GENERAL INVINCIBLE (1983)

 

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

I'd never seen GENERAL INVINCIBLE before, nor did I know that it was one of the last movies to feature the Chinese kung-fu diva Chang Ling. To my surprise, I only found one substantial review of INVINCIBLE: this detailed post by the late Todd Stadtman. I was very intrigued by Stadtman's assertion that this film was pretty much the "final star turn" for the Taiwanese actress.

For me the greater question, though, was whether it was either (a) a fun but somewhat ephemeral chopwacky, like WOLF DEVIL WOMAN,  (b) a dull formula outing like DARK LADY OF KUNG FU, or (c) that rarest of rarities, a mythopoeic Asian kung fu film, like MIRACULOUS FLOWER. 

Well, INVINCIBLE is not another MIRACULOUS FLOWER-- though there are a few times where it feels like that's what it's trying to be. It's definitely not just a chopwacky, because such martial movies always seem the results of harried writers pulling anything and everything out of their asses in order to keep the audience entertained. One vague reference suggested that the movie might have been an adaptation of some other work, so that *might* explain why INVINCIBLE seems to be shooting for some metaphysical truth that the film's scripter couldn't articulate.

That metaphysical truth, in this fictional context, feels like someone trying to adapt the complex confluence of Chinese faiths and folklore regarding "the search for enlightenment," which in this fictional universe can also lead one to become a peerless martial artist. There's also a slight suggestion of a familiar western homily that might be phrased as, "What shall it profit a woman to win the martial arts world, if she loses her only shot at romantic love."

It's ancient China again, and a new emperor has just succeeded his late father. The new ruler gets wind of an assassination conspiracy directed at him by an unscrupulous Chief Justice, one Lu Ruh-Ti (Tien Feng). The emperor sends for the four dukes of his empire to serve as his protectors, but Ruh-Ti just compensates by putting out hits on the dukes. Only one, "Duke Philip," concerns us, for he's the father of our heroine.  

 Oddly, though Chang's character Sparrow is the star of the show, first we see the love-interest she's doomed to lose, "Mean Red" (Adam Cheng). Red is seen washing out of a martial-arts test given an imperturbable teacher, "The Old Master," and after being kicked out of the Master's school, Red seems more than a little perturbed.

Then Duke Philip's killed, and Sparrow-- who passed her tests with the Old Master (but evidently never met Red) -- is called upon by her retainers to go after her father's killer. But even though the courtiers call Sparrow "general"-- a title that really means nothing to the plot-action-- she's a retiring type who doesn't like politics. She's also prone to epileptic fits, though this only comes up three times in the movie and never has much importance either. Still, one of the courtiers embarrasses Sparrow by taking his own life to force her to act. So she takes her mute slave (called only "slave") and seeks to find the one-armed killer of her father. (FUGITIVE jokes are taken as a given.)

She does eventually kill the killer, who puts her on the trail of the evil Chief Justice. But Sparrow's more significant encounter is with Mean Red. She pretends indifference to Red's flirtations, but she allows him to join her quest once she learns that Red used to be a student of the Old Master. He, however, despised the Old Master's high-flown devotion to transcendence of human emotions and his utter lack of compassion. (Maybe that's why Red is "mean?") However, if I followed the choppy script, Red is also a servant of Ruh-Ti, and ALSO may or may not also go by the name of Swift Thunder. 

So yeah, this is one of those chopsockies where new character-names are thrown out with wild abandon, and the English translators don't manage to follow it all. Early in the film Ruh-Ti references some mysterious ally named "Red Sow" and the dubbing says it's a "she." But when the character appears late in the film, it's a male-- and by any name, the character's not important to the movie. (Possibly this was some book-character shoehorned into the crowded story.) The Stadtman review asserts that a female martial artist named Ruh Yuh (played by Lin Dang) is one of the Chief Justice's allies. However, she spends most of the film trying to persuade Mean Red to join her in her own domain, so I felt she might've been intended as an independent player. Certainly she's tries her utmost to seduce Red away from Sparrow, and, to my surprise, she wins the romance contest.

The film's greatest appeal is that the credited author (who has just four IMDB credits) seems, in a very confused way, to filter a lot of real Chinese metaphysical concepts into this opus. The Old Master appears in a lot of flashbacks, uttering weird pithy observations like "nothingness leaves the door of transcending." And after the defeat of Ruh-Ti, the Master shows up to engage Sparrow in mystical combat, apparently just because he really wants to be sure Sparrow's fit to succeed him-- somehow, I never quite figured out what he wanted her to do. There's a flashy power-battle, the Master loses. Yet he doesn't die, but just walks away with a strange downbeat conclusion. Ruh-Ti, by the way, wasn't just content to knock off the emperor and his supporters. He's conspiring with Persian scientists (!) to create crystal knives which are somehow going to help him conquer the world. 

The upshot is that though INVINCIBLE seems like an issue of DOCTOR STRANGE that Stan Lee wrote for Chinese investors while dropping acid, at least the movie's never dull. It ends with Sparrow, sitting in lotus position with a rainbow in the sky, and that's not the worst image with which Chang Ling could (more or less) conclude her diva-career.

            

    
   

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.

BATTLE OF THE AMAZONS (1973)

  

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

The standard legends about Amazons assert that the warrior-women lived apart from males, except when they raided neighboring villages and kidnapped men for temporary stud service. Alfonso Brescia's Italian trash-peplum gets that part right, but adds the idea that the Amazons ruled by Queen Eraglia (Lucretia Love) keeps some males as slaves.

BATTLE has a rushed look even for an exploitation flick, possibly because the Italians wanted to "mockbust" Terence Young's more expensive production, THE AMAZONS. That's probably why the three credited writers (one of whom was Bruno Corbucci) took the obvious tack of ripping off THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. After the women warriors kill the headman of one village, his daughter Valeria (Paola Tedesco) decides to oppose Amazon tyranny. She hires handsome bandit Zeno (Lincoln Park) and his fellow rogues to train her people to fight.

