THE MARK OF ZORRO (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*, 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                          Director Don McDougall, whose long list of TV episodes includes some very nice work for shows like RAWHIDE and Classic TREK, probably had to make the best of things when he drew this assignment. He had to take the script for the 1940 MARK OF ZORRO, one of the most sumptuous swashbucklers of the Classical Hollywood era and squish its plot and action down into about 75 minutes. Still, enough of the mythic aspects of the 20th-Century Fox version of Zorro come through that I can give this 1974 MARK a fair rating.                                                                                                       

 The telefilm's best asset is star Frank Langella in the dual role of Zorro and his foppish civilian ID Diego Vega. The actor had to follow closely in the shoes of Tyrone Power, but I thought he gave both characters as much mojo as anyone could under the circumstances. Ricardo Montalban is in a similar position, playing Esteban, the military power behind the corrupt alcalde's rule, but in some ways he's better off, since his normal acting-style was more florid than that of his predecessor, and thus his Esteban doesn't seem too derivative. The rest of the cast deliver decent perfs, from Gilbert Roland and Yvonne deCarlo as Diego's dad and mom, to Robert Middleton and Louise Sorel as the alcalde and his perhaps unfaithful wife. Anne Archer gets one good scene as the romantic interest Teresa-- the one taking place in the church, where Zorro's pretending to be a priest-- but her character doesn't get nearly as much attention as the Linda Darnell version did. She doesn't even get a final clinch with the hero at the conclusion. Her casting in terms of her age is a bit odd too. In the 1940 film, Gale Sondergaard, then a little over forty, played the aunt of Teresa, and that role was played by Linda Darnell, who was then seventeen. In contrast, Anne Archer was only seven years younger than Louise Sorel. There's an odd remark by Middleton's character about how some figure akin to Zorro may have been observed in "The Pyrenees" of Spain, which was perhaps meant to address where Diego got the idea of Zorro. Possibly this remark was in the 1940 film too, but I'm not inspired to find out.

AMAZONS AND GLADIATORS (2001)

 

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

While my recent screening of BATTLE OF THE AMAZONS yielded only stinky cheese, AMAZONS AND GLADIATORS offers a more pleasing aroma.

In the BATTLE review, I said that it was no sin to be unoriginal, only to be lazy. In GLADIATORS writer-director Zachary Weintraub produced a cheese-fest consisting mostly of sexy men and women fighting each other, motivated only by a routine revenge fantasy. And the feminist tropes of the film are just as superficial. Nevertheless, GLADIATORS is never lazy but delivers its conflicts with considerable energy.     

Most of the action takes place in a fictional Roman province, "Panne," supposedly "60 years after the death of Christ." But it's a very mutable history, for its villain is the real-life Roman officer Marcus Crassius, famed for putting down the slave revolt of Spartacus. In this tale, Julius Caesar fears the popularity of Crassius (Patrick Bergin) with the Roman people, so the emperor appoints the soldier governor of Panne. Crassius resents being exiled from Rome, so he becomes a tyrant to the common folk under his reign. As one of his depredations, he kills the mother of heroine Serena and consigns the young girl and her sister Gwyned to slavery. As adults the two of them (played by Nichole Hiltz and Wendi Winburn) are trained as dancers, but their beauty attracts the attention of Roman officials. Gwyned (she of the oddly British name) becomes reconciled to a ritzy captivity, but Serena kills a Roman who tries to rape her. Luckily, there's an Amazon captive (Jennifer Rubin) close to hand, and the warrior-woman not only helps Serena escape, she paves Serena's path to join the Amazons of Queen Zenobia.

There was a historical Queen Zenobia who battled Rome, but she wasn't a contemporary of Crassius (and neither lived just 60 years after Christ's death). Real Zenobia also had no association with the Greek legends of Amazons, but this one-- who's not a major character here-- rules a tribe of female warriors who live out in the forest. They don't steal men to mate with but are defined purely as rebels against Roman authority. Serena trains as a woman-warrior and nurtures a desire to be revenged on Governor Crassius. Ultimately, after a lot of complications, Serena gets the chance to duel Crassius to the death in his low-rent imitation of a Roman arena.

The most amusing feminist trope comes after Crassius' death, when the assembled Amazons, having put down the small contingent of Roman soldiers, warn the arena-patrons never to abuse women, or they'll face Amazon vengeance. GLADIATORS is more compelling, even in its cheesiness, when it simply depicts women as willing to fight for justice-- even if these justice-fighters just happen to all be unbelievable hotties. There's no attention to how the Amazons came to separate themselves from patriarchal rule, nor is there any sense of their even having a culture or religion; they only qualify as a "weird society" by the mere fact of being an all-female tribe. There are a few puzzling scenes where a wisewoman utters predictions of Rome's imminent doom and even claims that Serena will play some role in that downfall. Only at the end does the prophet provide closure, claiming that Serena's Amazons will participate in the sacking of Rome, alongside the more typical suspects, the Goths and Vandals. I don't think that Goths, Vandals or even early converts to Roman Christianity would be very welcoming to Amazonian customs. But within the movie's terms, I suppose the apparent fulfillment of the prophecy falls into the uncanny domain as well.      

LUPIN III: MISSED BY A DOLLAR (2000)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

MISSED BY A DOLLAR was the last Lupin TV special to be animated in the traditional fashion. More importantly, though, DOLLAR is much less dominated by the tropes of wild fantasy found in many Lupin stories of the period. Here the master thief and his gang oppose an evil financial cabal that seeks to manipulate world events, and the only metaphenomenal elements of DOLLAR are the rather low-level tricks Lupin uses to bamboozle Zenigata.

