THE BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA (1971)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Here we have another giallo with an animal-name, testifying to a minor Argento influence on director Paulo Cavara. Cavara's only well-known giallo (this being the better known of two) lacks Argento's focus upon seamy psychology and aesthetic murder-scenarios, and often Cavara's pace has more resemblance to fast-paced polizitteschis. 

World-weary police inspector Tellini (Giancarlo Giannini) is thinking about a career change, maybe one that would allow him more time with his sexy wife Anna (Stefania Sandrelli). Then a serial killer with a unique murder-pattern gets dropped in Tellini's lap. Beautiful women with no known social connections begin dying at the hand of a madman who's unusually sadistic. The killer utilizes a special poison derived from that of a tarantula hawk-wasp: venom with which the wasp paralyzes a spider in order to lay its eggs in the spider's flesh. Used on the madman's victims, the venom paralyzes them so that they remain conscious as the killer eviscerates them.

Tellini isn't intellectually intrigued by the murders as some detectives might be, and indeed, despite his training he seems disgusted by the case. And after the maniac has preyed upon such victims as Barbara Bouchet and Barbara Bach-- he decides to go after the inspector's wife as well.

Though the killer's method is very inventive, and he's the star of the story as the murderer usually is in such dramas, TARANTULA is noteworthy for the ambivalent ending (that's why the SPOILER warning is there). In short, Tellini finds the madman, and after a violent battle-- simply kills him. Cavara's last shot is of the guilty officer leaving the scene of the murder and disappearing into a crowd of regular citizens. The strong implication is that Tellini will get away with the crime, but whether he regrets playing executioner, the viewer can only guess. Not many ambivalent conclusions work well in the giallo subgenre, but Cavara's is one of the best.

        

    

QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958)

 

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

The phrase "tongue in cheek" not infrequently comes up in reviews of QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE. But no matter how many tongues are lodged in how many cheeks, QUEEN's not a comedy because it isn't structured around the production of jokes and funny situations. Despite all the risible elements of the movie-- not least the presence of top-billed Zsa Zsa Gabor, the Venusian with a Hungarian accent-- the plot is structured like a drama. The essence of the story is yet another reprise of the War Between Men and Women, in which the men win the contest by killing a monstrous incarnation of femininity.

The usual backstory routine: Ben Hecht, writer of many Classic Hollywood movies, either composed or inspired a ten-page treatment about a planet ruled by inept females. Allied Artists bought the treatment for one of their low-budget sci-fi productions, such as 1956's WORLD WITHOUT END, as well as hiring that movie's director, Edward Bernds, for QUEEN. The credited screenwriter was Charles Beaumont, who has scored some success in SF-magazines but in 1958 had only successfully sold three television scripts before this job. What Beaumont and any uncredited collaborators produced was almost certainly compromised by QUEEN's low budget, recycling costumes and props from three or four other SF films, including a giant spider-puppet from WORLD WITHOUT END. 

Though Beaumont had yet to make his Hollywood bones, he does establish his gender-conflict fairly clearly in the opening scenes, at least as well as the best-known "babes in space" movie of the 1950s, CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON. Unlike that 1953 flick, QUEEN's space voyage is manned by an all-male team of four astronauts. Three of them, Captain Patterson (Eric Fleming) and two other young guys named Mike and Larry, express a desire to take on an exploratory mission in space, but they're obliged to do a "milk run" to an orbiting space station, escorting its architect Prof. Konrad (Paul Birch) to that destination. Even being told that they're to investigate anomalous signals to the station doesn't satisfy these seekers of glory, none of whom have any strong ties to females of the species (though Larry is constantly portrayed as the facile ladies' man of the bunch.)

However, when their spaceship approaches the station, a mysterious ray destroys the orbital and everyone aboard. Patterson and his three-men crew seek to avoid the ray, but it must not be the same one, for the ship is transported all the way to a jungle-planet. Despite an initial sighting of snow-- poetically described as "angel's hair"-- the four astronauts find that both atmosphere and gravity allow them to leave the ship and wander through a potted-plant jungle. Konrad theorizes that they've reached Venus, even though it doesn't look anything like established theories about the planet's nature.

Beaumont doesn't waste time on the discrepancy, for the viewer instantly gets proof that the planet MUST be Venus, since the guys are taken prisoner by a gaggle of love-goddesses. Okay, they're just a lot of cute girls in short skirts, but they're armed with disintegrator rays, so the guys have to go along. The astronauts see no men of any age (or women who are extremely old or young), and a tribunal headed by mask-wearing Queen Yllana (Laurie Mitchell) accuses the Earthmen of plotting an invasion of Venus. Yllana announces that the men are to be executed, but then she simply has them confined in some room together.

While under "cathouse arrest," the Earthmen meet Talleah (Gabor), allegedly a scientist, though she never says anything remotely technical. She gives the guys a quick and dirty summary of Venusian history. Ten years ago, Venus engaged in a war with another planet (whose name sounded like "Mordor"). Venus won, but the planet suffered radiation bombardments. Yllana and her all-female coterie somehow overthrew all the Venusian males and exiled them to a neighboring "satellite." Yllana and her allies are apparently fine with never enjoying male company again, but Talleah has assembled a gang of rebels planning to end the Queen's rule. Also, the Earth-guys learn that Yllana is responsible for blowing up the space station, and that she plans to do the same to the planet Earth.