It's not an irredeemable sin to be unoriginal, but it is to be lazy. Though Valeria is not much of a heroine, most of the Glam-azons are good looking enough to provide the sort of spectacle the movie needs. But the battles, even when not performed by stuntmen in drag, are unexceptional. And since the script has no interest in examining Amazon society from any sort of feminist angle-- which, admittedly, would be very atypical for any Italian film of the sixties or seventies -- BATTLE becomes something of a slog, rather than a fun if mindless peplum.

In addition to the "weird societies" trope, BATTLE also employs "outre outfits" in that the Amazons sometimes fight wearing outsized masks, whose real purpose was to conceal the masculine nature of the ladies' stunt-doubles. Over twenty years later, the show XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS also made frequent use of masked Amazons, though I don't know if the producers did so for a similar reason, or if someone on staff saw BATTLE and thought that the mask-thing was cool-looking. 

ONE PIECE: STRONG WORLD (2009)

 

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

I'd never attempt to review the multitudinous productions of ONE PIECE, the still-running manga and anime, any more than I'd take a shot at DRAGONBALL, the 1980s shonen that PIECE essentially superseded in popularity. Both are just too much of a time-commitment. But I can take a shot at the various movies and TV specials.

Phenomenality in ONE PIECE is problematic at best. It's not science fiction, nor what I call magical-era fantasy. The portmanteau term "science fantasy" is best, for it represents a world where all sorts of bizarre creatures and environments exist according to whatever phenomena the author wants to introduce-- much like the Mars books of Burroughs. Some characters in the PIECE universe use technology of a sort, but it's tech-gear filtered through the lens of historical fiction-- in this case, that of the Golden Age of Piracy. To further complicate the universe, there's some entity that scatters so-called "Devil Fruits" throughout the endless islands, and each fruit can bestow a particular, unique power on whoever eats one. So PIECE crosses the worlds of Burroughsian science-fantasy with that of superhero comics.

STRONG WORLD takes place after the manga and anime had been running roughly a decade, and stars nine-- count 'em, nine-- do-gooder pirates who never seem to find time to do the sort of things real pirates do. Instead, they're forever stomping out evil tyrants, or avenging little girls who've had their dollies messed up by bandits, and that sort of thing. In this case the goody-good "Straw Hat Pirates," led by the courageous moron Monkey D. Luffy, pit themselves against Shiki the Golden Lion, a villain who plans to dominate the world with a horde of mutated animals. In addition, Shiki abducts the Straw Hats' lissome lady navigator Nami to serve in his crew and scatters the other eight heroes all over the place. Naturally, after various exploits, they converge and kick the evildoer's ass.

Manga-creator Eichiro Oda wrote the movie's original story, and those in the know can see him recycling a major trope for the character Nami. When she first appears, she's the virtual slave of a petty ruler, and the Straw Hats rescue her. So WORLD is a partial reprise of that trope, with Shiki defeating the Straw Hats at first, so that Nami has to agree to serve him to spare her friends. The various "caring moments" in the film never overwhelm the big noisy action-scenarios but do serve as a necessary counterpoint.

ONE PIECE, which has been a major success in the world manga market, arguably found a way to translate the appeal of "superhero powers" to a shonen science-fantasy universe, and more than any other manga, seems to have eclipsed the American superheroes with the younger generations. WORLD is a decent action-fantasy programmer, with the only debit being that Shiki is just your usual tinpot tyrant. But the animators did a bang-up job designing all of the Golden Lion's malicious monsters, who provide some of the film's best moments.            

CORPSE PRINCESS (2008-09)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LEGEND OF THE RED REAPER (2013)

 

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

Before watching REAPER-- a passion project for writer/director/star Tara Cardinal-- I glanced at some of the IMDB reviews and saw a lot of "worse movie I ever saw" type of responses. Well, REAPER's far from being the worst movie even in the ranks of low-budget fantasy-films. It's not exactly good, but even if I judged it as "bad," it would be the badness of stuffing the script with too much stuff rather than too little. I always prefer the bad films that make a real effort over the ones that make little or none.

To be sure, it's tough to fit together all the puzzle-pieces in the life of Cardinal's character Aella. She dwells in a fantasy-world where humans and demons intermingle on a regular basis, and of course given the budget, the demons just look like humans in makeup. She's the seed of a human mother never given a proper name and a demon-lord named Ganesh (a peculiar reference to a Hindu elephant-god). The mother apparently has exclusive custody to Aella at the point where Mom marries a human lord named Adonis. Then the mother trades young Aella to her father in exchange for a vial of demon-blood, with which the human mother can stay young forever, or at least a really long time. Ganesh treats his daughter cruelly, though we only see one flashback of him whipping her (teen?) self. Aella is rescued by the Reapers, a cadre of warriors who were also the spawn of humans and demons, and who, despite a few demonic features (Aella has scales on her back), pledge their loyalty to the human world.

In the film's real-time, Aella has apparently served her lordly father Adonis for a while. Most of the film's early action, however, is confined to Aella having practice bouts with other Reapers and with humans. Her contact with human lords has caused her to form a romantic dalliance with Prince Eris, but various factions want Eris to marry a human noble, Princess Indira. Adonis is really the only one who nags Aella to step aside; the few others who know about the affair seem okay with it. 

After about half an hour of this melodrama-- including a side-plot about the possibility that Aella's inherited the prophetic powers of the mother she despises-- something finally happens to get the plot rolling. Aella is ambushed by a gang of humans, who riddle her with arrows, though this only incapacitates her. They take her to a hut and drain off her half-demon blood, planning to kill her thereafter. But Aella is rescued by her wayward mother, now billed as "The Teller Witch," who transports Aella to another hut, where the Witch lives with her other daughter, who for all the importance she has in the story might as well not exist.

If Aella or any viewer hoped for the mother to justify her past actions, there's not much of that. The Witch simply informs her prodigal daughter that the humans serve Ganesh, and that they intend to use her blood to strengthen an army to attack the semi-human Reapers and Aella's foster father Adonis. The broad implication is that doing so will bring about Ganesh's rulership of the mortal world, but political strategy is not a big concern here.

