AVENGERS ASSEMBLE, SEASON TWO (2014-15)

                                                                                                         

                                                                                                               PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                        Though I didn't get much bang out of the slam-bang antics of AVENGERS ASSEMBLE Season One, Two offers even less impact. One thing I didn't give Season One credit for was that at least the stories packed in loads of established Marvel villains to offset the repetitious menace of the Red Skull and his Cabal. This season, the Cabal is scattered, with characters like Attuma and Modok mounting individual assaults on the heroes, and Red Skull handing off his baton of villainy to Thanos. Hyperion, the road-company Superman, is joined by four other alternate-world versions of famous DC heroes, all of whom are pretty dull. The killer robot Ultron also carries over from Season One, but the focus only upon the major menaces creates a sense of sameness in the episodes. On the plus side, at least Elvish Dracula is out of the picture.                                       

 One new hero, the Scott Lang version of Ant-Man, joins the Avengers, but like the other members, he barely has any backstory, and less personality. Maybe he improves when the series introduces his fellow shrinking-partner The Wasp, but since that character will probably be based on the girl-boss from the live-action MCU, I'm not anticipating the advent.                                                            

The villains are no better. Thanos lacks the gravitas of the comic-book original or the lesser stature of the MCU version, and his hench-villains The Black Order are dull, regardless of whether they're close to the comics-originals or not. The Squadron Supreme is no better, and though I can understand why the writers dropped the dorky name given to the "Wonder Woman" doppelganger-- that of Power Princess-- the artists took a step back in giving the character an even more dorky costume. Ultron is just Ultron. Only two episodes were slightly memorable. In "Valhalla Can Wait," Loki tricks Thor and the Hulk into visiting the domain of Hela to settle their strength-quarrels, while in "Beneath the Surface," Black Widow has an above-average subsea-catfight with a female enemy of Attuma's. Oddly, this Atlantean original shares her name, Zartra, with that of a little-remembered ancestor of Namor's Atlantis. I wouldn't have credited the writers of ASSEMBLE with knowing such Marvel minutiae.                                                                                                              

THE MONKEY KING 2 (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*                                                                                                                         MONKEY KING 2 is just as much a feast for the fantasy-loving eye as the first film, but maybe not quite as much for the imagination. Part of the reason for the perceived drop-off may be that, as I commented in my review of KING 1, the middle part of the source novel JOURNEY TO THE WEST is the part that has perhaps been adapted to film most frequently. Also, though the odyssey of Sun Wukong toward discipline and heroism carries over from the first film, it's 500 years later, and we're not in the same cosmic terrain as the first film. I stated before that I didn't think the 2014 film showed any evidence that mortals had come into being yet, but 500 years later, some sort of Chinese culture has come into being, though we still don't see too many ordinary humans in this world of gods and monsters.                                                                                                       

 

  Aside from a few incidental characters, KING 2 hinges on the relationship of Monkey King Sun Wukong (Aaron Kwok) to one particular mortal: the young Buddhist scholar Tang Shanzang (Feng Shaofeng). When Wukong's imprisonment ends, he either breaks free, or is allowed to break free. Then the hero learns that the Buddhist deity Kwan Yin has decreed that Wukong must act as a servant to Tang while the monk travels to India in search of rare scrolls on Buddha's teachings, the better to disseminate enlightenment throughout China. Worse, the goddess forces Wukong to wear a metal headband, and if he's disobedient, Tang can bring the monkey-god into line by chanting a Buddhist prayer, which will cause the headband to contract and cause Wukong pain. Though Wukong still has a lot of rambunctious energy, he seems to fall into line pretty easily. A little later, Tang gets two more servants-- a pig-man and a water-spirit, which means they're some sort of Asian fairy-folk-- and though Wukong fights with them a little, he quickly accepts their addition to Tang's retinue. Tang, despite being even-tempered and good-hearted, provides some unexpected slapstick humor with respect to Bajie (the pig) and Wujing (the water-guy). In fact, while many film-adaptations of this story make the monk something of a plaster saint, performer Shaofeng gives Tang a lot of amusing tics that enhance his humanity without diluting his role as the story's spiritual center.                                                                             

                      
The villain of this chapter started out as an ordinary human, but ill treatment by her fellows led to her becoming the Chinese equivalent of an "angry ghost," obsessed with harming mortals and with becoming immortal by eating the flesh-- or maybe the spirit?-- of a monk just like Tang. This creature, White Bone Demon (Gong Li), takes a variety of forms, sometimes showing all the natural allurement of the beautiful Chinese actress, other times showing herself as a grotesque death-spirit. A part of White Bone does desire to be emancipated from her evil ways, so when Tang offers to give her spiritual counseling to free her from her obsessions, she listens for a while. However, White Bone flip-flops just enough to provide Wukong with a good bout, unleashing a giant skeleton-monster upon the world. For his part, Wukong manifests into duplicate forms of himself, so that he can fight the colossus the way the Justice League would take on a similar titan. In conclusion, KING 2 is still a very good fantasy-film, but the plot is much looser than that of the first film and doesn't sustain as much of a symbolic discourse.                                                                                  

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SEASON ONE (1997)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                                                                                                        Though the first season of BUFFY is a quantum leap in storytelling compared to the 1992 movie, the season's twelve episodes are fairly simple fare next to the involved mythology of the ensuing seasons. The mythicity never rises above fair, but none of the stories are actively poor, either. I tend to think of Season One as providing the scaffolding used by builders as they construct a more lasting edifice.                                                                                                                                    

