THE MAN FROM UNCLE (2015)

  

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

When I saw MAN FROM UNCLE in a first-run theater, I must not have read any contemporaneous reviews of it. I tend to assume that many if not all reviews would have led with, "don't watch this movie if you want entertainment akin to that of the loopy 1960s superspy-teleseries." In addition to being bored, I seem to remember being astonished that director/co-writer Guy Ritchie-- best known for some crime films and two high-tech Sherlock Holmes movies-- had made almost no attempt to emulate the series, except for setting UNCLE's action in the same era of the swinging 1960s. Most of the time, big-screen adaptations of small-screen successes are if anything too reverential toward their source material.

Watching the same film years later with my amateur reviewers' hat on, I must admit that I could cite dozens if not hundreds of movies more boring than Ritchie's UNCLE. But this mostly mundane espionage-film, even with a few uncanny gimmicks thrown in to put some "super" in the spy-jinks, is still very pedestrian. In contrast to the series, in which Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were introduced as partners in crimefighting for the secret organization UNCLE. the movie insists on giving audiences a dreary account of "how they first met." The heroes' recruitment to UNCLE is brought in only at the story's end, as if to allow sentimental old-timers to imagine the film as a real-world prequel to the fantasy-series.

Since the Cold War was still at its most frigid in 1963, Solo (Henry Cavill) works for the CIA while Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) is some sort of an agent for the USSR. Because the CIA becomes aware of a plot by a Neo-Nazi organization-- loosely covalent with the TV show's "Thrush" group-- seeks to gain control of a nuclear weapon. This project, led by rich magnate Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki), has obtained the services of a major scientific talent with the telling name of Teller. With an eye to luring Teller away from the bad actors, Solo goes to East Berlin to engage the services of Teller's daughter (Alicia Vikander). Gaby accepts the mission, but during her extraction from East Germany, Solo has a eye-raising (and fender-crunching) encounter with Agent Kuryakin. As played by Hammer, this Kuryakin is a Samson-like powerhouse, though no particular explanation appears for his being able to grab a car by the bumper and hold the vehicle back. Despite this hostile first meeting, the Kremlin wants to eliminate a new nuclear threat as much as the CIA does, so Solo and Kuryakin are assigned to work together, still using Gaby as a means of entrance into the social circle of Victoria and her allies.

In addition to Kuryakin's strength and the THUNDERBALL-like plot of a private entity gaining control of an atom bomb, there's one moment where one agent uses a laser-device to cut through a wire fence, but that's it for the fantasy-content in UNCLE. The relationship of the two heroes is thoroughly predictable: they don't like each other and bait one another, though by the conclusion they've become bound as danger-buddies. Gaby is a little more interesting than either character, for she's in the position of a vital young woman who finds herself playing den-mother to two handsome hunks while also pretending to be the fiancee of Kuryakin's fake character. Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki are allowed to channel a bit of sixties glamor through their attire, and one late development gives Gaby a little semblance of a "Girl from UNCLE." But Ritchie's main focus follows the pattern of a mundane action-thriller, and there's nothing memorable on that score. The film flopped, barely making more than its original cost, so this movie stands as one of the least successful adaptations of a small-screen show.

YPOTRON-- FINAL COUNTDOWN (1966)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

YPOTRON-- FINAL COUNTDOWN is only one of several titles for this multi-country production, but I might as well use the one appearing on my YouTube copy. The nonsense-word "ypotron" is tossed around several times in the film before the audience finds out what it connotes, and an English-language song even asks what the word means. I'll give it away here because it has consequences for the movie's phenomenality: Ypotron is an antiballistic weapon aimed at destroying America's Gemini space program, and it's the only marvelous item in the story, since the Bond-like hero only utilizes minor uncanny weapons like a lighter than dispenses tear gas.             

Argentinian star Luis Davila (billed here as "Luis Devil") had the misfortune to headline the dismal ESPIONAGE IN TANGIER, but his second and last time venture into the Eurospy genre was a charmer by comparison. We first see him in his character of tuxedo-clad Robbie Logan, getting shot several times by a rifle. But it's just a test of the bulletproof vest beneath his clothes, administered by his colleagues in the agency Kosmos, which is supposedly focused only on affairs related to space defense. Logan then departs for a vacation from spying in Acapulco, where he shows off his ability to charm assorted gorgeous women.                                                                   

  However, another agent brings Logan news that three of his colleagues were mysteriously slain while working security for the European missile-factory "Indra." In addition, Logan's informed that there's a possible threat to an old friend of his, Professor Morrow. Logan reminisces about how he was a captive in wartime, possibly by the Nazis since he mentions being tortured by an overseer named Leichman. Morrow somehow saved Logan's life but then disappeared from public sight for roughly twenty years. To repay his old debt, Logan drops his vacation and journeys to Morrow's home in Europe. There he has a meet-cute with Morrow's grown daughter Jeanne (Gaia "AVENGER X" Germani), whom Logan never met except for seeing a photo of her as a naked baby (which of course he tells her about to intrigue her). Jeanne calls her father to come meet Logan, but it just so happens Professor Morrow is kidnapped by hostile parties unknown.                                                                                   

 Thus far, everything in YPOTRON sounds like a regular old spy-flick. However, for once I won't go over the plot in detail, because director/co-writer works in a twist rare in the Eurospy world. Jeanne of course gets mixed up in Logan's attempts to find her father, and to sort out the villains behind the mysterious Ypotron project. A lot of Eurospy flicks barely establish the nature of the main villain, but in this movie, the Big Bad is, shall we say, "hiding in plain sight," and the twist actually has a little emotional resonance for both Logan and Jeanne. The script also works in a lady spy played by Janine "KISS ME MONSTER" Reynaud, but she turns out to be Logan's ally, so no bad girls here.                                                                                                     

There are a number of clever lines in the script and production values are pretty good, so director Giorgio Stegani did pretty well with what seems to be his only spy-film. In fact, whereas a lot of these cheap thrillers fall apart in the final act, Stegani provides audiences with a well-choreographed fight between Logan and a Big Brute henchman (Fernando Bilbao, who played a version of the Frankenstein Monster in a couple of Jess Franco flicks). But the aforementioned plot twist is the big distinction of YPOTRON.      

