THE TICK, SEASON 1 (2016-18)

 

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

I never followed the successful independent comic THE TICK. The few random issues I encountered didn't strike me as funny, so I gave it a pass. I mildly enjoyed the blue-hued crusader's ventures into television, a 1994 cartoon and a 2001 live-action teleseries. But the two-season Amazon Prime series seems a thing apart.

The first episode sets up the premise of the world of POV character Arthur Everest (Griffin Newman). Superheroes and supervillains have dominated Arthur's world for at least twenty-something years, beginning with the appearance of the Superman-like Superian and the Justice League-ish group The Flag Five. A supervillain, The Terror (Jackie Earle Haley), assassinates most of the Flag Five, as well as incidentally killing Arthur's father by landing a ship on top of the man, in full view of his son. However, after a subsequent encounter with Superian, everyone believes The Terror to be dead.

Except Arthur. He grows up to be a nervous accountant whose sister Dot thinks he's obsessed with a dead man, but Arthur becomes convinced that the Terror simply faked his death. He begins videotaping underworld gatherings, trying to gather evidence, only to have his life turned upside down by The Tick.

The Tick (Peter Serafinowicz) is a huge guy in a blue tick costume-- assuming that it is only a costume-- who possesses immense strength and near-invulnerability. What he doesn't possess is the slightest idea of who he is or where he came from. His memory begins with his meeting with Arthur, and because he witnesses Arthur "fighting crime" in his fashion, the rather buffoonish hero immediately decides the two of them should be partners. In a roundabout way, the thick-witted crusader bestows on the accountant a winged costume capable of sustained flight. But the costume's the property of a criminal gang with ties to The Terror, who is, surprise, surprise, really still alive.

 Despite his reluctance, Arthur becomes drawn into the superhero world, even though The Tick is far from the ideal mentor. In addition to having no memory, The Tick utters nothing but superhero cliches and remains obtuse as to any other reason for existence. To be sure, he's not the only one. Crime-boss Ramses IV and the electrically-powered Miss Lint constantly vie for power prior to the Terror's re-appearance, but though they all know who they are, they're all less than perfect representatives of super-crime. Arthur and The Tick are obliged to accept the help of a former Flag Five member who has remodeled himself into a lethal Punisher-like vigilante, name of Overkill (Scott Speiser), but his all too human flaws make him less than a self-possessed master of ultraviolence.

Not everything in THE TICK is as funny as the combo of Arthur and his big blue buddy. I could have lived without Tinfoil Kevin, a street-person wearing the expected tinfoil hat, or Dangerboat, Overkill's sentient vehicle. But there's a joie de vivre to this superhero spoof that rarely shows up in this post-WATCHMEN era. When the first episode mentions how the Flag Five were slain thanks to "weaponized syphilis," one might suspect that the series plans to pursue the heavy dramatics of INVINCIBLE or the dark irony of THE BOYS. But in a much later episode, The Tick, despite having no memory, shows a resolute if naive moral compass, taking a dim view of Overkill's "take no prisoners" ethic. And when the blue buffoon gets the chance to forbid Overkill from killing any more, the show gets good comic value out of a murder-happy vigilante who can't indulge in gratuitous violence.

Best line in the season comes at the end, when The Terror's huge metal flight-ship (shaped like a "T") is assailed by the titular crimefighter, and Miss Lint gets to tell the Terror:

"You've got a Tick!" 

KNIGHTS OF THE ZODIAC (2023)

 

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

I don't envy the American writers who tried to translate an extremely complicated manga series from 1985-1990, one probably only remembered by older fans of either the manga ST SEIYA or its dubbed American anime adaptation, KNIGHTS OF THE ZODIAC. I have certainly seen worse, though I'd still have to judge the 2023 ZODIAC as somewhat pedestrian.

I should note that I only have nodding familiarity with the dubbed anime TV show, and that I never became intimately acquainted with the "Seiya" universe. So I'll take it for granted that the basic setup in the movie at least loosely resembles that of the manga.

Though there's only one de facto knight in the film, the use of the term is not abstract: the knights of the zodiac (there are five in the manga) are pledged to defend a monarch-like figure. The movie seems to take place roughly in contemporary times, while the manga depicts a world with a very involved tournament for possession of the magical armor of long vanished gods. Both suggest that one goddess of ancient times, Athena, became incarnate in the body of a young woman, Sienna (Madison Iseman), and she's destined to be protected by the Pegasus Knight.

At movie's start, Seiya (Mackenyu, son of Sonny Chiba) is a street kid who competes in underground fights while seeking his missing sister Patricia. Two rival factions seek Seiya because both suspect he possesses a god-derived power, "Cosmo," power which can transform Seiya into the Pegasus Knight. As in many similar boys' manga, the protagonist is destined to take on the duty of serving a royal figure, and to his dubious fortune, he's first contacted by Alman (Sean Bean), adoptive father of Sienna. This leads to a lengthy segment in which he's given tough martial arts training by a masked woman, Marin (Caitlyn Hutson).

Seiya's motive for going along with this farrago is the suggestion that Alman may help Seiya find his lost sister, though by movie's end this possibility remains up in the air. But he also likes Sienna, and there's some nice "poor boy-rich girl" tension, for all that it's not certain whether the two have any romantic interest in one another. Seiya definitely does not like any of the persons associated with Alman's enemy Guraad (Famke Janssen), who are trying to capture Sienna to tap into her Athena-powers, which are much more dangerous than the "Cosmo" possessed by aspiring knights.

The script most drops the ball by its casual mention of the fact that Guraad is actually Sienna's adoptive mother, and that she lost her arms from one of the Sienna-baby's power-tantrums. Since Guraad has both arms, one assumes they're supposed to be artificial ones, but this too is remarkably underplayed. Guraad's motivations remain unclear from start to finish, as if the writers couldn't quite decide what they wanted to do with her-- or what if anything to use from the source material.

The training sequences, rife with lots of expensive CGI, are the most interesting scenes, more watchable than the predictable pyrotechnics when Seiya finally "knights up" to battle Guraad's minions. Mackenyu and Iseman have some pleasant interactions, but ZODIAC as a whole is just ordinary-- not least because the casual viewer won't get just what the whole "zodiac" thing is about. ZODIAC was a box office bomb and as a result this particular manga series probably won't see further live action iterations.

