from guilt over an act of self-preservation. As for Riddick-- is he truly outside the sphere of human influence as he seems to be?

The original film has a strong emotional dynamic, but the "pick-off-survivors" trope requires the sacrifice of some of the characters necessary to the dynamic. A major script-weakness is also the contrived nature of the predators. If they're carnivorous-- and even able to assimiliate alien humanoid flesh-- what do they live on, when human beings don't happen to land on their isolated world? 

I don't think the next two iterations of the Riddick saga manage to compensate for losing at least one of the major characters who does not escape the desert planet. But Diesel's charisma makes even the future failures bearable.  

THE MUMMY AND THE CURSE OF THE JACKALS (1969)

 

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

The above art, showing a fight between the titular mummy and a jackal-man, is far better than anything in the movie, particularly the film's climactic fight, where one can hardly see the two fighters in prevalent darkness. But now that I mention it, CURSE might have been better had everything been filmed in prevalent darkness. 

Director Oliver Drake had definitely seen better times. He'd written and/or directed a few dozen B-films in the forties, including the last of the Lon Chaney Jr "mummy movies," THE MUMMY'S CURSE. Most of the films he worked on were quickly forgotten, but five years before the 1969 CURSE, he wrote a psycho-thriller that might be his best scripting work: LAS VEGAS STRANGLER. He wasn't responsible for writing this feeble mummy-flick-- that honor went to a writer with only two other credits on IMDB-- but Drake may've contributed a little input, since the names of the two mummies in the film are "Akanna" and "Sirakh," re-arrangements of the doomed Egyptian lovers from the Universal series, "Ananka" and "Kharis."

But though the Universal mummy-films are mostly formula-fodder, the writer for CURSE didn't seem to have any awareness of what formula he was trying to emulate. Back in ancient Egypt, Princess Akanna (Marliza Pons) is informed by her dying Pharoah father that he's received a message from the gods. Rather than living out her life in ancient Egypt, the gods want Akanna to be entombed under a magical spell that will preserve her for centuries, until the time is right for her to rise again. Along for the ride is Sirakh, a low-ranking Egyptian who's in love with Akanna and attempts to steal her body from her special tomb. For this he's punished in the usual way-- the bandage-wrapping, the tongue-uprooting-- and made into a sleeping sentinel meant to serve Akanna when she next awakens.

Cut to modern Las Vegas: in a small house there, David Barrie (Anthony Eisley) shows off his two mummy-sarcophagii to a couple of friends. I'm not sure if Barrie is some sort of "Egyptologist manque" or what. Barrie claims that he simply found the caskets in a downed plane and took them with him. He claims to have some notion of exhibiting Akanna and Sirakh but doesn't seem to know how that would work. The conversation with Barrie and his friends is just there to set up Barrie's entrancement with the perfectly preserved non-mummified body of Akanna. He also mentions an Egyptian legend about a "bite of the jackal," which is also confusingly referenced by the Pharoah, and Barrie plans to test the legend by locking himself in the room with the opened caskets.

Sure enough, at some hour or other Akanna wakes up (Sirakh takes a little longer) and somehow inflicts the bite of the jackal on Barrie. I think this whole jackal-thing was the writer's dim attempt to bring Anubis into the mix, but it's never justified. The spell, or bite, or whatever it is works its magic, and Barrie becomes a raging Jackal-Man. He gets free and assaults a few Vegas residents, goes back home, re-transforms, and then gets his new instructions from Akanna.

After lots of talky, badly-lit incidents, Akanna finally reveals the plan of the Egyptian gods: they want her to conquer the modern world in the name of the ancient deities, with only a walking mummy and a Jackal-Man to aid her. How she would accomplish this, the audience never learns. But a real Egyptologist, Professor Cummings (John Carradine), hears about the Jackal-man killings and shows up on Barrie's doorstep, having implicitly figured out who got hold of the two missing mummies. Cummings, who doesn't have more than fifteen minutes in the movie, provides the info a local cop needs to put down this ancient threat: strike at a certain time, when the moon's no longer full, and Akanna's power will be weaker. The upshot is that Akanna loses her youth and the two monsters, each of whom is jealously possessive of his mistress, perish after fighting one another, I guess because Akanna's power wanes.