As usual the Lupin gang only oppose greater evils as a means of maintaining their freedom to commit generally harmless crimes. In fact, in the opening sequence the master thief begins the adventure in an apparently legal venue: participating in a New York auction (albeit in disguise) for a rare ring. However, another party outbids Lupin by a mere dollar, and on top of that, Zenigata arrives with a squad of New York cops to seize the master criminal. Never daunted, Lupin simply evades the cops and steals the ring, However, an enforcer working for the mystery bidder steals back the ring and tries to kill Lupin in the bargain. Of course all Lupin viewers know that this means war.

Lupin briefs his comrades in crime on his plans: the ring can guide one to a fabulous brooch, which in turn confers incredible luck upon its possessor. It's not entirely clear why Lupin wants the brooch. He natters a bit about a Lupin Empire, but somehow he convinces Jigen and Goemon that the brooch will lead to a big payoff. Fujiko isn't interested because she's become fascinated with the world of high finance, though she changes her tune when reversals decimate her wealth. Fujiko's attempt to transition from crook to high financier proves the reverse of Lupin's new enemy: Cynthia Craymov, already the head of a banking empire. Her father was the deposed tyrant of a small country, so Cynthia wants to rule an empire founded in high finance. She believes implicitly in the brooch's power to convey luck, though said power is never unilaterally proven. Her main enforcer is an ex-KGB killer with a penchant for knife-fighting, but Cynthia's cool resolve makes her the main opponent.

There's a subplot in which Lupin appears to fall to his death, in such a way that both his friends and Zenigata are convinced he's finished. The sequence is good for a laugh as Zenigata mourns his foe (or at least the impossibility of ever accomplishing his monomaniacal goal). There are some decent but workmanlike action-sequences, with Fujiko getting just one femme-formidable scene in which she shoots a guy menacing Goemon. In the end Cynthia's crimes are exposed and the brooch ends up in good hands, though for a change all four of the super-crooks end up temporarily broke. There are some acidulous comments on the financial mentality, but anyone wanting a critique of capitalism would need to look elsewhere.  

JUNGLE RAIDERS (1945)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*                                                                                                                          I've thought of the perfect term for limited-location serials like this one and others in the oeuvre of producer Sam Katzman: "shuttle serials." Basically, because the producer of such serials doesn't want to film on more than two or three locations, the actors are forced to keep "shuttling" back and forth between roughly the same locations. JUNGLE RAIDERS, for instance, really just has two functional locations for its fifteen chapters: a jungle trading-post and a camp, surrounded by mountains, where a tribe of Caucasian Africans make their home. The back-and-forth shutting isn't quite as dull as it is in Katzman's LOST PLANET, but I was ready for the serial to be over long before it ended.                                                                                  

The initiating action is provided by two middle-aged scientists who seek the secret of the Arzec tribe: a root reputed to have great curative powers. The root is never important to the story, however. Doctor Reed comes to the jungle first and manages to befriend the Arzecs and learn the hidden location of their camp. When seedy trader Jake (Charles King) learns of Reed's accomplishment, he holds Reed prisoner in the cellar of the trading-post, trying to learn the natives' location in order to plunder their famed secret treasure. While Reed is being held, his colleague Doctor Moore shows up and manages to befriend the Arzecs as well, again motivated by an altruistic cause. Both Reed and Moore have grown children-- daughter Ann for Reed, son Bob (Kane Richmond) for Moore-- who come to Africa to rendezvous with their respective dads. Ann arrives first by boat, and Jake sends his feminine aide Cora (Veda Ann Borg) to intercept Ann, the better to use her as a club over her old man. Just slightly later, Bob drives to the trading-post area with his war-buddy Joe (Eddie Quillan), looking to find Doctor Moore.                         

What follows is just one twist and turn after another, as Jake and his allies seek to find their way to the treasure, while Bob, Joe and Ann only slowly suss out the danger to themselves and the two scientists. (Reed, BTW, remains in captivity throughout most of the serial's early chapters and only becomes significant after being rescued.) Things are further complicated by the power-plays of an Arzec female priestess named Zara (Carol Hughes), who wants to displace the priest in charge of the tribe's religion. Some narrative tension is provided by the way both villains and heroes are obliged to enter into temporary alliances, which usually end in some sort of betrayal.   

   Nice location shots and attractive performers keep things moving moderately well in RAIDERS. Richmond provides a strong lead as always, while King is welcome here as a scuzzy schemer, as opposed to the more standard mystery mastermind. Quillan is similarly distinctive, providing comedy relief that's actually funny, a rarity in serials. The serial's most noteworthy aspect-- not including the lack of backstory for the Caucasian tribe in a part of Africa with no Negro residents-- is the presence of two formidable female villains in one serial. In fact, toward the end of the serial the two nasty ladies have a brief catfight. It's nothing compared to the spirited bouts of PERILS OF NYOKA, but it qualifies the film for my "fighting femmes" category.   

TAOISM DRUNKARD (1984)

 

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

You know, sometimes one image sums up a film better than any number of words. And in the case of the TAOISM DRUNKARD, also known as DRUNKEN WU TANG-- the image of a demon watermelon with teeth and limbs says it all about this "chopwacky," the directing debut of Yuen Cheung-Yan.

Most Hong Kong comedies are just assemblages of goofy jokes around loose plotlines, but DRUNKARD makes the ACES GO PLACES series look like the best of the Marx Brothers. I tip my hat to the stalwart online reviewers who did their best to figure who was fighting who and for what reasons, but I have nothing to add to their efforts. Yuen is clearly just tossing out anything that he thinks will make his audience laugh, and occasionally he's fairly inventive, as with an opening fight between main villain Old Devil (Yuen Shun-Yi) and his virtuous brother, where the latter wears attire able to sprout metal spikes. Old Devil enlists the aid of a female martial artist, Starry Devil (Hilda Liu), who obeys the evildoer because he fed her a potion that can make her age to death. Somehow, director Yuen's character, a weird drunken priest, gets into conflict with Old Devil, and Yuen is aided by a younger fighter and a couple of unmarried sisters. One's enjoyment of this farrago depends totally on how much one likes the wacky stunts Yuen devises.