From then on, the rest of the film is mostly lots of running around and sword-slinging. Before Aella can return to the keep of Adonis, Bad Father Ganesh duels Good Father Adonis and kills the latter. Aella does find a half-dead Eris on the battlefield and feeds him her blood to revive him. I *think* she runs off because she thinks he's died, but Eris does revive and joins the Reapers in trying to fight the demons and their human allies. I can't say that any of the combat, armed or unarmed, is anything special, but I have seen much worse. Strangely, despite all the tactics used to build to a fatal confrontation between good daughter and evil father, the two of them fight for a few minutes, but Eris gets to strike the fatal blow. This, on top of Aella stepping aside to allow Eris to make his political marriage, seems like a curious attempt to downplay the main character in order to make her story seem "tragic." 

Still, Cardinal does better than many actresses have in playing a tough swordswoman, and since the movie does at least have a muddled take on the concept of human-demon interactions in a fantasy-universe, I'll give REAPER a fair mythicity rating.  

        

THE LADY PROFESSIONAL (1971)

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

I don't know what the status of "stylish lady assassin films" was in 1971, but LADY PROFESSIONAL seems like it was made by people who never saw a good movie in this subgenre. I mean, even screening 1967's DEADLIER THAN THE MALE might have given them a clue.       

PROFESSIONAL looks good but proves a labor to get through thanks to a surfeit of talking-head scenes. Ge Tianli (Lily Ho), former assassin gone straight, is forced by gangsters to take on one more assignment. But once the job's done, the head gangster decides to save some money by knocking off Ge. This sounds like it ought to lead to a fair helping of lively action-scenes as Ge fends off assassins, but the film's two directors-- one Japanese, one Chinese-- weren't equal to this task. Only one scene is slightly memorable. Three assassins corner Ge in a construction yard, one killer being an acrobat who uses knives, while the other two are big muscular guys (one played by Bolo Yeung). Ge tries a few striking moves on the big guys, and they just ignore her blows. I think the writer meant to imply that Ge could fight well enough when not overmatched, so I still judge the film to be combative, even though the fights are underwhelming. Ge does manage to slay all three killers by fleeing and tricking them into "death by construction implements."

Characterization is nonexistent, and the only uncanny metaphenomenon is that Ge sometimes kills her victims with darts fired from her compact. Lily Ho's stunning good looks are the only ammunition this PROFESSIONAL can offer.               

SHADOW GIRL (1971)

 

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

I think I gave SHADOW GIRL a "fair" mythicity rating purely because it was so unusual to see someone attempt to mash up a swordplay-chopsocky with an "invisible person" comedy. It's not that SHADOW does anything especially outstanding, but I have to give it credit for trying something different.

We don't find out for a while what made Yin Chu (Lily Li) invisible, though only in daytime. She runs around playing pranks with her invisibility, convincing people that she's a ghost. But she interferes with a powerful gangster, and he sets assassins to kill the "spirit." The comedy-action scenes are okay, but I forgot most of them after one day, except for a climax in which Yin battles two old hermits, a blind one with acute hearing and a crippled one with telekinetic powers.

  To build up the comedy even more, Yin has a meet-cute with a handsome doctor (An Ping), and this leads to a comic wedding scene. Lily Li brings an effervescent charm to this lightweight role. On some level I suppose SHADOW GIRL deserves its obscurity, but at least it's the most atypical Shaw Brothers chopsocky I've ever encountered. 

ULTRAVIOLET (2006)

 

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

Not only was ULTRAVIOLET a massive flop in 2006, the film seemed (according to Wiki) to inspire loathing in some critics. It's hard to see why. At worst, it's a derivative hyperkinetic thriller set in a fantasy-future, in which the titular heroine seeks to overthrow a corrupt regime. Just as star Milla Jovovich did in her successful RESIDENT EVIL movies, her superwoman mows down huge numbers of villainous minions in the approved video-game style. Writer-director Kurt Wimmer doesn't come up with any bold new directions, but his story isn't bereft of interesting elements either.

Evil government researchers-- one of whom is the movie's main villain-- sought to convert a dormant virus into the viral equivalent of a "super-soldier serum." Instead, those infected did become stronger and faster than ordinary humans, but with a much-reduced life expectancy. I don't know why that prevented the Evil Government from still using the virus to create short-lived super-soldiers, but that whole idea gets dropped. Instead the government, headed by "Vice Cardinal" Daxus (Nick Chinlund) decides to "disappear" all the afflicted people, called "hemophages" because they have fang-like teeth, though they are in no way dependent upon drinking blood. Some hemophages escape the draconian roundup and organize into resistance cells. One of the foremost agents of this resistance is Violet (Jovovich), and throughout the film she shows a marked penchant for breaking into heavily guarded installations, shooting it out with dozens of guards (unless she uses her katana-sword instead), and getting clean away. Her only backstory is that before being infected Violet was a young would-be mother, and she lost her child because of the disease the evil government unleashed.

 However, quicker than you can say "maternal surrogate" (which the script actually puts into words late in the film), Violet's raid on one installation saddles her with a young boy named Six. Violet acquired the boy in the belief that he was a test-subject whose blood might contain an antigen for the hemophage disease. However, when this proves not to be the case, the heroine's fellow hemophages decide to terminate the child. So kind-hearted Violet goes on the run with Six, despite the fact that Daxus himself appeals to her, telling Violet that Six is the fruit of his loins.         

Violet's problems mount as some of the hemophages ally themselves to Daxus, trying to swipe Six from her. There's no explicit reason why Violet should be all that much stronger and faster than her fellow victims, except that Wimmer seems to be in love with the sword-fu and gun-fu seen in John Woo's 1990s action-films. Violet has a handful of scenes trying to relate to the confused boy, but Wimmer's main concern with having the heroine fight her way to a final confrontation with Daxus, who has two "big reveals," neither all that interesting. On the plus side, all the violent battles are nicely choreographed, and Jovovich does her best to give her simple character some humanity.