LEGO DC SUPER HEROES: JUSTICE LEAGUE-- COSMIC CLASH (2016)

 

 

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

CLASH was the next-to-last of the LEGO DC SUPER HEROES videos that used "Justice League" in the header, though arguably other videos featuring Flash and Aquaman were still structured as League adventures. CLASH follows up on a plot-thread from the end of this movie, and I rather wish CLASH had been the last in the series, since it's much better than the same-year GOTHAM CITY BREAKOUT.

The script benefits from only using one classic villain: the humanoid computer Brainiac. In line with the comical outlook of the franchise, the evildoer goes around shrinking planets because he's got a fixation on collecting things, using expressions like "mint condition." Though Superman has encountered the villain on some previous occasion, this version of Brainiac has apparently never shown up to menace Earth, and the rest of the League has to be brought up to speed. That done, the heroes encounter Brainiac's ship in space and send him packing.

What distinguishes this script from many others in the series is a clever buildup to the hurdles that some of the characters are forced to face by the villain's next gambit. As in other features, Batman stands out in that he's more obsessed with fighting crime than the more jovial Leaguers, and Green Lantern complains that Batman's often considered ways to undermine all of the heroes "if they turn evil." The Dark Knight doesn't possess such eccentricities as Wonder Woman's ardent feminism, Green Lantern's claim to be without fear, or Superman's goody-goodness.

But Batman's forced to anticipate what his fellow heroes will do, when the computerized criminal hurls Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern into other time-eras, where the three heroes also lose their memories. Aided by Flash's ability to traverse time, Batman locates two of the heroes in the past: Wonder Woman in prehistoric times, where she champions cave-women against the ruthless future villain Vandal Savage, and in the era of sailing-ships, where Green Lantern is assailed by a special sort of "fear"-- Captain Fear, an extremely obscure DC Comics character. The hardest task then takes place in the future, where Brainiac has done a Borg-treatment on Superman, as well as taking control of Earth rather than simply collecting it. The guest-stars here are the three charter members of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

One other crossover of note is Supergirl, making her first and last appearance in the Lego-verse. But the crossovers are only pleasurable because writer Jim Kreig gave all of the characters distinctive voices and backgrounds. Yet the same guy also wrote GOTHAM CITY BREAKOUT, which supports my theory that too many crooks spoil the broth.

SAMURAI RESURRECTION (2003)

                                                          

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*                                                                                                                            I read with interest that Kinji Fukasaku, who directed the 1981 adaptation of the novel "Reincarnation from Hell," also adapted the novel for the stage. Though I enjoyed the 1981 movie, I did find some sections rather "stagey" in their presentation. In contrast, this 2003 adaptation by one Hideyuki Hirayama is more purely cinematic in its orientations, with a lot more closeups and crane shots, and even a little bit of CGI.                                                       

                                                              

The setup is essentially the same as in the 1981 film, with some odd added details. The soldiers of the Tokugawa Shogunate wipe out several thousand Japanese Christians judged to be in rebellion, though the 2003 writers add the odd, possibly inaccurate detail that the peasants attacked the religious community first because of "Christian persecution." This time the leader of the Christians, Amakuza Shiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), confronts the soldiers who come to kill him, and he somehow bewitches the captain into slaying the other five soldiers before the man beheads Amakuza and then kills himself. This addition doesn't track well-- is the viewer supposed to think Amakuza has some sort of Satanic power before he's killed? In any case, Amakuza dies with his followers, but after a few years he reincarnates as an angry ghost, intent upon destroying the Shogunate.                                                                                             

 Amakuza proceeds to recruit other angry spirits for his revenge, although the scripters exclude the character of Gracia Hokosowa and substitute some other evil female ghost who didn't seem to have much of an identity. The other legendary figures of Musashi and Inchun appear, as do their opponents in the Yagyu family, father Tajima and son Jubei (Koichi Sato). I thought the actors did well with the roles, but the characters aren't laid out as well as in the Fukasaku movie, so the intermixing of the various legendary figures has less effect. Oddly, though the timeframe is still the 1600s, there are three new female characters who are sword-mistresses, and I can't help wondering if the filmmakers injected these characters for some political end. Yet only one of the three, a ghost who turns against her kindred, has a moderately dramatic scene, so if those characters weren't in the novel and were included just for more female representation, it was extra effort for little effect.          

MOROZKO/ FATHER FROST (1964)

 

 

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

Earlier I'd seen the MST3K version of the Americanized translation of this Russian fantasy, which in its original form was not really the sort of hackery the comedians usually mocked (though they were very funny nonetheless). But after a recent re-watch of that joked-up version, I finally sought out a subtitled version of MOROZKO on YouTube. Incidentally, I refuse to call the film "Jack Frost" as the American edition did, for the European frost-fairy has little to do with Russia's godlike dispenser of cold weather. That said, the 1964 film does seem to be consciously likening Morozko, aka "Father Frost" to Santa Claus, and it's said that the film was often shown on East European televisions during the Yuletide season.

In truth, Father Frost is one of two good-hearted spirits in the film, the other being a character the subtitles call "Grandpa Mushroom," and who wears a hat like a mushroom cap. Neither of them is the star of the movie, though, which has two mortal protagonists, loosely derived from two usually separate folktales. Director Alexander Rou and his two writers manage to combine the substance of both stories artfully, though not quite well enough to reach the highest mythicity possible for this type of fantasy-flick.

Nastenka is the Cinderella-like protagonist who hails from the original "Father Frost" tale. In it, her cruel stepmother and weak father send her out in the wintry Russian forest to perish. She meets Father Frost, but because she refuses to complain even though she's freezing to death, the winter-god sends her back home in a sleigh, gifted with a huge dowry. The cruel stepmother, who favors her equally mean daughter, sends the daughter out into the forest, thinking she'll be automatically rewarded. Instead, the mean girl speaks improperly to Father Frost-- and does not prosper.

The other protagonist is a hale young man named Ivan, derived from the hero of a tale called "Ivan the Bear's Son," but I've not been able to find an online copy of this story, so-- no advance summary.