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.   

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. 

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.

ACES GO PLACES (1982)

  

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

Though I'm far from being a great fan of Chinese comedy films, I enjoyed the zany slapstick of the ACES GO PLACES series, and the first film in the series did a good job of setting up the three principals, who I believe remained together for all five entries. The basic idea seems to be "what would have happened if the "Phantom" thief of PINK PANTHER joined forces with two eccentric HK cops in fighting crime.

Hong Kong super-thief King Kong (Sam Hui) rips off a diamond shipment and then finds out he's robbed the Mafia. The aggrieved crime-lords send various assassins to HK to avenge their honor, particularly a master burglar named "White Gloves." To apprehend Kong, the HK government calls in an American cop of Asian extraction, Albert Au (Karl Maka). He more or less takes the place of the wacky Inspector Clouseau of the PANTHER films, though his main physical characteristic is his total baldness, a testimony to the popularity of the KOJAK teleseries in Hong Kong. Albert's HK liaison is lady cop Nancy Ho (Sylvia Chang), who's constantly accused of being "mannish," and who does get the movie's best fight-scene.         

There are a number of nice comic stunts, though nothing particularly stands out, but the film has too many car chases and crash-ups. The finale contains the only metaphenomenal element, when King Kong counters a fleet of Mafia automobiles with a collection of tiny, remote-controlled toy cars, each loaded with explosives. I tend to doubt anyone in 1982 could actually create such vehicular weapons, but since the script believes that, I'll treat the little cars as uncanny devices.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST (2006)

 

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

I'm sure Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer saved a ton of money by shooting this movie and its sequel back-to-back, and since audiences loved Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow, both films made bank at the box office. But director Gore Verbinski and his team sure sacrificed the simple, elemental appeal of two good-hearted but conventional lovers who have their world turned upside down by a roguish pirate with a heart of fool's gold.

It's a year later since the events of the first film, and Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley) are due to be married soon. However, a Navy official named Beckett shows up at Port Royal, ordering the arrests of the two lovers for having aided the escape of wanted pirate Jack Sparrow (Depp). Beckett's also looking for former Naval officer Norrington, but this is merely a plot-device just to let the audience know that the character will show up later in the story. Beckett has zero need for Norrington, because his real plot is to use Elizabeth's captivity to blackmail Will into finding Jack Sparrow.

After the first hour, it becomes clear that the poor excuse for a plot is just a series of "go find something" tasks. The crude assemblages of goals put me in mind of the old kids' song "The Old Lady Who Swallowed the Fly:"

Will follows Jack Sparrow to find Jack's compass,

And they use the compass to find a key,

And the key they use to open Dead Man's Chest, 

And in the chest they find a heart

From another chest, that of Davy Jones,

And with that heart they can win their desires--

I understand that most pirate adventures owe a debt to TREASURE ISLAND, but all these different doodads become tedious, particularly since they're just there to pad the film's running-time. The supernatural being Davy Jones (Bill Nighy with an octopus-face), a former human transformed into a keeper of dead souls (and the captain of the Flying Dutchman), holds control of the seven seas. Anyone who can gain custody of Davy Jones' heart will also control the oceans-- which is Beckett's endgame.

After about an hours' worth of pointless stunts, Will does find Jack and reunites the querulous captain with his crew and his ship-- as well as new crewman Norrington, who nurses old grudges against both Will and Jack. While they head off to find the Flying Dutchman-- which is crewed by a bunch of fish-men-- Elizabeth wins free of prison and goes looking for Will.

The makeshift mythology here includes not only Davy Jones, but also a goddess called Calypso and a giant Kraken. I recall that these matters get a little more exposition in the third film, but I imagine the audience just rolled with it all while waiting for Johnny Depp to show up and be funny. Will has a subplot in which he meets his long-lost father, now a member of the Dutchman crew, and Elizabeth once more appears to be slightly tempted by Jack's chaotic charms. Elizabeth gets to swordfight this time, as well as handily tricking tricky Jack, while the best stunt in the film is a three-way blade-battle between Jack, Will, and Norrington. But there were also a lot more boring scenes that one should expect from a Jerry Bruckheimer production.

POOTIE TANG (2001)

 

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


The character of "Pootie Tang" first appeared in sketches on Chris Rock's HBO series of the late nineties, and later grew into a feature-film, written in part by Rock and directed by another comedian, Louis C.K., although the latter disavowed the final cut of the film.

I can't imagine what the final cut might've left out, for POOTIE TANG is, despite being utterly silly, fairly tight for a superhero spoof. Aside from a largely inconsequential frame-story, in which the protagonist is interviewed about his own movie, the story starts out with showing urban hero Pootie Tang (Lance Crouther) taking out a small gang of drug-dealers, led by the Pigpen-like gangsta "Dirry Dee." Pootie displays no well-defined super-powers, but he's able to dodge bullets purely by his smooth dance moves, or to deflect bullets with either his long braids or with the belt he wears, which he also uses to bludgeon hoods. It seems that the only thing Pootie can't do is to speak the English language, in that he constantly mixes English words with an undecipherable slang of his own creation-- though for the most part both white and black listeners seem to understand what he says.