ULTRAVIOLET's most interesting quality, though, may be its prescience. I never encountered very many sci-fi futures in which a tyranny was built upon the government's manipulation of an infectious disease, so I have the impression that Wimmer's story somewhat anticipates the real-life manipulations seen in the real world after the Covid pandemic. While I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I have no doubt that a lot of companies and government agencies profited from the chaos, and that's what ULTRAVIOLET shows, fourteen years before the consequences of a real-life "lab leak."       

ALIEN RISING (2013)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                                Once again I find myself launching a mild defense of a low-budget film that's been bagged on, way out of proportion to its faults. Director Dana Schroeder and his two writers (one of whom was Michael Todd, star of ROBOT NINJA) didn't produce any sort of sci-fi sleeper. But there's a smooth progression of incidents and some half-decent fight-scenes, even if the plot doesn't always make perfect sense.                                                                                             

  So I'll unfold the plot as it's supposed to occur in the actual story, not the protagonist's fragmented discovery of it. At some past era, an alien craft with two ETs-- one small, one big--crashlands on Earth. The military prompted hides the first contact in a secret facility. Apparently the boffins' research shows that the small alien wields some sort of mental control over the big, powerful one, and the theory is advanced that the small one created the big one as a proxy with which to explore other planets. The head of the operation, Colonel Cencula (Lance Henriksen) separates the two ETs to test their level of contact, sending the big one to another laboratory. For some reason the head scientist gets the idea that they might better communicate with the alien and its "twin" with the use of a human twin that demonstrated psychic connection with her human twin. The military finds a female twin named Amy in prison, remands her, and uses her in a communication experiment. Amy dies somehow, and maybe it's the fault of Cencula-- because hey, how often does Lance Henriksen play a good guy?                                                           

   So Cencula sends his agents out to collect the other twin, whether she likes it or not. Lisa Morgan (Amy Hathaway), long estranged from her prison-bait sister, became a kick-ass homeland security agent. In a botched operation, Lisa's partner Manning (played by the sixty-something John Savage) gets killed, and because Lisa had enjoyed an affair with Manning, she quits her job. But Cencula's men abduct Lisa to their isolated facility and induct her into the government's alien-inquiry program. There, Cencula doles out just enough info to keep Lisa intrigued-- her sister's involvement, the possibility that Lisa possesses the same psychic powers as the late sister. Oh, would you believe that Cencula was far-sighted enough that he also spirited away Manning before he died, faked his death, and inducted him into the project because the colonel thought Manning would prove useful? Nah, and I didn't believe it either.                           

In fact, if anything Manning just further indicates to Lisa that Cencula's dealing from the bottom of the deck. Manning wants to get with Lisa again, but she finds love with Plummer (Brian Krause), an agent closer to her own age. (Both Krause and Hathaway were in their forties at the time RISING was made, though appearance-wise both were able to skew younger in 2013.)  Lisa also participates in the head scientist's experiments with the small alien, and I guess she provides the research guys with some extra data, though no one actually says so. But Cencula has some involved plans to make money off the ETs, and soon Lisa has to play one-woman army against the colonel, her former lover, and the troops-- though she gets some last-minute help from the Big CGI Alien.                                                                     

Director Shroeder is no Orson Welles, but he tells the formula story passably well in terms of visuals. I saw a number of critiques of Hathaway both as an actress and as a performer of movie-fights. There's not that much in the Lisa character that proves Hathaway's thespian abilities either way, but I thought she looked okay punching and kicking in the fight-scenes. I agree that sometimes the heroine would hit a full-grown man and that he'd fold too easily, and that her male opponents rarely managed to hit Lisa with a really strong blow. But those could be the fault of hasty, low-budget fight-coordination, and I've certainly seen a lot of actresses who were much less convincing as tough-girl heroines.                               

DEADLY DREAM WOMAN (1992)

 

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

I admit that I watched a version of this film broadcast on a cable channel that used to show old HK movies, usually with the very rough English subtitles done for Hong Kong's English-speaking residents. So I could be missing lots of subtleties thanks to a subpar translation.

However, I doubt that this inferior "girls with guns" entry had any hidden virtues. DEADLY DREAM WOMAN looks like a lot of HK comedies, with the story cobbled together from all sorts of disparate elements. And one of the biggest is that main character Nightingale Wong (Sharla Cheung Man) waltzes around in a domino mask and costume for no explicit reason. This attire resulted in a number of online sources calling Nightingale a "superhero," even though there's no evidence that she's anything of the kind.

Nightingale is first seen, along with a similarly garbed partner named "Cuckoo," in a meeting of Triad gang bosses. None of these career criminals seem the least bit curious as to why the two women wear weird costumes, but it's not to protect their identities. By way of introducing Nightingale to the other crooks, the chairman of the group-- whom Nightingale calls her "foster dad"-- tells everyone that Nightingale is the daughter of such-and-such a Triad bigwig. Since Nightingale and Cuckoo are later seen to possess considerable fighting skills, the best conclusion is that they're supposed to be either bodyguards or assassins who just like dressing up like a female version of Batman and Robin.     

A young Triad boss, name of "Jaguar," makes his move to gain dominance, bringing in a gang of assassins to murder the chairman and his allies. Nightingale and Cuckoo fight valiantly but both the chairman and Cuckoo are killed. Nightingale escapes in a boat but hits her head and loses her memory. 

At the same time all this is going on, the film introducers viewers to some rather crooked bar-girls, headed by older female Deannie Yip and the younger Chingmy Yau. They find Nightingale and take her in, at least partly hoping to ransom her when they find out who she is. All the scenes with the bargirls are filled with wacky dialogue that HK audiences may've found hilarious, but said scenes were a complete bore to me. Eventually Nightingale recovers her memory and goes on the warpath to get Jaguar, with some assistance from her new girl-buddies. The various action-scenes are certainly better than any of the comedy, but the former are nothing special. The curiosity value of Triad bosses using costumed bodyguards is the only distinguishing aspect of this derivative production.      