WELCOME TO THE HELLMOUTH/ THE HARVEST-- Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), only tangentially based upon the character from the 1992 film, transfers to the California town of Sunnydale, accompanied by her divorced mother Joyce. The change in locations allowed creator Josh Whedon to imagine Buffy's new school, Sunnydale High, as the nexus of many supernatural phenomena, aka the Hellmouth, thus allowing "the Slayer" to take on a lot of non-vampiric menaces. That said, vampires are the menace for this two-parter, a clutch of them commanded by a road-company Nosferatu named The Master. Against these foes, Buffy is aided primarily by Xander (Nicholas Brendon) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan), who become her aides more out of friendship than from any desire to fight monsters. Buffy's middle-aged librarian/advisor Giles plays a very circumscribed role in this season, rarely doing more than rendering advice, while the character of Cordelia is merely used as an occasional comic foil. She and Buffy's potential love interest Angel (David Boreanaz) occupy something like a secondary ensemble in that they don't appear in all episodes.  WITCH-- This is the first episode not to involve a vampire menace. Buffy makes what may be her only attempt to resume her cheerleading career, only to discover than some of the girls are falling victim to peculiar fates, such as going blind or losing the power to speak. All indications are that one of the cheerleaders is responsible for the curses, though there's a good twist involved regarding the witch's identity.                                                                      

TEACHER'S PET-- While Sunnydale residents are losing their heads to a new head-hunting menace, Xander seeks to deal with masculinity issues, not least because Buffy puts him in the "friend zone." Then new biology teacher Natalie (Musetta Vander) seems to be very interested in Xander-- or is just that she's a mantis-monster, obsessed with her unique way of "getting head?" Since the story includes a regular vampire as well, this counts as a monster- mashup. NEVER KILL A BOY ON THE FIRST DATE-- Buffy tries to have a normal date with a nice classmate named Owen, but she's forced to put him out of her life to save his. The Master plans to unleash a new vampire-menace, The Anointed One, and despite the heroes' efforts he succeeds. Unfortunately, the producers' casting of a grade-school boy in the role of the Appointed One proved to be a misstep that wasn't corrected until Season Two. THE PACK-- This time Xander's masculinity issues are aggravated by his falling in with a bad crowd, made up of teen boys infected by the spirits of hyena-shapechangers.                                                                                 

    ANGEL-- From the character's first appearance, the characters remark that he has an "older man" appeal for Buffy, but here she finds out that he's much older than she imagined, as well as a "good vampire" dedicated to fighting evil. The thin plot involves the Master sending vamp-assassins after Buffy, which results in Angel saving her and various romantic complications. I ROBOT, YOU JANE-- It's Willow's turn to experience an unhappy romance, as she falls for a guy she met online, who just happens to be an archaic demon who got translated into the Internet. Xander shows himself unduly perturbed at Willow's budding romance, despite not being willing to date her himself. The episode introduced "techno-pagan" Jenny Calendar, who becomes a later romantic interest for Giles. THE PUPPET SHOW-- It's a minor accomplishment that this is a show featuring a snarky puppet possessed by a dead man's spirit, but he's NOT the monster of the week. The menace is less interesting than the hilarious attempt of Buffy and company to perform a scene from "Oedipus Rex" for the school talent show.                                       

  NIGHTMARES-- This time everyone at Buffy's school is besieged by horrific dreams, which may have something to do with a small boy hanging about. Though some of the dreams, like Xander's, are played for humor, others are more harrowing than any demon or vampire, since they stem from the dreamer's deepest insecurities. Buffy gets not one but two evil dreams, one centering upon her father (only seen in four episodes in the whole series), who tells Buffy's dream-self that she was responsible for his divorce from Joyce. Buffy also dreams of being infected by vampirism, which was certainly a foreshadowing of the events of the season finale. OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND-- A high-schooler named Marcie is so relentlessly ignored by the other students that she becomes literally invisible and thus is a perfect position to exact revenge on the popular crowd. One might call the preachy theme of this episode rather-- transparent. A wry ending shows Invisible Marcie being recruited by a secret agency. PROPHECY GIRL-- Buffy learns of a prophecy that she's doomed to die when the Master breaks free at last, and so she seeks to refuse the "call to action" and return to being an ordinary girl. But her desire to protect the innocent overpowers her natural self-defensiveness. The prophecy is proven half-right, when the Master overcomes the Slayer and drinks her blood, albeit without vampirizing her, and leaves her to drown to death. However, Xander and Angel find her and revive her, though I thought Xander's use of CPR to purge Buffy's lungs of water didn't exactly explain her survival of massive blood loss. Buffy recovers, confronts the Master and kills him, putting an end to the first of the show's season-long "Big Bads." This is the strongest episode of the season, and Buffy's temporary demise would become a source for further plotlines later on. One interesting touch is that Giles, who's been something less than paternal throughout the season, announces his intention to take Buffy's place in facing down the Master, forcing Buffy to knock him out to save his life. Later seasons will do a much better job depicting the father-daughter relationship of Slayer and Watcher, encouraged in part by the disappearance of Buffy's real father from her life.    

GAMERA THE BRAVE (2006)

 

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

I mentioned in my review of the 1990s GAMERA series that I'd seen but did not like the 2006 follow-up GAMERA THE BRAVE. Nevertheless, in the name of Totalicus, the God of Completism, I decided to revisit BRAVE once more.

There are still aspects of this kaiju flick-- the last feature-film in the Gamera series-- that still suck. The "Muppetization" of the giant turtle's standard design remains awful, and the effect would have been even worse if that appearance had successfully appeared in a Godzilla/Gamera crossover that had been in discussion between the owning studios previous to BRAVE's production. Apparently the re-design came about because some children had reacted badly to the intense events of the third 1990s film, and the studio wanted to make the big terrapin more cuddly-looking.