Pootie is such an incredible media-phenomenon that kids everywhere love him, turning their backs on drugs and other temptations. This development enrages multi-conglomerate honcho Dick Lecter, because it affects the bottom line of his corrupt companies. Realizing that he can't take out the hero by force, he uses guile, in the form of a temptress named Ireenie (Jennifer Coolidge). Despite the fact that there's a good black woman who pines after the hero, Pootie lets himself be seduced by Ireenie, even though she does so in a singularly weird manner: accosting the noble fellow in a supermarket and both slapping and kicking him. Like Delilah before her, Ireenie learns the hero's secret weakness: take away the magic belt given Pootie by his father, and he loses all of his power. Lecter steals the belt, and Pootie loses his moral compass, signing a contract that allows Lecter to exploit his image without Pootie's consent. Finally, not having a Fortress of Solitude as a retreat, Pootie wanders out into some rural community, which leads to a handful of surprisingly mild redneck-jokes. Without giving away too much, suffice to say that Pootie Tang learns that his true powers stem not from the belt but from his inner "goodness," allowing him to regain his heroic stature and take down the villains.

I'm not sure if the protagonist's mangling of the English language was intended as a spoof of slang-language in general, but though this is the film's primary joke, happily it isn't the only one. Indeed, the best bit in the film appears when Pootie cuts a record which is entirely devoid of music or lyrics, but people still dance to it as if it were the hottest new track out there. As noted, most of the story derives from the Samson myth, though there's a curious, not-particularly-funny scene in which Pootie also plays Jesus, in that Pootie apparently brings a slain hoodlum back to life purely through the hero's agony over the man's death. It's an odd scene that doesn't have a function in the plot, but it's pleasing in its very peculiarity.

THE STORY OF KARATE, FISTS, AND BEANS (1973)

 

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

BEANS (so titled because one of the two heroes likes all food, but especially beans) is one of a seemingly endless supply of Italian knockabout comedies. This one stars a duo of protagonists right out of THEY CALL ME TRINITY, a handsome cad and a big dumb brute having slapstick adventures in the Old West.

It's also one of various Italian flicks that worked in some chopsocky action thanks to the martial arts-movie craze of the seventies. All the "karate" in BEANS stems from a Japanese cook (Iwao Yoshioka) who aligns himself with the dopey duo. This character is also the source of all the film' metaphenomenal content, all pretty much in one scene. The cook is seen using his prowess to (a) chop down a small tree with his hand, (b) strike sparks from flint with his hand to make a fire, and (c) yell a "kiai" so loud that it strips the feathers off a dead bird so he can roast it. Were it not for the other two "skills," I'd probably consider that one a cartoony departure from reality.

The only halfway interesting part of BEANS is that the duo joins with other reprobates in seeking to liberate a banker's daughter from a gang of Mexican bandits. The reprobates think she's a little girl, and she turns out to be a very big girl, played by six-foot-tall Francesca Romana Coluzzi. She doesn't fight so much as deck guys with single power-punches, and one of her punchouts includes accidentally knocking out the "Bud Spenser" guy among her rescuers. 

BEANS must have made money, because the director, Coluzzi and other performers in this film returned three years later for an even loonier film where a martial arts guy shows up in medieval England for ROBIN HOOD: ARROWS, BEANS AND KARATE. There's no metaphenomenal content here, and Yoshioka and Coluzzi play roughly the same type of characters as in BEANS. But Yoshioka only appeared in five movies, while Coluzzi had a good long career in Italian character parts, in addition to playing the role of the mother of the 1985 RED SONJA.

KISS THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM DIE (1966)

  

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

I'm using my label "eurosploitation" for this Italian-American production because KISS feels a big-budgeted version of one of Italy's cheapie eurospy flicks-- not least because it shows what I've found to be those films' worst feature: crappy villains. Conversely, despite KISS having a storyline that ought to make maximum use of beautiful actresses, I've seen a number of cheap spyflicks that did a better job with their presentations of pulchritude.

The middle sixties displayed the apogee of the superspy movie. KISS was preceded in 1966 by both OUR MAN FLINT and the first of the Matt Helm movies and followed in 1967 by the "Bond-comedy" CASINO ROYALE, which used a "world-peril" very similar to that of KISS, but did it better. By the early seventies the more naturalistic spy-films became prevalent and the superspy subgenre didn't rally until the early 2000s. KISS probably did the subgenre neither lasting harm nor any good.

The story was mostly filmed in Rio de Janiero, where much of the action takes place. The famous Rio statue of Christ the Redeemer provides journeyman director Henry Levin with what might be his only "Hitchcock moment," as American agent Kelly (Mike Connors) fights off an attacker beneath the statue's shadow. Allegedly Kelly came to Rio investigating a white slavery ring, but this mundane rationale is dropped. Somehow Kelly gets on the track of eccentric Brazilian businessman Ardonian (Raf Vallone), who's seen hanging out with a gorgeous jet-setter type, Susan Fleming (Dorothy Provine). Kelly questions Susan and learns that she's a British agent who's also investigating the disappearance of nubile young women. In contrast to most Bond knockoffs, the hero's leading lady shares the spotlight here, even though Susan tends to fight with assorted gadgets (like a ring with a drugged needle) while Kelly uses basic fisticuffs.

Ardonian may be the most under-characterized "bad spy" from this period. The viewer soon learns that he's conspired with Red Chinese agents to engineer a radiation-weapon that can sterilize all of the United States, thus putting China in the catbird seat as a world power. The Dino Maiuri script gives Ardonian no particular motive, ideological or pecuniary, for collaborating with Red China or for building a rocket-silo in Africa, in order to launch a radiation-satellite into orbit. But Maiuri's reticence stems from a "Big Reveal:" Ardonian actually plans to neuter every other man on Earth, aside from himself and maybe a few aides. But the script presents this revelation with zero insight into the villain's psychology, in marked contrast to the better-conceived motives of Woody Allen's evildoer in CASINO ROYALE. All that said, the Reveal does provide KISS with its only mythic moment: a scene in the facility showing that all the kidnapped women have been placed in frozen blocks of ice, moving on a conveyor belt like so many delicacies at the villain's command.