Only John Carradine's scenes justify watching this pile of dreck. He actually looks better here than in some of his earlier sixties films, and his speaking voice is as resonant as it was when he played roles like "High Priest of Kharis" in the 1940s. All of the other actors, whether experienced thespians like Eisley or dabbler-types like Pons, convey nothing but sheer boredom.

HONOR ROLL #249

Though two mummies and one jackal-man are the stars of this movie, famed horror-icon JOHN CARRADINE is the real luminary here.

After "Pitch Black," VIN DIESEL's career got a lot brighter.

ALEXANDRA HOLMQUIST didn't make a very noble shinobi.

BRUCE LI wears a Green Hornet costume very briefly but mostly he's doing standard non-costumed martial moves.

HIROKI MATSUKATA won't be caught dragon around.

It wasn't VINCENT PEREZ's fault that the second "Crow" flick plunged to a hideous death.

GHOST OF ZORRO (1949)

 

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

This was both the last and the least of the American "Zorro" serials, so maybe a better title would have been "giving up the Ghost of Zorro." 

Hero Ken Mason (Clayton Moore) is supposedly the grandson of the original masked cavalier, but aside from his having a Mexican guy serving as his aide-- presumably a parallel to the Bernardo character from the original stories-- there's no attempt to emulate the Zorro mythos. The serial follows a familiar template: a community-- sometimes just a town, sometimes a whole state-- is seeking to gain protection from American jurisprudence, while outlaw elements seek to keep the status quo. The script doesn't show us much of the outlaws' depredations, though there's an offhand comment that gangs like those of "Jesse James and the Daltons" use Twin Bluffs as one of their hideouts. Though the square citizens of the town don't know it, one of their upstanding citizens, Joe Crane (Gene Roth), is the secret leader of the gangs. When an elderly entrepreneur and his daughter Rita (Pamela Blake) try to set up a telegraph office that may lead to the ingress of lawmaking elements, Crane has the old guy killed. 

Fortunately, before he dies Rita's father invites a new engineer to help lay the wires, and this turns out to be Mason. Rita thinks he's an eastern dude, not knowing that Mason's forbears once owned land in that general area, though the script spends no time on these matters. When Mason finds out that lawless elements control the town, he takes up the mantle of his ancestor Zorro, supposedly to convince the crooks that he actually is Zorro's ghost, though Mason does not have any tricks to suggest any spectral nature. Thus none of the villains seem the least bit convinced that the new Zorro is anything but a masked mortal. The serial is largely composed of routine endeavors of Crane's thugs to undermine the telegraph, though one source of conflict doesn't stem from the outlaws. A gung-ho sheriff comes to town for a couple of episodes, trying to bring the vigilante Zorro to justice, and this almost leads to Mason being lynched-- which is the only time the serial becomes a little bit compelling.

The other principals are competent but there's little to work with here, even in the routine action-scenes. Unfortunately Clayton Moore only gets to use his own sonorous voice for Mason, while some other actor dubs Zorro's lines. The only real significance of this mediocre effort is that supposedly in the same year the serial was released, the casting people for the 1949 LONE RANGER teleseries got a look at GHOST, and so Moore secured the role, leading to a long association with that character, to the extent that many fans think of Moore as the quintessential Lone Ranger.

INVINCIBLE, SEASON TWO (2023-24)

  

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

INVINCIBLE Season 2 is more of the same as Season 1, so anyone who liked the first will probably like the second. I admit that I'm probably a bit more torqued at Season 2 because I thought it was the final one. But that's not a sin I can lay at the show-runners' door.