 As if to disavow the profitable trilogy, the studio kept the trilogy's idea that Gamera was a being more or less "programmed" to defend Earth-people against other kaiju. Yet twenty years before the events of BRAVE, the then-current Gamera is unable to best a flock of Gyaos-birds, and so blows himself up to kill them, as well as himself. A young boy named Kousuke witnesses the event, and twenty years later he's sired a grade-schooler son, Toru (Ryo Tomioka), though the boy's mother has passed away. Toru and his friends find a mysterious egg with a red stone attached to the shell, and in due time, it hatches a small turtle with strange powers. I'm not sure why neither Toru nor his friends make the connection to the deceased Gamera. One would think that even if you've never seen such a creature before, the fact that one sacrificed itself for the well-being of Japan would make a pretty big cultural impression.

The very elementary plot resorts to some cornball humor to pad out the time until the little turtle starts getting really big, and there's some slightly better drama in that protective father Kousuke doesn't want his only son getting near any destructive giant monsters, even those with protective intentions. Fortuitously, a hostile dragon-like kaiju named Zedus starts trashing Toru's town just as Baby Gamera has matured into his king-size form. The battles of New Gamera and Zedus keep the movie from being totally without suspense, but it takes a long time for the central dramatic point to manifest: that Kousuke must allow Toru to render aid to Gamera in order to stop Zedus. Said aid involves the previously mentioned red stone, though the script doesn't really explain why the deceased Gamera, who implicitly left the egg behind, also included some sort of power-stone in the mix.

The sixties Gamera films are rightfully mocked for playing to children too often, though this tendency may have lent those films a lively wackiness, thus distinguishing the big turtle's series from the competing Godzilla films of the same period. But despite a winning performance from Tomioka, who shoulders most of the movie's dramatic burden, BRAVE offers neither engaging wackiness nor the heavy seriousness of the 1990s movies. Thus BRAVE failed at the box office and essentially killed the franchise. Nineteen years later, the future doesn't look rosy for the continuing adventures of the iconic flying, flame-breathing turtle-monster.              

THE WILD WILD PLANET (1966)

 

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

"I'm a person, not a collection of hunks of meat."            

I've already reviewed the second and third releases in Antonio Margheriti's "Gamma One" tetralogy, WAR OF THE PLANETS and PLANET ON THE PROWL. I've not had the opportunity to re-screen SNOW DEVILS, the one that was fourth to be released to theaters (that is, irrespective of the order of actual filming, given that all four movies were generated within the same year). But I have no hesitation in proclaiming the first-released, THE WILD,WlLD PLANET, to be the best in this short-lived series. And in contrast to many other Italian space-operas, PLANET has more to it than just the usual "so bad it's good" elements-- though I admit some of those elements are present. 

Take the line I quoted above. Following a few shots establishing that PLANET takes place on a far-future Earth that has colonized other planets, the line is spoken by Mike Halstead (Tony Russel), commander of a space-station orbiting Earth, as he has a testy exchange with Doctor Nurmi (Massimo Serato). Nurmi has been allowed to set up a lab on the station due to the influence of certain planetside "corporations," where he conducts experiments with skin grafts and "miniature organs" (not explained). Halstead makes clear that he doesn't approve of all this monkeying around with piecing together people out of "hunks of flesh," while Nurmi clearly has some agenda involving the eugenic production of "perfect people." Nevertheless, Halstead has to offer Nurmi hospitality aboard the station, and invites him to dinner that evening, where, as Nurmi notes, they will be eating "hunks of meat." Clearly, if one can trust the English translation, writers Ivan Reiner and Renato Moretti were having some fun with the standard tropes of space opera-- although all their other film-work seems to be nothing but undistinguished sci-fi time-fillers. 

              

Halstead's futuristic paradise also gets some trouble from his current girlfriend Connie (Lisa Gastoni), who serves on the space-station under Halstead's authority. Connie's first seen in a gym, drilling male and female officers in judo moves. But even though she twice drops Halstead's officer-buddy Jake (Franco Nero) on his ass with her own skills, don't mistake Connie for a modern girlboss. In this scene and the one at dinner, she makes it clear to Nurmi that she doesn't appreciate her boyfriend treating her like "one of the boys." In a way she's as traditionally minded as Halstead, and that includes the tradition of accepting an invitation from smooth talker Nurmi to pay a visit to his experimental center on the space station (or planet?) Delphus.    

                                                                       

But some mysterious agents of Delphus come to Earth long before Connie goes anywhere. It appears these agents have been operating on Earth for some time, causing mysterious disappearances of scientists, but what we first see of them is eight women and one man, a tall guy with dark glasses and a dark cloak. Whenever one of the girls and Glasses Guy approach a solitary victim, Glasses Guy spreads his cloak over the victim, who just disappears. Even when I saw PLANET in my youth, I knew that this was a cost-cutting effect. Yet the way Margheriti films these disappearance-scenes, they're much creepier than the use of some optical image. In one of the attack-scenes, Glasses Guy botches things somehow, and the victim escapes, though he's been weirdly shrunken, causing him to fall into a coma. The woman with Glasses Guy then makes him disappear, though she doesn't have a cloak to bring off the effect. 

I'm not sure how it happens that Halstead, commander of a space station, gets assigned to investigate missing scientists, though in one scene he and his agents certainly act like they have police-powers. At one point, Glasses Guy (or a clone thereof) is sighted in a future-car, and agents give chase. The car cracks up and the driver disappears, but Halstead makes the scene in time to see that the car contains doll-sized, miniature people held in stasis within a suitcase. In addition, slightly later the authorities find the dead body of a Glasses-Guy, and discover that he has four arms, the result of skin grafts. The call goes out to find Doctor Nurmi.

