STAN LEE'S MIGHTY 7 (2014)

 

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

*JOKE SPOIILER JOKE SPOILER*

MIGHTY 7 was one of various superhero projects produced by Stan Lee's company POW Entertainment before the famed comics writer-editor passed in 2018. I have not become acquainted with all of these would-be franchises, but it's fair to state that none of them caught fire with the public. 

In the case of MIGHTY, this direct-to-TV feature was preceded by a magazine issued by POW and two other merchandizing partners (one being Archie Comics). The MIGHTY comic was supposed to come out for six issues but only three appeared, all written by the team of Tony Blake and Paul Jackson, presumably with input (but probably not an actual script) from Lee. (Blake and Jackson are also credited for the script of the video in the end credits.)

Comic book and video present the setup for the Mighty 7 in nearly identical fashion. Stan Lee drives out in the Mojave Desert, seeking to brainstorm some new superheroes for Archie Comics (a company for whom Lee never actually labored). A spaceship crashes, and the nonagenarian writer meets seven humanoid aliens from the planet Kring. All seven have super-powers, for reasons that are not sufficiently explained in either version, but like the original Avengers, they're something less than a knitting-circle. Two are "star marshals," and they're hauling the other five Kringians back to face justice for various crimes. Now, with their ship destroyed, the aliens have to settle for hanging out with the first Earthman they run into, even though his dominant desire is to market them all as "real-life superheroes."

I won't dwell on the seven aliens-- almost all of whom are voiced by celebrity performers. They patch up their differences really quickly and join forces in being Earth's real superheroes-- admittedly, the better to keep from being turned into lab animals. In the comic they all get weird alien nonsense-cognomens, but I think I prefer these to the "superhero names" that the script for the video almost exclusively uses. ("Laser Lord?" "Kid Kinergy?" Ugh.) But if the assembly of the heroic group is pedestrian, at least visually they look pretty good, and their diverse powers complement one another in three big fight-scenes. The animation is much more fluid than two rather stodgy cartoon-films I reviewed here, MOSAIC and THE CONDOR. 

One big change from comic to video is that in the comic, the first threat that the Mighty 7 must face is essentially a mad-scientist supervillain. The video improves on the comic's setup in that, early in the story, the aliens and their Earthling cheerleader discover that Earth has already been infiltrated by other aliens, a race of marauders called the Taegon. There's nothing memorable about these bargain-basement boogiemen, but had this pilot-movie spawned a series, the alien marauders might have made a better long-term threat than "the villain of the week."

Yet in a broad sense, the attraction here is not the heroes or the villains, but what the story does with the Legendary Stan Lee, who is of course voiced by the real celebrity. Naturally in neither medium does the script reference anything about Lee's real history, particularly with regard to his former employer Marvel Comics. The video presents Writer Lee loosely along the same lines as Lee's persona in vintage Marvel Comics: bombastic, self-centered, and egotistical, but still possessed of enough verbal style to make him charming. Most of the humor in MIGHTY is mighty ordinary, but the video does boast one joke I'll proceed to spoil.

The government is trying to locate the Mighty Seven, so they use a high-powered mind-reading device on Lee, to find out what he knows. But for some reason, even though the device can project Lee's memories on a handy TV-screen for the interrogators' review, all the memories come out in chronological order. And the only memories of which the audience learns are Lee's memories of creating hundreds and hundreds of superheroes, thus causing the interrogators no end of aggravation. I know it's not a great joke, but for me it carries a little added resonance. When I was reading Marvel Comics in my teens, I naively believed that the credited writer alone conceived all the characters in the stories. I certainly don't believe that now, knowing how important most of Lee's collaborators were to those many conceptions. But I still think that those hundreds of characters would not have been given what life they possessed without some partial creative input from Stan Lee.

THE INVINCIBLE BROTHERS MACISTE (1964)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*                                                                                                                          Despite BROTHERS' coming out at the end of the sixties peplum cycle, it's a decent little flick of its kind. Director/co-writer Roberto Mauri-- best known, perhaps unjustly, for the lively bad movie KONG ISLAND--   possibly took some elements from the 1961 MOLE MEN AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES, such as an underground civilization, visually dominated by a gigantic mill and politically dominated by an immortal queen. However, Mauri didn't just copy from the next student but took his creation in some interesting mythic directions.                                                                           

 In a loosely Greek-seeming domain, Prince Akim (Anthony Steffen) and his fiancee Diana (Ursula Davis) attempt to consecrate their impending nuptials by building a temple to "the gods" near a mountainside, not far from the famed "Waterfall of the Gods." In this endeavor the royal couple are aided by two local strongmen, the titular Brothers Maciste, Elder Maciste (Richard Lloyd) and Younger Maciste (Tony Freeman). The script offers no clue as to why the name Maciste, usually applied to a mysterious hero able to appear in any era he pleases to dispense justice, is used by both of these men. Perhaps both brothers are by-blows of that time-traveling hero, after he made a romantic conquest in that era. However, the attempt to lay the foundations of the new temple-- an activity that archaic peoples often considered a perilous endeavor-- the side of the mountain caves in. This damages the temple and seems to be a bad omen. While the menfolk investigate what look like ancient ruins within the mountain, Akim sends Diana back to her father's palace. (It's a little obscure, but I think the region is within the scope of Diana's kingly father, while Akim is marrying into the family to unite his realm and hers).                                                                         

 However, as Diana drives her chariot back in the company of two guards, all of them are ambushed by men wearing leopard costumes. The attackers kill the guards and drag Diana into the mountain, going in through some different access point. Inside the mountain Diana sees a huge mill being pushed by slaves, more leopard men, and the ruling queen of the domain, Thaliade (Claudie Lange). After some minor chat, Thaliade offers Diana some liquid refreshment. Diana is then drugged into submission, and she's sent back to her father's palace to work Thalaide's will. The brothers follow Diana's trail to the waterfall, and Elder Maciste tells his younger sibling to inform Akim of their progress while he the Elder One enters the mountain through the waterfall. Leopard men attack Maciste and he beats them down, but he's caught in a metal cage whose bars he can't break. A ceiling studded with spikes descends to perforate Elder Maciste's deltoids, but just when the hero's about to collapse from holding off the death-trap, Thalaide turns it off remotely and he simply collapses from the strain. Slightly later Thalaide drugs him and makes Elder Maciste her new consort, which displeases her previous consort, formerly one of the leopard-men.                               

