JUNGLE QUEEN (1945)

 

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


Some Hollywood films were caught flat-footed when World War II ended, at least in Europe, in June 1945. Busy turning out melodramas in which the Nazi menace was still extant, they had to "back-date" the films to keep them relevant.

That doesn't seem to be the case with JUNGLE QUEEN, which was released in January 1945 but set its narrative near the beginning of the war, in 1939.  Were the filmmakers unusually prescient regarding the disposition of the war?  Or could it be that, given that the story's action took place in Africa, they realized that the plot had little in common with the real war's history?  The fact that the script coined an ambiguous term for the area in which the story takes place-- calling it "Middle Africa"-- suggests that the producers were saying, "Well, things could have happened this way if the Nazis had wanted to gain control of Central Africa."

Of course it would have been cost-prohibitive for a serial to mount an invasion comparable to the Afrika Korps' movements into North Africa.  JUNGLE QUEEN follows a pattern seen in most American jungle-films-- particularly the Tarzan opus-- in that the villains seek to insinuate themselves into local African politics by suborning their tribal customs.  Thus a group of interrelated tribes called "the Tongghiili" become the focus of Nazi espionage, Leading the Nazi agents-- though only rarely seen interacting with the Africans-- are Dr. Bork (Tala Birell) and Lang (Douglass Dumbrille).  The viewpoint protagonists are American adventurer Bob Elliott (Edward Norris) and his comedy-relief buddy Chuck (Eddie Quillan). They make common cause with Pamela Courtney, a British national who's come to the jungle, like many jungle-film female leads before her, to look for her lost father.  The three of them become the Nazis' primary foes, though not without some highly unusual help.

Another well-trod trope of jungle-films was that of "the white goddess." This was usually a purely mortal white woman who was taken in by some Black African tribe, who worshiped her because they'd never seen white people or for some equally unlikely reason.  JUNGLE QUEEN, however, is the first jungle-film I've seen where the white goddess, name of Lothel (Ruth Roman), does seem to have some claim to supernatural powers.

The viewer is never told just how Lothel comes to be looked upon as a spiritual adviser to the tribes of the Tonghilli.  Lothel, a woman garbed in flowing white robes, is first seen manifesting before the tribes in a great stone temple, walking across a field of  flame to show off her claim to goddesshood. Because there's currently a power vacuum in local Tonghilli politics, Lothel seeks to keep the reins of power out of the hands of "bad Africans" and in the hands of "good Africans." Of course there would be no story if the bad Africans didn't take power for a while.  So Lothel wafts her way out of the temple and shows up to aid Bob, Chuck and Pamela whenever they're endangered by either Nazis or bad Africans.

QUEEN has a bad reputation among serial fans.  There's no question that it suffers from a slack script and boring villains.  Yet whereas a lot of serials have been visually humdrum, I rather liked the way directors Lewis Collins and Ray Taylor kept focusing on the heroes in interesting visual setups, to enhance identification-- though I must admit that the villains don't get the same treatment, as they're usually sitting around yakking about their next strategies.  I also thought the black-and-white photography seemed crisper than one normally sees in most serials, making the actors look good even when they're not acting all that well (Norris) or are not trying too hard (Dumbrille).

One positive sociological myth-aspect of JUNGLE QUEEN is that although the overall political approach to the tribal cultures is patronizing even on the heroes' side-- that is, suggesting that the Africans are "good" if they are pro-Allies-- the script's approach to the native customs isn't especially condescending.  There's no suggestion that the "bad Africans" are bad because they embrace old tribal ways, because the "good Africans" embrace the same customs.  And whereas some jungle films make Black African natives look foolish when they conflate either real or phony monsters with their ancestral spirits-- as one sees in PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO -- JUNGLE QUEEN is innocent of that sin, because their "goddess" really does seem to be something supernormal.