         

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (2004)

 

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

The Riddick franchise was birthed by the 2000 film PITCH BLACK, one year after THE MATRIX brought forth a somewhat similar about a science-fictional hero in a far future. The Wachowskis' hero was a basically sympathetic good guy, negotiating his way through alternate realities, though as the franchise developed, the hero's universe seemed more and more arbitrary. Director/co-scripter David Twohy also began his franchise with a strong opener, but he confined his trope-metaphors to a small selection (altruism vs. self-interest, animality vs. humanity). Yet CHRONICLES, the second live-action film to feature Vin Diesel essaying the murderer destined to save his universe, also fails to build on a strong first film. 

PITCH BLACK had a simple but strong plotline: a seemingly ruthless criminal becomes the sole hope of a small band of crash-survivors, and by becoming their hero he's at least partly changed. An interstitial animated film, DARK FURY, merely accounts for what immediately happened to Riddick and the last two persons to escape the Pitch-Black Planet; it doesn't extend any of the three protagonists but merely sets up the events of CHRONICLES. 

CHRONICLES makes a clumsy effort to build its story from Riddick's emotional ties to his fellow survivors. To keep from endangering them, he distances himself from the Muslim holy man Iman (Keith David) and the young woman who supposedly thinks of him as a "big brother," Jack-renamed-as-Kyra (Alexa Davalos, replacing the performer from PITCH BLACK). This possibly selfless act has one bad consequence: Kyra goes looking for Riddick and is confined to a "slam" (future-world jail). 

Riddick does not know this until he finds himself pursued by a gang of bounty hunters, led by a malefactor named Tombs. Tombs reveals that the bounty was set by the Imam, so Riddick, feeling not a little betrayed, seeks out the alleged holy man. It's soon revealed that Imam's bounty was designed to bring Riddick close enough for the revelation that, as the "Last Furyan" (a particular planetary people), the hard-ass fugitive is the only "evil" that can defeat a greater evil.

When I wonder why I didn't like CHRONICLES better-- despite lots of good costumes, decent FX and splashy action-sequences-- the reason comes down to the uninteresting threat of the Necromongers. This race of humanoid aliens, whom I assume are unrelated to Earth-people, worship the concept of bringing widespread death to the universe. Their theory is that the extinguishing of all life will allow them to access a mystical dimension, the UnderVerse-- all of which sounds like a rejected concept for a JUDGE DREDD story. Because the Necromongers as a movement are boring and one-dimensional, there's nothing compelling about their leader, "The Lord Marshal," or any of his subordinates, such as Lord Varro and his scheming wife Lady Varro. Riddick faces some other raffish opponents as well, and they're also forgettable, though the hero does give one thug the humiliating demise of "death by teacup."

The subplot about Riddick having survived a "death of innocents" oriented on eliminating him as a future opponent is no more impressive. Riddick's confrontation with the alienated Kyra offers a few dramatic beats, but on the whole Twohy, who was solely credited for a Riddick script for the first time, muffs this potential too. The ending tries for tragedy and ends up with mere portentousness. Despite the fact that CHRONICLES underperformed, the franchise got another iteration in 2013's RIDDICK, which I will probably review in the near future.

BLACK FOX: AGE OFTHE NINJA (2019)

  

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

This live-action, Edo-period ninja-movie was made the same year as an anime titled BLACK FOX, and one of the non-animated movie's main characters is supposed to be the ancestor of the main anime character. I have not seen the anime.

While FOX is not any sort of gang-changer, it stands as an object lesson as to how a contemporary movie can be centered upon the relationship of two heroic women, without running all the male characters into the ground. And this is a signal accomplishment, given that one of the villains is the father to one of the heroines.

Young woman Miya (MamiYajima) is subjected to an arcane experiment by her father, one that fills her body with electrical energy. A marauding gang breaks into their home, and Miya flees, thinking they've slain her father. The woman wanders through a forest until she comes across a compound belonging to a ninja clan called Kitsune (fox). Miya encounters Rikka Isurugi (Chihiro Yamamoto), and though their meeting isn't entirely copacetic, Rikka becomes sympathetic to the frazzled young woman, despite witnessing her bizarre shock-powers. Rikka appears to her grandfather Hyoe (familiar face Yasuaki Kurata) to give Miya shelter from the gang, the Negoro. Hyoe does so briefly, but when the Negoro come calling, they launch a frontal attack against the Kitsune. Informed of the higher powers served by the gangsters, Hyoe backs down and turns Miya over to the Negoro and their masters. 

Rikka, having befriended the helpless fugitive, defies her grandfather's authority and swears to rescue Miya. To this end, Rikka dons a special costume far from the usual attire of the cinematic ninja, seen only briefly in the opening credits-- a fairly sporty outfit, crowned with a black fox-mask. She probably only wears the mask for about ten full minutes during the action-packed climax, but it looks good, and at least is a great improvement on the bizarre costumes worn by the so-called "ninjas" of the NARUTO manga.

The climax has a few too many irons in the fire, as we're quickly introduced to the bosses behind the Negoro, and the strange development that the Negoro, for reasons unclear to me, suddenly decide to throw in with Rikka against their former employers. Far less surprising is the revelation that Miya's father did not die in the raid, and that in truth he always planned to exploit his daughter as a living weapon. The shock of seeing her father alive again throws Miya into a fugue state, and he even manages to turn Miya against her own rescuer. However, in tried-and-true sentimental fashion, Rikka is able to appeal to female friendship to snap Miya back to normal.

Though few of the male characters are that important, only Miya's father is a flat-out villain. Hyoe compromises with the Negoro because he wants to save his clan, while one of the conspirators is openly disgusted at the father having turned his own daughter into a lab rat. Chihiro Yamamoto provides most of the physical action and the heavy emoting, but the script is noteworthy for including small bits of character-business that keep everything from seeming overly predictable.