  The mesmerized Diana appears at her dad's palace and uses a drug given her by the queen on Younger Maciste, sending him into a deep sleep. With that hero out of the way, Diana talks her fiancee into holding a parley with the ruler of the underground world, whom she claims speaks for the gods. She sells him a line about building the consecrating temple elsewhere, but this is apparently just a deception to get Akim to enter the queen's underground domain. Meanwhile back in the hidden world, Thaliade sets Elder Maciste to work turning the giant wheel, whose purpose, we later learn, generates a stream of water that confers immortality upon everyone in the hidden world. One of Thaliade's maidservants, Nila, takes a shine to Elder Maciste, gets him alone and makes love to him while expressing her desire to escape this twilight existence and enter the human world once more.                                                                                                   

As it happens, this is also what Thaliade wants, though on her own terms. When Prince Akim ventures into her court as instructed by Diana, Thalaide relates her origins. She was once a mortal princess like Diana, but one of the gods spirited her away. She enjoyed her existence in the gods' world for a time, but Venus became jealous of Thaliade's beauty. The gods' solution to this conflict was to create the underground realm for Thaliade to dwell in, along with a huge retinue of maidservants and leopard-costumed guards, all made immortal by the streams of "immortality water" dispensed by the mill. However, for some unspecified reason, Thaliade can escape her velvet prison if she marries Akim-- which she proceeds to bring about, with the mind-controlled Diana coolly observing.                       

However, back at Diana's palace her father engages a sorceress to bring Younger Maciste out of his sleep-spell. The young hero rides to the waterfall, enters the hidden world and begins thrashing every leopard man he can find. Thaliade must interrupt her wedding, sending the elder brother to fight the younger one. Elder defeats Younger and binds him to the wheel for punishment. However, while Thaliade becomes preoccupied with the wedding once more, Nila steals an antidote, uses it on Elder Maciste and brings him out of his obedient stupor. The two brothers then join in wrecking the kingdom of Thaliade, she dies in one of her own traps, and apparently most of the queen's retinue, evil or not, perishes except for Nila. At the end Akim is reunited with Diana, Elder Maciste gets Nila, and Younger Maciste gets no nookie no how.                                                     

  INVINCIBLE has some minor story flaws, such as the question of where Thalaide's retinue comes from, and why the guards dress like leopards. But there are some good mythic tropes here, arguably stronger than the ones in MOLE MEN. The emphasis upon the flowing water may remind one of the river Styx in the Greek underworld, though the Styx could confer healing, not immortality. The underground world should remind anyone of the underworld itself, though the denizens have simply put off death rather than actually having died. Most impressively, Thalaide's attempt to take Diana's place by usurping Diana's groom bears some resemblance to the Sumerian myth of Ishtar's descent to the underworld, wherein the goddess of sexual bounty loses her powers when she enters the domain of her sister Ereshkigal. The two narratives are not identical, since Ereshkigal does not have any means or intent to escape her death-realm. But there is a substitution motif in most versions of the Sumerian myth, where Ishtar can only escape her imprisonment if another entity takes her place. In addition, there's a suggestion that Thaliade's from another mortal generation than that of Akim and Diana, so she, more than a goddess might be, signifies a transgression of clan-boundaries; i.e., a "clansgression." Thus, even though INVINCIBLE seems to have fallen through the cracks in the annals of favored peplums, it deserves some serious reconsideration.      

HUMANOID DEFENDER (1985)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                        This flop pilot for a TV show may be better known by the title JOE AND THE COLONEL, but I've chosen the VHS title of HUMANOID DEFENDER. The well-trained clone soldier Joe (played by Gary Kasper, and whose technical name is J.O.E., though I forget the acronym's meaning) is definitely the star of the show. But the support-character of "The Colonel," played by William Lucking, definitely does not deserve co-billing.                                      

I concur with this review that the TV-movie feels as if writer Nicholas Corea-- who worked exclusively on TV shows and TV movies-- tossed almost every idea he had for an ongoing series into the mix for this hour-and-a-half pilot. This does give DEFENDER a minor distinction for sheer incoherence, though there's nothing especially amusing about the chaos. First, we see the full-grown clone being trained in a government facility by his "three parents," whom I *think* may also have contributed genetic material to his creation-- which if true would make him more like a DNA version of Frankenstein than a clone. Then the "mother" of the trio, Lena (Gail Edwards) is said to have died suddenly. The military's liaison, The Colonel, blows it off, but the third "parent," Doctor Rourke (Terence Knox) thinks Kai's death is part of a conspiracy to shut down the JOE project. There's also been an incident in which Joe, despite being massively trained as a super-soldier, refuses to kill an animal when ordered to do so. So Rourke spirits Joe away.                           

 So far, so average for a derivative spy-story. But DEFENDER goes completely off the rails because Corea sought to set up a rationale for Joe as an action-hero. Joe and Rourke hide themselves in some suburban dwelling, where one assumes they're going to keep their heads down and live a mundane life. But no, somehow Rourke works things out so that Joe can still take on missions to help people, like liberating a kidnap victim from terrorists. Not a word is said about how such activities could call the military's attention to their existence and location. Then there's a plot about an unthinking Joe-clone that gets loose and creates very minor chaos before Joe takes the creature out with very minor action. Then, surprise, Lena is alive again. And then Rourke's out of the picture and the Colonel's a good guy after all, since he becomes Joe's new handler for whatever adventures are down the road. None of the actors, good or bad, can do anything with this sloppy tripe. I think Gary Kaspar tried hard to make his sketchy character charming, but I have a theory that even if had DEFENDER become a regular show, it would probably have flopped, and thus Kaspar probably would not have had any more lasting success as an actor than he did in real-time.        

CORPSE PRINCESS (2008-09)

 

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

CORPSE PRINCESS is no classic, but it’s at least as good as many of the better formulaic anime-shows from the eighties and nineties. The manga presumably provided a much better model for the serial in terms of concepts and characters than that of NABARI NO OU. To be sure, though, NABARI does at least give the viewer closure at the end, while PRINCESS’s 26 episodes evidently weren’t able to capture the range of the original manga, which ran for about six years. However, if the viewer accepts that the ride will be wild but somewhat brief, PRINCESS is worth a look.

The manga provided the serial with a relatively novel take on Japanese folklore about “angry spirits.” Whereas many ghosts in the Westenr storytelling tradition appear as ephemeral phantoms, Japanese revenants tend to be capable of taking on solid form with many repulsive characteristics. I’m not sure whether or not the Japanese word “shikabane”—which literally means “corpse”—appeared in genuine folklore as a word for such a revenant, though I tend to suspect that the original manga-author has taken many liberties to adapt legend into pop culture.