 Somehow Halstead and two other officers track down two of the female Delphus agents and their leader (Moha Tahi). This confrontation scene is in equal measure both risible and symbolically significant, for the three girls show themselves to be judo-mistresses and hand the three guys a pretty tough battle. While the spies are being taken into custody, Connie arrives on Delphus and begins to encounter some weird phenomena, including an oddball doctor who tells her "your other half will soon be here." Back on Earth, Halstead tries to choke the truth out of Nurmi, but Halstead's superior reins him in. Nothing daunted, Halstead takes a contingent of men to Delphus to rescue Connie and destroy Nurmi's mad scheme, whatever it is. Nurmi gets to Delphus before Halstead and informs Connie that, in addition to somehow conquering Earth with his clones and his shrink-tech, he plans to be joined with Connie in a manner more surgical than sexual. In other words, when Nurmi isn't playing Frankenstein, he's a Moreau who works on himself, and he wants Connie's body only to create a perfect male-female hybrid. If you credit Nurmi with nothing else, he certainly has the courage of his convictions, for even though Halstead brings down his operation Nurmi does his best to take the space-soldier with him into oblivion.

I don't know which of the "Gamma Ones" was written first, but PLANET is the most detailed and feels most like the authors projecting their societal concerns upon a future-scape. The writers did this by creating two sets of oppositions. Halstead may sound as conservative as a Hebrew patriarch out of Leviticus when he rails against skin grafts as a threat to bodily autonomy. But Nurmi is entirely blasphemous in creating a race of perfect humans to people the universe, suggesting a god-complex-- though he might be the first such mad scientist who wanted to become "god and goddess in one body." And though Nurmi's female servants may be judo-trained marvels, none of them have any individuality-- which Connie, even in her rejection of ultra-feminism, certainly possesses. I'm not saying that it's entirely wrong to laugh at some of the movie's missteps, like the soldiers using acetylene torches to suggest ray-guns. But Margheriti, who had completed two Gothic horrors before PLANET, puts a lot of social content into this space-opera, as well as undermining a lot of the gosh-wow sci-fi nicknacks with uncanny, and sometimes apocalyptic, imagery. One might not want to think of PLANET, with its "wild" space-babes and square-jawed heroes, as quality sci-fi. But it's much more imaginative than most space-operas from any decade or nation.      

            

GHOST PATROL (1936

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

GHOST PATROL pits cowboy star Tim McCoy against a gang of owlhoots with a mild science-fiction twist. It happens that the crooks have abducted a professor who foolishly let the papers broadcast his development of a "radium tube" capable of zapping any electrical systems. Being small-time thinkers, the crooks decide to use the tube-- seen above looking like an electric chair-- to make mail-planes crash so that the gang can loot the contents. The finale manages to incorporate the device long enough for McCoy's character to blast the hell out of it.

HONOR ROLL #277

 The correct name for this TIM MCCOY flick would've been more like "Ray-That-Shoots-Down-Planes Patrol."

MOHA TAHI, pretty Polynesian kickboxer.

ZEDUS, road-company Godzilla.

The Slayer might be the ideal heroine but NICHOLAS BRENDON is the ideal comedy relief.

Just insert routine "monkeying around" joke for FENG SHOUFENG.

HAWKEYE is ironically the last hero anyone would call "straight arrow."

LEGO DC SUPER HERO GIRLS:SUPER-VILLAIN HIGH (2018)

 

 

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

The second and last of the LEGO versions of this franchise utilizes a lot more of the secondary characters than the other one, such as the Lego-ized versions of Katana, Bumblebee, Beast Boy and the female Green Lantern, Jessica Something. However, it sticks with just one villain, Lena Luthor, who's well-crafted as a third-rate villain trying to up her reputation. (Lena does have one henchperson from a previous telefilm, Lashina of the Female Furies, but because she functions only as a henchperson, she doesn't overburden HIGH with too many divergent antagonists.

I've mentioned in previous reviews that the franchise takes place in its own continuity, where the students at the hero-forging institution include all sorts of de-aged DC heroes and villains-- the implication being that the villains attempted to be heroes before going down the wrong path as adults. Lena Luthor, resenting her previous defeats by the Hero High students, decides to infiltrate the school and corrupt five "future villains" to her way of thinking. As it happens, Lena's timing is spot on, for five students-- Catwoman, Cheetah, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn and Killer Frost-- get irritated with Supergirl, Batgirl, Wonder Woman and the "Jessica Cruz" version of Green Lantern. While Principal Waller is on vacation, Lena impersonates her and lures the disaffected students to another school, "Uber High."

The three main heroes decide they want to investigate Uber, and they send Green Jessica to spy on the new high school. Eventually the heroines learn Lena's dastardly (and comparatively original) scheme: to break into the Rock of Eternity (where dwells the wizard formerly known as Shazam) and steal seven magical gems. However, the removal of the gems sets loose the demons known as the Seven Deadly Sins, who have the power to influence mortals with negative emotions. On the positive side, the five proto-villain girls begin to miss their good times at Super Hero High. and eventually they're all brought back into the fold. Though the heroes foil Lena's plot to use the magic gems for (I think) world dominion, she escapes justice and plots to found her universe's version of the Legion of Doom.

Both the jokes and the fights here are on a par with the best Lego-flicks for other DC characters, making this the best of the comedy versions of the franchise. 