There are a few decent moments of action and comedy in KISS, but they're drowned in lots of dull, pokey scenes, suggesting that often Levin was just marking time. There's also a senseless incident wherein Kelly enters a beauty's room, saves her from a deadly scorpion, and then-- tells her to leave her own room? Half a dozen lovely actresses appear in KISS, but the only ones who have half-decent roles are Provine and Marilu Tolo, the latter playing one of the villain's Chinese contacts.

RETURN OF THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN AND THE BIONIC WOMAN (1987)

 

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

"Did you want your son made over in your own image?"

This is a pretty intense line coming from a character in the gosh-gee-wowie world of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, especially being spoken by Michael Austin (Tom Schanley) to his father Steve Austin (Lee Majors). The character of Michael never appeared on the TV shows but was at some point conceived by Steve with a mother from a short-lived marriage. (She's conveniently out of the picture, of course.) The line is all the more interesting because making over this would-be spinoff hero in the image of Steve Austin is exactly what the producers of the telefilm had in mind. Thus when Michael suffers a terrible accident, he loses exactly the same body parts that Steve did-- one arm, two legs, and an eye, though Steve's son does get one extra enhancement: his eye can shoot lasers in addition to being able to see great distances. The line is also interesting because the two bionic wonders before Michael were given their makeovers by the government without their express consent, and the producers of the TV-movie apparently couldn't resist repeating the trope of the "forced conversion." (Didn't any of these people ever enter a real hospital, where the physicians almost always have to ask for consent for any operation?)

Though RETURN was conceived as a back-door pilot for a series starring Michael Austin, the first hour of the show is all about Steve Austin and Jamie Sommars (Lindsay Wagner). Both of them retired from the OSI about a decade ago, with Steve taking up some sort of fishing gig while Jamie apparently took classes to become a licensed therapist for the underprivileged. Former boss Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) approaches Steve about coming back to the fold to stop a terrorist operation, Fortress, because Steve dealt before with its obsessed leader Stenning (Martin Landau). Though Steve refuses, he's soon forced to return to the spy biz because Stenning, despite being in prison, is aware of the bionic duo's powers and begins sending thugs to harvest their mechanical organs. This contingency forces Steve and Jamie to reunite after years of estrangement, with all the attendant emotional turmoil.

As for Michael, Steve just happens to be in the process of seeking a connection with his grown son, a pilot in the Air Force. Despite his having been raised by an aunt, Michael seems fairly neutral toward his famous sire, knowing him only as an astronaut. Shortly before Michael has his transformative accident, Steve reveals his abilities to his son. Michael thinks bionic enhancements are cool, until he's forced to get them himself. Naturally, Michael doesn't spend much time grousing about his fate. Jamie transfers from whatever her regular gig is to become the therapist to Steve's offspring. Michael makes rapid progress as a bionic wonder, all leading up to the final confrontation with Fortress. Wikipedia's assertion that the producers had the successful film "Top Gun" on their minds is confirmed when Oscar asks Michael to come work for him "if you ever get tired of being Top Gun in the Air Force." 

The bionic stunts here are as good as anything on the older shows, and some of the dialogue is a good deal better, courtesy of Michael Sloan, who would also write the next two TV-films with Steve and Jamie (but no Michael). Lee Majors's real son Lee Majors Jr has a minor supporting role as a young agent of the OSI, and he DOES reprise that role for the other two bionic-reunion flicks. One interesting aspect of the script is that Fortress is said to be some sort of "America for Americans" reactionary group, which is a bit surprising since the TV shows usually steered clear of real-world politics. Martin Landau does his usual professional job as the Big Bad, ranting about how the country allows aliens to infect its "bloodstream," or something like that. And yes, it's fun to see the chemistry between Majors and Wagner for the first of three final collaborations.

QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE (1935)

 

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

There's just one element in this 12-chapter serial that renders it marvelous: a short sequence in which two people in the African jungle are pinned down by some sort of "strangler vines." To the best of my knowledge there exist no such plants, so QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE is marvelous. But most of the significant phenomena are uncanny, so as I occasionally do on this blog, I include labels for those tropes for my own reference.

QUEEN gets a "fair" rating for mythicity just because it manages to touch on five or six major jungle-adventure tropes. Nevertheless, the serial is a mess. It recycled footage from a 1922 silent serial, JUNGLE GODDESS (now lost), which was noteworthy in its time for having been shot on a forested backlot in the U.S. and for having a better than average budget for a chapterplay. But in the 1930s silent films were unmarketable. So a producer named Herman Wolk chose to cannibalize certain sequences from GODDESS and to shoot a lot of matching sequences on soundstages. This leads to a lot of padding with the use of stock jungle footage, none of which includes either old or new players. This creates one amusing sequence in which a chimp, cornered on a high rock by hungry lions, is rescued by a helpful elephant, who's never in the same frame with the lions.

Two of the major jungle-tropes used here are that of the "lost city" and "the white goddess." To be sure, there are actually two bizarre African cultures crammed close together. In the ERB tradition, there's a small coterie of White people-- far from the usual "city"-- that have somehow established a priesthood over their Black neighbors. To be sure, the two groups are never seen together, aside from an early scene in which the Black chieftain confers with head priest Kali (Lafe McKee), so apparently this mirrors the original plot of GODDESS. The White priests all wear big conical hats that I suppose are meant to look vaguely Semitic, but their only cultural identification is that they consider themselves citizens of "Mu." Since this legendary locale did not appear in print until one James Churchward wrote a book about it in 1926, I think it's safe to assume this tidbit is a 1935 interpolation.