Whereas most "white goddess" films are careful to emphasize that the goddess is a fake, JUNGLE QUEEN offers no explanation whatever for Lothel's nature, and even the white heroes remain clueless on that score by picture's end.  In addition to prancing around through vaulting flames, Lothel usually shows up whenever the good guys need her, and she can disappear the moment anyone looks away from her.  This leads to the serial's only genuinely funny moment, for though Eddie Quillan is the comedy relief, straight-man Norris gets the best joke when Lothel does another vanishing act on him, and he shrugs to the audience as if to say, "Got me again."  The ability to walk through fire and to do ninja-like vanishing tricks could be examples of "fake magic," and thus would belong to the domain of the uncanny.  However, in the serial's last episode, one of the Nazis fires point-blank at Lothel, with no effect on the goddess.  Immediately after this. the two of them are both consumed by an explosion, but Lothel survives to re-assume her role as guidance counselor to the Tongghili.  I suppose it's inevitable that a "white goddess" of any kind carries uncomfortable colonial associations, but the mere fact that JUNGLE QUEEN's script avoids the "fake goddess fools the natives" pitfall defuses some of those associations-- though of course it was a given that the script couldn't go to the other extreme, and portray Lothel as a LITERAL goddess.

BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE (1959)

 

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


SF-films are not known for creating finely detailed viewpoint characters, but I'd never seen one that barely establishes such characters at all.

BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE begins with an alien invasion of Earth, which, in keeping with a stated theme of director Inoshiro Honda, ends up uniting the fractious nations of the planet into a common defensive cause. In the first fifteen minutes, the viewer watches the aliens using a gravity-device to cause ships and bridges to slip the surly bonds of earth, and the shocked representatives of many nations converge at a conference in Japan to discuss the matter. One of the viewpoint characters, a Japanese officer named Katsumiya gives a report on his findings, but at this point it's not discernible that he is particularly important to the story. A turbaned delegate. Ahmed, gets up and begins actly oddly, attracting the attention of a woman named Etsuko. She's unable to convince the next two people she talks to-- a fellow named Iwamura and the officer Katsumiya-- that Ahmed was acting oddly, and only then it is evident that these are the film's viewpoint characters. I wondered if this down-played approach to the characters was the consequence of a bad American edit. However, a little research disclosed that although BATTLE is not a literal sequel to 1957's THE MYSTERIANS, Etsuko appeared in the earlier film as the sister of one of the heroes. None of the major BATTLE characters appeared in THE MYSTERIANS, but since the same writer wrote both, it may be that he made some connection that didn't "carry over" into the finished script. In BATTLE Etsuko is the romantic interest to new character Katsumiya. It isn't even clear that the two of them and their buddy Iwamura are all qualified astronauts, though later in the story this becomes a significant plot-point.

Ahmed is the second prong of a two-pronged attack, for he's one of the first Earthmen to be brainwashed by the invaders. Ahmed is used to undermine the conference, but he fails and is executed by a long-distance ray from the sky. Before the delegate dies, he announces that the people of "the planet Natal" intend to make all Earth-people into slaves, which is all the motive one gets regarding the invaders.

Fortunately, though Earth doesn't have a fleet of saucers like the Natalians, it does have a functioning space-program, as well as an experimental heat-ray. Once scientists have determined that the Natalians have made a base on the moon, they get two rockets ready lickety-split and send them off to attack the enemy. Though the conference sports assorted non-Japanese faces, the crews of the two ships are all Japanese officers, including Katsumiya, Iwamura, and Etsuko. However, an earlier sequence establishes that the expedition now has a mole along for the ride. The Natalians have brainwashed Iwamura, who lies in wait for the opportunity to blow up his own ship in progress. By chance he's intercepted by a crewman and gets tied up, so that both ships reach the moon without further trouble.

As with the overly easy transition from Earth to moon, the astronauts, using ground-cars find the domed HQ of the Natalians without much trouble. There is one altercation, when the astronauts, infiltrating a system of caves, encounter a bunch of chittering, space-suited humanoids who try to capture Etsuko. Presumably the humanoids are the Natalians, though curiously none of them are armed, and are easily blasted to bits by Katsumiya.