The film opens with Nastenka (Natalya Sedykh) getting the evil stepmother treatment, particularly when the young girl is told she has to complete a knitting-job out in the cold, before the sun rises. But the young lady apparently has some rapport with animals and spirits, so the sun just delays coming up long enough for Nastenka to finish her labors. I can't prove this element doesn't occur in any genuine Russian folktales, but it sure sounds a lot like Disney's Snow White.

Miles away in another village, young blade Ivan (Eduord Isotov) goes wandering in the woods, having basked in the admiration of all the local females. In the forest Ivan encounters a band of brigands, but confounds by hurling their cudgels far up into the sky. Then the young hero meets Grandpa Mushroom, and the two engage in a friendly game. Grandpa gives the young fellow a gift, but Ivan declines to show the proper respect to an elder, telling Grandpa that a bear will bow his head to the old man before Ivan does. 

Ivan then encounters Nastenka and the two flirt a little, though Nastenka swiftly realizes that Ivan is a braggart. Then Grandpa Mushroom's retaliation takes place, and Ivan suddenly has the head of a bear. He runs off into the woods, blaming Nastenka for the transformation. Eventually he encounters the Mushroom Sage again, but Ivan doesn't listen to the counsel that he needs to become a more generous and caring person. The bear-man convinces himself that he just needs to do a good deed to reverse the curse, and so he runs around scaring locals with his bear-head. Eventually Ivan shows a spontaneous moment of empathy for someone else, with the result that he regains his humanity. He then decides to seek out Nastenka.

The young woman has her own problems. The stepmother decides that not enough suitors pay court to her homely daughter and orders the weak father to leave Nastenka out in the forest. The father follows orders up to a point, but then rebels against his wife's influence. But Nastenka jumps off their sleigh without the dad seeing her do so, to preserve family harmony. This leads to the part of the folktale where she wins the approval of Father Frost.

Meanwhile, since Ivan has no idea where Nastenka, he seeks the counsel of the renowned witch Baba Yaga, residing in her signature dwelling, a house supported by two giant chicken-legs. Instead of helping Ivan, the witch tries to cook him in her huge oven, planning to eat him later. Ivan tricks her into her own oven but only scorches her a little in order to force her to aid him. Baba Yaga gives Ivan guidance but also sends an emissary to doom Nastenka. However, Ivan is now possessed of the empathy necessary to revive Nastenka from a frozen death.

The rest of the "Father Frost" narrative resumes as Nastenka returns to her father's house with both a great dowry and a comely fiancee. The bad daughter's fate isn't as dire as in the folktale, and it chastens the stepmother enough that the cowardly father finally takes control of his household. 

Then, just for a sort of climax, Baba Yaga can't leave well enough alone. She finds the same gang of brigands that Ivan bamboozled and talks the robbers into attacking Ivan and Nastenka in the forest. But Ivan, proving his martial prowess, holds his own against the half-dozen crooks, with some additional help from the re-appearance of those cudgels he disposed of days and days ago. (This incident may or may not have been in an authentic folktale, but it certainly has a folkloric feel to it.)

I should note that many scenes in MOROZKO have a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek attitude, though the movie's not a comedy as such. I can't claim it's a great magical fantasy, but I'm now very curious about director Rou's other dozen-or-so films in this genre, in which he clearly specialized.

 

WITCH HUNT (1994)

 

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

Somewhere amidst some forgotten article in CINEFANTASTIQUE, someone associated with WITCH HUNT may have testified as to why this sequel to 1991's CAST A \DEADLY SPELL went so sour. 

It's not just that HUNT revises various details about the magic-using Los Angeles of this alternate Earth. Despite being written by the first film's sole credited author, one Joseph Dougherty, HUNT offers a confused storyline, bad dialogue, a listless performance from Dennis Hopper (replacing Fred Ward in the role of detective Howard Lovecraft), and extremely pedestrian visuals from big-time director Paul Schrader.

Absent any such testimony, though, I have my theory. Schrader, known for penning downbeat dramas like HARDCORE and TAXI DRIVER, took on HUNT just to fill a hole in his work schedule, and insisted that Doughtery rework the SPELL universe to Schrader's tastes.

One good thing about the badness of this HBO flick is that it means I don't have to spend any time on its inelegant plot. It boils down to this: Hollywood actress Kim Hudson (Penelope Ann Miller) hires Lovecraft to dig up dirt on her husband, studio exec Gotleib, because Kim suspects he's going to dump her for a younger actress, both personally and professionally. Lovecraft bums around, gets threatened by a weird magus (Julian Sands, projecting good creepiness), and ultimately uncovers a prostitution ring that uses magical spells to alter hookers to their clients' specifications. However, Gotlieb is killed, bringing in the question of a murder-plot.

And on top of this mediocrity, the script telegraphs its intent to work in a secondary plot about McCarthyism. The magic-Earth gets no more exposition here than it did in the previous film. However, this time such backstory is necessary, to establish just how long ago Earth-denizens begin regularly using spells. Without such context, there's no sense in positing that a newly formed conservative movement (loosely linked to fundamentalism) has arisen to condemn modern witchcraft as a tool of The Devil. This is the cumbersome double meaning of the title, but Dougherty (and possibly Schrader looking over his shoulder) can't sustain the metaphor. The villain behind all the evil stuff is played by Eric Bogosian, but he can't do anything with his inconsistent character, and so ends up simply resorting to braggadocio, just as Hopper confines himself to just saying the lines and moving on. (HUNT shows why Hopper was much better playing villains and societal outsiders than noble heroes.) Penelope Ann Miller gives the most affecting performance as a beauty queen alienated by Hollywood corruption, but her arc is badly defined and hugely compromised by the McCarthyism nonsense. There are one or two decent magical effects, but these probably came about in spite of Schrader's efforts to make this movie as tedious as possible.

HONOR ROLL #266

 DENNIS HOPPER is in stitches from hunting witches.       

 When he turns into a bear, does EDWARD ISOTOV poop in the woods?                                                                                                   

And this time it's YOSUKE KUBOZUKA's turn to go ghost.                       