  

ATTACK OF THE 60 FOOT CENTERFOLDS (1995)

 

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

In my July 2022 review of ATTACK OF THE 60 FOOT CHEERLEADER, I wrote:

This Roger Corman production echoes the title of a nineties flick for the same producer's New Horizons label, ATTACK OF THE 60-FOOT CENTERFOLDS. However, while both films are sold on Corman's dependable attractions of T & A, my memory is that CENTERFOLDS had nothing else, while the Michael MacLean script for CHEERLEADER injects some intelligent humor into an undoubtedly silly concept.

When I wrote that, I hadn't seen CENTERFOLDS in over twenty years, but now that I have, I'm gratified to see that my memory remained accurate, even about such a piddling movie. But that's very nearly all that's gratifying about yet another listless Fred Olen Ray potboiler.

Of course, Ray doesn't stint on the aforementioned T&A. In addition to supporting roles by Nikki Fritz and Michelle Bauer (though the latter remains fully clothed throughout), the movie centers upon three models competing for a big contract. The star is a girl with an unusually religious name, Angel Grace (J.J. North), and though she's dating sleazy photographer Mark, Mark's assistant Wilson is the guy who truly loves Angel. Betty (Tammy Parks) is the Bitch of the story, constantly putting down innocent Angel as her strongest competition for their common goal. Lastly, there's Inga (Raelyn Saalman), who really serves no purpose in the narrative except to feed other actors a few lines here and there. I assume Ray simply had the budget to afford three hotties willing to doff their tops, so he went with it.

Now, though most of Ray's movies are timekillers at best, occasionally he's shown some talent at comedy whenever he got a half-decent script. But CENTERFOLDS, while not the bottom of the comedic barrel, doesn't float much higher than that. This is shown by the extreme idiocy of Angel's motivation. Though she's patently a gorgeous woman, she fears losing her looks for some unexplained reason. So she volunteers to be a guinea pig for a "beauty enhancement" drug, though the scientist in charge tells her to only take the drug as prescribed.

So Angel, Betty, Inga and the photography crew show up at the mansion of some high-roller named Gordon (Jay Richardson), seemingly based on Hugh Hefner, even though Gordon only has one live-in girlfriend. I don't recall the nature of whatever job the models all want, but Angel's so nervous that she overdoses on the drug. Coincidentally, back at the science place the learned people have learned that the drug has caused a test rat to become One Big Honking Rodent.

Within a few hours of overdosing, Angel expands into Sixty-Foot Centerfold. After the others on Gordon's estate get over their initial shock, bad guys Mark and Gordon lay plans to exploit the Colossal Cutie, while nice guy Mark tries to protect her. But the only real conflict in this tired script is that Betty learns of the plans to give Angel a really big centerfold, and so she steals the drug and becomes a second Colossal Girl. The two tit-titans struggle for supremacy with that old favorite, the Standing Grapple (where two girls catfight by grabbing each other's hands and shoving each other back and forth). The dull fight only gets enlivened at the end, when Scientist Guy changes them both back to normal and Angel decks Betty. Angel and Wilson end up together, happy happy joy joy.

Simple as the silly concept is, Ray could have got considerably more mileage out of it, but he and his writer were apparently too lazy. They even blow an easy joke that "quotes" THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN. In that fifties Bert I. Gordon flick, scientists try to inject the hapless giant for his own good, but he grabs their oversize syringe, hurls it and impales one of the attendants. Angel gets to duplicate the scene, with non-fatal consequences for Gordon, but his posterior punishment comes off as utterly unfunny. However, Richardson is the only actor to gives a little more than just basic service with his smarmy Hefner-analogue. Ray also throws in blink-and-miss-them short bits for other performers, such as Russ Tamblyn, Tommy Kirk, Ross Hagen, Stanley "My Three Sons" Livingston, and Forrest J. Ackerman as "Dracula." I think he was supposed to be a wax statue of the vampire, one that comes to life and runs away from the Colossal Catfight. But if so said statue must have been made by someone who never saw any pictorial depictions of Dracula-- just like, watching this film, one could easily believe Fred Olen Ray must not have ever seen a good movie, because he makes so many bad ones.

EROTIC GHOST STORY (1990)

 

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

Some online reviews compare the Hong Kong movie EROTIC GHOST STORY to the book-and-movie THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, and I suppose this could be a partial influence. But even having only a smidgen of familiarity with Chinese literary tropes, I tend to think that the story owes a lot more to the oft-adapted Chinese story of THE LEGEND OF THE WHITE SNAKE. SNAKE is about a female snake-spirit who falls in love with a mortal man and so attempts to pass as human, only to be separated from her love by a busybody Taoist monk. 

GHOST is about three spirits-- my subtitling calls them both "foxes" and "fairies"-- who are seeking to purge themselves of lustful impulses so that they can become human. In a reversal of the SNAKE plotline, they meet a male-- only apparently a mortal-- who seduces them all and ruins their chances to become human beings. The film's references to Chinese metaphysics are the only reason I give GHOST a fair mythicity rating, since most of this Category III film consists of loads and loads of softcore sex.

The three fairies (Amy Yip, So Man and Hitomi Kudo) descend to Earth and take up residence in some Chinese city, where they're able to pass as humans with their neighbors. A busybody Taoist priest stops by to provide exposition about how the fairies need to avoid sex in order to attain humanity, and the girls all vow to stay chaste.

In no time, handsome young scholar Wu Ming (Pal Sinn) comes along and implores the women to give him shelter until he gets wherever he's going. And equally quickly, each of the sisters in turn finds some excuse to corner Ming in private and sex him up. The sisters aren't even particularly possessive, for when they find out that they've all done the scholar their next step is line up a foursome.

But Ming isn't a mortal scholar at all; he's the fertility demon Wutung, the very incarnation of the lust the sisters were attempting to avoid. This leads to a magical duel, which includes flashing CGI rays and the use of  a voodoo doll. (The scene in which Wutung writhes in pain as the three girls repeatedly stab his image is the movie's high point.) Aside from that scene, both the fight-scenes and the sex-scenes are nothing special, and the three female stars don't even get to defeat their seducer, as the Taoist comes back to deal the demon his defeat-- though oddly, Wutung gets a sequel and the fairy-girls don't.