The Shikabane of this anime-serial are less like ghosts than zombies. If, at the moment of a human being’s death, that person nurtures deep resentments—repeatedly termed “regrets”—the person’s body simply re-animates. These living dead people have no organic needs as such, but they feel driven to avenge the wrongs done them in life. However, a particular Japanese sect (possibly Shinto) called the Kougon Sect evolves a special means of fighting death with death. Certain monks of the sect make contracts with dead Shikabane, in which the monks supply the Shikabane with a power called ”rune.” In exchange, these benign Shikabanee then use their inhuman strength and endurance to battle the more malefic corpse-monsters. An additional facet of this arrangement seems rooted in Japanese pop-culture’s preference for cute young female heroes, for the monks are only able to forge their contracts with deceased girls of a certain age. (And yes, this circumstance is played for as much raunchy fan-service as is feasible.) All of these undead women are termed “Shikabane Hime,” meaning “Corpse Princesses.”

Though several of the “Hime” (as I’ll call them from now on) and their “contracted monks” appear as supporting characters, the focal figures here consist of one particular “Corpse Princess,” Makina, and a young man, Ouri who’s forcibly introduced into the world of metamorphic zombie-fights. Makina, a dynamic young Hime, is originally given her mission by Keisei, who’s both a Kougon monk and the adoptive brother of Ouri. However, early in the series Keisei perishes, and the later episodes deal with the problems faced by Ouri as he tries to assume his brother’s role in this dangerous scenario—not least because he and Makina face not only random undead menaces, but also an organization of evil Shikabane, the Seven Stars.

The somewhat passive Ouri and the hardcore Makina make a good “opposites attract” team, though by serial’s end it’s unclear as to whether or not there will be romance between the principals. At the very least, though, they complement one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Further, the scripts are sensitive to the melodramatic potential of human beings who feel cheated of life but must define themselves as the living dead—though not without lots of high-powered shonen action, wherein the super-powered Hime (who wield weapons but don’t usually change form) battle hordes of shapechanging zombies. A particular standout appears when Makina goes toe-to-toe with Hokujo, a Shikabane who seemingly has no human sentiments, and therefore seems to Makina like the incarnation of death itself.

As noted earlier,,the story is unfortunately truncated. Episode 25 ends with Makina fighting, and apparently winning out, over Hokujo, but there’s no wrap up of the situation,. The final episode concerns one of the supporting characters, and was apparently released as a solo DVD feature in Japan when it became apparent that another full season would not appear. Still, even these limited adaptations of Makine and Ouri make me want to invest some time in the original manga.

ASH VS EVIL DEAD SEASON THREE (2018)

 

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

The first time I saw Season Three, I perceived a fall-off in the show's balls-to-the-wall qualities, so much so that I rather wished the show stopped with the second season. I now think the conclusion works, partly as a callback to the events of ARMY OF DARKNESS, and I agree with the stated verdict of Bruce Campbell, to the effect that this season rounded off everything possible that could be done with the character of Ash Williams. That doesn't mean the season doesn't have a big problem, though. The introduction of the overly "normie" character of Brandy, the daughter Ash never knew he had, undercuts the wild irresponsibility of the demon-hunting insanity.

FAMILY-- Again the Necronomicon summons the Evil Dead, and Ruby seeks to gain control of the demons-- this time by performing a ritual that will make her pregnant with a demonic version of Ash, the destined savior of the world. In Elk Grove Ash and Pablo encounter Ash's old (and barely remembered) lover Candy, who informs him that all this time he's had a daughter, teenaged Brandy (Arielle Carver-O'Neill), without knowing of her. This does move Ash to assume a more responsible role, meathead though he remains. Kelly shows up from some unexplained foray in the company of Dalton, a handsome fellow who belongs to a demon-fighting cadre, the Knights of Sumeria. This engenders jealousy in Pablo. Ash, Pablo and Candy get wind of a threat to Brandy, and rush to her school. However, the demons possess Brandy's friend Rachel, and in a musically themed combat, Rachel beheads Candy-- albeit only minutes after Candy has revealed to Brandy the identity of her father. Ash destroys Rachel.  

BOOTH THREE-- I'm not sure what causes Ash to suspect that Ruby may've got access to the sperm Ash had on file at the local bank-- where Ash has long been a cheerful contributor-- but he shows up in "booth three" to investigate and once again has to fight the Evil Dead. He also finds out that for some time Ruby has been at Brandy's school posing as a counselor, but Brandy, revulsed by her father's role in her mother's gruesome death, refuses to believe Ash about Ruby. Dalton tells Kelly that because Pablo still has the script of the Book embedded in his flesh, Pablo remains a danger and should be eliminated. 

APPARENTLY DEAD-- You know those disreputable relatives who make a scene at funerals, by brawling with the undead deceased? Well, that's Ash thanks to the demonic revival of Candy at her funeral, all for the purpose of further alienating Brandy from Ash. I guess this is a Ruby scheme though I didn't see what benefit that alienation was to her. A vision guides Pablo, Kelly and Dalton back to the cabin to unearth the magical dagger that seems to come and go so quickly throughout the story. A Deadite tree-monster impales Dalton with a branch (wish fulfillment for Pablo?) and Dalton too becomes a Deadite who must be destroyed. When Ash shows up at Brandy's home, he finds her watching tv with a convincing simulacrum of Brock, the grandfather she never knew. Ash is forced to destroy this fake father after having seen the real one slain by the Evil Dead.

UNIFINISHED BUSINESS-- Dalton proves to be right: Pablo is susceptible to being possessed because of his history with the Book (though the show really has no rules about who can or can't be possessed, as witness the possession of the innocent Rachel). Demonic Pablo bites Kelly's leg so as to infect it with a mini-demon face. More significantly, the spirit of the real Brock (no rules about whose ghosts can or can't appear either) manifests to fill in some blanks for his demon-hunting son. It seems that in 2012, while Brock and Ash were still alienated, Brock got a visit from a Knight of Sumeria and accidentally killed the guy-- which is important only because the knight has some missing pages of the Book with him, so that's a new grail to seek. Ash goes looking for Ruby, but she's at the cabin interrogating the corpse of Dalton, so Ash has to settle for learning that Ruby's spawn, Baby Demon-Ash, is terrorizing the "nurse" Ruby forced to care for the evil tyke. 