The more numerous Black natives venerate a huge statue that sometimes shines deadly rays from its eyes. Since the viewer eventually learns that there's a radium deposit nearby, in the so-called "Garden of Rad," possibly the original idea in GODDESS was that the statue was inhabited by minions of the priesthood. The statue is seen to move its hands a little, which sounds like real votive statues (albeit much smaller ones) that were designed to "come to life" and impress the gullible. Did GODDESS originally include the idea that priests inside the statue somehow projected energy from raw radium through the statue's eyeholes, in order to create lethal rays and execute sacrificial victims? Hard to say, for that serial's gone, and QUEEN never explains the statue at all. ("Rad," by the way, is the name of the priesthood's god, so maybe they're supposed to be Latinate Romans?)

The white queen comes to the Black tribe by accident. As a small child, Joan Lawrence is taken away from her parents, and from neighbor-kid David, when she's caught in a hot-air balloon. The balloon's descent into the territory of Mu impresses the Black tribesmen and they raise little Joan to be their queen (Mary Kornman), even referred to a few times as "The Queen of the Jungle." 

Little David, however, grows up to be Adult David (Reed Howes). Joan's parents could never find her, or the radium mine that the father came to Africa to locate. Yet David apparently takes that right turn at Albuquerque, since he makes his way to the Mu territory with no big hassle. He does however get captured and slated for sacrifice by radiation-gaze. Adult Joan at first seems totally okay with the White guy getting burned to ash. Then a crawl asks rhetorically if her "White blood" will allow Joan to endure such savagery. By the next episode, naturally, Joan rescues David.

Despite the fact that Joan has forgotten the English language, and David doesn't speak the local Swahili, the young hunter talks the Queen into leaving the only people she's ever known. More oddly, they agree to let her go with no fuss. However, the writers, probably loosely following the earlier movie's template, did this so that Joan and David could be attacked by diverse menaces on their trek back to civilization. I think Kali is at least responsible for some assaults, because he's afraid David will bring back other invaders and mess up Kali's setup-- but the continuity's excruciatingly hard to follow. In addition to the aforementioned strangler vine, and the usual jungle-animals, David is attacked by a pair of natives who are implied to live beneath the surface of a river (no, no explanation of that either) while minions of Kali blind Joan with radium, stick her in a canoe and send her careening toward a waterfall. For a time White hunters capture Joan and David to find out the mine's location, I think because they've been sold minute quantities of radium by Kali. But the funniest assault comes when a native somehow manipulates a chimp into attacking Joan with a knife. David's priceless line as the chimp runs away: "I wonder who put him up to it."

Since Joan never learns English "on the road," her personality is confined to that of wide-eyed innocence. She's not any sort of fighter, but her scenes in Mu make the loose implication that she MAY have a psychic connection with elephants for some reason. She's seen commanding a trained elephant in Mu, and then later, on the hunters' ship, she actually commands an elephant whom the hunters have taken captive to do her will-- that is, by reaching its trunk through a porthole to strangle a bad hunter-guy. David therefore shoulders almost all the action-scenes herein, and Reed Howes acquits himself quite well, given that most fights in thirties' serials were spottily choreographed. He's seen to be a stand-up guy, tempted to take advantage of Joan's innocence but not yielding to the temptation.

Whenever the 1935 producers utilize footage from 1922, they don't bother to synch the two, so the viewer sees various scenes of "undercranking," resulting in characters moving like jumping-beans. The longest scene from GODDESS is one in which Kali tries to make his fellow priests think that Kali's own little boy is a god made flesh. But there's a mixup and the priests get the idea that a chimp is the new god in town, so there's an amusing moment where the simian cavorts around the room and the priests imitate his holy actions. However, Kali, like a number of other characters, just disappears from the story when it's convenient for the filmmakers, and so he never pays for his crimes.

QUEEN is a real curio. It's not good, or even "so bad it's good." But it's not as dull as some serials out there, and that's something.

THE FACE OF THE FROG (1959)

 

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

As of this writing I've not seen the first sound film adaptation of Edgar Wallace's FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG, but I did review the sequel. And now, thanks be to streamng, I've seen this 1959 adaptation, which was successful enough to launch a long series of German crime films, called krimis, and also not infrequently adapted from other Wallace works.

As I've said in similar reviews, I've no familiarity with the source novel. However, one online review of the Wallace work-- the second in a brief series of novels about a clever Scotland Yard cop, Inspector Elk-- indicates that the novel is mostly a straight mystery, in which Elk seeks to learn the identity of the frog-masked mastermind whose cutthroat gang has been committing London robberies and eluding capture for at least a couple of years. However, since German crime films had not been successful in the fifties for some time, it seems director Harold Reinl and his crew upped the violence content, making this FROG into a high-jumping adventure. The strategy was a success with German moviegoers and possibly other Europeans as well, so that FROG gave birth to a plethora of krimi films. I note that one of those thrillers that I reviewed previously, DEAD EYES OF LONDON, shows a much more kinetic attitude to the Wallace material than had the previous sound adaptation, THE HUMAN MONSTER.