The humans set up their heat-ray to make their attack. At the same time, though, Iwamura-- who's been left behind, totally unsupervised-- escapes his bonds and manages to blow up one of the unoccupied ships. A clash of energies ensues as the astronauts unleash heat-blasts upon the dome, which returns fire. By coincidence, the astronauts manage to destroy the dome just before Iwamura destroys the remaining ship. Once Iwamura is no longer receiving radio broadcasts from the Natalians, he reverts to normality, and, in the film's best emotional moment, he sacrifices his life to make sure his comrades get back to the rocket and return to Earth. The surviving ships of the Natalians then give pursuit, resulting in another clash of technologies before the united people of Earth triumph.

BATTLE, though boasting the signature miniatures and animated energies characteristic of FX-wizard Eiji Tsuburaya, is a fairly pallid space-opera compared to THE MYSTERIANS. Perhaps it would have benefited from a more dynamic central hero. But as written, BATTLE is in the tradition of Wells's "War of the Worlds" and most 1950s invasion-films, in that the aliens-- poorly conceived though they are-- are the pivotal, and thus central, characters.

CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981)

 

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


In my review of the 2010 CLASH OF THE TITANS, I said that the 1981 CLASH, the last cinematic work of Ray Harryhausen, was "my least favorite of Harryhausen's otherworldly-fantasy films."  I also stated that it didn't have as strong a theme as the earlier JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, which as it happens was also written by the scripter of CLASH, Beverley Cross.  But thanks to my most recent re-viewing of the 1981 film, I've changed my mind.

I still don't think the theme of CLASH is as well organized as that of JASON (reviewed here).  However, I do see vivid symbolic elements in CLASH that I didn't appreciate the first time around, and which raise the film far above, say, Harryhausen's final "Sinbad" film.  Other flaws are present: the scenes with the two-headed dog Dioskilos and the giant scorpions slow down the film's pace without contributing to the dominant sense of wonder.  Romantic leads Harry Hamlin and Judi Bowker lack charisma, and the writer did himself no favors by emulating the popularity of the STAR WARS character "R2-D2" with the use of the mechanical owl Bubo.    But where these may have annoyed me a lot more back in 1981, they seem like minor problems now, and I now find CLASH to be a fitting conclusion to Harryhausen's wonder-working career.

The essential change scripter Cross made to the original Perseus myth was to make it a sexual conflict between Perseus and his enemy Calibos for the hand of the heroine Andromeda.  In some versions of the Perseus story, the hero has a brief contest with an Andromeda-suitor named Phineas, but it's a very short-lived conflict; Perseus simply unveils the head of Medusa and turns the bellicose suitor to stone. This minor conflict becomes the center of the 1981 film, whereas the two "father vs. son" conflicts most important to the original myth-- the prophecy that Perseus will slay his grandfather Acrisius, and the attempt of the hero's adoptive uncle to send the young hero to his death-- are minimized in the first case and elided in the second. 

Acrisius-- who will be made into a god-hating tyrant in the 2010 remake-- is much like Pelias in JASON; a violent man who tries to use religion to justify his acts.  Acrisius, angry that his daughter Danae slept with Zeus and bore from him the infant Perseus, sets both of them adrift at sea, claiming to be justified by godly law.  However, the Zeus of CLASH condemns the mortal's murderous act much as the Zeus in JASON condemned the deadly deeds of Pelias, though in the former case there's more personal interest on Zeus' part.  Indeed, later in the story one of the goddesses will remark that while Zeus barely remembers Danae-- who disappears from the film early on-- he has a fatherly pride in Perseus, which explains his constant supervision of the young hero. In any case, Zeus rewards Acrisius by telling Poseidon to "unleash the kraken." The beast is not seen, being saved for the film's conclusion, but its stormy fury destroys the city of Argos and kills Perseus' grandfather.

About twenty years pass, and Zeus' justice strikes again. The god becomes enraged at Calibos, the mortal son of the sea-goddess Thetis, because Calibos has been overly brutal in his profession of hunting, to the extent of wiping out all but one of Zeus' sacred winged horses.  Calibos at that point has been engaged to marry Andromeda, princess of the city of Joppa.  Zeus strikes him with a curse, so that Calibos becomes an ugly horned demon-creature, making him completely unmarriageable. 