So Mark Grayson, a.k.a. Invincible, survives his brutal defeat at the hands of his father Omni-Man. He's spared because his dad, who's been masquerading as a superhero while operating as a covert agent for an alien empire, feels an upsurge of paternal feeling and deserts his post on Earth. Mark and his mother Debbie are both hugely traumatized by Omni-Man's betrayal, but Mark tries to get back to his regular activities with his girlfriend and his first year at college. At the same time, he desperately wants to validate himself as a real superhero, as against his father's falsehoods, and he accepts more assignments from government coordinator Cecil. 

One of these assignments involves investigating a secret science-facility, even without knowing that the Mauler clone-brothers are involved in its operation. The real mastermind behind the facility is Angstrom Levy, a high-minded idealist with the ability to access multiple alternate dimensions. His big "mad science" scheme involves somehow pooling the knowledge (or something) of alternate versions of himself so as to enforce absolute peace upon all dimensions. (Well, except for the dimension he's going to give to the Maulers for their help.) Invincible's interference results in that stale old trope, the Deformed Villain Out for Revenge on the Hero Who Caused the Deformity. Levy is one of the worst villains but I suppose he was brought in to reinforce another subplot, in which it's revealed that in most alternate dimensions, Invincible and Omni-Man teamed up to bring Earth under the dominion of the Viltrum Empire.

At least slightly more germane to established plotlines is an arc in which Invincible must seek to deal with Earth's impending invasion by Viltrum. However, the hero's first major interstellar adventure starts out as a hoax, as bug-aliens beseech his help with a catastrophe endangering their planet Thraxa. Once Invincible arrives, he finds that Thraxa's real peril is their own impending invasion from Viltrum. And just for a bonus, the current ruler of Thraxa is none other than-- Invincible's dear old dad. Also, during his ascension to kingship, Omni-Man has also mated with a female Thraxan, resulting in a mostly humanoid baby, Thraxa's defense against Viltrum does not go well: Omni-Man is captured to be tried as a traitor, while Invincible must take his infant half-brother back to Earth.

The soap operatics involving Mark's family and friends, and those between the young Guardians of the Globe, are also more of the same: efficient but pedestrian. Surprisingly, Invincible's closest superhero friend, Atom Eve, doesn't get much development until the last few episodes. But then, in between Season 1 and Season 2, Atom Eve was the only hero to get her own hour-long special, so I'm sure the show-runners have big plans for her. 

Season Two might not be my cup of root beer. But I admit it does an okay job of making the lives of its protagonists increasingly messy-- to say nothing of providing loads more scenes showing INVINCIBLE's patented "superhero gore."

DAREDEVILS OF THE RED CIRCLE (1939)

 

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

This Republic serial, co-directed by William Witney and John English, is generally regarded as one of the best examples of "the Golden Age of Serials." I think it's very strong for its first six chapters, and then loses some momentum due to repetitiveness (and that's not counting Chapter 11, one of the notorious "clip episodes.")

That said, it's hard to beat DAREDEVILS for the simple clarity of the revenge-motives of both villain and heroes. At the opening, an escaped criminal (Charles Middleton) uses his old prisoner-number, 39013, as a nom de guerre as he pursues a monomaniacal project to destroy all the holdings of industrialist Granville. No specific reasons are given for the evildoer's grudge, except a loose allusion to Granville having helped imprison 39013. The villain and his gang of cutthroats don't care if the public gets in the way, and in episode one 39013 strikes at a Granville-owned amusement park. At this park, three superb athletes are performing, and they too have a nickname, "Daredevils of the Red Circle," for the target-like circle each one wears on the front of his shirt. 39013's thugs set the park on fire, and though the Daredevils escape death, the kid brother of one of them does not. The trio dedicate their lives to taking vengeance upon the murderers.

Each of the Daredevils is given a specialty in addition to general athleticism. Tiny (Herman Brix) is a strongman. Bert (Dave Sharpe) is an escape artist. And Gene (Charles Quigley) is a high diver with exceptional reflexes, as well the one who loses his kid brother in the fire. The trio seek out Granville's mansion to proffer their amateur assistance, and Granville's granddaughter Blanche (Carole Landis) proves instrumental in getting her grandpa to accept the guys' help. The athletes thus become independent agents who can get johnny-on-the-spot to any of 39013's sabotage operations-- at least partly because the fiend, like many a comic-book villain after him, is usually considerate enough to announce his next target.