Further, though clever Inspector Elk was probably the sole star of the book, in FROG he's obliged to share the position of central hero with an amateur detective-- an ironic development, since in his time Wallace was noted for making his detectives police officers rather than amateur sleuths. In the book a character named Richard Gordon, a British prosecuting attorney, is the boyfriend of the story's heroine Ella. But in the movie Gordon (Joachim Fuchsberger, also the doughty hero of DEAD EYES) is the wealthy nephew of another Scotland Yard official, whose romancing of Ella may be more important to the story as a whole, and this Gordon is so serious about amateur crimefighting that he and his stoical butler practice judo holds on one another. In fact, the two of them have a spirited fight with a bunch of Frog henchmen that carries a slight Batman-and-Robin vibe. True, both of the heroes get taken down by superior numbers. But after being held in durance vile for what must be several days (because both uncaped crusaders grow substantial beards), this dynamic duo breaks out in spectacular fashion. Other scenes that were a trifle hyperviolent for 1959 include a scene with a knife-wielding thug slicing open a bobby's throat, and a big raid by the cops on the Frog's HQ, which includes London cops unleashing machine-gun fire on the ruthless criminals.

But though the Frog is opposed by both the superior brainpower of Inspector Elk and the brawn of his ally Gordon, it's really the princess that slays the frog, to misquote KING KONG. For no explicit reason, the Frog-- whose precise identity was never important to me, so I barely remember his ID-- falls in love with Ella, and he demands that she willingly agree to be his bride. When Ella refuses, the Frog has his henchmen launch a complicated plot in which a sexy chanteuse seduces Ella's irresponsible brother and then frames him for murder-- all so pretty Ella will willingly go to the altar with the batrachian criminal's civilian identity. It's the weakest aspect of a generally tight police thriller with some strong violence, a few cool gimmicks, and an encore for the first "mystery villains" of the 20th century.          

LORD OF ILLUSIONS (1995)

 

 

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

LORD OF ILLUSIONS to date is the last feature film written and directed by horror author Clive Barker, and proves the least accomplished after 1987's HELLRAISER and 1990's NIGHTBREED. Like NIGHTBREED, ILLUSIONS came to theatres in an adumbrated studio cut, which is probably what I saw years ago. But since I barely remember anything about the cut version of ILLUSIONS, my review of the director's cut won't be influenced by the earlier viewing-- or by having read, many months ago, the short story Barker used as his template, since Wiki mentions that Barker substantially changed that template for the movie.

The germ of the original idea was that professional detective Harry D'Amour investigated the supposed death of a stage illusionist, Philip Swann, only to learn that Swann was performing his tricks with real magic. To make that bare notion more salable, Barker interpolated the story of a demonically powered cult-leader named William Nix (Daniel von Bargen), who becomes an enemy Swann (Kevin J. O'Connor) seeks to escape and whom D'Amour (Scott Bakula) must try to eradicate. The result is an ungainly blend of noir detection and flamboyant occult menace, with an evil sorcerer who says things like, "I was born to murder the world."

It's not impossible to do a good mashup of hardboiled crime with supernatural investigation, but Barker doesn't have a handle on either genre's boundaries. The story begins with Swann and his allies invading the HQ of Nix's cult, overcoming Nix, and burying him alive so that he can't destroy the world with his illimitable (but unexplained) powers. Thirteen years later, detective D'Amour-- whose experience with occult matters is only vaguely described-- is hired by Swann's wife (Famke Janssen) to protect the magician, since some of Nix's freaky cultists have been swarming about and making trouble. Then Swann apparently dies-- only to have it revealed later on that he faked his death-- and one of the cultists manages to revive Nix. Despite being woefully overmatched, D'Amour pulls a rabbit out of his hat and prevents the apocalypse, and gets the girl to boot, thanks to Swann conveniently dying for real.

Barker's lack of ability to ground his wild characters in reality is oddly presaged by a line spoken by one of his minor characters halfway through the film. A sanitarium attendant, not privy to any of the magical goings-on, states to D'Amour, "We have to agree on what's real and what's not. That's what holds us together." Barker means this ironically, since through D'Amour the audience has already seen that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the attendant's philosophy. But inadvertently, Barker described his own inability to make either his plot or characters "hold together." He provides only the most cursory motivation at all times, and his big reveal at the climax-- that Nix had a gay thing for Swann and wanted them to be together after mankind's death-- gets zero foreshadowing. Characters pop in and out of D'Amour's orbit without explanation, and most of them are focused on showing how recherche they are. Oddly, Bakula's homespun normality could have been used to Barker's advantage here, and the actor does his best to give the role a dogged, passionate morality. But D'Amour just feels like Barker copying old movie-detectives, not coming up with his own unique take on the form. Barker may have had better luck with the character in prose, where he's not dependent on interacting with performers other than himself. 

THE LAST WITCH HUNTER (2015)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*                                                                                                                                                 I'd never heard either positive or negative reviews of this Vin Diesel project, but now that I've seen it, HUNTER has one standout aspect. While I can tolerate a lot of derivative plots and characters in my search for good-- or even just fun-- adventure-movies, I'm aware that some viewers get immediately turned off by anything that seems stereotypical. For various reasons, HUNTER gave me some sense of how an adventure-hater feels when faced with an especially mediocre specimen.                                                                                                     

HUNTER, based on some D&D concept that Vin Diesel was able to copyright (somehow), hinges on Diesel's protagonist Kaulder being immortal. Thus a 14th-century Kaulder joins with other warriors to destroy the evil Witch Queen (Julie Englebrecht) who unleashes the Black Plague on the world. Presumably she has even worse plans in store for humanity when Kaulder slays her. And the dying Queen curses Kaulder with-- immortality? Wait, how does she know this will be an undesirable fate to this guy? Yes, I, like every fantasy-viewer, have seen umpteen stories about immortals who get existentially exhausted with eternal life. But the Witch Queen doesn't have any particular reason to assume that her killer is going to be so discomfited. This major stumbling-block in storytelling is just one of too many others.                                                   

   The audience doesn't get to see Kaulder learning the evils of immortality, for the film immediately shuttles to the present day. Though the Witch Queen is dead, an entire race of witches still exists on the fringes of regular civilization, and Kaulder has become an enforcer for an organization, the Axe and Cross, that monitors witch-activities. Neither the culture of the witches nor the monitoring organization get much elaboration, but Kaulder trusts one guy, Dolan 36 (Michael Caine), as his contact person. Dolan 36 is assassinated (apparently) and Kaulder launches a crusade to find the killer.                 