BABY PROOF-- Ash escaped dealing with his daughter's "terrible twos," but all his hassles with the demon-tyke more than compensate. While Ash tries to capture Baby Ash, the spirit of Pablo communes with that of his uncle The Brujo and learns a ritual by which he can return to life. Pablo does so. Ruby regains custody of her spawn, but Brandy is finally convinced of her father's heroism and joins his team.

TALES FROM THE RIFT-- More Knights of Sumeria show up on Ash's doorstep, and thanks to the past-vision vouchsafed Ash by his dead dad, he's able to find the missing book-pages. The Knights, aided by alive-again Pablo, attempt a ritual to open an interspatial rift that might help them control the demons. However, one of their number goes Deadite, killing all the Knights save one until Ash is able to slay the possessee. Kelly, by this time rid of her demon-infection, gets a hard jones to kill Ruby. The two of them have a big splashy battle, but Kelly loses and is slain by Ruby. The evil witch then allows Kelly's dead body to be possessed by another sorceress, Kaya.

TWIST AND SHOUT-- Ruby's attempt at deception is undermined when Pablo receives a vision from the ghost of Kelly. However, by this time Kaya, posing as Kelly, has joined Ash and Brandy as they seek out the school dance, where they hope to confront Ruby. A big fight erupts in front of the horrified students and teachers, while Ruby's spawn, now grown to manhood, battles the real Ash. Though Ash kills his clone, Ruby almost kills the hero with the dagger. However, Brandy intervenes and saves her father's life by taking the dagger and (temporarily) dying. 

RIFTING APART-- Gaining custody of Brandy's body, Ash has a brilliant idea how to restore her to life: he has Pablo stab him with the dagger, so that his spirit ends up with hers in the rift-world. This works better than expected, for Ash finds not only the spirit of Brandy but those of Dalton and Kelly too. Pursued by a demon, Dalton sacrifices his ghost-life to allow the others to return to the real world. Kelly can't manage to do so because Kaya's possessing her body. Meanwhile, Kaya gets hold of the last surviving Knight, name of Zoe, who's supposed to help Kaya and Ruby gain control of the demons.

JUDGMENT DAY-- Now Ruby has both the demons and the Ash Team after her, and despite the attempt she and Kaya make to conceal themselves, they have only minimal success. Ash battles Ruby, who fends off his best efforts thanks to her immortality, and even wrecks his precious chainsaw. However, the demons arrive and accidentally save Ash's life by sucking away the spirits of Ruby and Kaya. The absence of Kaya in Kelly's body makes it possible for Ash to attempt reuniting Kelly's spirit with her body-- which finally makes it possible for Pablo to get with Kelly. However, the demons have also made a full-fledged invasion of the earth-realm with an invulnerable sixty-foot demon.

THE METTLE OF MAN-- The world is finally beset by demons, though Ash only sees the part of the battle taking place in Elk Grove. Kelly is restored to her body, but the titanic demon is on the rampage, and American soldiers seek to evacuate the town before the military drops a nuclear warhead on the creature. Ash allows his friends to escape but seeks to find an alternative battle-plan, using a tank and the super-dagger to destroy the giant demon. However, in a transition intended to call back to ARMY OF DARKNESS, Ash is somehow transported into a post-apocalyptic future, where he accepts his new destiny to continue a new fight against evil.

If anyone had told me that Sam Raimi and his colleagues could make an epic out of the simple and unpromising materials of the 1981 EVIL DEAD, I would have scoffed big-time. I also would never have believed that Raimi et al could take a meathead character like Ash and make him into "the stone the builders rejected." Yet all the things that make Ash a loser in the real world-- his laziness, his vulgarity, his man-whorishness-- are the things that give him the vitality to be a larger-than-life hero. That's one reason I classified the series as a combative drama despite all the looney-toons slapstick, because Ash ends his career as a hero taking his leave of his friends and daughter, symbolically "dying" to the world of reality but finally accepting his heroic destiny in "the world to come."                

    

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN (1983)

 

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

I've not been in any great hurry to review the last Sean Connery Bond-flick, having remembered it largely as fairly dull with snatches of dopey "camp" humor, possibly courtesy of screenplay writer Lorenzo (BATMAN) Semple Jr. But today I took the plunge.

I'll get two of my category-concerns out of the way first. Both the Fleming novel and the 1965 film fall into the domain of the uncanny, largely for the idea of a "bizarre crime" involving nuclear blackmail. However, one spotlighted Bond-gadget in NEVER-- a laser-ray watch-- is so removed from contemporary technology of the era that it conveys a marvelous phenomenality on the film, much as the attack-laser in the GOLDFINGER movie did for that film. I might argue that the miniature explosive dart that kills Fatima might also be outside the bounds of the uncanny as well. The "bizarre crime" is also the main reason I assign NEVER a "fair" mythicity: not that the makers of the film executed the important nuclear-blackmail trope all that well, but because they at least channeled some of the sociological ramifications of the threat.

NEVER came about because producer Kevin McClory acquired the rights to adapt the THUNDERBALL story, on which he unofficially collaborated with Fleming. Thus NEVER is a one-off independent of the Bond franchise that was managed, up to a certain point, by Eon Productions. McClory and his collaborators had rights only to work with what elements were in the THUNDERBALL novel as such-- though strangely, this didn't prevent them from inventing an evil henchwoman for NEVER, in clear emulation of the henchwoman Fiona Volpe, who had no precedents in the novel.

I haven't re-screened THUNDERBALL for a long time. so I won't comment on the plot-differences between NEVER and its sources. The only thing worth noting in the early scenes is that while Bond (a 52-year-old Sean Connery) discover a vital clue to SPECTRE's nuclear plot at a mundane health spa, his enemies don't find out that Bond is on their trail right away. In fact, Fatima, who is SPECTRE's contact person for an agent undergoing recovery from an operation, recognizes Bond through a window. Convenient, yes?

This contingency allows the script to have the villains make periodic attacks on the hero, but it takes away a lot of the suspense potential. Bond finds his way to the Bahamas, and to Maximillion Largo (Klaus-Maria Brandauer) the SPECTRE agent in charge of placing the stolen bombs in strategic places. 