But there's a wrinkle, for Granville is not Granville. The man whom the heroes meet is actually 39013 himself, disguised in a perfect mask (meaning that he's played in those scenes by the same actor essaying the real Granville). The industrialist is imprisoned in a cell beneath the mansion, where a Rube Goldberg device threatens to drop poison gas into the man's cell if said device is not regularly corrected by Granville's captor. 39013's sole desire is that his enemy should hear about every enterprise being destroyed in turn, so that he'll know that his entire life's work has been wrecked before he himself perishes.

The roust-and-repeat actions of the super-athletes, as they dash hither and yon foiling the villain's pawns, might have become tiresome but for an additional angle: someone inside the mansion is privy to 39013's schemes. That someone sends printed notes to the Daredevils, warning them of this or that peril, and each note is signed with the same "red circle" image as the brand used by the heroes. To be sure, there are two or three named characters at the mansion, and surely no one would have suspected the comical Black butler Snowflake (though imagine how 1939 audiences might have reacted, had Snowflake been the Daredevils' secret benefactor). I'll note in passing that aside from the butler's condescending name he doesn't perpetrate any other racial-humor schticks except for his broad accent.

Since 39013 isn't a scientist, mad or otherwise, he only used a couple of diabolical devices besides his poison-gas contraption. In one case, his thugs rig a clinic's curative radioactive device so that it will slay a patient with deadly rays. In another, 39103 executes an expendable henchman by flooding the garage at the mansion with poison gas. But was that really the most efficient way to set up hench-executions? When the heroes survive getting caught in the same trap, they do a whole detective-number on the garage's gas-apparatus, which conveniently gives the good guys a new avenue for tracking down the crooked cabal. But the script makes it sound like 39013 intended to make the gas-apparatus look like it was tampered with by agents unknown. Why would he do so, since he doesn't expect to found out, thinking he can pass off the garage-executions as carbon monoxide poisoning from the automobiles?

The action set-pieces in the first two episodes are the most thrilling in the chapterplay. After that, the rest of the episodes are mostly hand-to-hand fights, well enough done but not that noteworthy. As far as acting, Middleton takes top honors with his hiss-worthy villainy, though 39013 would not make my list of best serial-villains, just as the serial wouldn't make my twenty best of all time.

LUPIN III: THE COLUMBUS FILES (1999)

 

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

Since the original LUPIN III manga was unquestionably more "comedy" than "adventure," unlike many of the anime adaptations, it's fairly appropriate that the last Lupin III adaptation for the 20th century was totally in the comedic mode of creator Monkey Punch. It was also the last of three Lupin screenplays by writer Shinzo Fujita, and the best.

First, let me dispose of the film's obligatory MacGuffin over which the factions battle. The Columbus Files comprise a treasure map that can lead one to the Columbus Egg, which in turn contains some ancient civilization's techniques for controlling the world's weather, and even creating things like giant water-geysers. But the connection to the explorer Columbus is entirely meretricious: the script might as well have used the subtitle "Plato Files" and claimed that Plato preserved a techno-egg from ancient Atlantis.

What isn't meretricious is how Fujita not only recaptures the raucous, licentious spirit of the manga, but uses it to ask a new question: given all the constant conflict between Lupin and his adversarial amour Fujiko, would he still want her if she lost all of her contentiousness?

So Fujiko summons Lupin to a meeting, and while he tries earnestly to get in her pants, she explains that she has a map that will lead her, and any partners, to the Columbus Egg. A gunship appears and attacks them. Lupin and Fujiko escape the strafing, but the map is destroyed, so that the coordinates are preserved only in Fujiko's memory. Then before Lupin can catch her, she goes over a cliff into the sea below.