The most interesting thing here is that the director and the Old Devil actor are part of a filmmaking clan which also includes Yuen Woo-ping, who garnered some Hollywood fame for his fight-choreography work. One review avers that Woo-ping might have helped out on DRUNKARD, but that in no way improves the movie.

     

  

ONE PIECE: STAMPEDE (2019)

 

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

The ONE PIECE manga series, the TV show, and (I assume) all the movies, even those I haven't seen, are first and foremost big noisy shonen spectacles. They possess mythicity only when the creators put all the gob-smacking action in some sort of context-- the cosmological innovations of the pirate-world's biological sphere, the sociological conflicts of the lawless and the law-abiding.

Of the five movies I've reviewed here, the aptly named STAMPEDE just thunders past any epistemological context, and fairly runs over the viewer with action, action, action. Probably insiders who know the OP universe inside-out will have no objections. But even though I'm reasonably well grounded in the OP cosmos-- having read 78 tankobon collections of this wack-a-doodle manga-- I found that so much concentration on action left me enervated.

The setup is that the Straw Hats attend the planet's first "Pirate Fest," on a remote island supposedly shielded from the World Navy. Though a lot of the other pirates seem to have been designed (poorly) for this cartoon movie, a fair number of characters from earlier manga-storylines pop up here.  Some are rogues who challenged Luffy and company in the past, like Buggy the Clown and Crocodile, while others are loosely affiliated with the law, like Smoker and Boa Hancock. But none of them get any introductions, so you'd better bring your own scorecard.

The festival is quickly broken up by the Navy, when someone finks to them, and by the Menace of the Day: a colossus named Douglas Bullet. He may deserve the distinction of ONE PIECE's worst villain, being just another sorehead with a grudge who tapped into some ultimate power, which nevertheless can be surpassed by the incredible tenacity of Monkey D. Luffy.

Aside from the mostly forgettable crossovers, STAMPEDE has one other small distinction. The organizing premise of ONE PIECE is that prior to the start of the Grand Pirate Era, a superb pirate left behind a hidden treasure, "One Piece," before he was executed. However, though the allure of the treasure supposedly spurs the multifarious pirates to seek it out, One Piece is never the actual subject of a plot in the 78 volumes I've read. STAMPEDE does depart from that tendency in that the prize of Pirate Fest is a device that can guide one to the desired goal. But since such a contingency could interfere with the continuity of the still-ongoing manga series, the device is naturally disposed of.      

     

HONOR ROLL #310

 No fans of SANJI should stampede to see his role in this film.

What's the one thing YUEN CHEUNG-YAN holds in common with a certain Oscar-winning rabbit? (Hint: *not* both winning an Oscar.) 

Raid that jungle, VEDA ANN BORG.

Can even a master thief defeat a master banker like CYNTHIA CRAYMOV?

 NICOLA HOLTZ, Amazon driver.

"ZORRRROOOO!" just didn't sound the same, even from RICARDO MONTALBAN. 

THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, SEASON TWO (2007-8)

 

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

Though Season Two's mythicity rates the same as that of Season One, the final season of LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES is more appealing in a kinetic sense. It's as if the producers realized in the first season that they couldn't duplicate the quirky appeal of the Legion-comics of the Silver Age and so switched to an approach more like that of the hyperviolent Image Comics of the 1990s.  

The design for Two's "Big Bad," Imperiex, fairly screams "Image," but a new inductee to the hero-group-- a Superman-clone nicknamed "Superman X"-- is not much different, with his eyes all black cornea with green irises. Superman-X summons the 31st-century heroes to his era, that of the 41st century, to defeat the world-destroying tyrant Imperiex. Instead, the villain time-travels to the 31st century and begins a new reign of terror there, unleashing such familiar menaces as the Fatal Five and the Legion of Super-Villains. The Legion tries to compensate by bringing 21st-century Superman to their aid-- this time looking to be in his twenties rather than a teen. But Superman-X, with his Ahab-like obsession with stopping the future overlord, is the real "face of Superman" for the season.

There's a somewhat better usage of comics-plots than I found in Season One. The story of Timber Wolf's mutation by his ruthless scientist-father is extended by an adaptation of a story in which a different Legionnaire was accused of causing a death. In contrast, there's a completely original, and reasonably affecting, episode focusing on Lightning Lad and his two siblings. To be sure, though, said tale includes a comics-derived incident in which the aforementioned Legionnaire loses an arm and must have it replaced by a robot limb (a good fifteen years before Luke Skywalker suffered the same fate in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK).

The greater possibility of death increases the tension of the conflicts. As in the comics, Triplicate Girl loses one of her duplicates, which means that she must adjust to a new fighting-pattern, not to mention taking on a new cognomen. Superman-X is given a "would you kill Hitler as a child" moment, and Brainiac 5-- who as noted earlier is a humanoid computer rather than just a really smart guy-- has to confront his cyber-ancestor, the original Brainiac. There's also a little bit of Eros to balance the increase in Thanatos-- mostly in the suggestion of a thing between Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad-- though I still think the producers missed a beat by not building up the romantic element from the first. But as indicated above, the greater concentration of action-sequences is Season Two's biggest asset. 

                   

CONSTANTINE-- THE SERIES (2014-15)

 

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

I won't discourse on the story behind DC's John Constantine, having already provided considerable data in my review of the 2005 CONSTANTINE. For purposes of reviewing this one-season rendition of comics' most famous exorcist, one only needs to know that the edgy Englishman is living in the U.S. for some reason (to make him more appealing to American audiences, I imagine) and that he seeks to "exorcise" his personal demons of guilt by helping other people escape from supernatural infestations. In this endeavor he gets aid from a few other kindred spirits, like Zed Martin (another comics-character, played by Angelica Celaya). A heavenly angel named Manny (Harold Perrineau) hangs around dispensing mostly useless pearls of wisdom.