Now, Fleming utilized a certain amount of coincidence too. In the original book, Largo does not know that his mistress Domino Vitali is actually the sister of the man SPECTRE engaged to help steal the bombs, because the brother goes by another last name. Bond, however, finds out about the family relationship, and he goes out of his way to make contact with the "Domino Petachi" (Kim Basinger) of NEVER, so that he can use Domino against Largo. But this strategy makes less sense if Bond's enemies know who he is and could put a bullet in his head at any time. The fact that Bond also comes on to Largo's mistress also ought to shorten his lifespan, but Fatima Blush keeps bungling her assignments. She does finally get Bond at gunpoint, threatening to shoot off his nuts as a prelude to killing him. This is played so over-the-top that it merely becomes ridiculous, like most of the other "humorous" moments of the movie. Kerschner apparently did not favor a light touch.

One of the most egregious scenes involves Bond informing Domino of her brother's murder by her lover Largo. There's a similar scene in THUNDERBALL the movie, but the dance-scene in NEVER is a big splashy scene that makes the revelation utterly idiotic. Speaking of Domino, for most of the film she's a doe-eyed damsel, and though Basinger does decently with the unrewarding role, her Domino pales in comparison with both of the earlier incarnations. I also preferred Adolfo Celi's version of Largo, who seems like a dyed-in-the-wool Mafioso, while Brandauer seems more like a frustrated child-- particularly when he and Bond duel playing a 1980s video game of Largo's design. What is a SPECTRE agent doing designing video games?

Despite a fair quantity of big action scenes, many of them lack musical accompaniment, and those scored by composer Michel Legrand are entirely disappointing. The only spectacle that works fairly well takes place in Palmyra, where Largo takes the captive agent and his turncoat lover. Bond is put in one of those "traps that will kill you while I'm conveniently busy elsewhere," and so 007 gets free and saves Domino from being sold to Arab slavers. The pursuit of the heroes by the slavers through an ancient Mediterranean fortress is stronger than any of Kerschner's other set-pieces, and free of stupid humor. Later, at the climax Largo attempts to detonate the final bomb in his possession, so Domino, as in her two previous incarnations, gets to end his evil career with a well-placed spear. But this last minute "action-girl" moment doesn't dispel Basinger's damsel image, though she does make one of the most delectable Bond girls.

Finally, though Sean Connery looks very fit for his last outing as 007, he's a washout with the material as well. Connery-Bond in the sixties was not by any means a nice guy, but occasionally he showed passion to save women from dastardly fates when he didn't have to do so. There was a certain knight-like nobility in Connery-Bond that was probably translated from the books, but in NEVER Bond just seems smug and ironically distanced. The movie ends with the false intimation of further entries of this Bond-incarnation, which the producers knew was not going to happen in a million years. So the title NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN was doubly ironic, because Kevin McClory would "never again" get any further chances to take part in the phenomena of the Bond franchise. 

        
                 

HONOR ROLL #292

 No embarrassment can bring a Blush to the cheek of BARBARA CARRERA.

DANA DE LORENZO proves herself to be a dead shot-- or at least an Evil Dead shot.

MAKINA HOSHIMURA celebrates becoming Princess of All Corpses.

"I had two daddies before it was cool," boasted GARY KASPAR.
   

Two muscle-brothers are no match for the feminine wiles of CLAUDIA LANGE.

Zero times a MIGHTY SEVEN is still zero.

TEEN TITANS SEASON FIVE (2005-06)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*  

                                                                                                              The final season of TEEN TITANS provides an overarching plotline concerning Beast Boy's first superhero team The Doom Patrol, though said group wasn't mentioned in any previous TV-episodes. In comic books, DC debuted both TEEN TITANS and DOOM PATROL within a few years of one another, and though they were largely independent, Beast Boy of PATROL guest-starred in one issue of TITANS-- which later resulted in the shapeshifter becoming a New Teen Titan in the 1980s.  The 1980s comic also concluded a hanging plot-thread left over since PATROL's cancellation in the 1960s, and this storyline resulted in the Patrol's old foes, the Brotherhood of Evil, becoming members of the New Titans' regular rogues' gallery.                                                                                            

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 POOR

Only one episode this time is a waste of time. The Titans pursue their recurring villain Doctor Light into a subterranean domain where prehistoric life has persisted. It's too complicated to go into the comics-histories of the two quasi-heroic locals, Gnarrk and Kole, but as far as I've concerned, both were boring in the comics and the TITANS writers aren't able to make them any less so. I suppose the eating contest between Gnarrk and Cyborg is moderately amusing.                                                                            

 FAIR 

                                                                                                    

GO! -- This episode, whose title is a patent reference to the catchphrase "Teen Titans Go," is the only fair-mythicity episode which isn't tied into the overarching "Brotherhood of Evil" plotline. The episode is a very condensed version of the origin of the 1980s Titans, in which Starfire escapes her captors, the extraterrestrial marauders called Gordanians. Various contrivances cause Robin, Raven, Cyborg and Beast Boy to oppose the Gordanians' attempts to recapture Starfire. The story naturally emphasizes action more than character explication. But some strong moments include Beast Boy's first meeting with Robin, acting the fanboy to the Teen Wonder. Starfire appears as the product of a ruthless warlord culture, so the episode's not able to explain how she transitioned to the "puppies and kittens" Starfire of the later episodes.                                                                                                                            

HOMECOMING PTS 1-2, TRUST, FOR REAL, SNOWBLIND, HIDE AND SEEK, LIGHTSPEED, CALLING ALL TITANS, and TITANS TOGETHER-- All of these episodes are organized around the resurgence of the Brotherhood of Evil. This villain-team's core members are The Brain, the intelligent gorilla Monsieur Mallah, General Immortus, and the rubber-limbed Madame Rouge, though by the last episodes they've managed to enlist nearly all of the Titans' recurring enemies in their project to "destroy all Titans."              HOMECOMING chronicles Beast Boy's first encounter with the Patrol since he resigned from their ranks, which include Robotman, Negative Man, Elasti-Girl and Mento, the latter serving as the team's leader. All four are under-characterized, probably because the writers knew that they weren't to make more than token appearances. Beast Boy's reasons for leaving that group aren't articulated, but it's likely that he rebelled against Mento's severe and unforgiving attitude. In fact, all four Patrollers are bereft of any humor or fellow-feeling, and the HOMECOMING script treats them as if they were ultra-military types, focused only upon beating the enemy. This is more than a little ironic, since in the original comics from the 1960s, PATROL was distinguished by its display of rollicking humor, while the TITANS comic was usually only funny by virtue of its writer seeking to emulate the speech patterns of 1960s teenagers.                                                                                         

TRUST follows Robin as he seeks to prevent Madame Rouge from abducting Hotspot. This episode feels much like filler, given that Hotspot had only a minor appearance in WINNER TAKE ALL and certainly didn't do anything to earn himself a big fandom.          