Lupin and his gang don't find Fujiko, but a young female treasure-hunter named Rosaria does-- and this Fujiko has no memory of anything. However, the guy in the airship, one Nazalhoff, somehow tracks Fujiko to Rosaria's lair, and abducts Fujiko, whose personality has vanished along with her memory, so that she's an entirely helpless damsel in distress. For reasons that are not clear-- though the script implies some lesbian desire on Rosaria's part-- Rosaria is willing to risk her life to rescue the distressed damsel.

The young treasure-hunter hooks with the three males of the Lupin Gang and joins forces with them-- though at times she shows a Fujiko-like tendency to betray Lupin. The master thief makes a few passes at Rosaria, but for the most part he's intensely confused at Fujiko's change in personality. In one scene, he rips off his clothes and makes as if he intends to ravish her, just as he constantly did whenever she was in her "normal" persona. It's not clear whether Lupin really means to follow through, or if he's applying "shock therapy." But trembling Fujiko gives him permission to take her, in the hope that she'll regain her normal memory. Lupin declines and treats her like a gentleman from then on, suggesting that he really doesn't want only Fujiko's body; he wants her to be with him, body and soul.

It turns out that Nazalhoff-- who shares Lupin's tendency to mack on both Fujiko and Rosaria-- is one of a small army of henchmen serving a mad scientist named Barton. Barton's the one who wants the hidden technology of the Columbus Egg, in order to create a weather-weapon whereby to rule the world. And as a cherry on top of all that James Bond goodness, Rosaria is his daughter, who becomes involved in stopping him even before she knows he's involved. Rosaria's got a bad history with her papa, who killed her mother in his scientific experiments, and seems willing to use his daughter as a test subject too. 

Lupin and his associates delve into a mysterious pre-Columbian temple, where they face a sampling of Indiana Jones perils, and even quote RAIDERS overtly. I forget how Barton gets the Egg from them, but soon he's creating waterspouts to show off his power (though I could swear he creates one early in the movie, before he has the full technology). One waterspout even works to Lupin's advantage, separating him from Zenigata just as the obsessed cop catches up with the thief. And just to demonstrate that anime writers share the American tendency to use technology to achieve any magic-like effect desired, toward the end Barton even uses the Columbus Tech to transform himself into a super-strong, nearly invulnerable monster. This frustrates Rosaria's chances to avenge her mother directly, but without revealing too much, the young woman's potential "lover" does it for her.

As for Jigen and Goemon, they're largely relegated to support roles. Goemon gets the best scenes: he uses his katana to slice a waterspout in two (!) and uses artificial respiration to revive a waterlogged Jigen, much to the gunman's disgust. Lupin is more in line with Monkey Punch's image of the character as "the trickster who tricks himself," taking many comical pratfalls not seen in the more serious iterations. And like the comics version, the master thief is able to assume instant disguises and use assorted gimmicks concealed on his person to thwart his foes. And of course, Fujiko must regain her normal personality: vain, unscrupulous, and venal-- though of course there's always the implication that she enjoys her bouts with Lupin. Though not everything in the script makes perfect sense, the writer's take on the "war between male thief and female thief" elevates FILES to the top of the Lupin heap. 

THE POSTMAN (1997)

 

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

Although I can see a lot of reasons why this Kevin Costner passion-project failed at the box office, and although I probably would have been bored watching in a theater, THE POSTMAN goes on my list of "interesting failures." This may be because I recently re-watched it on streaming, where I was free to pause this or that section as I pleased. But it's also because it was an attempt at producing a modern film in the vein of "Americana." More on that later.

Star-director Costner and two writers adapted the same-name 1985 novel by David Brin. I read the novel years ago and at the time liked it better than the film, though the main thing the POSTMAN film utilizes is the basic setup. It's 2013, and the mostly unexplained apocalypse has been recent enough that the older generation still remembers all of the events. The centralized government in the U.S. has been devastated, and as in most post-apoc films, the survivors have formed assorted small farming communities with little technology. But armed raiders have become the scourge of the countryside, levying tribute from the communities and threatening to become the de facto government. The raiders, named "The Holnists" after their deceased leader, are given a patina of sexism and racism, but their major evil is their insistence on a Spartan-like culture of military tyranny.