Thetis, whose worship is strong in Joppa, becomes angry at Zeus for having exalted his own son while punishing hers.  For no clear reason Thetis magically transports Perseus to an amphitheatre in Joppa.  This is one of the movie's weakest points, since this action doesn't directly place Perseus in danger, and Thetis' reasons for doing so are explained with a lot of piffle about "making him see the real world."  Since putting Perseus in Joppa eventually leads to his conflict with Calibos, it would have been far more logical had Zeus placed his son on this road to destiny.  I strongly suspect that writer Cross chose to give this action to Thetis out of personal reasons, given that he was married to the actress portraying her-- Maggie Smith-- and so used this scene as a chance to beef up Smith's lines.

Zeus sees Thetis' transgression and sends Perseus magical gifts: a magical sword, a shield, and a helmet of invisiblity. The invisibility helmet proves the most useful item when Perseus seeks out his heroic destiny in Joppa.  Once there, he learns that although Calibos no longer dwells in Joppa, his mother's power still gives him control of its customs.  Through Thetis' power it's been declared that Andromeda can only be married by a suitor who can answer one of her riddles.  Suitors who fail the test pay with their lives.  By using the helmet Perseus finds out that Andromeda is no Turandot, taking pleasure in the deaths of countless aspirants.  At night Calibos sends an emissary-- a vulture, carrying a golden cage-- which carries away Andromeda's spirit to Calibos' domain. There, even though she pleads with Calibos to be released from his influence, he compels her to learn a new riddle to defeat her next suitor.  Perseus, with the help of the helmet and Pegasus, last of Zeus' winged horses, learns the riddle.  Calibos detects him, the two fight, and Perseus escapes after cutting off the hunter's hand.  With the solution to the riddle Perseus wins his claim to Andromeda, as well as winning her heart on a personal level.

But Thetis is full of wrath for the humiliation of her son.  She curses Joppa to be destroyed by the kraken just as Argos was, unless the denizens of Joppa will expose Andromeda outside the city, so that the kraken can destroy only her.  Thetis is also careful to say that Andromeda must be virgin when she is destroyed.  Whereas the original Andromeda myth carries the intimation that the monster will simply devour the maiden, Thetis' specification has the effect of making the exposure sounds more like a ritual of a mortal's rape by a god.  Perhaps Harryhausen's beloved KING KONG informs this transformation of the original tale.

Having analyzed the intricate mythic setup, I won't devote the same attention to all of the endeavors by which Perseus seeks the head of Medusa in order to repel the invulnerable kraken.  Perseus' confrontation with the Stygian Witches, who share one eye between them, is one of the strongest of these scenes, and the beheading of the Medusa is equally vivid.  It's interesting that whereas Perseus has some soldiers accompanying him, in this film they're little more than cannon-fodder for the various monsters the group encounters.  In the 2010 film, they're more of a retinue that indoctrinates Perseus into the male code of battle.  In addition, Andromeda herself goes along part of the way, showing a certain amount of gutsiness, though by the demands of the story she's obliged to return to Joppa to play her part in the sacrificial rite.  Calibos manages to overtake Perseus, and the two fight to Calibos' finish. Perseus, along with Pegasus and the clockwork owl Bubo, returns to Joppa in time to defeat the kraken and redeem Andromeda.  Zeus forbids Thetis to seek vengeance again and the film ends with a happy marriage-- giving it a note of closure that even JASON can't surpass.

Beverley Cross' script has some interesting subtleties.  Hera, the goddess of marriage who usually nags Zeus about his tomcat affairs with mortals, is barely a presence in the story, and this function has been essentially usurped by Thetis.  In the original Andromeda story the princess is forced to be a sacrifice after her mother Cassiopeia esteems Andromeda's beauty about that of the seagoing "Nereids," thus bringing on the city the wrath of Poseidon's pet monster.  With the interpolation of Calibos as Perseus' rival, Thetis doesn't need any additional motivations for cursing Joppa, though Cross does have Cassiopeia bad-mouth Thetis' looks anyway.  In real Greek mythology Thetis is best remembered not for cursing cities but for being "the one that got away" from Zeus.  Zeus intended to sleep with the sea-goddess, but reconsidered on being informed of a prophecy that any son Thetis bore would be greater than his father; thus, he steered her toward the mortal who fathered Achilles.  This myth isn't referenced in CLASH.  However, Thetis tells her fellow goddesses an amusing story about Zeus trying to sneak up on her in the form of a cuttlefish, after which she drove him off in the form of a shark.