  Since Kaulder doesn't practice magic, he has to draft a witch to help his investigation, so he chooses, almost randomly, a hot young conjuress named Chloe (Rose Leslie). Chloe is given little reason to help Kaulder at first, though a convenient plot-device has Chloe's buddy knocked off by Kaulder's enemies, so this becomes motivation enough for her to risk her own life. (The writers probably wanted to imply that Chloe had the hots for the reticent hero, given a late scene where she seems jealous of another woman's attentions to Kaulder.) Kaulder beats down various unmemorable menaces until he finally learns that his enemies are out to revive the Witch Queen. This contingency isn't even anything the Queen arranged in anticipation of her demise. There's some gobbledygook about how Kaulder's immortal existence is the key to the Queen's revival, but it was all forgettable too. The final battle between Kaulder and the grotty Queen is fairly well choreographed, but everything else is from hunger. In 2015 the film made more than it cost, but not much more, which may be the reason no threatened sequel has materialized.

          

FEDERAL OPERATOR 99 (1945)

 

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


The postwar serial FEDERAL OPERATOR 99 turns from war to crime for its thrills. For almost all of its 12 chapters, the serial concerns the adventures of the titular Operator 99, Jerry Blake, to ferret out the robbery-schemes of master criminal Jim Belmont. In addition to the fact that hero and villain possess the same initials, the British-sounding Blake is a bit more elegant sounding than the standard staccato-sounding American serial lead-- and this accords with the portrait of Belmont, a sophisticated thief and killer who likes to lay his plans while playing classical music. Unfortunately, all he seems to know how to play is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, which lends a certain sameness to each of Belmont's planned transgressions.

Only in one chapter does Belmont depart from naturalistic depredations-- like the one in the still above, where the heroine is menaced by a spinning airplane propellor. Belmont lures Blake to a special chamber, wherein one wall is transparent, Blake shoots at Belmont, only to find that the glass is bulletproof. Belmont can watch the destruction of Blake, after Belmont sets off a device that causes the sealed room to go up in flames. The hero escapes, of course, but the cremation-room is still one of the more memorable serial death-traps, though a little out of line with the mastermind's usual modus operandi.

THE SEVENTH CURSE (1986)

  

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

Most of the Western attempts to cash in on the popularity of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK-- most of which appeared in the 1980s-- were low-level formula at best. The two Duncan Jax films have the virtue of being the wackiest emulations of Indiana from the West-- meaning the US and Western Europe-- and I favorably compared the Jax films to many of the more brain-friend Japanese adventure-films. But what about Hong Kong? Certainly, that Asian  powerhouse could outdo the Westerners in sheer insanity?

Well, two of the laborers on THE SEVENTH CURSE, co-writer Wong Jing and director Lam Nagai Kai, did indeed produce their share of absurd adventures. But this specific film, adapted from a Chinese book-series, isn't a rival to Duncan Jax, much less Indiana Jones.

Just as Indiana's career is all about confronting specters of remote cultures, the hero of CURSE, Doctor Yuen (Chin Sui-ho) seems similarly constituted. He ventures to Thailand in search of AIDS medicine but has an ill-fated encounter with a local cult of "worm priests" when he tries to liberate a sacrificial cult victim. For Yuen's effrontery, the cult inflicts on him seven "curses," which manifest in his body as suppurations of flesh and pus, tormenting him until the seventh and last curse kills him. Yuen escapes Thailand and cheats death thanks to a female priestess who shares a piece of her breast-flesh with him (!) But to foil the curse permanently, he must return to the cult and somehow get the curse reversed, this time with the help of bazooka-toting Chow Yun-Fat and spunky reporter Maggie Cheung.

I don't take issue with the fact that the film's creators meant CURSE as "leave your brain at the door entertainment." But aside from a couple of big fight scenes, most of the time the heroes are fleeing from crude, practical-effects menaces like living skeletons and killer fetuses. CURSE is certainly okay escapist divertissement as it stands, but it's awfully predictable, not only in terms of the menaces but also in terms of the rather dull heroes. Compared to the most absurd films Hong Kong has been able to muster in the past, CURSE is third-rate at best.   

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN (2008)

  

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

Once upon a time, there was a western movie-- or maybe more like 411,557 western movies-- in which an Eastern city slicker went out West and conned the noble White settlers into fighting the noble Red tribes, so that the con man could buy up their land once the two groups had killed one another.

Now what has that trope got to do with the almost-a-century-long Middle East conflict between Israelis and Arabs? Beats me, but the trope proved useful in resolving an insoluble conflict set up by the premise of ZOHAN. I think it safe to assume that, given the difficulty of using said conflict for comedy, this was probably the same "out" employed by writers Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow and by writer-star Adam Sandler when the three of them completed the first draft of ZOHAN's script in 2000. In any case, that was the basic trope behind the final script when the movie was released to theaters in 2008.

So in the Sandlerverse, the prolonged struggle between the denizens of Israel and Palestine (other Arabs are not mentioned) has one important difference from our world: each side has one, and apparently only one, superhuman agent. Israel has "Zohan" Dvir (Sandler), while Palestine has Fatoush, nicknamed "Phantom" (John Turturro). There's no explanation as to why these super-agents can perform great feats of strength or resist gunfire, and it's probably just as well the writers didn't try. But Zohan becomes tired of the never- ending battles, and he wants to emigrate to the U.S. so that he can live his dream of becoming a great hairdresser. In the pursuance of this goal, Zohan allows the world to think that Phantom has slain him, and then smuggles his way into America. (Since his illegal status is never mentioned, presumably his secret agent skills, or his espionage contacts, help him pass as a naturalized citizen.)

