HONOR ROLL #86, NOVEMBER 19

ROBERT DAVI covets James Bond's license to murder people without consequence. 

KARL DANE's a lot like Joe Biden; famous for his whispering.

I can't find a good online pic of DINA DISANTIS from her Hercules movie, so I've included one from a spy movie.

THE DIAPHANOIDS must be the cheapest monsters in a SF setting, since like Jumpin' Jack Flash, they're "just a gas."

DENISE DARCEL flames across Calcutta.

"Benedict who?" asks the animated DOCTOR STRANGE.

THE LONE RANGER RIDES AGAIN (1939)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure *

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

It will come as no surprise that both of these sequels to successful adventure-hero serials are inferior to the originals, respectively 1938's LONE RANGER and 1940's THE GREEN HORNET.  It's rare for a sequel to excel the original, though even in serials there is precedent, given that 1942's PERILS OF NYOKA easily trumps 1941s JUNGLE GIRL.

What is surprising is that of the two sequels, the Hornet proves more enjoyable by far than the Ranger. Devotees of vintage nerd-data should all know that of the two, the Lone Ranger was the first out of the gate, produced at the behest of radio entrepreneur George W. Trendle. The initial film serial seems to have been the first time the character acquired his memorable "slaughter of the innocents" origin, and was helmed by co-directors William Witney and John English, whom I still view as the "reigning kings of the sound serials," thanks to their felicitous collaborations on PERILS OF NYOKA, ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL and THE DRUMS OF FU MANCHU.   However, due to an inferior script featuring the hoary-even-back-then homesteaders-vs. cattle ranchers plot, and an unmemorable set of villains, LONE RANGER RIDES AGAIN is nothing more than by-the-numbers entertainment.  It even cadges its ending from the original RANGER serial, suggesting that the sequel was quickly thrown together to take advantage of the first one's success.

REVENGEFUL SWORDSWOMAN (1979)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*


REVENGEFUL SWORDSWOMAN is far from the best film in the martial-arts repertoire of Chia Ling. Yet, even though the narrative bounces around too wildly to keep track of, at least it benefits from centering upon Chia's character Hsiang, who calls herself "the Heartless Woman."

In one of the most hard-to-follow setups, Hsiang is learning kung-fu out in the country from her sifu, until one day he decides to fling her off a 200-foot-tall cliff. She survives and chases him down for an explanation. He claims to have killed her father long ago, after which he chose to instruct her in the martial arts, but fails to reveal any reason for this contradictory behavior. He then locks her in a cage and leaves her.

A handsome young man named Ku lets Hsiang loose, and seems interested in her, though Hsiang has only bloody vengeance on her mind. Ku tags along as she begins looking for her sifu. Eventually it's revealed that the sifu was lying; that the real killer of Hsiang's father was a man named "Lord Ku," who is Young Ku's uncle. (There's also a side-plot in which Ku believes that his father was killed by the uncle, but the father turns out to be alive at the end.) While Hsiang embarks on her quest, Lord Ku sends various adversaries against her and her companion, such as a one-armed boxer (a shout-out to Jimmy Wang Yu's "one-armed swordsman" series) and a female swordswoman. However, no opponent is more impressive than Lord Ku himself, who carries around two metallic skulls on the shoulders of his outfit. When he bids them to do so, the skulls launch themselves from his shoulders, fly around and bite people. The film's budget is too low to make this memorable visual touch come alive, but the film still earns some points for coming with something other than the usual swords, whips, and flails.

MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1951)

 

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

I have not read Jules Verne's MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, but from all accounts it's barely a metaphenomenal book at all. Several castaways become stranded on an island and must deal with issues of survival, though they get help from a mystery benefactor who turns out to be none other than Captain Nemo, who alone survived the wreck of the Nautilus in 20,000 LEAGUES, along with his fantastic submarine.