However, everyone thinks that Patterson ought to try making out with Mask Maiden, so he vows to take one for the team. Unfortunately, Yllana takes off her mask and reveals that her real reason for hating men is because nuclear radiation ravaged her facial features (though the rest of her is perfectly fine). She wants to make an exception of Patterson, so that he becomes her consort on Venus. But not only does the captain have "butterface" issues, he's already got the come-hither from Talleah, so he turns Yllana down.

One might think that Yllana now has no reason to keep any of the Earth-dudes, and I don't think she even says anything about letting them live long enough to watch Earth die. Bernds must have insisted on re-using his damn fake spider from WWE, because the Earthmen briefly escape with Talleah and a couple of random girl-buddies, but only long enough for Mike to get attacked by, and saved from, the unconvincing arachnid. So Talleah fakes apprehending the fugitives and takes them back to their previous set. Beaumont kills a little more time by having Patterson capture Yllana and letting Talleah don the Queen's mask to impersonate her-- but this gambit also fails. Yllana escorts all of her enemies to the site of the long-range disintegrator ray, which looks like a giant easy-bake oven. Then Yllana presses what she calls a "red button" (actually black) -- and the machine simply doesn't work. Talleah's rebels attack Yllana's guards in a half-hearted battle, while Yllana runs inside the machine to make it work. Instead, the ray-machine blows up and finishes off the Ugly Duckling. Talleah becomes queen and orders the return of Venusian men from exile. The world has been safe for the return of heterosexual coitus, so the astronauts conveniently receive orders that they can stay on Venus for at least a year of humping.

Beaumont's best movie/TV work was ahead of him. But though he crafted a sloppy script, that's probably helped the movie in its claim to "so bad it's good" status. Ironically, there are some major tropes in QUEEN that could have made for a decent formula-movie, along the lines of Bernds' equally cheap WORLD WITHOUT END-- and not just the trope of the male-female war. Yllana "coulda been a contender" for good villainy, given that she holds warring males responsible for her disfigurement, and thus for her exclusion from hetero happiness. During Talleah's mask-masquerade, Patterson comments that she could be Yllana's "twin sister" (despite the accent), and the idea of heroes and villains mirroring each other is another rich trope, even though you'd have to make Talleah interesting for the trope to work at all. It's interesting that Patterson refers to the ship's attackers as "deadly neighbors," and what better justifies regime-change than finding out that your neighbors are already plotting against you? But all of QUEEN's tropes are as stillborn babes. Zsa Zsa wouldn't have been selected for a good script at all, so her casting is another of the movie's "tongue-in-cheek" aspects. And wouldn't most actors prefer to be known for a notorious dog than for an efficient formula-film remembered only by a small coterie of nerds?

    

                        

 

LUPIN III: TACTICS OF ANGELS (2005)

 

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

I'm by no means a Lupin III expert, even where the animated films are concerned. But it's pretty evident to most of the feature films/TV specials usually involve three groups in conflict. The primary conflict is most often the Lupin Gang of superlative thieves with some other criminal gang, who are always more ignoble and destructive than the "honest thieves," and there's a secondary conflict in which Inspector Zenigata, accompanied by whatever law-enforcement agents he can draft, pursues the Lupin Gang but has to be satisfied with the defeated villains Lupin has left behind. It's a corollary tendency that if Fujiko Mine sees any advantage in betraying the gang to the villains, she usually will, but she always gets welcomed back to the fold when the evil guys seek to off her.

TACTICS starts out like a lot of Lupin adventures (though overall this TV special has better comedic elements than many of the others). Zenigata has received a challenge from Lupin to the effect that the master thief's going to raid the US installation Area 51. As Zenigata learns from head scientist Emily, the installation holds a bonafide alien artifact, a sphere called "The Original Metal," apparently because it's so hard nothing can cut it. Lupin and his associates succeed swimmingly, partly through Lupin disguising himself as an artsy statue of a giant poop-pile. Jigen and Goemon are disgusted, however, when Lupin informs that he didn't steal the artifact in order to fence it and make a lot of cash. He plans to turn the metal of the sphere into a unique finger-ring for Fujiko, the better to steal her heart. Unfortunately for Lupin, not even Goemon's peerless samurai blade can cut the metal, and Goemon must leave to seek some way to repair his chipped sword. So then Lupin begins trying to figure out some way to penetrate the metal-- though even at the movie's end, it's not a sure thing that Lupin really intended just to make the Original Metal into a ring for Fujiko.