LEGO WONDER WOMAN gets a little more personal treatment in this clash than in most of the brick-flicks.                                                      

What's your sign, Zodiac Knight MACKENYU?                                                                          

PETER SERAFINOWICZ stuck to his role like a-- you know.                 

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (2024)

  

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

I also noticed that whereas the first film had some fun dealing with "female-objectification" tropes, Number Two apparently decides that it's more important to play it safe with a half-dozen "homoerotica" tropes. The first film was more even-handed, while this one seems designed to defuse politically correct criticism. -- my review of DEADPOOL 2.

Though the third DEADPOOL film pours on the homoerotic jokes like they're going out of season, I don't object to them because (a) they're tossed out quickly, without showing a concerted idea to make a straight audience uncomfortable, and (b) they're focused upon a character established as being at least bi-curious. All that said, I will comment on one odd aspect of the film's sexual politics. Officially, the reason for Wade Wilson, a.k.a. Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) to go through all the chaos of the film is to save his timeline. However, before the time-business even starts, the former killer-for-hire has sought to become a "hero" in order to please his off-again, on-again girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). Yet there's no promise of sexual rewards for the would-be crusader, just the companionship with a circle of buddies. So yeah, I tend to believe that, contrary to one of the film's jokes, cocaine-snorting wasn't the only pastime that Disney kept off the table.

D&W is also a contradiction in terms re: being a "multiverse" film. True, Wilson sneers at the whole idea of multiverses (with a false analogy to the 1939 WIZARD OF OZ). But without multiverses, D&W could not exist, so Wilson's protests come to sound a little like Br'er Rabbit protesting against being tossed in the briar patch: a hoax to get his victim to go along with his plans. Yet from the box office records being set by the movie in its opening weekend, it's a hoax with which the audience was eager to engage with-- in contrast to the more tiresome universe-crunching of "straight" movies like THE FLASH and DR STRANGE AND THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS. 

At the same time, the writers of D&W are much smarter about what they expect "normies" in the audience to know about the history of superhero films. MCU movies that depended on viewers having seen all of the company's films and streaming shows, like the MULTIVERSE film mentioned above, were clearly misguided. Instead, when Deadpool goes hunting for an alternate-universe Wolverine to save his own timeline, the script (credited in part both to Reynolds and director Shawn Levy) spotlights franchises that appeared some time back, particularly those of 20th-Century Fox, whose properties Disney acquired via purchase. A "normie" won't know a lot of the references tossed out and won't religiously check all the Easter eggs on YouTube. But when the film makes a FANTASTIC FOUR joke, he's likely to get the general sense of it as long as he knows some general stuff about pop culture.

The writers keep the plot very loose to make room for all the references, and in some ways it's just another "save the universe" story whose main purpose is to bring together an "odd couple:" wacky Wilson and taciturn Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Reynolds cuts capers throughout most of the film, and gets a little monotonous at times, but it's likely he does so to clear the decks for Jackman to be more brooding and tragic. The tragic backstory for Wolverine is just okay, but Jackman's intensity serves as an "anchor" for the whole film, much like the character is supposed to "anchor" Wilson's timeline. (Hmm, if Wilson's timeline is doomed to decay without a living Wolverine, doesn't that mean that whatever timeline loses its Wolverine goes down the toilet?)

As I was born during a period in which no hero ever slashed or gashed his opponents-- not counting sword-fighting swashbucklers and the occasional samurai-- I'm not blown away by the almost endless impalement-scenes during most of the battles. (Even three of the four "guest stars" who take place in one big battle are blade-users.) The initial villain of the movie is so weak that a secondary villain takes over his function in the last half-hour, but I must admit that said evildoer Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) made me wish she'd been the main Big Bad from the start. 

 Like the other two, this one is just "fair" on the mythicity level, though I still rate the first DEADPOOL as the funniest of them all. It would be nice if Disney/MCU learned something from Reynolds' shakeup of their icons, but it seems unlikely.

MILS MASCARAS: ACADEMY OF DOOM (2008)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                              One online review asserts that this item was shot on an American college campus by some of the same crew that worked on the more professional MIL MASCARAS VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY. This choice of locations affected the plot of this amateurish production and its seven-years-later sequel. The "academy" of the title is "Mil Mascaras Wrestling Women's Academy," which means a lot more females in the narrative than in the average luchador film. Said wrestling-school is menaced on two fronts: Luctor, a criminal mastermind (complete with luchador-mask) who wants to buy the school by hook or by crook, and a mysterious killer who attacks people and eats their brains.  (Contrary to the copy on the movie poster above, the monster has nothing to do with the 1960s "Brainiac" creature.)                                                                                                                                                                                 Some online reviews esteem the movie for trying to capture the cheesy appeal of the famous luchador-movies from the sixties and seventies, albeit on a very restricted budget and with a lot of amateur actors. I could get behind that, even given that all aspects of the script, including the revelation of the monster's ID, are exceedingly moldy. But it's not worth doing a luchador-homage if you can't set up even half-decent fights, particularly when one has the services of a famous cinematic wrestling-figure. About the only item of interest here is that the female wrestler La Torcha (Sabrina Braden) made a non-speaking appearance in MUMMY, but here she's upgraded into something like a quasi-partner to Mil. Oh, and as in MUMMY, there's an attempt to sell Mil as more than a wrestler, but a bon vivant with extensive knowledge of physics and philosophy-- a depiction that actually plays into the plot of the following installment.  

CAST A DEADLY SPELL (1991)

 

 

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

CAST A DEADLY SPELL was one of two HBO original films. Both this one and the subsequent WITCH HUNT were written by Joseph Dougherty, though only SPELL was directed by Martin Campbell, just a few years away from his graduating to the big time with 1995's GOLDENEYE. 

Both movies take place in Los Angeles circa 1948-1950, but on an Earth where magic works, and is practiced openly. Thus the gangsters of L.A. are as likely to put a hit on their targets with curse-ruins as with tommy-guns, and many professionals on the police force learn to use magic defensively against such criminals. A noted exception is ex-cop P.I. Howard Phillips Lovecraft (Fred Ward). Though Lovecraft barely manages a living, operating out of a run-down office where his landlord constantly nags him for the rent, he's repeatedly asked why he won't practice magic, even in self-defense. His longest response on the subject is that he wants to be his own man, beholden to no gods or spirits. Clearly Lovecraft is meant to be the epitome of the lonely crusader who won't sell out to corrupt forces in the police force or the upper classes, though the script isn't really interested in making any serious critique of magic or even paganism. (A modern character remarks on her knowledge of the current worship of Diana.) The entire concept of SPELL is meant to be as playful, as seen by the in-jokey usage of the name of horror-author H.P. Lovecraft for the heroic protagonist.