All thirteen episodes of CONSTANTINE are well-constructed supernatural mysteries that the hero must solve using more wit and guile, given that his magical abilities are modest at best. The various victims of curses and possessions are given realistic characterizations and the FX and costumes are impressive, particularly in one episode's depiction of a monster called an "invunche" (derived from a 1980s SWAMP THING storyline). And Matt Ryan sells the Constantine character as few actors could have, emphasizing his impatience and sardonic humor without lessening the character's capacity for guilt and empathy. Yet there's something about all of the episodes that never escapes the shadow of the formulaic. To borrow from one of my ARCHIVE essays, the CONSTANTINE scripts are all about "what things happen" and not about "how things happen."

The writers also tried to conceal the show's episodic nature by injecting a continuing metaphysical threat, a "Rising Darkness" capable of breaking down the borders between earth and hell. But since the series was dropped, all these dire suggestions amount to window-dressing. The writers were comics-savvy enough to toss in "Easter-egg" references to DC characters like Jim Corrigan and Felix Faust, and there's a story involving a malignant "black diamond" that may have been a covert salute to Eclipso. But on the whole, CONSTANTINE's main virtue was the energetic performance of Ryan. Indeed, when Ryan reprised this role on the LEGENDS OF TOMORROW show, not even those writers' terrible scripts could rob the actor of his formidable presence. 

STAR TREK: PICARD (SEASON TWO, 2022)

 

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

Well, the experiment cost about 8 hours I'll never get back, but after watching Season Two of PICARD, I confirmed for my own satisfaction that only the participation of showrunner Michael Chabon resulted in a superior storyline for Season One. To be sure, he claimed prior to his departure that he was heavily involved in the Season Two storyline, so that season would have remained bad had he stayed. But Alex Kurtzman and his fellow custodians of the TREK franchise are primarily responsible for plunging TREK back into the valley of mediocrity. And while the original NEXTGEN only occasionally resorted to banal political posturing, Season Two is far ghastlier in that respect than the worst of the old series-- though I suppose those who agree with Season Two's politics would feel differently.

There's no way I can give Season Two as witty a summation as someone did for STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, which some wag re-christened "Where Nomad Has Gone Before." Nevertheless, Two really is "Where 'Mirror Mirror' and 'City on the Edge of Forever' have gone before." Some time after the events of Season One, Picard and his New Zoo Crew-- more or les including the VOYAGER alum Seven of Nine-- investigate a space-anomaly. It turns out to be a new manifestation of the Borg, which starts to assimilate the ship. A sudden transition then brings Picard into contact with another old foe, the mercurial Q (John deLancie in what I assume is a finale-narrative for the character).

Q then introduces Picard and Crew to a changed version of their enlightened Federation: a space-empire founded primarily in xenophobia. Oddly, though Wikipedia reported some anti-Trump rhetoric from Patrick Stewart during promotion of Season One, Season Two seems to be where all the real ultraliberal cant ended up. There's no attempt to explore how the super-xenophobic empire came to be, for Q reveals that he was the empire's creator by virtue of messing with time. His challenge to Picard: go back in time and make everything better.

I'm not going to dilate on all the 21st-century rambles of the Picard Crew, except to note two politically charged developments. One involves Seven of Nine's visit to the Isle of Lesbos, a state of affairs that lesbian Trekkers stumped for back during the original VOYAGER run. The other deals with a despicable subplot about anti-ICE rhetoric that anticipates the ultraliberal fanaticism about protecting illegal aliens seen in 2025. Neither development has much to do with the main plotline.

Anyway, the Crew eventually does find its "patient zero" and erases the rogue timeline. In the course of events, somehow the comedy-relief Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) becomes the new Borg Queen of the future, but this, like Q's time-puzzle, all works out for the best. I'm not feeling too sanguine about the concluding Season Three.

Will Wheaton makes an appearance as Wesley Crusher, so this season also registers as having crossover-status.

          

FLYER AND MAGIC SWORD (1970)

 

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

When I only saw one online description of this Hong Kong-Thailand co-production, and said summary said it involves rival clans fighting over a salt mine, I suspected that the title was a fantasy-fakeout. And yes, there's no magic sword and no one even does "trampoline flying."

The hero is Wai Chin (billed as "Nai Mi," possibly to obscur,e the actor's Thai heritage), and since childhood he's been in love with Lan Choo (Fan Ling), daughter of Tien-Long (Dean Shek of ENTER THE DRAGON fame). I don't know why Tien-Long won't let them marry, but he seems totally preoccupied with the aforementioned salt mine. His rival for the mine-- which is barely seen-- is called "Wu Tang" in the streaming dub. But while Wu Tang is a bastard, Tien-Long might be worse. The film's opening scene-- and it's the film's best scene-- starts with Wu Tang and his soldiers attacking Tien-long's house. Outnumbered, Tien-Long, Lan Choo, and their retainers flee to a bolt-hole, but Wu Tang sets the house afire, so that the bolt-hole fills with smoke. Three retainers try to escape, and Tien-Long kills them-- moments before the patriarch changes his mind and allows the rest of his coterie to get out.

After that, FLYER is just a melange of combat-scenes and wistful romantic interludes between Chin and Choo. Only one "magical" implement appears, in that one of Chin's opponents wields a "boomerang claw-weapon." Most of the fighting is sword-fu, with Choo getting in hers only in the first scene, but nothing's memorable in that department. One might call this a reversal of ROMEO AND JULIET, where the two lovers survive and the patriarchal clans (no mothers are seen) destroy one another.      

RED SONJA (2025)

 

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

"[Hyrkania] was a place of breathtaking beauty and pristine nature, where people lived as one with the Goddess of the Earth ... it was a time of peace and harmony, until the rise of the barbarian king Anzus, who swept across the land, bringing terror and destruction wherever he went."-- Initial voiceover to RED SONJA.    