FOR REAL-- Control Freak breaks out of jail and invades Titans Tower to challenge his old foes. Instead of his usual foes, the villain finds that the Titans East have taken up residence in the Tower while the other heroes are on missions. There are a few funny moments where Control Freak debates with other cyber-chatters as to whether he should even bother battling such rank unknowns. Of course, he does, and he even goes the "average villain" route by setting up physical challenges for the Easterners-- who naturally kick his butt just as hard as the Western branch did.         

SNOWBLIND-- This story, only tangentially related to the Brotherhood arc, involves the Titans going to Russia to fight a marauding monster. While searching for the creature, Starfire is separated from her group but finds shelter in a quarantined facility occupied by Red Star, a soldier given unstable powers in a government experiment.  There's an involved comics in-joke here, in that although Red Star did appear in the 1980s TITANS series, he was derived from a sixties character, who was the first DC character to be named-- Starfire.                                                

HIDE AND SEEK-- Raven gets her only solo comedy episode, as she's charged with protecting three grade-schoolers from being captured by the Brotherhood. The humor's very predictable, made palatable only by the characterization of Raven.      

LIGHTSPEED-- In this odd segue, loner-hero Kid Flash-- a frequent Titan in the comics but seen here for the first time-- makes life miserable for the "Hive Five." But even without the Kid's interference, the Five's leader Jinx finds herself constantly undercut by her lazy-ass comrades (now upped to six with the inclusion of Billy Numerous and two newbies, See-mour and Kid Wycked). Moreover, when Jinx tries to curry favor with the Brotherhood, she finds that they're something less than accomodating.                                                                               

CALLING ALL TITANS just sets up the action for TITANS TOGETHER, when the principal Titans invade the Brotherhood's sanctuary and free all the prisoners the villains have captured. There are various character bits that enhance TOGETHER's mythicity, but the main appeal is kinetic, as the animators unleash what may be the largest multi-character fight-scene in the history of world cartoons. This episode seems to have been conceived as a possible conclusion for the series, though one more episode was produced to give the series a more wistful send-off.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

GOOD 

                                                                                                               REVVED UP-- In the 1960s TITANS comic, the writer introduced a villain with the improbable name of "Ding Dong Daddy," who executed crimes with the help of specially rigged vehicles. This was a rare (for the time) shout-out to a cartoon character outside the boundaries of four-color comic books: the artistic persona of Earl "Big Daddy" Roth, a caricaturist renowned for weird monsters driving fast cars. REVVED UP introduces the animated Ding Dong as a guy who somehow gets hold of a secret treasure owned by the Teen Wonder himself. When Robin and the other Titans try to reacquire the mysterious item, Ding Dong compels them to participate in a car-race-- and Cyborg, who dearly loves his T-car, is more than happy to oblige. A bunch of other villains show up to try winning Robin's mysterious prize, including Red X, the mystery thief who took over Robin's phony criminal identity-- though in some ways Red X shows some of Robin's own sense of personal honor. Ding Dong is aided by a mobile pit crew, whose monstrous servicemen look like the comical ghouls drawn by "Big Daddy," and that alone gives extra heft to the episode's mythicity.  

THINGS CHANGE-- Every other TEEN TITANS episode, no matter how good or bad in terms of symbolic discourse, is structured as formula entertainment. This observation isn't meant to have any negative connotations. It simply means that the raconteurs structured their narratives to respond to the expectations of the audience, rather than obliging the audience to follow where the storyteller wants to go. But in THINGS CHANGE, the production team concluded their series with the superhero equivalent of FALL OUT, the final episode of the 1960s teleseries THE PRISONER. Like FALL OUT, CHANGE is full of uncertainties, of questions without answers. The five Titans stride into town looking for their favorite haunts-- a pizza place, a video store-- but those touchstones have been closed down. From a construction site a metamorphic monster pops out and attacks them. While four of the heroes pursue the creature and eventually defeat it-- though they never know what it was or why it attacked-- Beast Boy is astounded to see, amid a crowd of onlookers, a dead-ringer for the deceased Terra. No other Titan sees her, nor do they join Beast Boy when he investigates the place where they enshrined Terra's body, converted into pure stone during her battle with Slade. Not only does the changeling find the statue missing, he's attacked by a being that resembles Slade, who keeps telling him to leave the young girl alone. When Beast Boy defeats Slade, Slade turns out to be a robot, but there are no clues as to who programmed the mechanical man for this exigency. As for the girl, she denies any identity with Terra but rather significantly never gives her "real" name. While she's fairly kind toward the confused young superhero, she flatly disavows any connection with the world he lives in, and the story ends with Beast Boy, committed to the life of a hero, rushing off to join his friends in their next mission and reconciling himself to his loss. Many fans didn't like this mysterioso conclusion, but I was glad to see the producers bow out on this atypical note of loss and heartache.   

ASSASSIN (1986)

 

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

I saw a lot of the journeyman-TV work of Sandor Stern, but not much of his writing and/or directing proved memorable, and his one big break into feature films, writing the screenplay for THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, is far from one of my fave horror flicks. That said, I did at least remember this mostly routine TV-movie better than a lot of others.

It's a mark of Stern's gimcrack scripting that when retired CIA agent Henry Stanton (Robert Conrad) is persuaded to help terminate a killer who's preying on other agents, nobody thinks it necessary to impart to Henry the information that the killer is a high-functioning robot. Even the woman Henry is partnered with, a female scientist named Mary (Karen Austin), doesn't bother to explain this little detail until after Henry has had his first run-in with the super-strong automaton. Since it's a TV-film, the ballyhoo surrounding the story would have ensured that anyone watching knew the subject matter, so who was Stern trying to surprise?

That said, once that clumsy set-up is done, ASSASSIN moves briskly enough from point A to B and so on. Mary explains that the robot (Richard Young), given the ironic name of Robert Golem, was designed to function as an assassin for the CIA, but for some reason it malfunctioned and started killing off its handlers-- one of whom is Mary. In contrast to the cinematic Terminators on whom this killer robot is partly modeled, Golem is supposed to function in society like a regular human, and to that end he's been given a good-looking face and build and even instructed in how to seduce a woman if it serves his mission.           