Ironically, one of the main distinctions of Original Lovecraft's work was that he broke from the use of magical-themed menaces for his terror-tales, focusing for the most part on quasi-scientific concepts. He did borrow popular tropes from "magical horror," but the connotation was that human beings were using these tropes to contact extra-dimensional entities through some form of psychic operation. Doughtery's concept is closer to the model of the "rational magic" subgenre of horror-fantasy, often seen in the forties pulp magazine UNKNOWN, which generated such classics as Fritz Leiber's CONJURE WIFE and Robert Heinlein's MAGIC, INC. Thus the only truly Lovecraftian motif of SPELL is the villains' plans to unleash the demon-god Yog-Sothoth upon helpless humanity.

Detective Lovecraft is hired to find a missing grimoire, which his employer needs for a special ritual. The fine details of the "mystery" are not memorable, but the cast does a good job of polishing up all of the hoary hard-boiled tropes, with David Warner and Clancy Brown as two of the villains, Julianne Moore as a shady lady with whom Lovecraft has a checkered past, and Alexandra Powers as a "virgin sacrifice"-- a trope Original Lovecraft would never have touched with a pole the length of infinity.

The adventure verges on comedy, but there's enough straightforward menace (as when a hulking zombie drowns a man in a pool) that keeps things from being too jovial. Ward is the movie's main strength, maintaining the insouciant appeal of the noble P.I, who can never do things the easy way. He too did not return for the second and last film, but SPELL stands as one of the actor's best performances.

LION MAN (1975)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                  The Turkish film industry is renowned for producing knockoffs of Western franchises. the so-called "Turkish Star Wars" being a famous one, though not one I've seen. But the movie LION MAN-- currently on streaming under the blah title THE SWORD AND THE CLAW-- is a reasonably original take on Tarzan, but one where the future hero (Cuneyt Arkin) is raised from infanthood by a pride of lions.                                                                                                      

The place name "Byzantium" is tossed out at one point, so I guess the opening conflict takes place between Byzantine Christians and Muslims of that period. The Christians lose a rather ratty looking battle, and their representative lord Antuan (Yildririm Gencer) appears at the court of Suleiman Shah (also played by Arkin) to come to terms. Unbeknownst to Antuan, a lady of the Christian court, Princess Maria, finds Suleiman beguiling despite his being married to his own queen. Maria and Suleiman do the deed. Some time passes, during which Antuan lays plans for an assassination and the queen delivers a son to Suleiman. However, Antuan's assassins attack the shah at court and kill all his people, including the queen, which apparently paves the way for the Byzantines to conquer the country. However, one of the queen's servants gets away with the shah's infant son. This son is lost in the wild and gets raised by lions. Antuan tops off his triumph by marrying Maria, little suspecting that she has a Suleiman-bun in the oven.                                                                                                      

Twenty years later, the Byzantines exert a cruel hold upon the kingdom of Wherever It Is, and a resistance movement of Muslim nationals has arisen. Antar (Cebil Sahbaz), the grown son of Maria-- whom Antuan assumes to be his own progeny-- serves the Byzantine cause, and during a patrol he and his soldiers are attacked by rebels. For reasons I forget, Aslan the Lion Man intervenes to help the Byzantines. The two half-brothers exchange pleasantries, to the extent that Aslan can't speak human lingo.                                                                             

Living with the lions has conferred upon Aslan superhuman strength, at least on the level of a Maciste-movie, and the movie's highlight is seeing the hero attack people with his naked fingers poised like claws. Aslan's interference with the rebels cheeses off the daughter of the rebel leader, so she sets up an occasion to meet the wild man. When he drops his guard, she stabs Aslan-- and then belatedly sees that he possesses a royal birthmark, attesting to his true lineage. Soon Aslan joins the rebels and learns to speak and follow other human customs-- though surprisingly given the Tarzan influence, there's no romantic arc between Aslan and any female of his own species.                                     

   Meanwhile, Maria finally confesses to Antuan that Antar is not the Byzantine's son. (Antar also possesses the birthmark of the shah's line, but I guess none of the Byzantines knew what it meant.) Antuan hurls Maria into durance vile and begins counter-attacking the rebels and their new ally. After various martial encounters, Antuan tries to nullify Aslan's claw-powers by pouring acid on his hands. However, a rebel blacksmith makes metal claw-hands for the hero, so that he becomes more powerful than before. Eventually Antar learns his true heritage and the half-brothers unite to destroy the "false father."                                                                                                                       Surprisingly, aside from avenging the death of Suleiman, the movie's main plot-thread is about the two siblings finding one another. LION MAN has a delirious concept, but at most turns it's undermined by the poverty of the production, resulting in bad fight-choreography beside which even an Italian knockabout comedy looks good. Some battle-scenes are even scored with a peculiar jaunty tune, rather than something more suitably adventurous. Arkin's the only performer who projects a little personality, though I can't say he overshadows even Gordon Scott, much less Johnny Weismuller.    

WHAT WAITS BELOW (1984)

 

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

WHAT WAITS BELOW comes very close to being a mythic movie, but the script, co-written by cartoon-writer Christy (CONAN THE ADVENTURER) Marx, doesn't quite bring all the elements together into a pleasing whole.

After a brief sequence in Nicaragua to establish that the main hero "Wolf" Wolfson (Robert Powell) is a badass, the lupine hero, who's also proficient in caving, is hired by the U.S. Army for a spelunking assignment in Central America. Once he gets there, Wolf has a "meet-cure" with sexy blonde Leslie (Lisa Blount) and learns that she belongs to a geological expedition in the same area. Wolf also finds out that the head of the army's detachment, Lt. Stevens (Timothy Bottoms), wants to evict all the civilian personnel-- mainly Gannon (Richard Johnson) and Freida (Anne Heywood) as well as Leslie. Wolf manages to talk the tight-butted lieutenant into letting the experience spelunkers find a perfect underground location for their project: a radio transmitter powerful enough to send signals through solid rock to a waiting submarine.