"It's knowledge that brings civilization to the barbarians."-- Draygan, haranguing a defeated ruler about the foolishness of theism.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

My first reaction to the voiceover was that writer Tasha Huo was putting some heavy symbolic baggage upon Hyrkania, the native land of heroine Red Sonja. The "Red Sonya" created by Robert E. Howard was a denizen of 16th-century Poland, so Marvel comics editor Roy Thomas probably decided that Marvel's version, "Red Sonja," would hail from Howard's quasi-Russian realm of Hyrkania. Since Marvel writers never made much of Sonja's national origins, it's likely Huo conceived the movie's opposition between a prelapsarian, paradisical Hyrkania, violated by barbarians, and evil Draygan's vision of a grand future that eliminates both gods and barbarians. 

The comics-Sonja became a woman warrior after losing just her immediate family, but this Sonja (Matilda Lutz) loses her whole village when it's ravaged by Anzus the Barbarian. She and a few others escape death in the forests, but the other refugees perish. Sonja spends the next decade or so looking for any other survivors in the vast Hyrkanian forests, accompanied only by her loyal steed Vihur. Aside from her fruitless searches, Sonja does little but worship her people's goddess Asherah (modeled on one of the fertility deities of the ancient Near East) and hone her swordfighting skills, like a blade-wielding Sheena of the Jungle. Meanwhile, her fated enemy Emperor Draygan (Robert Sheehan) has tapped the powers of strange science to conquer many realms including that of Anzus. Then Draygan decides to extend his empire into the Hyrkanian forests, along with a retinue of soldiers and some key henchpeople. The most notable of these is Annisia (Wallis Day), a swordswoman who was given her freedom after killing dozens of opponents in Draygan's gladiatorial games, but who is now haunted by the voices of those slain in the arena. Once Draygan starts clear-cutting trees and caging wild creatures, Sonja utters the classic line, "Now we have a quarrel." (Just kidding, that was from SWORD AND THE SORCERER.)   

Later Huo's script will get confused about whether Sonja should be termed a Hyrkanian or not, despite the voiceover's clear implication that she belonged to that realm. And here's where I unleash my only major "spoiler:" Huo allows this confusion because she wants to sell a "big reveal" at picture's end: that Draygan was also a survivor from Sonja's village. However, though young Draygan was enslaved by the ravagers, the boy somehow kept hold of an incomplete "Book of Secrets, taken from the village temple. While Sonja grew up in the forest, venerating the Earth Goddess, Draygan reviled all deities and used the proto-science from his Book to become a new Emperor. When Sonja gets in Draygan's path of conquest, he gets the idea that she, being a Hyrkanian, can lead him to the missing parts of his Book of Secrets, which supposedly will give him even greater power.

Since Draygan wants Sonja's supposed knowledge, the Emperor tries to break her by sentencing her to the arena. This backfires, for Sonja gathers her fellow gladiators into a fighting-force, and after a nice (albeit short) battle with a giant Cyclops, she and her allies escape. As a further touch of irony, one of the other gladiators, name of Daix, really is one of the "special Hyrkanians" both Draygan and Sonja have been looking for. This development leads to an equally ironic resolution of the Book-subplot, which I'll pass over. Annisia and Sonja duel just twice before both Draygan and his forces are defeated by Sonja and her warriors. After much carnage, I'll state that the concluding face-off between the three opponents isn't like any other sword-and-sorcery film I've ever seen.

It's fair to argue that Huo and director W.J. Bassett may have cadged their dialectic from a lot of earlier, non-Howardian sources, particularly the 2009 AVATAR, with its opposition between nature-worshipping primitives and materialistic, acquisitive invaders from Earth. Yet in one respect RED SONJA plays fair with its dialectic more than AVATAR does, in that SONJA addresses (to revise Ingmar Bergman) "the Silence of Goddess." Comics-Sonja lives in a world of demonstrable gods and sorcery. But there's no real magic in the SONJA world-- only scientific devices and some nonhuman species. Both theist Sonja and atheist Draygan complain that Asherah does not answer their appeals, and the Goddess only speaks to Sonja once, when the wounded heroine hovers between life and death. So is Asherah real, or is Draygan right, that all gods are just conjured from the imagination?

Now I've written so much about SONJA's plot and theme that one might think it's some feminist lecture against toxic masculinity, like the execrable 2020 BIRDS OF PREY, to name another adventure-flick with both a writer and director from the XX side of the gene pool. SONJA might not be a great adventure-movie like the classic 1982 CONAN, but it shows the same excellent bloody-mindedness seen in the early Kathryn Bigelow films. Star Matilda Lutz, despite standing only a little over 5'6", displays a tigerish quality foreign to other Sonja-actresses (all two of them). If all one wants from a barbarian fantasy is throats slashed and guts stabbed, SONJA ought to fulfill those needs. I've avoided looking at other reviews, but if it's true that most of SONJA's reviews have been negative, they must have all come from people who never saw a really bad S&S film.      

SCANNERS III: THE TAKEDOWN (1992)

  

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

Despite having the same director and writer as SCANNERS: THE NEW ORDER, the second sequel to SCANNERS doesn't rise to the level of competent genre-material. It does give viewers many scenes of Scanners tossing people around with telekinesis, but it screws up the psychological motifs that could have made for a better film than the original.

It's still roughly 10 years from the time of the original film, and though I don't remember much about NEW ORDER, it seemed odd to me that the general public now knows what Scanners are and what they can do. Some time back Elton Monet, a scientist who's been researching the Scanner phenomenon, adopted and raised to maturity two European kids, Alex (Steve Parrish) and Helena (Liliana Komorowska). Both have the requisite psychic powers, but for some reason the script doesn't venture to explain, Alex suffers none of the usual side-effects of his in utero mutation. In fact, at a party whose attendees all know what Alex is, the partygoers ask Alex to perform a trick with his powers. The trick results in a friend's accidental death, so Alex goes off to a Thailand monastery to learn how to control his powers. A better script might have made more of Alex's search for spiritual clarity, but the Thai-trek is just a plot-point.