More than most Harryhausen films, CLASH deals in images of powerful women.  Even though the goddesses cannot resist some of Zeus's edicts, Thetis does defy the father-god by insisting on destroying Perseus' happiness, at least up to a point.  When Perseus loses the invisibility helmet, Zeus commands Athena to send him her owl Bubo.  Athena refuses to part with her beloved bird but provides a substitute by enjoining Hephaestus to make a mechanical version, who does provide some vital help during the hero's quest.  As noted above, Princess Andromeda at least tries to accompany her lover into hell.  The three weapons Zeus sends to Perseus are actually said to be owned by the goddesses Hera (the shield), Athena (the helmet), and the sword (Aphrodite).  The association of the love-goddess with a martial weapon doesn't make much sense, but I theorize that Cross wanted this arrangement in order to reference the three goddesses who vie for Paris' approval in the story of the first Olympian beauty contest.  The cannibalistic Stygian witches and the snake-bodied Medusa are also powerful figures despite their grotesquerie, and even after death, Medusa's blood spawns the scorpions who kill all of Perseus' redshirt comrades.  Whereas some heroic quests are structured to pit male against female, in CLASH Perseus exists less as a representation of masculinity than as a rather neutral figure caught between positive and negative aspects of femininity.

I noted above that this film has none of the "daddy issues" suffusing the original Perseus myth, and which also appear significantly in the 2010 Louis Letterier movie.  Certainly this Perseus never minds having been raised without knowing his true father; when Zeus comes along to guide his mortal progeny down the path of heroism, Perseus accepts it all quite matter-of-factly.  Unlike Jason and Sinbad, Perseus feels a bit of a cipher, which may have been one reason I didn't care for the film originally.  Still, I find now that this is an extremely imaginative reworking of the Perseus myth, more fertile because it incorporates motifs from modern stories like KING KONG and from fairytales (the element of the demonic suitor summoning the princess to his lair has a fairy-tale feel to it, though no specific influence springs to mind).

A STUDY IN TERROR (1965)

 

  


PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, psychological*


     Some fans of Sherlock Holmes have regretted that Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous fictional creation didn’t square off against some version of the contemporaneous real-life killer, Jack the Ripper.  I disagree. I believe that had Doyle attempted this-- directly using the events of real life occurrences as a foundation for a fictional tale—any such story would have been as problematic as Edgar Allen Poe’s similar attempt in “The Mystery of Marie Roget.”  To say the least, the unsolved events of the Ripper murders probably would have been too close for Doyle to do justice to them within the sphere of a Sherlock Holmes story.

However, with the passing of time, Jack the Ripper’s murders have accrued to themselves a mythology not unlike that of Doyle’s detective.  Though Doyle’s stories don’t include the spectre of a Ripper-like killer, later iterations of the Holmes character would put the detective on the trail of such specters.  The 1944 Universal film “The Pearl of Death” features a serial killer known as “the Hoxton Creeper,” while a 1946 radio-play pits Holmes against another British icon of mass murder, Sweeney Todd—or at least, a madman who thinks that he is Sweeney Todd. But the first significant encounter between Holmes and the Ripper appears in James Hill’s 1965 A STUDY IN TERROR.

With a script by Derek and Donald Ford, who also provided the script for THE BLACK TORMENT, Hill’s film uses the menace of the Ripper murders for the purpose of societal critique.  Throughout STUDY the fate of the prostitutes menaced by  “Saucy Jack” indicts the callousness of British society, an indictment with which the conservative Doyle might not have agreed.  Holmes is placed in the position of striving to both save the marginalized poor and to keep the government, whatever its faults, from falling into chaos.