The first episode of 1951's MYSTERIOUS ISLAND is allegedly true to the book, which takes place during America's Civil War. The aforementioned castaways, all Northern officers or sympathizers, escape captivity in the South by stealing an observation balloon, but become stranded on an island. The main hero Captain Harding (Richard Crane) is given a touch more humanity at the outset than most serial-heroes, though it doesn't help once the action starts, for said action once again consists of-- lots of fighting and running around, this time in a locale which cannot be varied. As if to make up for this static situation, the scriptwriters have the five castaways menaced by no less than three separate menaces. The most mundane menace is a gang of 19th-century pirates, and technically the island's inhabitants are mundane in that they belong to some island-dwelling Earth-tribe, though the serial dresses them up in outer-space-looking garments. In contrast, the last menace-- actual aliens from the planet Mercury-- are rather mundanely outfitted, as the above photo shows. The Mercurian leader, one Rulu, is acceptably "alien" in her attire, but her minions are dressed in knockoffs derived from the look of Columbia's SPIDER'S WEB serial, right down to that hero's spider-webbed mask. I note in passing the accidental resemblance of the serial's first chapter to the title of a 1965 teleseries, but there's no truth in ISLAND's advertising. No one goes into space in the course of the serial, though we do see the Mercurian ship-- which is just a refurbished BRICK BRADFORD "time top"-- land on the island.

The various motivations of the three separate menaces are dodgy at best, while the castaways have no motivation beyond immediate survival. The fistfights are pretty good, and though Rulu is no Khana, she at least has a few magisterial moments, conquering the will of her opponents with a thought-control wand. Of Harding's four companions, the three white guys are largely interchangeable. The one black character, Ned (Bernie Hamilton), doesn't get a lot of characterization, but in contrast to the roles given black people in most serials, he's treated respectfully and is shown to be a handy guy in a fight. Given that Verne did a horrible "idiot Negro" in ROBUR THE CONQUEROR, I suspect that this may be one thing that this goofy serial improved upon-- though I'm in no hurry to read the book and find out.

CHIVALROUS INN (1977)

 

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

One IMDB review of this low-budget Taiwanese chopsocky asserted that it was a response to an earlier film, DRAGON GATE INN, which I have not seen. This seems very likely, since CHIVALROUS is filled with scenes in which actors bounce off one another with even less setup than one sees in the most average kung-fu flick. On top of that, the titular inn—a site where Ming loyalists converge to plot against the tyrannical Manchu dynasty—barely figures into the story after the first thirty minutes, after which the heroes and villains are just running around through caves and forests most of the time.

There’s a vague murder-mystery plot about loyalists being killed off by a Manchu general (Chang I) who’s a master of “the bloody stroke,” a kung-fu move he uses to kill people instantly with his outthrust fingers). Aside from the fact that the villain is made up to look like one of many hundreds of “white eyebrow” evildoers, the only other halfway interesting element is that female lead Lung Chung-erh—teamed up this time with male lead Carter Wong—belongs to an all-female tribe living in a hard-to-reach domain called “Cloud Valley.” Lung’s character introduces herself to the hero by killing off a bunch of his enemies with flowers that exude poison. Apparently all the women in her tribe are masters of floral poisons, although they’re not exactly possesses of good memories. When Wong asks Lung how her people came to live in the valley, she can’t seem to recall. Good thing he didn’t ask her how their male-less tribe renewed its ranks.

Carter Wong is just average in the fight department here, but there are some nice scenes by Lung Chung-erh and by Chia Ling, playing a side-character.

THE IRON CLAW (1941)

 

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

Though this 1941 serial sports the same name as a 1916 Pearl White chapter-play, there's probably no other connection between the two works. For one thing, the 1916 serial didn't sport only a mystery villain, but also a mystery hero, the Laughing Mask, who has been tagged by some as the first American-made "superhero," at least in cinema.

Because the 1916 serial is lost, I'll probably never know whether the serial was more focused upon the original Iron Claw or his nemesis, or even upon Pearl White's character. However, there's no such obscurity about the 1941 chapter-play. Though CLAW is just as full of unstinting action as any other serial, the story hearkens back to "old dark house" films in which a house-bound ensemble of   people-- often, but not always, members of a family-- are picked off one-by-one by an unknown, often masked killer. The villain is often unmasked by an outsider, often a journalist, whose role is essayed in CLAW by one Bob Lane (Charles Quigley). He also usually has a female aide, who may be an outsider like him or some sympathetic member of the ensemble, and this role too is filled by one Patricia (Joyce Bryant). Such viewpoint characters are seen in action-serials as well, but most such serials keep their pool of victims relatively sympathetic. CLAW resembles old dark house films like 1933's THE SHADOW in that most of the possible victims are grasping, disreputable types.