A wandering actor (Costner) travels from enclave to enclave, entertaining the residents with garbed Shakespeare performances. in contrast to the novel, the actor's name is never known. Then the current leader of the Holnists, General Bethlehem (Will Patton), decides to induct three men into his forces from the community the actor's visiting, and the actor is one of his victims. There's a little fencing between the actor and Bethlehem, in that both are familiar with the Bard, but for the most part, becoming an unwilling soldier is no picnic for our hero. He ultimately manages to escape the ranks of the Holnists.

On his own again, the protagonist comes across the long-deceased body of a U.S. postman. The actor appropriates the dead man's uniform and gets the idea of trying to deliver the leftover mail in order to cadge free food at communities. From then on, he becomes The Postman in much the same way that Clint Eastwood's hero from PALE RIDER becomes known as "Preacher." Why he never feels it useful to use his own real name, or to come up with a new one, goes unexplained.

As The Postman successfully mingles with one or two communities, his scam becomes his calling. His lie, that he's been empowered by a reconstituted U.S. government, becomes a dream that the scattered American tribes want to believe, and without his intent to do so, a new postal service grows into being. However, Bethlehem deems this organization a threat to his power, and he initiates reprisals. Coincidentally, he also abducts, for his own pleasure, a woman named Abby (Olivia Williams) -- though the general indirectly does the Postman an indirect favor by killing off Abby's husband, which will clear the decks for the romantic couple later on. Eventually, in marked contrast to the Brin novel, the quarrel of hero and villain is settled in a one-on-one battle.

Though Costner and his collaborators invoke paeans to the American Way of Life a little too often, and the film's length was surely one of the things that worked against it, the script does put across a strong sociological myth. The lines of communication, represented by the Postal Service, are what bind a country-- any country-- together, beyond the simple level of convenience, and such family-based community is exalted over the divisive nature of military culture.

POSTMAN, coming two years after the moderate success of WATERWORLD, may have done worse, but the script of the former isn't the only thing that's better. Costner, who was utterly unable to pull off the selfish loner of WATERWORLD, fits perfectly with this "hero of few words who can quote Shakespeare in a pinch." The star has good romantic chemistry with his leading lady, and Will Patton made an atypical villain: one who didn't look scary like the average adventure-antagonist but conveyed a sense of tangible menace. The climax, which builds upon the early events of the narrative, is in my book superior to that of the David Brin novel. 

SAMSON AND DELILAH (1949)

 

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

In contrast to 1953's SALOME. the scripters for Cecil B. DeMille's SAMSON AND DELILAH had a wealth of Biblical material to work with, for the Samson material in Judges is replete with all the spectacular incidents a Hollywood moviemaker could ever want. However, unlike many of the narratives in the Bible, that of Samson and Delilah is infused with the wild illogicality of myth and folklore.  Not surprisingly, DeMille did not attempt to depict some of the more eyebrow-raising deeds of Samson, like tying torches to the tails of three hundred foxes in order to set fire to Philistine crops.

Male heroes in American-made religious epics tend to be depicted as either righteous men from beginning to end, or men who stray from righteousness but end by re-affirming the Judeo-Christian ethos. The script for SAMSON intends to portray its hero (Victor Mature) in this manner: an early scene has Samson's mother chastising the hero for wenching, roistering, and being too friendly with the Philistines who hold dominion over the Jewish tribe of Dan, Samson's own people. The mother urges the hero to settle down and marry Miriam, a nice Danite girl. His response is to chase after Philistine girl Semadar (Angela Lansbury).