Zohan takes up lodging in a New York borough that just happens to be evenly divided between Israeli-Americans and Palestinian-Americans. Zohan makes a few friends, but because of his lack of experience he can't get a job doing "dos." However, the cute owner of a Palestinian hair salon (Emmanuelle Chiriqui) gives Zohan a menial cleaning job. Inevitably he gets to show his stuff, and he becomes incredibly popular.

This chain of events has two negative consequences. While the salon's business picks up and the owner is able to pay her extremely inflated rent, a block-busting landlord decides to use violent techniques to get rid of anyone not already turned out by his high rental rates. In addition, a Palestinian recognizes the hairdresser as the counter-terrorist Zohan, and he lets Phantom know about his enemy's location.

Like most Sandler movies, ZOHAN has some funny bits mixed in with various tedious indulgences. The basic idea of the agents of two warring powers coming to a rapprochement, even if their countries don't, is laudable. But because the script has no idea as to how to make things work out for a happy ending, they resort to the idea that the landlord, who's allied with White supremacies for some reason, serve the function of the evil city slickers fostering conflict for profit.

There's just barely enough superhero-style combat between Zohan and Phantom to justify calling this a combative comedy. 

G.I. JOE: RETALIATION (2013)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                   There's so little entertainment in RETALIATION that I had less fun re-watching it (having barely remembered the first viewing) than in concocting the following theory: that these two live-action G.I. JOE feature films recapitulate the unrelated (save by content) history of the MCU phases.                                                                                       

 From what I've read about the making of the 2009 RISE OF COBRA (which appeared one year after the debut of the MCU's breakout hit IRON MAN), the filmmakers didn't originally intend to make a close adaptation of their source material. How those original intentions would have turned out, no one can say, but some insider leaked those plans to the Internet. The makers, who in those days actually wanted to please their audience and thereby make money, reworked their existing script to work in all the usual gang of Cobra-crooks as adversaries for the heroic Joes. RISE is no classic, but it is, like the majority of the MCU's first three phases, generally decent formula-fare. In contrast, RETALIATION is like nearly everything that followed the MCU's Phase Three, stuffed with cynical grandstanding, poorly conceived spectacles, and overconfidence as to the makers' ability to make the customers line up and pay for tickets.                                                                                                       

You might think, for instance, that after the financial success of RISE, no production team would be dumb enough not to copy the essence of both the preceding film and the successful franchise-- said essence being the appeal of seeing America defended by a cadre of gonzo commandos with wacky code-names and oddball gimmicks. True, RISE focused mostly on four of the heroes (Scarlett, Ripcord, Snake Eyes and Duke) and the three main villains (The Baroness, Cobra Commander and Destro). But there were six or seven other Joes contributing to the heroic goings-on, so the sense of the franchise's original intent was preserved. Not so RETALIATION. Channing Tatum's Duke is only in the movie long enough to get killed off, as are various other Joes, thanks to a "first strike" by Zartan, who was left on the loose at the end of RISE. Most of the narrative follows three surviving Joes, none of whom were in the previous film, as they seek a means to retaliate: Flint (DJ Cotrona), Lady Jaye (Adrienne Palicki), and, perhaps most consequentially, Roadblock as played by that 300-pound gorilla Dwayne Johnson. Given how Johnson's history of spotlight-stealing negatively impacted 2022's BLACK ADAM, I think I'm justified in speculating that the script was written to play up Johnson's dubious charms at the box office. Palicki and Cotrona have almost nothing to do, as does Bruce Willis in a throwaway support-role. The other two heroes in the film's ensemble-- Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Jinx (Elodie Yung) -- are not so sidelined, but only because they occupy a separate story-arc, in which they pursue another of Cobra's allies: the elusive Storm Shadow (Lee Byung-Hun).                                               

 Though RETALIATION is poorly paced and only a few spectacles are worth looking at, I will admit that Cobra's evil plot makes more sense than the one in RISE. This time the villains aren't unleashing a superweapon capable of destroying the world they too occupy. They've simply got their disguise-master Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) impersonating the President in order to destroy the Joes and to put Cobra in control of the world. Aside from that Storm Shadow subplot, it's almost entirely Cobra Commander's show, for the master villain leaves his former comrade Destro in prison and the fate of the reformed Baroness is never revealed. The leader does bring a minor henchman out of mothballs, Firefly (Ray Stevenson), but his only function is to have a couple of throwdowns with Johnson's Roadblock. (I almost want to say it's just "Johnson," because this role feels like almost every other part "The Rock" ever essayed.)       

 The only actor well-served by the script is the aforementioned Storm Shadow. The first film set up the quasi-sibling rivalry he shared with Snake Eyes and alluded to his supposed murder of his uncle/mentor, and RETALIATION does at least provide closure for that storyline. One of the few praiseworthy spectacles in the film is a bang-up ninja-battle between Snake and Shadow, concluded only when Jinx renders Shadow unconscious with knockout gas. Since Jinx is said to be Shadow's niece, I assume there was some idea of building up some drama in this conflict, but nothing is done with the subject; she gets a couple of decent fights but on the whole she's as underserved as Palicki and Cotrona. But in both films Lee Byung-Hun projects indomitable ferocity in this potentially cartoonish character, putting Johnson and his "ain't-I-a-cute-asskicker" routine to shame. In any case, though RETALIATION made decent box office, no sequel manifested, possibly because the filmmakers holding the franchise couldn't figure out what to do next. I know simple incompetence is not usually the thing that kills franchises-- certainly the MCU just keeps chugging along despite numerous failures-- but I find it pretty to think so.