Yet for every element Stern provided that might hold some promise, he largely botches that potential. Golem does indeed seduce a young woman to give himself some cover, but nothing much comes of this. Late in the movie, because Golem can access all CIA files, he tries to persuade Henry to desert the agency boss because the guy betrayed Henry on a previous mission. Henry is clearly irritated by the revelation but he nevertheless doubles down his efforts and does end up terminating the terminator. It might have been more interesting had Henry had some real internal debate about which villain was the greater menace.

Since Young isn't on screen enough to build up his persona, Robert Conrad is pretty much the whole show here. As Mary, Karen Austin doesn't have much to do but to provide exposition. There's one odd moment where, despite being a non-combatant, she gutpunches some enemy agent. I like to think the actress complained about having too little to do, so Stern just cobbled together a scene where she hit someone.    

TO KILL WITH INTRIGUE (1977)

  

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

Otherwise known as JACKIE CHAN'S HAMLET! Okay, I'm the only one who calls TO KILL WITH INTRIGUE by that name but given that this obscure Taiwanese flick predates Jackie's jolly image, I could justify the name just on the basis that this has to be Chan's grimmest, most morose role up to this point in his career.

However, one of INTRIGUE's scenes made me think of the key HAMLET scene in which the hero renounces Ophelia, possibly (as some critics speculate) after he's made her pregnant. In INTRIGUE, young nobleman Shao (Chan) meets with Qian (Yu Ling-long), a maid in his father's court, and tells her to take a hike, despite knowing that she has a bun in the oven. Not too much later, he bursts into the court, telling all of the guests celebrating his father's birthday to get lost too. The guests leave, and Father Lei yells at Shao. Shao says he did it all to keep innocents out of harm's way, and he removes an item from his tunic: a dismembered hand with the image of a human-headed bee drawn upon it. Shao doesn't say how he came by this curious oracle, but he claims it's the calling-card of a gang of kung-fu bandits, the Killer Bees, whom Lord Lei attempted to wipe out. While the lord is conferring with his son, wife, and retainers about the incipient attack, four guests return to the court-- only to drop dead. A strange one-handed man shows up (maybe a cutesy reference to Jimmy Wang Yu's One-Armed Swordsman?) and demands the return of his hand. Shao flings the dead hand to the probably dead man and the latter bounds away.

Then the attack by the Killer Bees begins in earnest. Armed men appear on the estate-walls, and into the courtyard five coffins appear. The coffin lids shoot off, and up spring the assault's leader and four cohorts, all attired in flower-masks, as if seeking to conflate death and fertility. The leader is Ting Tan-yen (Hsu Feng), a beautiful woman wearing a half-mask over her lower face, and after swearing vengeance, she engages Lord Lei in sword-combat. A melee breaks out, but the Lei family is overmatched. Ting kills the hero's mother and father and easily beats down Shao's weak nobleman-fu. However, he manages to get a sword to Ting's throat. She invites Shao to kill her but only after she shows him the facial scar beneath her mask, a wound she got from Shao's father when she was still a child. Doubt, the curse of the Melancholy Dane, causes Shao to hesitate, and Ting knocks him out.

When he awakes, he sees Ting from behind and thinks it's his lost love Qian. Ting tells Shao that she spared his life so that he'd suffer as she suffered the loss of her family. Shao can do nothing but go looking for the woman he spurned, even for reasons he thought beneficent.

To be sure, Shao wasn't completely stupid about the risks of chasing off his pregnant mistress; he mentioned to his father that he sent a friend named Jin to look after Qian. Jin does show up just as bandits attack Qian, and he kicks their asses before taking Qian to his house. However, Jin doesn't seem to know why Shao disavowed his mistress. Qian wants to flee the general area and Jin obliges her, so that when Shao comes looking, no one's to home.

A disconsolate Shao stays at Jin's house. Ting shows up, twisting the knife by telling Shao his friend's gone off with his lover. Then she calls Shao a "beast," which just so happens to be what Qian called Shao when he gave her the kiss-off. Shao hallucinates that Ting is Qian, embraces her, and summarily beds her. It's not clear if Ting is aware he's mistaken her for someone else, though there's no question she could've stopped Shao if she'd wanted to. After they've had sex and Shao's passed out, he mumbles Qian's name and Ting runs off, jealous as hell. (I admit Hamlet didn't do quite this much bed-hopping, though a fellow named Freud claimed that he had a certain ambivalence about his mama.) 

Then Shao pays the price for a grudge against Jin, as three paid assassins break in on him. He fights them and he kills one, but the other two knock him out. Fourth Dragon, an older noble, shows up and tells his assassin-employees that they assaulted the wrong man. He pays them off but when they want to murder the unconscious Shao, Fourth Dragon drives them off. He has Shao brought to his home, apologizes, and tells Shao that Jin ripped off the cargo that Fourth Dragon's guard-escorts were protecting. Slightly later, Ting shows up again-- "I am your shadow," she mocks the anguished hero-- and though she won't tell Shao where Jin and Qian are, she tasks him with not even having the filial piety to bury his slain parents. Further, she says, they were buried by none other than his recent benefactor, Fourth Dragon. Shao, unable to find his lost love, sublimates his desires by pledging loyalty to a "second father," joining the Dragon's guards. Does Fourth Dragon take the place of Lord Lei, the father whose virtue became suspect? The clan of the assassins attacks the guardians, and Shao leads the fight against them, calling himself "Fifth Dragon." But the assassins really start losing when Ting Tan-yen joins the battle, without explaining why she interceded. She leaves Shao in the care of Fourth Dragon for the time being but later persuades him to let her take Shao to her own domicile. 

On top of all these sturm-and-drang incidents-- Shao finding a new father to replace the dead one, or having his life preserved by the woman who killed both parents-- Fourth Dragon meets the governor, to whom his life is forfeit for losing a precious cargo-- and it's none other than the robber Jin, who is ALSO the head of the assassin-clan. Basically, everything Jin has done has been to advance his clan's power in the region, and he even takes credit for eliminating the Lei family. This may have been an overreach on the author's part, since Jin doesn't seem affiliated with the Killer Bees, who aren't mentioned or seen again after the opening fight. Jin fights and kills both Fourth Dragon and his aide, and then proceeds to his estate, where he uses honeyed words to persuade Qian to marry him. She agrees, wanting to protect her child and grieving because she's been told Shao is dead. 