Despite the truce between the civilians and the military, a certain tension remains evident as the explorers descend into the nearby caverns. However, they not only find bioluminescence in the walls of certain caves, they discover a whole civilization of albinos, called "Lemurians" in the script, have implicitly one that's existed in isolation since primitive times, not unlike the premise of THE MOLE PEOPLE. These albinos, however, communicate in a garbled language that the confused humans cannot understand, and they also immediately attack the surface dwellers as trespassers-- which of course they are.

Though one of the soldiers dies at the fangs of an underground serpent, the armed military men have the advantage. But hardass Stevens insists on completing his mission with the transmitter. The script fails to make this intransigence convincing. I found it unlikely that any military officer, upon learning that his mission might impinge on the discovery of a new subspecies of humanity, would not at least report to his superiors for further orders. But to make the shaky script work, Stevens has to be irrationally motivated to carry out orders that are merely experimental in nature.

Eventually most of the civilians are captured by the Lemurians. When Leslie stands in danger, Wolf challenges the Lemurian's toughest warrior to single combat and defeats him soundly. Gannon and Freida still get killed but Wolf escapes with Leslie. However, when Stevens activates his transmitter, it initially irritates the Lemurians' sensitive ears-- until they strike back with a sort of "sonic scream." With most of the soldiers dead, Wolf and Leslie are able to take steps to make sure no one trespasses on the lost civilization again. (Incidentally, since the Lemurians are the stars of this show, they, not viewpoint character Wolf, are the combative agents of the film.)

In addition to all the cosmological knowledge about the nature of the "inner Earth," BELOW had good potential for showing a "clash of cultures." But the budgetary limitations, poor characterization and listless direction all contribute to the film's poor reputation, even with viewers seeking films "so  bad they're good."

DARK PLANET (1997)

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

DARK PLANET has received a number of critiques for director Albert Magnoli's having shot too many scenes in partial darkness. I've had similar criticisms of other films, but Magnoli's use of partial-dark scenes didn't bother me, since I think he was pretty good at highlighting the faces of the four main actors-- even if they weren't given very many good lines by the three writers, one of whom was Buzz Dixon, famed for various cult cartoon-shows.

The setup had potential. On a far-future Earth, but one which has not yet managed to colonize any planets despite mastering space-travel, two factions have been fighting for decades. One faction is comprised of humans who have been genetically modified, the Alphas, while the other group is unmodified. Curiously, the latter group is termed "The Rebels," as if the non-modified types at some time might have been ruled by the enhanced Alphas. But the underwritten script never elaborates on the genesis of the Rebels' group cognomen, any more than it's at all clear about what sort of things the modified humans can do, with the exception of one character, a telepath. 

For reasons not outlined until the last half hour, the Alphas and Rebels institute an armistice. The authorities on both sides designate a joint task force to make a landing on the so-called "Dark Planet," which implicitly is known through artificial probes. Said world can theoretically be reached by piloting a spacecraft through a wormhole, and that's never been accomplished before-- except by one man.

Though the task force is roughly ten soldiers from both sides, only four characters are important. The Alphas are represented by the conscienceless military commander Winter (Michael York) and his telepathic subordinate Salera (Maria Ford), while the only Rebel of consequence is an officer named Brendan (Harley Jane Kozak). Standing between these uneasy allies is Hawke (Paul Mercurio), a non-enhanced human who was arrested by the Alphas for weapons smuggling. While fleeing pursuit, Hawke drove his spacecraft into a wormhole and managed to emerge with his life, though another crewmember, Hawke's wife, perished for unexplained reasons. The Alpha-Rebel alliance drafts Hawke to be their navigator in order to reach the Dark Planet, though no one speaks as to why this mission is so important.

I'll give the Big Reveal away now: the Planet Earth is due to become uninhabitable in two years, thanks to bioweapons unleashed by both factions. Winter and Brendan both know that they must colonize the one human-friendly world in order for humankind to survive, and yet both officers have contingency plans to ace out the other group, which doesn't make a lot of sense given that the allied authorities back on Earth would still be in charge of who gets to emigrate to the new world. 

Hawke, in theory, is the random element. Despite Paul Mercurio's weirdly downplayed performance, Hawke professes a belief in the primacy of human instinct, and he attempts to win over the repressed Salera with rather ham-handed advances. Hawke more or less throws in with the sympathetic Brendan rather than the despicable Winter, but all three characters are too sketchy to provide much drama. The action isn't strong, though Winter has both a brief throw-down with the rebellious Salera and an end-battle out in space, with Winter and Hawke fighting one another in spacesuits. By virtue of such scenes, PLANET is a combative film.

Despite playing a flat character, York is the only actor who's a pleasure to listen to even when the dialogue is bad. Kozak, Mercurio and Ford, whatever their talents in other productions, are incapable of transcending the banal script. 

Keith Bailey's site not only reviews the movie, but also conveys the experience of a writer, Bill Vellaly, assigned to the project but excluded from the final credits. (Actually, the aforementioned Buzz Dixon is only credited on the movie's IMDB page.) I don't know if Vellaly's concept for the script would have made a better film, but PLANET remains damned underwhelming in its final form.

HONOR ROLL #265

 PAUL MERCURIO faces a dark future.       

What Waits Below is a whole tribe of mutants spoiling for a fight with ROBERT POWELL.                                                                             

CEMIL SAHBAZ may be Turkish, but he's no delight.                          

Deadly spells can't resist being warded off by FRED WARD.               

 SABRINA BRADEN had to wrestle with her conscience about doing this movie.                                                                                     

Is EMMA CORRIN more screwball than cueball?                                

            

LEGO DC SUPER HEROES: JUSTICE LEAGUE-- GOTHAM CITY BREAKOUT (2016)

 

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

I haven't seen all of the Lego DC flicks prior to this one, the sixth in the series, but this one is overly silly even for a comic take on DC superheroes. Not only did the usually dependable Jim Kreig turn in stupid schticks like Joker having conversations with the spoon he used to dig out of Arkham, the title seems poorly conceived. Members of the Justice League are in the film, and various Bat-villains break out to menace Gotham. But Batman and his entourage are the stars, and the main plot focuses upon two villains forming yet another plot to rule the world.