To be sure, Alex gets secondary status because Helena is the star of the show. The young woman-- who incidentally remains friends with Valerie, Alex's ex-girlfriend-- suffers migraines whether she uses her powers or not. Her adoptive father reveals a new project: chemical patches that may be capable, after adequate testing, of eradicating the Scanner side-effects. However, Helena steals the patches to anneal her suffering. In nearly no time, the untested tech unleashes Helena's "Miss Hyde." She kills her adoptive father and enlists a small army of institutionalized Scanners to become her agents, and one of the first things she does is to send her pawns to Thailand to kill Alex.

Perhaps the dumbest subplot involves Helena to get revenge upon a scientist at Elton's institute who tortured her when she was a young girl-- wait, what? What was Elton doing at the time, and how did the guy get away with such actions? I think the writer might have been evoking the old "good father's who's really a bad father" trope. But he lacked the guts to give Elton such a personality, so this nugatory scientist was used to provoke Helena to vengeful violence.

Naturally Alex and his girlfriend save the day from the bad sister. Since the FX scenes are only fair, the sole reason to watch TAKEOVER is to watch Komorowska pull out all stops as a psychic super-villain.

HONOR ROLL #309

 LILIANA KOMOROWSKA, psycho psychic.

All hail MELINDA LUTZ, the definitive Red Sonja.

NAI MI might not really be the actor's name, but it fits my scheme, so...

ALLISON became a chilled PILL in her last outing.

 Five-o-clock shadow is always the right time for MATT RYAN.

X marks the hero when it's SUPERMAN-X.

AQUAMAN (2006)

 

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

I don't know which of the many reboots of the AQUAMAN comics-franchise influenced this unsuccessful pilot for a WB teleseries, but it follows many of the same beats as the popular 2018 feature film. Again we see the hero first as a small child, living amidst surface-dwelling humans with his mother and father, only to have his mother stolen from him by mysterious sea-dwellers. Then, after growing to adulthood with his father as confidante, the hero learns that his mother was a native of sunken Atlantis, and that the Atlanteans are coming back to give him grief. The pilot's biggest change from that template is that this version of Arthur "Aquaman" Curry (Justin Hartley) isn't the product of a mer-woman and a surface-dweller; Arthur's paternal unit adopts Little Arthur and marries his mother after finding them drifting in the ocean.

It's not clear, within the limits of a forty-minute pilot, why Atlanteans start messing in Mature Arthur's life after leaving him alone for roughly fifteen years, but there are both good water-breathers (Ving Rhames) and bad ones called "sirens" who can morph into claw-handed demons (Adrianne Palicki). But the script, by SMALLVILLE's showrunners Michael Millar and Alfred Gough, certainly piles on lots of subplots for development in the ongoing series that didn't happen. Arthur and his dad live in the Florida Keys, just a stone's throw from the mysterious Bermuda Triangle, somehow tied into the underwater city of Atlantis (never seen). There's a government agent investigating the recrudescence of Atlanteans, and a female Navy pilot who ends up "racing" her plane against Arthur, swimming below her in the sea like a human torpedo. A Navy man is found sixty years after he disappeared, but he hasn't aged-- though he doesn't get any older, thanks to an Atlantean assassin. Arthur barely has time to suss out any of these impending plot-threads, but he does get to slay the evil siren who maybe kidnapped his mother. 

In addition to some engaging plotlines, the pilot provided a few nice visual moments showing the wonders of the ocean, albeit on a TV budget. Probably this would have made a good show, certainly better than many of the abortions brought into imperfect life after the WB channel merged with the UPN and begot the horror that was the CW.

DAIGORO VS. GOLIATH (1972)

 

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

I consider this the first "kaiju comedy" feature film. I've heard some critics assign that distinction to KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, but though I've never seen the original Japanese cut, KKVG isn't structured like a comedy, which requires a lot more overt jokes than even an American distributor could have possibly removed.

DAIGORO was a reworking of a failed (and ostensibly serious) Godzilla project, which was to have been a collaboration between Godzilla's studio Toho and the special effects company Tsurabaya. Once the Big G was off the table, the producers shifted gears toward a comedy for small children, quite as if someone said, "Well, if we can't use Godzilla, let's do our own version of the Son of Godzilla, but make him even dorkier." Indeed, the hippo-like visage of Daigoro, a "kid kaiju" like Minilla, seems to be a joke in its own right.

Unlike Minilla, Daigoro is dependent upon human beings for parental guidance. His mother was a subterranean creature awakened by nuclear tests, and after she ravaged Japan, the military killed her. However, she left behind Baby Daigoro. One might expect the government to take charge of the infant kaiju, whether for study or weaponization-- but this would have deprived the kid-audience of the nuclear-family experience. So the government allows one private individual, an inventor named Goro, to adopt Daigoro and keep him on an island. Trouble is. Goro has to pay for the kid-monster's upkeep, and his only way of doing so is to enter Japanese contests for wacky new inventions. However, Daigoro eventually gets to prove his mettle when a more destructive giant monster, dubbed Goliath, descends to Earth and begins tearing things up.

Though most adults will get little out of the humor here, it's at least palatable if one thinks of kids seeing such jokes for the first time. It's at least lively, not repeating the same jokes the way some Gamera-flicks did, and the weird end-scene with the genial kaiju availing himself of a giant privy has to be seen to be believed. The combative action between the giant monsters wasn't much better than that of a SyFy critter-flick. There's an ecology lecture about how human misuse of the biosphere has weakened the atmosphere, thus making it easier for meteors-- and monsters named Goliath-- to descend and wreak destruction.