I won’t dwell here on all the intricacies on the complicated plot, which rates as one of the more seamless mysteries presented within the corpus of Sherlockian films.  In contrast to some film-adaptations that present Holmes as a cold fish, John Neville’s performance makes Holmes a character with a great deal of heart and compassion to match his relentless logic-- all the better to give the puzzle of the Ripper’s identity a socially significant dimension.

To be sure, Holmes is put on the trail of the Ripper by an item mailed to him by some unknown party: a box of medical instruments, which immediately suggests the surgical precison of the Ripper murders.  This clue puts Holmes on the trail of a missing lordling, Michael Osborne, who had medical experience.  One of Hill’s first criticisms of stratified British society appears when Holmes and Watson meet Michael’s hidebound father, who affronts Watson by speaking of medicine as a mere “trade.”  The elder Osborne cast his younger son out because of Michael's marriage to a prostitute with the deliberately ironic name of “Angela.”  Holmes and Watson also encounter Michael’s brother Edward, who encourages the sleuths to find his brother despite their father’s condemnation.

A suspect arises in Doctor Murray.  Holmes and Watson first meet him as the coroner assigned to examine the Ripper’s victims, but he’s revealed to have a close association with Whitechapel, in that he and his niece run a soup kitchen to feed the poor of that district.  It’s further revealed that Edward supplies the money to run the soup kitchen, having met Doctor Murray during his own search for his missing brother and having formed a romantic tie to the niece. 

The Ripper continues to attack prostitutes despite police measures.  The law’s failure brings about demonstrations of civil unrest, some of which are brought about by Murray, who advocates the reformation of Whitechapel. Sherlock’s brother Mycroft (Robert Morley) importunes Sherlock to find the slayer, whom some believe to be an “Anarchist.”  Mycroft fears that the government—of which Mycroft is a part—may come tumbling down due to the chaos encouraged by the Rpper’s misdeeds.

Someone else doesn’t appreciate Holmes and Watson nosing about, as they’re set upon in the streets by two cutthroats. In contrast to many Holmes films, this one gives both the detective and his partner the chance to show off their combat-skills, as the two heroes beat off the hoods easily with the help of their sword-canes.  As Holmes continues to pursue the clues relating to the missing Michael, he unravels a complex tapestry of blackmail, betrayal, disfigurement and insanity, all of which culminates in a lively physical battle between Holmes and the revealed Ripper—who, fittingly enough, is a mad aristocrat with a hatred for lower-class women.

Considering the period in which STUDY was filmed, the script is remarkably clear-eyed about the unappetizing lives of the Whitechapel hookers, far more than, say, 2001’s FROM HELL.  The Ripper’s first victim is seen stealing from a john in a tavern, but the bullying she receives from the bartender renders her sympathetic despite her crime. Another victim is locked out of her lodgings for her inability to pay, and is seen pathetically trolling for clients just to find a place to sleep.  Unfortunately for her, the men in Whitechapel don’t seem that interested; minutes before the second victim meets her death, one of her fellow prostitutes comments, “I don’t know what’s the matter with the men lately.”

One interesting facet of the script is that once the Ripper has met his end, Holmes—who seemed perfectly willing to see the government brought low while it allowed innocents to die through neglect—conceals the murderer’s true identity.  The final moments of the film don’t justify this discrepancy, but one may presume that Holmes doesn’t really believe anything can be significantly altered, and that he’s satisfied to see the serial murders come to an end—even if it’s only curing the symptoms, not the disease.    

 Though many of the Sherlock Holmes stories emphasize ratiocination over action, STUDY enters my category of "combative adventures" in that the narrative places strong emphasis-- also seen in the ad above-- with regard to the physical confrontation of the two mythic figures of Holmes and the Ripper.  It also doesn't hurt that Neville's Holmes is one of the more action-oriented versions of the famous sleuth.