Because it's the anniversary of Batman's first adventure, his Bat-buddies and various heroes of the Justice League and Teen Titans talk him into taking a vacation. Superman offers to guard Gotham in the hero's absence, with co-ordination from the Boy Wonder, though the Man of Steel appears overconfident in his abilities. Nightwing and Batgirl accompany Batman to a remote island where he received all of his martial training from an eccentric old sensei, Madame Mantis. However, the Bat-folk soon find out that Mantis is being impersonated by a short green humanoid called a "Trogawog." This creature serves Mantis' only other notable trainee: the mercenary Deathstroke. Deathstroke has forged a partnership with Bane, and they're using a special device to brainwash the subterranean Trogawog race to be their vanguard in conquering the world.

The plot also involves Deathstroke's bitterness toward Madame Mantis for having favored Batman over him, which included teaching Batman "the forbidden move." (It's really nothing but a picayune version of Son Goku's kamehameha wave.) The script at least develops the Batman-Deathstroke conflict well enough, punctuated by numerous pseudo-humorous remarks from Madame Mantis. Most of the other heroes and villains get short shrift, except that Superman becomes embarrassed when he finds that Batman's foes are far from easy to handle. Overall, BREAKOUT has a few decent jokes but for the most part, the flick proves much too predictable.

FLAME OF RECCA (1997-98)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*                                                                                                                        I've just finished a brief overview of the manga-installments of the FLAME OF RECCA series here, so I won't go into further details about the nature of this lively fighting-fantasy anime series, since there aren't any important differences between manga and anime.                           

                                                                                                                What I most liked about the FLAME anime is that, unlike most TV-shows of the 21st century, it devotes a now-staggering quantity of FORTY-TWO episodes to the series and even manages to conclude on a decent finish. Compare this expansive production outlay to the piddling twelve episodes given to Tamaki's DANCE IN THE VAMPIRE BUND by the 2010 anime adaptation. There are assorted changes in the continuity that were surely made just to save time, but the animation's good and captures Nobuyuki Anzai's character designs quite well, while providing more excitement thanks to the animation. (I frankly find the fight-scenes in the manga underwhelming by comparison.) The tournament-arc has a different ending than the manga so as to give viewers the sense that a major villain is wiped off the map, thus giving them some closure that wasn't possible in the ongoing manga. In the domain of my "fighting females" category, this is mainly represented by the "cute tomboy" character Fuko, though there are also a handful of "bad girls" sprinkled throughout the episodes.                                                         

ADDENDUM: I should mention one continuity-change from the manga that's amusing due to how it shows the anime-makers losing control of their own setup. In the first episode of the manga, after Recca befriends his classmate Yanagi and offers to become her ninja, a strange middle-aged woman, Kagero, appears to the two of them and challenges Recca to a fight. To make Recca fight, Kagero slashes his face with a knife, and once he starts to strike back, she disappears. Later, Kagero reveals that she's the mother Recca has never known, and that she attacked him to trigger his hidden powers. The first episode of the anime follows the manga's plot accurately, but the fight is longer, with Kagero hitting and kicking Recca as well as cutting him. This only becomes a continuity error later, in an episode that suddenly reveals (contrary to anything in the manga) that Kagero suffers a curse that prevents her from physically touching her son. But if she can't touch him in that episode, how in the debut episode was she able to physically hit him with hands or feet?      

BATGIRL: YEAR ONE (2009)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            This will be one of my shortest reviews, because, having reviewed this project's source material here, there's no need to repeat any of my observations for this "motion comic" DTV film. This YEAR ONE reproduces all of the major plot points of the nine-issue comics series, introducing DC's then current origin for the character of the Barbara Gordon Batgirl. It even repeats one development that should have been left on the trashheap in the original comic: a confusing side-plot about a crook with a flamethrower trying to bite the style of the "official" Firebug. Given that this Firebug has only been operating for a few weeks at most, the comics-writers threw in this development for no good reason-- but the motion comic reproduces that bad plotline accurately.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Since the techs behind this YEAR ONE are simply photographing the art of Marcos Martin, the visuals have the same basic appeal, though I can't imagine anyone preferring to watch this herky-jerky assemblage of five-minute segments, which can't duplicate the pace of the original comic. But as the old saying goes, for those who like this type of thing, this is the type of thing they'll like.     

ASTRO BOY (1963-65)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                                                                                                         Some specifications first: Japan produced 193 episodes of TETSUWAN ATOM, the first animated TV show the country marketed abroad, from the Osamu Tezuka work of the same name. However, only 104 episodes were translated into English, which ran from 1963 to 1965 under the name "Astro Boy." To my knowledge few if any of the other 89 episodes have been translated into English or into any other non-Japanese language, so my review of the series is necessarily truncated. Because I can only reference the English episodes, in this review I'll also use the American names for the episodes and for all of the characters, though I'm aware that one can find the alternate cognomens on the web if one so desires. I should also mention that I've little knowledge as to which episodes adapt specific Tezuka stories and which ones are original productions, so I won't make mention of the adaptation factors.                      

  Although ASTRO was produced with child-viewers in mind, it's a much better science-fiction television series than most of those that preceded it and many of those that came after. True, there's a lot of silly kid-humor in most of the episodes, and frequently the animators would throw in the sort of gags only feasible in cartoons, like having characters' faces morph into weird shapes after said faces get punched. Nevertheless, most episodes possess a strong grounding in the tropes of "sense of wonder" science fiction, and a good sampling possess high mythicity in terms of their cosmological, psychological or sociological patterns. Since so many episodes were made for ASTRO's two seasons, I'll only review the high-mythicity episodes below, though I might argue that all of them at least touch on Tezuka's master trope: "Robots are people too." By that I don't mean that the "God of Manga" erased all distinctions between mechanical people and organic human beings. But Tezuka's robots possess the same affective range as, say, the star of Disney's PINOCCHIO, and this capacity makes both Disney's puppet and Tezuka's robots *essentially* human. Because of this commonality, Tezuka does not really imagine his robots as mere mechanisms that emulate human behavior, as sci-fi author Isaac Asimov would. And because these robots possess essential humanity, many episodes of the TV show, like the 1952 manga, assert that robots should have civil rights like human beings. Tezuka's robots are the ultimate marginalized group: they really aren't humans, in the way that members of marginalized races or religions are still humans. But it becomes essential that in a forward-looking society as that of Astro Boy's 2013 era, robots should be treated as humans.                                                                 