The one element that's not totally aimed at kids is Goro's niece Yoshiko. She's of marriageable age, but her uncle's reputation is so bad that every arranged marriage she explores falls through. This is an odd side-plot for a kids' movie, especially since it doesn't affect the main plot, though she manages some sort of hookup at the end. Maybe the writers just thought kids of both genders could identify with having to listen to the complaints of older sisters.                   

            

MANTIS FIST AND TIGER CLAWS OF SHAOLIN (1977)

  

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I think I've found my new favorite "crazy-fu" film in this one.

First things first: though there are several characters who utilize kung fu-- the hero, the villains, and all the villains' minions-- there's no mention of anything to do with the Shaolin Temple. There's also no great focus on animal-styles of fighting. "Tiger claw" techniques are verbally referenced once during a battle, and there's no mention of "mantis fist." The film does begin with an odd little lecture in which a narrator talks about the carnivorous nature of the real bugs while two cartoon mantises copulate, and then the female bites off the male's head. Even more oddly, this ends up being relevant to what initially looks like just another quarrel between a noble hero and some rapacious (emphasis on the "rape") villains.

Pai (John Cheung) stops in a tavern for a drink. He sees waitress Shuang (Sarina Sai) getting harassed by the son of a powerful local family, the Hungs, who has a small gang of minions. Pai's superior skills drive off the Hung faction, but as Pai leaves, he mentions to the grateful Shuang that his next destination is the local "orchid house." Later Shuang learns that Pai's motives there are noble as well. At some point in the past, Pai's sister Yu was abducted and sold to a whorehouse (possibly by the Hung family), and Pai has gathered enough money to buy her contract and liberate Yu. 

However, things go from bad to worse for Shuang. Despite a local's warning that women often get abducted in these parts, she wanders into the forest, and the guys from the tavern assault her. They leave her behind afterward, but before they get home they're attacked by some unseen entity who hurls bamboo shoots at them, either impaling or killing them in other ways. In jig time, the Hung Patriarch (Dean Shek) learns of his son's death and decides that he must have been killed by this interloper Pai. Pai's efforts to free his sister are complicated when he's attacked by Hung and his other two sons at the whorehouse. One of the sons has a highly original weapon: a false hump on his back that can sprout metal spikes like a cartoon porcupine. 

Pai suffers some damage from the massed attack and takes refuge at Shuang's tavern. Once Shuang learns of Pai's true purpose, she masquerades as a male customer and spirits Yu away from the house of ill repute. The three of them leave town, but another of the Hung boys, along with some henchmen, attack the good guys in the forest. Yu is killed, and though Pai escapes, Hung-son #2 has Shuang taken to his place of residence, where he does unto her just as his dead brother did. Then he apparently leaves Shuang confined to a room, ventures into the forest with the minions, and most of them get killed by nooses that whip out of the trees.

This misfortune does nothing to deter Hung-son #3-- the one with the spiky hunchback-- from raping Shuang too. (This includes a really weird scene where he rotates on his spike-hump while having intercourse with Shuang.) However, the last son meets his fate at home, killed by an assailant seen only as two huge mantis-arms. 

None of these events keep the elder Hung from obsessively tracking down Pai. The two have a good long battle, which Hung loses. Pai recovers Shuang and marries her. However, a friend of Pai's belatedly learns of a skeleton in the Shuang family's closet. It seems that her mother was impregnated by a mantis (it's not even specified to be a mantis-god or anything), and as a result Shuang is half-mantis. When Pai attempts to celebrate his nuptials, Shuang turns into a mantis-monster, in this case a normal-sized woman with claws and an insect-head. Shuang is killed and spared from any further rampages, though Pai's not exactly a happy camper either.

Hong Kong kung fu films are not exactly anyone's first choice for examining sexual politics. Still, the writer-directors of MANTIS seem to be unusually preoccupied with the disposition of women due to the physical power differential. Women can be raped, abducted and sold to brothels, or even impregnated by mantises, and there's not a lot they can do about it. Pai brings about some retribution by fighting the Hungs. Still, his main concern is his sister, so he might not have ended up battling the Elder Hung had it not been for Shuang taking vengeance upon her rapists. She has to become a monster to accomplish this, though apparently her transformations are unconscious. There's no indication that she remembers her experiences as a mantis-creature, though the writers cheat a little, having her kill off some of her attackers with the use of unusual weapons. 

Shuang and Yu perish, though Pai doesn't exactly end up in a good place either. But I can't claim that the two creators-- most of whose works I've not seen-- intended to make any statement beyond grabbing the public with an arresting story.

EL ROJO (1966)

  

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

The "fair mythicity" rating on EL ROJO isn't at all for the generally routine spaghetti-western plot, but for an assortment of odd little touches writer-director Leopoldo Savona throws into the mix. 

We open on the scene of a wagon-train family arriving at the site of their newly acquired land, where they intend to work a gold mine. Then everyone in the family gets shot dead by arrows-- yet we don't see any marauding Indians about. Years later, four stalwart citizens of a nearby town are celebrating how rich they are before the admiring townfolk. Then a mysterious arrow is shot from an unknown Indian assailant, just missing the luminaries-- all on the very same day that a laconic stranger named Joe (Richard Harrison) arrives in town. Can there be a connection between all of these events?

No surprises here: the four rich guys-- Navarro, Wallace, Laskey and Ortega-- made their riches by killing off the family of goldminers and then by acquiring their mine. However, one member of the family wasn't there to be slaughtered, and it's the laconic stranger named Joe, who's looking for revenge. The Indian sniper, who has no lines in the picture, witnessed the slaughter of the family. Maybe the association of their bloody deaths is why Joe is called "Rojo" just once-- not counting a very oblique reference at the movie's end.