THE MONKEY KING; HAVOC IN HEAVEN'S PALACE (2014)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*                                                                                                                                               I've seen my fair share of "Monkey King" adaptations up to now, but this 2014 MONKEY, as I'll call it henceforth, is the first one that has made me actively curious to read the 16th-century novel on which it's based. I imagine director Soi Cheang and his scriptwriters might have interpolated some myth-material not present in JOURNEY TO THE WEST, just to make this expensive FX-project score with 21st-century audiences. But if so, they did a fine job of expanding on the first third of the source work, which I think usually gets the fewest adaptations.                                                                                           

As in many archaic mythologies, the epoch previous to the birth of mortal man is determined by a struggle between the beneficent and self-controlling gods and the destructive and emotional demons. Led by the Bull Demon King (Aaron Kwok), the demons assail the Palace of Heaven to gain supremacy. The ruler of the gods, Jade Emperor (Chow Yun-Fat), defeats the Demon King and his forces, and considers wiping them all out. A merciful goddess named Nuwa declares that even demons' lives are valuable, and she sacrifices herself to make a barrier of mystic crystals that will keep the demons from invading Heaven again. Jade Emperor is thus satisfied to simply banish the evil beings and go back to doing the involved metaphysical exercises beloved by the gods. Demon King accepts his banishment but plans to watch for his next opportunity. (I emphasize again that I don't think humanity has come into being as it has in the novel's second part: all we see are gods, demons, fairies, and animal-people.)                                                                                    

 One of the crystals falls to Earth, and inside this makeshift womb lies the fetus that will become Sun Wukong (Donnie Yen). A young fox-spirit, Ruxie, encounters the crystal but does not actually communicate with the infant. I don't know why this immaculate conception happens to be a humanoid monkey, but in any case, the next time we see Wukong, he's mingling with a tribe of similar monkey-people, though Wukong has far greater magical abilities than any of them. A teacher named Subhuti-- possibly a heaven-immortal rather than the historical figure with the same name-- seeks out Wukong and offers to train him so that he can realize his great potential and take his place with the gods. Wukong accepts the training, though he's cocky and egotistical-- which might indicate some common lineage with the demons, in case Wukong's conception wasn't all that immaculate. At the same time, however, the Demon King lays new plans to overcome the magic that restricts him from entering Heaven. One possible weak link is the Jade Emperor's nephew Erlang, who envies his uncle for his throne. However, Wukong will prove even more useful to the demon-lord because of the heroic monkey's tremendous ego.                                   

 As a result of Wukong's rash actions, he unleashes a destructive tsunami on the lower world. The Demon King, knowing that the minions of heaven will haul Wukong into their domain for judgment, so the evildoer appears to Wukong and makes a pretense of friendship. Wukong defies the constables of the gods but still shows up to knock on Heaven's door, where he's able to enter, presumably because he's part-god. His teacher Subhuti enters the heavenly halls as well to convince Jade Emperor that the arrogant simian simply needs discipline. The Emperor allows Wukong to train in Heaven and the hero masters new skills, but he still doesn't become mentally disciplined, as when he raids the Emperor's garden for a peach of immortality. Meanwhile, Demon King employs his pawn Erlang to bait Wukong, priming the conceited warrior for a major deception. In short, the demon-lord massacres Wukong's people and the fox-girl (who was also one of Bull Demon's agents) to convince Wukong that the immortals did the deed. Despite being deceived for a time, Wukong learns the truth and defeats Demon King in battle. However, for his past deeds he must spend 500 years in a prison devised by the merciful goddess Kwan Yin. After that, he will have to redeem himself by becoming a servant to a mortal Buddhist teacher-- which is where MONKEY KING 2 will pick up, chronicling some of the more familiar parts of the original saga.                   

 Donnie Yen, continuously acting with heavy makeup, does a fine job of portraying the hero, whose faults make him human despite the trouble he causes.  Kwok makes a good "thinking man's villain," though oddly he was switched to portraying Monkey in this film's two sequels, presumably because Yen opted out. Not too many of the other performers get show-stealing moments, but the script doles out a lot of good lines, serious and humorous, even for the stiffly noble deities. The costumes and CGI are excellent and fully drew me into this fantasy-realm, but the quality of the film's look proves secondary to the scripters' understanding of the original work's fundamental strength. As I currently see it, JOURNEY TO THE WEST was to many Asians what Milton's PARADISE LOST was to many European Christians: the former justified the ways of Buddha, and the need for discipline and compassion, to mortals who were often tempted by egoistic desires. It's a strength of the Cheang project that it captures that serious theme, and yet provides moments that are either funny or heartwarming without "talking down" to the audience. 

LOST TREASURE OF THE INCAS (1964)

  

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

I was strongly tempted to alter the title's use of "Incas" to "Aztecs," because all through the film the mysterious Indians with the barely seen treasure are called "Aztecs." I'm sure that there have been any number of lost-world stories about Incas. But the fact remains that there's no sense in doing a lost-world in the American Southwest of the 1880s and thinking that Incas are going to pop up in that domain. If the recrudescent Indian tribe is in the American Southwest, or in Mexico, then THEY'RE BLOODY AZTECS!!

TREASURE was one of three peplum films director Piero Pierotti made with bodybuilder-star Alan Steel, the others being HERCULES AND THE MASKED RIDER and HERCULES AGAINST ROME. However, because the bloom was off the rose for the strongman-movies, the producers cancelled plans for the flick to take place in the dim and dusty past, and had their hero-- still known as "Samson" in the Italian title-- become a righteous cowboy. This was supposedly a response to the success of the pioneering spaghettti western A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, though TREASURE's hero, broad-shouldered Arizona Smith, is closer to Roy Rogers than Clint Eastwood.

Arizona and his buddy Alan ride around doing odd jobs, in between which Arizona rides into such-and-such a town to flirt with pretty schoolmarm Jenny (Brigitte Heiberg). But there's a fancy-dressing Eastern dude, Darmon, who's jockeying for power in the same town, so you know he and Arizona are bound to butt heads. I was never sure what Darmon's main criminal aim was, but he has a man killed and frames Alan for it. Alan heads for the hills despite Arizona's attempt to bring him in for a fair trial.