    

"The Birth of Astro Boy"-- in many ways, Astro's origin remains the standout story even among other resonant stories. The narrative feels much like an inverted version of PINOCCHIO. In place of Geppetto, a father who ceaselessly sacrifices himself for an often thoughtless son, Astro Boy is created by the thoughtless narcissism of Professor Boynton, who makes a robot duplicate of the small son Boynton lost in an accident. When Boynton belatedly realizes that the little robot cannot take his son's place, he callously sells Astro to a circus, and, in the English episodes at least, is never seen again. A second "bad father" takes Boynton's place: an unscrupulous ringmaster whom the translators named "Cacciatore" (possibly a callback to the evil Italian Stromboli in Disney's PINOCCHIO). Cacciatore forces Astro to battle other robots in arena-fights, much to the innocent automaton's displeasure. But a good father, the huge-nosed Doctor Elefun, seeks to free Astro from the ringmaster, and he ultimately succeeds in doing so when the government passes a "robot emancipation act" (almost certainly based upon the Emancipation Proclamation of the 1800s). Astro then joins Elefun in a variety of adventures, and Elefun even creates a robot family for Astro: father, mother and little sister Astro Girl. (There's also a "brother" who's introduced in later episodes, but he doesn't assume much importance.)                           

   "Expedition to Mars"-- as if to test Astro's status as a free being, he's assigned to captain a vessel going to Mars. Not surprisingly, a number of human crewmen don't like being bossed around by a robot.                                                                                                       

"The Sphinx"-- Is the huge creature Astro encounters in the desert the real Sphinx of legend? Of course not, it's another robot, but the real story of the riddling monster is related during the episode, which conveys a certain level of mythicity.                                                           

  "Hullabaloo Land"-- In a foreign country given the semblance of a fairy-tale land, a huge tyrant, Baron Von Hoodwink, seeks to bend an innocent robot named Princess Lollipop to his will. No sexual overtones appear, though Lollipop's ability to morph into a swan suggests that there was some influence from European swan-maiden tales.                                                                                                           

 "Ditto"-- for the first time, a young robot named Ditto is elected to the presidency of a foreign country. Ditto's own creator Deadcross seeks to overthrow the new ruler, and Astro comes to Ditto's rescue.   

   "Astro Boy Goes to School"-- Astro realizes that he doesn't share some human capacities, like the ability to appreciate beauty. He thus enrolls in a human middle school. Amid various hijinks, Astro does make a little progress toward his goal of greater humanity.                     

"Dream Machine"-- Astro. who like other robots has no ability to dream, participates in an experiment to see if a device can give him this human experience.                                                                           

  "Mighty Microbe Army"-- In a fascinating anticipation of FANTASTIC VOYAGE, Astro and Doctor Elefun must diagnose a space traveler's malady by shrinking themselves to microbe-size and entering the man's body for a closeup look.                                                   

 "Contest in Space"-- was this a riff on Frederic Brown's "Arena" before STAR TREK did its sanctioned adaptation? No way to know, but it's the same setup. Aliens select two representatives of Earth to fight other ETs with the survival of one team's homeworld at stake. The Earth-reps are Astro and a criminal fugitive, and initially the crook doesn't care if his world perishes. But a virtuous little robot shall lead him...                                                                                     

   "Mystery of the Amless Dam"-- Robot-human tensions heighten in the city of Amless, due in large part to the influence of reactionaries like "Boss Barker." When a human child disappears, the locals blame robots, claiming that the automatons should never have been liberated. The persecuted machines barricade themselves at the local dam, claiming innocence, and Astro Boy jets over to help. But it seems Barker reached out to a kindred spirit, Astro's former master Cacciatore, who brings two big robots and a bunch of small manta-like creatures to subdue the hero. The missing boy shows up to help Astro and to vindicate the local robots, and everyone makes nice.        

"Jungle Mystery"-- In a story that's both wacky and sentimental, Astro Girl gets hired to play a movie-role, that of a Tarzan-like boy. While the movie shoots in a real jungle, Riva, the immortal queen of a remote valley, spies what she mistakes for a young man, and abducts Astro Girl to be Riva's new husband. Astro follows to rescue his sister and learns that there's an alien force that has made Riva and her valley immune from death. (By the way, though Astro Girl is not as powerful as her brother, she often plays the role of "fighting female" in various episodes.)                                                      

  "The Mighty Mite from Ursa Minor"-- Though this episode aired after "Amless Dam," both in Japan and in the US, it feels like the script for this one was written earlier, because of the way it portrays Cacciatore and one of his minions. The scheming ringmaster comes across a young boy with super-strength, and though the boy only wants to find his way home, Cacciatore hoaxes the boy into fighting a huge man named Saturno in an arena for the entertainment of patrons. Then Cacciatore realizes that the boy is an alien, so the ringmaster may be in legal trouble because he's only supposed to have humans fight humans in his circus. Astro Boy must intervene to make sure the mighty mite gets back to Ursa Minor. The continuity problem arises because in "Amless Dam" the villain not only says that Saturno is a robot, the assertion is proven when a young boy drains Saturno of his power to re-energize Astro.                                      

And the last high-mythicity episode of the English-language episodes in my view is "Mystery of the Metal Men," which chronicles Astro's only voyage to an alternate universe. An explosion hurls the little robot into a world where Astro Boy never existed, because Doctor Boynton never lost his son Astor and so never invented his robot replacement. Once Boynton and Elefun accept that Astro really does come from an alternate timeline, they help him get back, though first Astro has to use his powers to help them out of their "metal men" difficulties. And just to show Astro's unceasing virtue, he even renders advice to Astor to help the youth relate to his father better-- even though to Astro, Boynton was nothing but the father who cast him aside like trash.