                           

BATMAN (1943)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

For the last forty years the 1943 Batman serial has been subjected to massive derision, largely because of its cheapjack sets and costumes and its World War II jingoism.  However, the serial is considerably more accurate to the Golden Age comic-- only about four years old by that time-- than many similar adaptations of comic books or strips into the serial format.

Director Lambert Hillyer, who launched his career with William S. Hart silents, directed almost nothing but westerns during the sound era. Yet in the 1930s he proved that he could work with more extravagant subject matter in his two 1936 horror films, THE INVISIBLE RAY and DRACULA'S DAUGHTER.  The BATMAN serial was the last of his delvings into the world of marvelous cinema, but as in the horror flicks, Hillyer was more than able to create the atmosphere necessary to adapt the early, Expressionism-influenced Batman comic. The Japanese villain Doctor Daka makes an eminently hissable mad-scientist villain, particularly for his ability to turn healthy men into subservient zombies (an apt metaphor for the fate of democracy at the hands of the Axis "New Order," whether by accident or design).  The battles of the Dynamic Duo against Daka's various thugs aren't rendered with the amazing precision seen in the Republic serials, but Columbia's fights look more like real, rough-and-tumble brawls.

Douglas Croft (about 17 at the time) is an undistinguished Robin, though he could have been much worse.But given a decent costume, Lewis Wilson might've made an excellent Batman, since he had a good enough build (which he kept up in the 1950s cultfilm WILD WOMEN).  His scenes as Bruce Wayne, shifting between affable playboy and determined crusader, are a welcome change from the one-dimensional granite-jawed do-gooder. As Daka, J. Carroll Naish is the only other actor who really makes a strong impression, although William Austin puts over a strong comedy relief presence as cinema's first Alfred.

Like most serials, BATMAN starts off strong, as the opening chapters establish some "mcguffin" that both heroes and villains must pursue-- in this case, radium needed to power Daka's disintegrator ray-- and then it sags in the middle from repeating the setups.  But at least BATMAN delivers a good pulp-style conclusion, though it's also the section heaviest with racial slurs on American's Nipponese opponents. I can imagine an argument in favor of war propaganda as a necessary evil.  But I must admit that BATMAN does indulge in anti-Japanese rhetoric a little too heavily for modern sensibilities..

HONOR ROLL #47, AUGUST 29

You know your superhero movie isn't going well when the villain, this time played by J. CARROLL NAISH, gives a better perfomance than both of the main heroes.

Jack the Ripper and JOHN NEVILLE's Sherlock Holmes: two J's that go great together.

I suppose it's "reverse-snobbery," but I like seeing classically trained actors like LAURENCE OLIVIER show up in fantasy-extravaganzas.

In contrast to "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers," the extraterrestrials of "Battle in Outer Space" got a name (of sorts): THE NATAL SPACEMEN.

In the obscure serial "Jungle Queen" EDWARD NORRIS did all the heavy lifting, and fighting, for the titular royalty of RUTH ROMAN.

ORGA-Porgie, Pudding and Pie.

SPLIT (2016)

 

In SPLIT, Shyamalan attempts to codify his dialectic somewhat. Though some of Elijah’s remarks suggest that super-abilities arise from stressful circumstances, only in SPLIT does a scientist make this an explicit requirement for empowerment. SPLIT is not nearly as stylistically adventurous as UNBREAKABLE, for its basic template—crazy man holds one or more people prisoners and they try to escape—is more overtly melodramatic.

This time, rather than a hero or a villain, we have a monster in the character of Kevin (James MacAvoy). After Kevin captures three teenage girls and imprisons them in a tunnel-system beneath the zoo where he works, the girls learn that he’s a multiple personality case, one who doesn’t always seem cognizant that all the personas share the same body. Two of the girls die, leaving “Final Girl” Casey as the last survivor seeking to escape Kevin before he turns into his most brutal persona, “The Beast.”

Apart from MacAvoy’s stunning performance, SPLIT is merely a decent thriller, notable for being a companion piece to the currently-airing GLASS, which brings together all the parts of Shyamalan’s “ordinary superhero” universe.

NOTE: UNBREAKABLE is a combative drama; SPLIT is not (except when regarded as part of a greater whole).