In the wilderness Alan happens across a young Indian woman, though he mistakes her for a boy because her attire is so unfeminine. The woman is Princess Mysia (Anna Maria Polani), and she's escaped from the mountain stronghold of a lost tribe of Aztecs. Her royal status is not much of a benefit, for her people happen to have chosen a dormant volcano as their home (don't you hate it when that happens), and Mysia's purpose is to be "married," i.e, sacrificed, to the volcano god to keep the deity from drowning the whole tribe in hot lava. During her travels with Alan Mysia falls in love with the secondary hero, and when the Aztecs overtake the two of them, Mysia agrees to go back and be sacrificed in order to save the young cowboy's life. All of these developments will eventually lead to Darmon and his gang storming the Aztec citadel to steal their gold, while Arizona and his allies seek to thwart the dirty owlhoots.

Before we get to the big standoff between Cowboys and Aztecs, TREASURE is a very slow slog, despite a couple of barroom brawls. The script even throws in a secondary love interest for Arizona, a saloon girl named Ilona, but she has so few scenes, she could have been cut with no consequences to the story. (Maybe in the archaic version of the story she had a bigger "bad girl" role?) There's a tiny bit of comic byplay with the town barber, who's also the mortician, but that's underdone as well.

The film does perk up somewhat with the big finish, as the two sets of cowboys blast away at each other while the Aztecs pick off their enemies with arrows. (The schoolmarm manages to go along with Arizona's bunch and even manages to shoot one of the bad guys.) The Aztecs' method of sacrifice is visually interesting: a big metal idol-head built into a temple-wall, made so that lava from the volcano's depths emerges from the idol's mouth to immolate anyone placed under the flow. The Indians are already somewhat aware that a big eruption is on the way, but they think a mass sacrifice of their captives, mostly surviving good guys, will fix their problems-- until "Samson" busts loose.

But no, there's no pulling down any pillars here. Arizona is an ordinary guy, and his only feat is lifting one Indian attacker and tossing him to the side. The pillars do come down, but it's because of the volcano's fury, and all the good guys escape, along with good girl Mysia, while the Aztec colony returns to the dust.

Aside the mildly diverting design of the volcano-idol, TREASURE's only value is the performance of Heiberg as Schoolmarm Jenny. While Alan Steel just does his impression of a walking rock, Heiberg really communicates the sense of her being in love with the galoot, sometimes coquettish, sometimes playfully stern. She's certainly better than anyone else in the movie, though as it happened, the actress only made three other films in her short career.

GAMERA GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE (1995)

 

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

With the exception of 2006's GAMERA THE BRAVE-- which I didn't like and don't plan to re-screen any time soon-- these three 1990s films, directed and co-written by Shuseke Kaneko, were the final hurrah for the turtle-monster.

The first time that I screened 1995's GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE, I thought that it was a strong, substantive upgrade of the enjoyably loony series of the 1960s and 1970s. In re-screening these films, I can see that on occasion they had a greater claim to mythopoesis than I used to believe. Still, compared to the original Godzilla films, the mythic material appears in a very hit-and-miss manner. Most of the early films get by purely on the absurdity of a giant turtle who defends children from harm.

Kaneko's series does not forswear the events of the old films, but he erects a more sophisticated science-fiction explanation for them.  Gamera is not just a freak of prehistoric nature mutated by radiation, but a creation of an ancient civilization, one "programmed" to protect the Earth against its enemies. The foremost enemies here are a trio of Gyaos-birds, but humanity has unwittingly conspired in their resurrection through its pollution of the atmosphere.  In addition, humans hurl their military forces against Gamera, despite the protests of Asagi, a psychic Japanese woman who has formed a link with Gamera and knows that his basic instincts are protective. Asagi performs basically the same role in all three films and provides a decided improvement on the old series' concentration of cutesy kids as viewpoint-characters.

The FX are far more impressive than anything in the old Gamera films, and the script is far more logical. Still, I must admit that the first film seemed a little pedestrian this time out, lacking the wild inventiveness of the old flicks. Still, it remains one of the better kaiju films of the period.

ROBOT HOLOCAUST (1986),

 

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


I've little to say about the low-budget SF-oeuvre of porn director Tim Kincaid than to use it as an object lesson of how not to make even a halfway decent low-budget film.

ROBOT HOLOCAUST is the first of Kincaid's miniscule output in the SF genre, and I'm amazed to read on IMDB that it apparently did show up in some theaters, rather than going straight to theaters. It almost goes without saying that it's a mind-numbing mix of formulas swiped from STAR WARS and MAD MAX, acted by people who couldn't act, filmed mostly underground (the basements of abandoned buildings, maybe?), and using ragtag outfits that even the addition of greater nudity could not make less abominable.

The basic idea is that after the usual nuclear apocalypse, many humans fled to the wastelands, but some stayed within a generic city. I guess the city's got a dome over it, or else the threats of the local tyrant, "The Dark One," to cut off people's air wouldn't come to much. The idea of an air-monopoly has a little promise, but the idea is rendered risible by the idea that some of the outsiders have mutated so that they somehow don't need air. Oh, and there's a brilliant professor who's somehow immunized himself and his lovely daughter from needing air to supply. Okay.

This is just barely a combative film by virtue of the struggles of the rebel leader "Neo" (no, not that Neo) against the Dark One. It's far too dull to be "so bad it's good."