Now, thus far INTRIGUE hasn't had anything like Hamlet's ghostly father, or even the Devil whom Hamlet half-suspects of having sent the paternal apparition. However, there is a slight sense of passing into another world when Shao is taken to Ting's estate. Ting heals Shao but won't let him leave if he can't beat her in kung fu. He practices continually, but he's unable to up his game. He challenges her anyway, and she punishes him in various ways, which reminded me of the ordeals heroes would undergo from goddesses. (Admittedly the Classical deities didn't make their acolytes swallow hot coals or suffer having their faces burned). Finally, in contrast to the majority of chopsockies, Ting realizes Shao can't equal her. She feeds him a drink mixed with her own blood, and this empowers him so that he can now destroy Jin and save Qian, even though Ting's implicitly condemned to a loveless existence.

I admit that Shao's quest for vengeance isn't responsible for the deaths of almost all of the principal characters, as Hamlet's quest causes the fall of the Danish court. However, a few times the English translation criticizes Shao's inability to tell good from bad, which is closer to Hamlet than most martial-arts heroes ever come. Shao's overly trusting friendship with Jin makes it possible for the evil plotter to end the lives of the Fourth Dragon family, and (maybe indirectly) those of the Lei Family too. It is a major error when Ting's Killer Bee allies just disappear. In a plot-sense Jin's assassin cult more or less takes the place of the recrudescent bandits, even though Ting clearly does not connect the two in any way when she cuts a bloody swathe through the assassins to protect Shao. While INTRIGUE was no more than a bump in the road of Jackie Chan's ascension to international success, it does deserve to be better known as one of the few kung-fu films to possess some psychological depth. I haven't seen all the films in Hsu Feng's repertoire, but I doubt any other role she played came close to that of the tormented Ting Tan-Yen.   

BLACK MAGIC (1949)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*


"Orson Welles, superhero."

Okay, I just had to write that line, even though it's not literally true. To be sure, at least one intellectual, Antonio Gramsci claimed that the character Welles plays in BLACK MAGIC-- the character of Cagliostro, as fictionalized in Alexandre Dumas's 1846 JOSEPH BALSAMO-- to be an example of a 19th-century "superman." But Cagliostro, a.k.a. the gypsy hypnotist Joseph Balsamo, uses his unique gifts for evil, and thus BLACK MAGIC can be accurately described as--

"Orson Welles, supervillain."

BLACK MAGIC begins with half of a frame-story, not unlike that of 1935's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, in that the frame starts out with author Alexandre Dumas as talking about how his great creation Cagliostro seemed to escape him. However, the film ends without returning to Dumas.

Welles, then forty-four years old and not yet as heavyset as he would become in future decades, plays Joseph Balsamo as a crafty gypsy whose people have been perpetually mistreated by the non-gypsy populace of France. As a child Joseph saw both his mother and father executed by the will of a petty nobleman, Montagne, because Joseph's mother predicted a child's death and was therefore accused of being a witch. Child Joseph is spared when his fellow gypsies rescue him from the French soldiers, but vows vengeance on Montagne. Years later, when Joseph has become an adult, he develops a rude version of hypnotic skill, and the real-life French physician Doctor Mesmer (founder of "mesmerism") sees Joseph demonstrate his powers. Mesmer wants Joseph to hone his talents so that the two of them can use hypnotism in medical treatments. Joseph, who's never given his ability much thought, realizes that if he can impress this wealthy gadjo, he can impress others, and so he rejects Mesmer's offer.

Years later, Joseph has assumed the name of Cagliostro, and has garnered fame and wealth through alleviating people's ills with the power of suggestion. This fame brings Joseph back to his long deferred desire for vengeance, for the nobleman Montagne summons Cagliostro to treat a comatose young woman, Lorenza. Joseph represses his desire for immediate revenge, studies Lorenza and realizes that she's a dead ringer for Marie Antoinette, who will ascend to the rank of France's queen when her husband's father Louis XV passes on. Since Lorenza is useless to Montagne unless Joseph can release the woman from her coma, the ambitious gypsy deals himself in on the plot of Montagne and his co-conspirator Madame DuBarry, which involves a complicated scheme to defame the queen.

As part of the deal, Montagne has to get the famed "Cagliostro" an invitation to attend the court of Louis XV. Local Parisian doctors arrange a hoax to expose the supposed healer's fakery, by presenting Joseph with nobles dressed up like suffering wretches. But Joseph has the last laugh, for after the court's had a good guffaw at his expense, the hypnotist places one of the impostors under his mental control, forcing the unwilling nobleman to act like a dog. This impresses Louis XV and awes the court, though this doesn't help Joseph much when, some days later, the current king dies and Louis XVI ascends to the throne. Marie Antoinette doesn't like the alleged healer, so Joseph and Montagne initiate their plan to embarrass the queen, which in a roundabout way is supposed to bring them great temporal power.

On a side note, though Joseph does bring Lorenza out of her coma, he also falls in love with her, and keeps her under his psychic thrall. However, Lorenza has an age-appropriate love, Gilbert of the royal guards, and Joseph eventually hypnotizes the young woman into marrying him, the better to discourage the young swain.

Though the plot proceeds to some extent, Joseph and Montagne are both accused of conspiracy. Joseph easily escapes jail and for good measure forces his old enemy to commit suicide. However, eventually Joseph/Cagliostro is brought to trial, though the authors of the villain's downfall are both Gilbert and Joseph's short-lived mentor Mesmer.

I skimmed the ending of Dumas's BALSAMO-- which probably is no better a rendering of historical fact than BLACK MAGIC-- and I'm reasonably sure the book doesn't end in as combative a manner as the film, which boasts both a hypnotist-battle between the villain and Mesmer and a swordfight between Joseph and Gilbert. Wikipedia mentions that both Welles and director Gregory Ratoff rewrote the script credited to two other writers, and I would guess that someone behind the scenes wanted BLACK MAGIC to conform to the model of Dumas's best known work, THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Rumor has it that Welles directed parts of the film, but though MAGIC is a better-than-average swashbuckler, its direction isn't all that distinguished. The film's greatest significance may be as a possible inspiration to the Marvel supervillain Doctor Doom. Doom's origin, analyzed here, starts with Doom as a gypsy boy whose dead mother actually was a witch, after which the future supervillain grows to manhood, confounds the local nobles with his scientific wizardry, and eventually rules the country-- only to fall victim to a fate closer to that of Dumas's MAN IN THE IRON MASK.