Semadar is the name the script gives to the unnamed Biblical wife of Samson, but the script also throws in a few interesting myth-allusions. Semadar is first seen wearing Philistine armor and hurling a spear at a picture of a lion, preparing herself for an anticipated lion-hunt. Her father compares her to the Greek goddess Dictynna, an analogue of the "mistress of animals" Artemis. Perhaps the scriptwriters wished to make Semadar as different as possible from her younger sister Delilah (Hedy Lamarr), who has more in common with Aphrodite, and with feminine arts of persuasion rather than masculine arts of force. When Samson comes calling for Semadar, Delilah hangs around, clearly planning to steal the Danite muscleman from her sister.

I'll pass quickly over some of the "high intrigues" of the story-- how Samson's suit interferes with a Philistine general's desire for Semadar, how the Danite hero's famous bare-handed slaying of a lion impresses the Philistine king, the Saran (George Sanders). In short, the film takes the "bride story" from the Old Testament-- in which the bride's father gives Samson's bride to another man and then tries to convince the Danite to accept an unnamed younger daughter-- and converts the whole plot to the contrivances of Delilah, who wants her sister married to anyone else and herself wed to Samson. Delilah's plan backfires. Delilah convinces Semadar to betray Samson's confidence, bringing about a battle between Samson and his Philistine groomsmen, a battle that results in the deaths of Semadar and her father. In a strong "Scarlet O'Hara" moment, Delilah swears vengeance on Samson, and her words suggest that she experiences some guilt for her own role in causing her family's demise.

After the Philistines fail to capture Samson by force-- yielding the crowd-pleasing scene in which the hero slays dozens of soldiers with "the jawbone of an ass"-- Delilah offers her services to  Saran's court. One courtier asks her if she plans to drive a stake through his head, as Jael did to Sisera (another nice mythic touch), but Delilah promises to conquer her enemy not through the "force of arms" but "the softness of arms."

I need not go into a lot of detail about the familiar conclusion, except to point out that Delilah regrets her betrayal of Samson to the Philistines and allows herself to perish when the blind hero pulls down the pillars of Dagon's temple. One of the effects of Delilah's self-sacrifice, though, is that it works against the film's supposed theme, in which Judeo-Christian modesty is extolled over pagan glamor. The effect of Delilah choosing to join Samson in death, though, is just one of many scenes that impart a heroic, almost Hellenic glory to Delilah, as much as to her strongman lover.

Moreover, even though SAMSON AND DELILAH is plagued with dozens of unintentionally risible dialogue-lines-- often rendered funny simply because they're uttered with midwestern accents-- DeMille's scripters succeed in filling the movie a catalogue with so many sadistic, masochistic, and penis-envy references as to warm the cockles of any Freudian heart. I'm tempted to generalize that while most American Bible-films are all about Freud's "reality principle"-- i.e. learning to respect life and live within limits-- SAMSON AND DELILIAH is more about Freud's so-called "pleasure principle," in which the joy of transgression, of polymorphous sexuality, is the main attraction.

The scripters also show some realization that certain motifs from the original narrative aren't logical in the light of later Christian rationalization.  When Samson does reveal his secret to the temptress, she doesn't believe it: "Do you really believe that this great god of yours gave you power through your hair?" When she clips him of his locks, what she's really doing is shearing away his confidence in God's gift. Thus the film, not wanting to imply that the God of the Fathers would mess about with folkloric gimmicks, strongly implies that Samson never really loses his strength; he merely *believes* that he has. Thus, when he regains his strength, it's not because the blinded hero's hair has time to grow back during his final captivity, as in the Bible narrative.

Yet, for what reason does Samson's strength return? It doesn't come back because Samson re-commits to the Lord of Hosts.  Samson first realizes that his strength is back when Delilah approaches him in his confinement. Full of hatred, he grabs her and lifts her over his head, intending to kill her. However, in so doing breaks his chains-- which leads him to realize that he can spring one last surprise on his enemies-- as long as Delilah doesn't betray him again. And so we see that in this particular Gospel According to DeMille, that a man's strength can not only be drained by sexual love, it can also be restored by the passion of a lusty hatred.  And that may be one reason why, for all its faults, SAMSON AND DELILAH is a helluva lot more fun to watch than most religious epics of this time-period.