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE, SEASON ONE (2013-14)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                                Whatever the failings of the AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES series, it remains much more ambitious than this show, since HEROES attempted to adapt some of the more far-reaching comic-book storylines. Evidently that series could not be continued due to behind-the-scenes legal complications. So ASSEMBLE rebooted the avenging team, consisting of Iron Man (more or less the leader), Captain America, Thor, The Hulk, Hawkeye and The Black Widow-- in essence, reproducing the ensemble from the 2012 live-action film, except for the addition of rookie member The Falcon. One episode works in Ant-Man, though there's no explanation of how he related to any earlier adventures.                                                         

   The new priority for ASSEMBLE was action, action, action, with just touches of characterization along the way, and (like the movie series) no soap-operatic plotlines. The writers were evidently free to cull villains from most of the Marvel Comics mainstream, so ASSEMBLE is the first animated appearance for such characters as The Mangog, The Super Adaptoid (this time portrayed as a mindless automaton whom Modok uses as his personal mecha), Justin Hammer, and Hyperion. Though Doctor Doom appears in three episodes, the primary villain for Season One is the Red Skull, whose strong presence makes up somewhat for his mediocre usage in the FIRST AVENGER film. In addition to Hyperion and Modok, the Skull also drafts into his Cabal the services of Attuma and Dracula, who in this incarnation looks like a Tolkienian elf-prince.                                                                   

As for the heroes, most of their conflicts as they mess around Avengers Mansion involve one hero having eaten another hero's refrigerator stash, so no, no attempt at drama. A minor exception is "Hulked Out Heroes." In this story, Black Widow, who part-times with SHIELD, is instructed by Nick Fury to turn over any information she gets on ways to subdue the Hulk. Out of team loyalty, the Widow conveniently loses the coveted intel. The Hulk is often used to set up allegedly humorous situations, but at least in Season One, he remains a pivotal member of the team, in marked contrast to the way the character gets sidelined in the MCU's live-action movies. He never reverts to Bruce Banner, though, and no one in the super-team really has anything like a private life. To be sure, Falcon gets a sitcom-like episode in which his mom comes to visit the mansion, and the high-flying hero must beg his friends not to reveal his identity, because she thinks he's "just" a SHIELD agent. On the whole, the main heroes never go into any deep characterization, even by melodrama-standards. But it's a small blessing that none of them are actively bad in terms of their dominant traits, in contrast to the way the later MCU productions treated Hulk and Thor. So that's something.                 

HONOR ROLL #276

 BLACK WIDOW certainly got better treatment in animation than she ever got in live-action.

A religious holocaust is a sacrifice, but watching NORRIS CULF in "Robot Holocaust" is more like a blasphemy.

As soon as Gamera found out Godzilla had a psychic friend, he wanted one too, and got one in AYAKO FUJITANI.

When they told BRIGITTE HELBERG that they were turning her sword-and-sandal movie into a western, she just rolled with it.

AARON KWOK doesn't get to monkey around until the next picture in the series, but at least here he takes no bull.

After Lego Eclipso has had her fun, it's time for LEGO LENA LUTHOR to have an L of a time.

  

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS (2016)

 

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

I liked this sequel better than the 2014 iteration with some, though far from all, of the same cast and crew. Now, as stated elsewhere I'm far from being deeply versed in the Ninja Turtle mythos. It doesn't precisely excite me to see the movie introduce various characters from the comic and the animated cartoon, though the film does get a lot of mileage out of the alien warlord Krang (for drama) and the goofball mutant stooges Bebop and Rocksteady (for humor). 

Rather, I appreciated that this time the writers not only included some interpersonal drama between the Turtle Teens as well as the standard hyper-kinetic banter, but also an "existential crisis." The heroes-on-the-half-shell confront a better version of the conflict that X3: THE LAST STAND thoroughly botched: to wit, "if you could change the thing that makes others consider you 'different,' would you do so?"

The mutation-chemical called "The Ooze" is the proximate reason for the conflict in the latter part of the film, but the problem is prefigured at the start. In the first film, the Turtles save New York City from the forces of the Shredder, but they don't want their existence to be known, so they let screwy newsman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) take the credit. Yet even though they do the right thing, keeping under cover because of their monstrous appearances, they're young enough to want the credit, and they take pleasure in puncturing Fenwick's ego when possible. Leo tells the other three that it's their nature as ninjas to move only within the shadows, but the title prefigures that this won't stand.

I remarked of the first film that evildoers Shredder and Eric Sacks seemed to be relying on the Super-Villains Playbook, given how little resonance their schemes had. For the sequel, Sacks is jettisoned in favor of prideful scientist Baxter Stockman (who has only minimal scenes in the first movie), who helps Shredder tap into the alien tech from another dimension. Shredder makes a devil's deal with the aforementioned Krang, thinking he will gain power thereby-- though of course the grotesquely gooey ET is concerned only with turning the planet Earth into scorched earth.

The perfidious plan is exposed thanks in large part to detective work by April O'Neil (Megan Fox once more), while she also manages to show off her more physical assets to good effect. She also places the mutation-muck in the hands of the Turtles, at which point big-brain Donatello figures out that if the Ooze can be used to change humans into a humanoid warthog and rhinoceros (the aforementioned stooges), the same sludge might change four teenage terrapins into ninja humans. And so they might be able to get out of the shadows and into the light of the human world.

Of course, such a transformation would have undermined the entire franchise. But the writers make the Turtles' acceptance of their destiny ring true, even in the midst of all sorts of carnivalesque commotion. Most of the humor worked well enough for me, though I could have done without the bit where the Turtles' attack van sprouted gigantic nunchucks (!) 

Unfortunately, the 2016 audience wasn't primed for any more Turtle-games, and SHADOWS became known as a box office bomb. Far more tragically, the vastly inferior animated entry MUTANT MAYHEM used aspects of SHADOWS' theme but did so in a thoroughly blockheaded manner. Sadly, in Hollywood as elsewhere, sometimes virtue is the only reward of virtue. 