The main plot-- that there's a hidden treasure somewhere beneath the Bensonhurst estate, sought by both the Benson family and by the claw-handed stalker-- is perhaps a little more typical of silent serials than of the old dark house films. But then, CLAW's script doesn't stick close to any coherent plot. Once the Iron Claw starts killing people, Bob and Patricia start trying to track down his identity, only to be hindered by a small army of gold-hunting gangsters as well as the main villain. There's the usual comedy relief and the usual suspicious activities by the pool of victims, though the latter come to nothing since in the final chapter the Claw's ID is revealed but the viewer never knows why he assumed the guise of a hooded killer in the first place.

The charm of this barely coherent tale-- almost half of which seems to consist of heroes chasing villains, or vice versa, through the underground corridors beneath Bensonhurst-- is largely dependent on the charms of director James W. Horne. Horne spent many years directing two-reel comedy shorts, and only the last years of his career did he begin directing serials for Columbia. In other forties serials, characters rarely speak except to deliver exposition seasoned with slight touches of humanity, but here and elsewhere, Horne's characters are over-dramatic and given to peculiar lines that make the whole movie seem mock-serious.

Indeed, many serial afficianados view Horne's serials as covert comedies, and the estimable Jerry Blake even considers IRON CLAW an outright spoof of straight serials. While I acknowledge that there's a strong streak of the ludicrous in this and other Horne serials, that streak does not dominate the serial over the more pervasive elements of adventurous thrills and chills.

In addition to the Claw's uncanny appearance, he only uses a couple of gimmicks, like a mirror set up to make cars run off a road, and a pit filled with spikes-- though I don't remember if he creates the spike-pit himself or simply uses one created by an earlier generation.

KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1985)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

I reviewed the second film in this series here, but though the second outing was released two years after KING, these 1980s versions of classic white hunter-hero Allan Quatermain were filmed back-to-back. The first film is, like its sequel, "dumb fun" at best, and only erratically borrows plot-threads from the 1885 novel. The novel begins with Quatermain being hired to venture into an unexplored part of Africa to find an Englishman's missing relative. In this film, released by the cheese-kings Golan and Globus, Quatermain is hired by a sexy young blonde (Sharon Stone), whose father, like the missing man in the novel, was seeking the fabled King Solomon's Mines.

The script for this flick has no sense of the mythic resonance of the Biblical mines, much less the culture-clash of colonial England venturing into "darkest Africa." KING's entire raison d'etre is to copy the comical scenes from 1981's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, ignoring all the other elements that made that film a success. Most of KING's slapstick-toned antics don't work particularly well, as director J. Lee Thompson-- never a strong hand with comedy, even in his early years-- overplays most of the scenes, virtually telling his audience, "Laugh here!" 

Only one action-comedy scene works moderately well. Quatermain and Stone's character Jesse are captured by a cannibal tribe and thrown into a gigantic metal cooking-pot, sort of a brobdingnagian version of the sort of cookware seen in dozens of cartoons about white hunters getting stewed-- and not in a good way. The heroes' escape isn't the least bit believable, but it's the only scene in which the absurdity works on its own terms.

One odd scene doesn't rely on goony slapstick. While foraging through the jungle Quatermain and Jesse are given succor by a curious tribe of natives who no longer live on the earth, but inhabit the latticework-branches of the trees, There's an explanatory line about how these natives abandoned the earth to escape the evil of mankind or something like that. I seem to remember reading somewhere that this fantasy-element may have been taken from another Haggard book, and that may be the reason that it's the only scene that carries a little of that author's poetical charm. There's no fantasy-explanation for how the natives can hang from the branches, more or less in Spider-Man fashion, so it may be the natives' uncanny agility shares some kinship with some similar abilities demonstrated in the kung fu film FIVE DEADLY VENOMS. That said, the presence of a giant spider edges the film into the domain of the marvelous.

Stone probably gets the worst part in the movie, as the script writes her "Karen Allen lite" character as a blithering idiot, though Chamberlain doesn't get much better treatment, nor do Herbert Lom and John Rhys-David. Two Black African characters from the novel aren't implicated in the silly hijinks: Umbopa (Ken Gampu), who joins the expedition to uncharted Africa to reclaim his lost throne, and Gagool (June Bethelezi), the evil old witch-woman who tyrannizes over Umbopa's tribe. The latter makes a very good evil old woman, but is not nearly as central to the film as she is in the novel.