Though Joe has four obnoxious targets for his revenge-- one of whom, Laskey, married a local girl, Consuelo, who was apparently Joe's girl at some time-- director Savona doesn't play up the action/violence scenes as one might expect of a 1966 spaghetti western. Yet ROJO does maintain a curious offbeat charm in some little details Savona throws in. On a couple of occasions, Joe offers cubes of sugar to acquaintances and never explains where he picked up this habit. During one of Joe's revenge-plots, an accomplice-- also a patent-medicine peddler-- sets up a means of distracting the town by offering to burn the Devil in effigy, an odd ritual that the locals immediately embrace. Joe snipes at Consuelo for having sold her soul to one of the rich guys, and the script seems to agree with Joe, for unlike the majority of spaghetti-heroines Consuelo bites the dust.

However, the oddest thing in ROJO is also the only element that makes the film an uncanny western. At one point, a gunhawk comes to town, wearing a black mask over the lower part of his face-- except once, when he removes the scarf and displays an extensive scar that would do Jonah Hex proud. One assumes that one of the villains summoned the outlaw, not least because he's billed as "Nero Burt"-- in English, "Black Bart." Yet Bart (Angelo Boscariol) doesn't make any moves on Rojo. Then, near the movie's end, when Joe has wiped out the last enemy, Bart shows up and utters some cryptic line to Joe about how "the red and the black are together at last." Then the movie just ends, implying-- possibly-- some equivalence between the righteous vengeance-seeker and the Man in Black.

Savona directed four or five westerns I've not seen, some period historicals and one horror movie with the wild-sounding title, "Byleth the Demon of Incest." I may check out other sagebrush sagas in Savona's ouevre to see if any of them are as oddball as ROJO.

ONE PIECE: GOLD (2016)

  

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

A Marxist critic would probably view GOLD as a commentary on the corrosive power of the cash nexus upon human beings. I doubt that the writer had anything ideological in mind when he invented the villain Gild Tesoro (roughly, "golden treasure"), but one could certainly argue that he's one of many evildoers who seeks to hold a godlike control over his subjects, and even explicitly calls himself a god three or four times.

 Gild Tesoro manages Gran Tesoro, a mammoth ship that hosts its own Vegas-like community, entirely organized around the activities of his casino. The Straw Hat Pirates initially view the city-at-sea as a beguiling place of fun and adventure, and they even show off their powers by kicking the asses of some sore-loser pirates who try to rob the casino. Tesoro's lovely henchwoman Baccarat then invites the Straw Hats to enjoy the gambling activities and extends to them a munificent line of credit. However, Baccarat also possesses "luck-luck" powers, and she messes with Luffy's luck to cause the Straw Hats to lose all their credits, putting them in debt to Gran Tesoro.

Tesoro himself is the epitome of the "gladhander" villain: the type who pretends to offer everyone a good time. In truth one of the evildoer's showy stunts is to shower newcomers with gold dust-- dust with which he can then control them, thanks to his "gold-gold power." Everyone, except perhaps Tesoro's henchmen and casino guards, become Tesoro's slaves as soon as they enter the city, and that includes the hero-pirates. To provide his customers with "bread and circuses," he contrives a game to challenge the Hats to absolve their debts before Tesoro executes Zoro. 

 The Straw Hats get some timely assistance from a more landbound type of pirate: professional thief Carina. She's also an old acquaintance of Nami, who has her own larcenous past, and the joined allies try to heist the vast treasures of Gran Tesoro in order to ransom Zoro. Happily, the script doesn't allow the heroes to waste time in a reprise of "Ocean's Eleven," but instead finds a clever way to counteract Tesoro's gold-controlling power. In the big splashy climax, Luffy squares off against Tesoro, Zoro against a big goon, and Baccarat is taken down by three of the generally weaker members of the crew: Usopp, Chopper and Brooke. There's a belated flashback to Tesoro's early life, showing how he became attached to the idea of gaining gold and owning people, but it doesn't make him any more sympathetic, in contrast to Zephyr from the Z movie.

Curiously, though, all of the online sources credit the script to one Tsutomu Kuroiwa, the credits for GOLD assert that the film was based on an original story by series-creator Eichiro Oda. In addition, the brief appearance of a character called Spandam, a villain from an unrelated manga-arc, makes GOLD an example of a villain-crossover.

X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME FOUR (1995-96)

  

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

One odd note about Volume 4 is that although it doesn't contain all the episodes attributed to "Season 4," at least this time every episode on the discs came FROM Season 4. That said, a few had already appeared on the Volume Three collection, and there's at least one Season 4 tale that I assume will show up on Volume Five.

That said, the selections for Four are the same mixed bag seen in earlier volumes. "Proteus" is, despite cast-changes, one of the show's closest emulations of a Claremont-Byrne story, and it even succeeds in putting across some of that tale's horrific tonality.  One, "Sanctuary," was based on a story I'd not read, but it was tolerable, while "Lotus and Steel" is a complete reworking of the history of Wolverine's occasional opponent Silver Samurai, with mediocre results.

 An event of sorts takes place in that Cyclops and Marvel Girl are finally married, with less folderol than in the comics. That said, the wedding gets lost in yet another of the time-wasting time-travel stories to which the showrunners seemed addicted. Cable, Bishop, Apocalypse and Mister Sinister get four episodes devoted to a forgettable outing. The storyline was intended to conclude the series, but if nothing else, the fifth season deprived this mediocrity of that distinction.  

Strangely, the showrunners devote just one episode to disclosing Magneto's paternity of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. While I don't fault the adaptors for not translating the many continuity-nuggets from "The Yesterday Quest," at this point the show had only briefly introduced Quicksilver in one episode, as a member of an off-brand version of X-Factor. Then suddenly everyone in the story knows both Quicksilver and his sister Scarlet Witch, and Wolverine provides the X-hero connection while the two siblings encounter both Daddy Magneto and a fanatical version of the High Evolutionary. Niggles aside, it's still a better story than most of those on Volume Four.