WHITE PONGO (1945)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                                            There can be little doubt that I've wasted considerable time researching the genesis of this "girl and gorilla" potboiler, but once I learned that there had been two "white gorilla" movies that came out in 1945, I felt compelled to look into their possible relationships. Here's what I posted on Classic Horror Film Board after getting input from the scholarly folks thereabouts.                                                                                                                                     "So in August 1944 Sig Neufeld announces that because PRC's NABONGA is a success he's going to do a movie called "White Gorilla," directed like NABONGA by Sig's brother Sam. But apparently before PONGO gets made, Louis Weiss and Harry Fraser dust off some of the footage of 1927's silent PERILS OF THE JUNGLE (which Fraser wrote, and which appears to have had no white gorillas) and combine it with new footage, with Ray Corrigan of NABONGA playing both a hunter and a white ape, all of which I think hit theaters before Neufeld's WHITE PONGO. Contrary to my early impression, a squib on Wiki says that WHITE GORILLA did make money, Then PONGO comes out in October 1945, according to the Wiki writeup, with Corrigan playing Pongo (whose name almost rhymes with "Nabonga"). One online reviewer says that the same white gorilla suit was worn by Corrigan in both movies, though I don't know you'd prove that, and that it later showed up in Jerry Warren's MAN BEAST."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 After sorting all that out, though, what do we have in producer Neufeld's follow up to NABONGA, which I found moderately engaging even though it too was a potboiler?  Well, PONGO's not even a "trash classic," though it does have its share of oddball details.                                                                           

  The main deficit of PONGO is that even for a jungle-bungle flick, it's saddled with a thoroughly boring set of stock characters, with only the sole billed actress Maris Wrixton managing to put across a little strong emotion. Here's the setup, which I will relate chronologically instead of the piecemeal way director Sam Newfield tells it.  At some point prior to the action of the film, an anthropologist named Dierdorf sets up a station in the Belgian Congo, hoping to capture the fabled albino gorilla White Pongo, which Dierdorf thinks is the missing link between man and ape. Dierdorf captures Pongo but the ape breaks free and kills him, though Dierdorf's assistant Gerig escapes, only to be caught by a local tribe. (Weirdly, they're called "Negritos," which is a term that is probably verboten today but was formerly applied to tribes from Southeast Asia.) Gerig, whom the tribesmen don't seem in a hurry to execute, tells part of his story to a younger explorer, Gunderson, whom the natives do earmark for sacrifice. Gerig helps Gunderson escape with a diary containing Dierdorf's research. On his way out, Gunderson witnesses the Pongo himself as the gorilla assaults a Black couple who have a chimp on a leash. The Africans flee and we see Pongo take the leashed chimp away. One assumes the object of Pongo's intervention was anthropoid liberation, though since we never see the chimp again, he might have given up captivity to become a tasty morsel for a cannibal ape.                                                 

  Providentially, Gunderson makes it to a settlement but dies of fever, serving only to place the diary in the hands of a group of European explorers. An upper-crust Brit anthropologist, Sir Harry, decides to take his merry band and seek out Dierdorf's enclave in the hope of capturing the missing link-- though until the movie's end, no one in the film ever offers a reason as to why they believe an albino gorilla would be such a link. So, even though the expedition didn't necessarily come to Africa to hunt gorillas, off they go loaded for ape-- Sir Harry, his daughter Pam (Wrixton), his snooty secretary Clive, a German jungle-guide, a comedy relief, another convenient anthropologist, and a hired gun named Bishop (Richard Fraser), who would've been the male lead if the film wasn't primarily about Pongo. That said, Pam provides the only thing like dramatic tension as the group tediously treks toward its destination. Though she has apparently at least dated Clive somewhat, she becomes very smitten by Bishop, though he pretends not to reciprocate. Sir Harry makes clear that he doesn't approve of his daughter making up to a man of the lower class. Eventually the party crosses path with the same "Negritos" who are still holding Gerig prisoner, and Gerig tells them everything that he didn't already tell Gunderson.                                           

  Once the expedition reaches the deserted Dierdorf compound, they set a trap for Pongo. In one of the script's few good details, they're assured that Pongo will show up, because the late scientist planted some sort of rare gorilla-goody vegetation in the area. Pongo does show up and pokes around the compound while everyone's asleep, though he wakes Pam, who sees him and screams. Despite the fact that everyone there is counting on Pongo to show up, for some reason they all think she just imagined the critter. Slightly later, Pam makes an all-out play for Bishop, to which he finally surrenders, moments before Clive walks in and the two men fight, very briefly. However, a new threat manifests as the German guide, with Clive as his ally, takes everyone prisoner and ties them up, for he only went along with the expedition to make his way to a cache of jungle-gold. Clive and the guide take Pam as a hostage, but once they're gone Bishop gets free and reveals that he's a Rhodesian agent who's been trying to find the party guilty of some earlier murders. But Bishop doesn't get to square off with the two rotters. That's left up to Pongo, who kills the bad guys and makes off with Pam. She's spared from the fate worse than death by yet a regular-hued gorilla who apparently also wants some human nookie. The fight between the two apes-- the only fairly lively part of the movie-- ends with Pongo's victory, but he's apparently weakened enough by the fight that the explorers manage to overcome him with nothing more than a gunshot to the shoulder. Pongo is taken prisoner and presumably gets shipped back to Europe for study in the thoroughly anti-climactic ending.                                                                                                                                                                                                And then, in the final ten minutes of the film, someone advances that they've tested Pongo's intelligence (how?) and determined that he's smarter than your average ape, so that proves that he is the missing link to man. Or at least maybe a recapitulation of whatever freak of nature led to such an evolutionary leap in antiquity? Who knows? No one ever states that the gorilla is smarter because he has white hair, but it's impossible not to imagine some sort of rough correlation on the part of the writer. The trope of the dueling beasts, who loosely mirror the conflict of the contentious human males for the sole female, is a little more rewarding, but only a little. For what it's worth THE WHITE GORILLA, cut-and-paste job though it was, captured a little more pulp-poetry at its conclusion.