BARBARIAN QUEEN II: THE EMPRESS STRIKES BACK (1993)

 

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

Trust your power to the daughter of such

Who held it in another time, 

Trust to me what no man can touch

Without the blessing of womankind.

With the above bit of doggerel, was schlockmeister-writer Howard R. Cohen trying, even in a crude manner, to follow through on the quasi-feminist content of BARBARIAN QUEEN? To acknowledge this possibility is not to state that QUEEN II-- a sequel-in-name-only-- isn't one of the most dire sword-and-sorcery flicks to come down the pike. But one must give credit where it is due. (To be sure, this time Cohen is partnered with one Lance Smith on the script, though his credits are no better than Cohen's, while QUEEN II was the only directorial credit for film editor Joe Finley.)

It's possible Cohen subconsciously cadged from 1985's RED SONJA in coming up with a "power" accessible only to women, and which is fought over by a "good girl" and a "bad girl." In QUEEN II, the powerful talisman is a magical sceptre that's controlled by the royal family of Some Damn Kingdom or Other. The princess of that family, Athalia (Lana Clarkson), is evidently a bit of a tomboy, while her only relation, her king-father, has left the castle to lead a foray against an enemy. Athalia shows up at the throne room, and her father's counselor Ankaris reports that though the kingdom's (never seen) army has returned, the king has gone missing. Thus Ankaris and his cohorts decide to usurp the throne. They want Athalia to give them the secret of the magic sceptre that occupies some cynosure in the castle. When the princess refuses, they lock her up.

Enter the film's rather unusual "bad girl," pretending to be a good one: Tamis (Cecilia Tijerina), the 14-year-old daughter of Ankaris. Pretending to be Athalia's friend, Tamis frees the princess and takes her to the cynosure. After reciting the doggerel, Athalia is able to remove the magic sceptre, and have access to its unspecified power-- though she also claims that using it will cause her father's death, if he's still alive. I guess the writers threw this in so that she wouldn't be able to call on the power right away, thus ending the movie too soon. Tamis swipes the sceptre, and as Ankaris and his stooges waltz in, they all have a good laugh at the gullible princess. However, Athalia steals the sceptre back and puts it back in place, after which Ankaris and his guards can't touch the weapon. On top of that, Athalia escapes the palace and makes common cause with a band of forest-rebels-- though only after a mud-wrestling bout with one of the women warriors. (Yeah, even I'm not going to argue against that bit being gratuitous.)

While the villains lay their next plots, the Cohen-Smith script spotlights the bratty evil of Tamis, She seems convinced that her father's only good looking ally Sir Aurion (Greg Wrangler) is earmarked to marry her, though he looks less than enthusiastic at the prospect. Later the audience learns that Aurion proposed to Athalia several times, though she refused to marry him for reasons never disclosed. A few scenes later, though, the forest-rebels capture a band of royal knights, including Aurion, and we get to see that the fire of romance still burns between hunk-knight and hot princess. 

Athalia is captured when she and her rebels attack Ankaris' forces, and in a blatant callback to BARBARIAN QUEEN, the princess ends up on the rack as Amethea did-- although Athalia has to put up with nasty quasi-rival Tamis watching. Also, her torturer is evidently gay, baring the princess's breasts but calling them "disgusting."

Aurion tries to rescue Athalia, but she frees herself first and once more seeks out the magic sceptre. She experiences deep conflicts about using its power, though, since she doesn't know if it will cost her father's life. Ankaris captures her again, so apparently the only point of the escape was to underscore the heroine's reluctance to imperil her daddy's life, even though Ankaris tells her that the king is dead.

This time Athalia endures Tamis threatening to drop spiders on her. Aurion comes to her rescue, but so do members of the forest-rebels after they sneak into the castle. The rebels take Aurion and Athalia back to their camp. Meanwhile, Tamis belatedly reveals that she has a magic talisman given her by her mother, and uses some of Athalia's doggerel to activate it. Presto, change-o, Tamis becomes a full grown woman. 

Belatedly, a coterie of knights show up at the rebel camp with the body of Athalia's father, and now, despite her grief, Athalia knows she can use the magic sceptre against her foes. However, Grown Tamis infiltrates the camp at night, and after a weird attempt to get Aurion to make love to her, almost kills him. When the rebels attack the castle, they take Tamis along, hoping she'll be killed by her own forces-- and indeed, at the castle she's stabbed by her own daddy, because he doesn't know her. Meanwhile, Amethea kills the gay torturer and finds that Ankaris has killed himself over the body of his once more youthful daughter. After all the fuss about the magic spectre, it doesn't really do anything to resolve the main conflict, though Athalia says something about using it to cure a poisonous spider bite.

Unlike all the DEATHSTALKER movies on which Cohen worked, there's at least some erratic mythopoetic material here, which is the only reason I bothered to explicate it. But even if the movie had been given decent direction and fight choreography, the writers didn't know how to really make any of their mythic concepts resonate with viewers, and so QUEEN II-- which certainly wins no points for its cheesy subtitle-- earns only a ranking with the worst of the thud-and-blunder movies.

Odd addenda: at the start of the movie Athalia is seen wearing, very briefly, an outfit with a fur collar. About seven years later, Clarkson played a villain in one episode of the Corman-produced BLACK SCORPION teleseries, and the actress wore what I suspect was the exact same costume for that endeavor. 

SECRET OF THE SWORD (1985)

  

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

Maybe if I'd been in my grade-school years during the rise of the Filmation HE-MAN cartoon, I would have liked it no less than the actual superhero cartoons I was raised on. Yet I doubt it. I found the He-Man series a soulless, design-by-committee concept, made even less charming by the fact that even the non-toy characters were poorly conceived.

Yet when the episodes comprising SECRET OF THE SWORD debuted, I rather liked He-Man's new sister She-Ra. I don't know how much design input the toy line had on the characters, but I thought overall both the heroine and her support-characters looked better. Maybe this was because HE-MAN was slapped together as a vague amalgam of magical fantasy and clunky science-fiction. The same elements are in SHE-RA as well, but there was a better opposition of those elements. The heroine and her comrades-- a flying horse, a talking owl, an archer and a comical witch with a talking broom-- had a more pronounced fantasy-feeling. In contrast, most of the sci-fi elements were aligned with the villainous Hordak and his coterie of super-powered henchpersons (though he had a spooky witch-ally named Shadow Weaver).

The plot's pretty thin, so I'll keep to the bare essentials. Guided by a prophecy from his mentor The Sorceress, He-Man (in his "secret identity" of Prince Adam) leaves his homeworld Eternia and visits the dimension of Etheria, along with his friend-and-steed Cringer/Battlecat. All the hero knows is that he must give a second sword, one much like his own, to a heroine of that world. He's summarily captured by the forces of Hordak, under the command of an officer named Adora, who turns out to be the one he's supposed to seek out. 

As I've already given away, Adora is actually the sister of Adam, having been stolen by Hordak during an abortive invasion of Eternia-- an invasion abetted by He-Man's nemesis Skeletor. Hordak had Adora raised as an officer in his Horde just for spite, but Adora doesn't know she's on the wrong side. With just a few preachy statements He-Man opens Adora's eyes to Hordak's tyranny. Thus she proves worthy of the sword, which transforms her into the super-strong heroine She-Ra, and her horse into a Pegasus-type.

To say the least, Hordak is not pleased to have a super-powered heroine busting up his operations. He makes a stealth invasion of Eternia to get even, joins briefly with his despised former ally Skeletor, and after defeat returns to Etheria. She-Ra/Adora also decides to remain in Etheria rather than joining her family in Eternia, until the day that she expels the Horde from her adopted world.

I've skipped various incidents, but it's a thinly plotted adventure anyway. As I recall the average episode of SHE-RA was better plotted than the average episode of HE-MAN, but maybe I just liked the way She-Ra seemed to get a little bustier after her transformation.

RED SONJA: QUEEN OF PLAGUES (2016)

 

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

I'll get the main objection to RED SONJA: QUEEN OF PLAGUES out of the way: while hypothetically a barely animated motion comic might work for some genres, the genre of sword-and-sorcery needs lots of visceral bloodletting to have its optimal effects.

QUEEN is based on a "Red Sonja" comic issued by the company Dynamite, and written by big-name author Gail Simone. I haven't read the original comic, but given that Simone adapted her own script for this DTV project, I don't imagine that there are any major differences between the two. QUEEN is never more than an average formulaic S&S adventure, but at least it has a coherent plot and characterization, which is more than one can say of many big-screen efforts.

The backstory for this version of Red Sonja is that years ago she was enslaved and turned into a pit-fighter by King Rylack, the Butcher of Zamora. She and one other female fighter, Dark Annisia, survive the pit's rigors. Rylack is driven from his lands by Good King Dimath, who releases both women from imprisonment. Years later, Dimath's kingdom is under siege by a foreign army. His people have lost the will to fight, so he sends for Sonja to train them in the arts of war. Still grateful for Dimath's actions, Sonja also enters the fray when the enemy forces attack. But guess what former ally, whose name sounds like that of Robert E. Howard's "Dark Agnes" heroine, ends up fighting Sonja in the field, and apparently passing on a plague to the heroine? And guess what absent evildoer is actually pulling Annisia's strings without her knowledge?

None of the big reveals are very engrossing, any more than one revealing that there is no plague, just an insidious poison devised by a proto-scientist. Indeed, there's really no "sorcery" here, though in one short section Simone introduces some fish-humanoids that have nothing to do with the main story. But I give the movie a "fair" rating because even though the animation can't portray blood-and-guts, the script does get across the general sense of a brutal world where right and wrong are entirely decided by who can swing the meanest sword.

Simone's script also gives Sonja a new origin only tangentially related to the first version from 1975. The backstory still stresses that Sonja became a mercenary wanderer after her family was slaughtered by ruthless soldiers, but she isn't raped and she doesn't get any special gifts or counsel from any sort of deity. The revised Sonja-history thus eliminates many aspects of the early origin that feminists found problematic. Still, whether Simone or someone else at Dynamite concocted the new story, there's nothing about it to distinguish it from thousands of other vengeance-seeking warriors in popular fiction.

DRAGON FURY 2 (1996)

 

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

Okay, here's the sort of forgettable junk that isn't worth the time it takes to dismiss it.

There's a mention on IMDB that the script by the credited writer was so bad that the main actor and other personnel tossed it and concocted their own story. Suffice to say that they didn't succeed in making anything better than awful.

Mason (Robert Chapin) is once more the hero, despite having died at the end of the first film. I'm not sure that the first FURY showed that he had traveled back to his own time, but assuming it did, he's taken in by a future-doctor who puts his body into cryostasis for the next 15 years, and then for unstated reasons decides to revive Mason. But Mason, though hale and hearty once more, has lost his memory and flees the doctor's helping hands.

The real reason for the fifteen-year sleep is to provide Mason with a new romantic partner, one with slightly incestuous overtones. Future-warrior Crystal Blu (Cathleen Anne Gardner) heads a group of rebels against the authority of an evil overlord, Molech (Mike son-of-Chuck Norris). Whereas there was a troop of "dragons" fighting the overlords in Part One, now all the dragon-swordsmen serve Molech. There is no reference to the plague or the medical dictatorship from the first film.

So amnesiac Mason wanders around until a minor dragon-warrior finds him and invites the badass blonde to join Molech's team. Mason does become one of the dragons because he has no reason not to. Eventually Crystal fights with the new Molech-servant and then manages to knock him out and take him back to rebel HQ. The aforementioned doctor tells her at some point that Mason was trained by Crystal's late father, and this revelation leads the young woman to sleep with the time-displaced dead man. There's another assault on Molech's fortress, and Crystal dies to give Mason a good reason to duel Molech. Oh, and there's a cute young girl who has psychic predictions, which don't make any difference to the plot, which again is non-stop fighting, but with far inferior direction this time.

The only half-decent thing about FURY 2 is the logo, in which the Roman numeral "2" is formed by two side-by-side swords.