But other forces also want the Metal. The viewer meets "The Bloody Angels" before the Lupin Gang does, as this all-female fighting force practices for the coming conflict by killing four fighters dressed up like Lupin's people. The four Angels are Lady Jo (a kung fu expert who usually dresses up as a man), Poison Sophie (a poisons expert), Bomber Lily (an expert in both explosives and stage magic), and Kaoru (a samurai whose skills are a close match to Goemon's). The Bloody Angels (whose name always sounds like that of the "Lovely Angels" of the DIRTY PAIR franchise) seek to find out which of the gang has the metal sphere. But clever Lupin has made copies, so that not even devious Fujiko can be sure of stealing the right object when she tries to sell it to Lady Jo, who almost kills Fujiko.

The four main Angels, who are the forefront of an all-female army, provide the gang with good opposition, but the best comes from Kaoru, whose sword Goemon believed to be "cursed." It's not certain whether this is the case or not, but if so it would be a very rare instance of the supernatural existing in Lupin's sci-fi world. Because Goemon's sword was chipped by contact with Original Metal, he even has to flee Kaoru in the first encounter, though of course the second face-off turns out very differently. Lupin is faced with an intriguing puzzle: if no Earthly force can scrape off a shard of the sphere, what good is it to the Angels, or to any foreign government they might sell it to? As it happens, there is a good solution to this puzzle, which involves using the sphere in conjunction with something else to create a death-ray that no government should be trusted with.

Though the Angels are initially portrayed as terrorists, one of them, Sophie, claims to have an altruistic reason to want the sphere. Since she becomes somewhat simpatico with Lupin during their clashes, she reveals to Lupin that she carries a major grudge against the US due to having lost her brother, a member of the US military forces, due to incompetent commanders. It's rare for stories in the LUPIN canon to be very critical specifically of US practices, given that America is a big market for the franchise. At the same time, Sophie's grudge is loosely demonstrated to be sophistry in that she believes she can built a new, better country out of the ashes of devastation-- something Lupin opposes for purely practical reasons. Then Sophie is killed by one of her own, and the gang has no further sympathies for the other three angels or their small army of lady soldiers.

TACTICS is certainly one of the bloodiest productions in this franchise that I've seen, with lots of characters getting shot or sliced up. The animators don't linger upon the after-effects of the violence, but the carnage is a real factor in giving TACTICS a harder edge than many similar works-- though, oddly, it's also one of the funniest LUPINs in my experience. The viewer never learns anything about the ET science that formed the sphere, and no aliens make the scene. But there's a stronger sociological theme here than in most LUPINs. (Also, Fujiko does get a chance to be more of an action-girl than in many other productions.)

                    

AGAINST THE DRUNKEN CAT PAWS (1979)

 

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

As distinctive as the title is, very little of the rambling storyline has to do with its heroine Lin (Chia Ling) using drunk-fu, or patterning her moves on those of felines. In fact, if the epithet "blind drunk" didn't mean something else, one could have credibly titled the movie "Against the Blind Drunken Cat Paws," since Lin spends roughly half the picture as a high-functioning, blind kung-fu artist.

Some time back, Lin was the martially-trained daughter of a prominent kung-fu master, who'd become famous for bringing bandits to justice-- specifically, 13 of the equally famed "14 Bandits." But the gang's leader Wolf Fang escapes, and he gathers a new mob, also called variously "14 Bandits," when the dub doesn't say "13" instead. Wolf Fang's forces-- including a blind female colossus (whose eyes are crossed) and a dwarf with a poisonous blowgun-- attack the master's domicile, killing him and many of the servants. Lin is blinded by the dwarf's poisons but gets away. Strangely, the film doesn't seek to get much emotional mileage out of this sad state of affairs. Director Shan Hsi-Ting-- who directed over 50 HK flicks, of which I've seen only a few-- merely has her holed up in some old temple with her little brother (also a kung-fu trainee) and her cat. It's not clear how Lin supports herself, much less gets all the booze she drinks (though sometimes she steals it).

However, the New 14 Bandits come to the town where Lin's hiding out, and their next intended target is some government official who also prosecuted Wolf Fang's earlier gang. The official has a kung-fu daughter named Wang (Sun Chia-Lin), and she and her unnamed female servant (also a "fu girl") seek to figure out a way to repel the villains. She makes common cause with Lu, a stalwart who had been engaged to Lin before she disappeared. Lu has recognized Lin despite her deshabille appearance, so he and Wang contrive a plan to make Lin admit her true identity. They tell Lin that the two of them are going to be married, and Lin can't tamp down her true feelings for Lu. Not only does she reveal her identity, she also cries so heavily, she weeps out the poison that has kept her blind for so long. 

Lin, Lu, Lin's brother and Wang are joined by a couple of other characters whose importance, frankly, escaped me. So they take on the 14 Bandits, who possess various talents, including Wolf Fang, who apparently has real fangs in his mouth. The various battles are decent, aside from those centered upon a supposedly "funny" character, but Chia Ling is the only performer worth watching. Her character's arc is compromised by these mostly uninteresting support-types, and so I can't say that CAT deserves to be on the list of the actress's best films. She would only make seven more movies before mostly retiring from the role of kung-fu diva.                   

MONSTER MASH (2024)

 

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

Unlike the other two movies I've reviewed here that used the title of Bobby Pickett's famous novelty song, the 2024 MONSTER MASH is not a comedy. This is all the more remarkable since it's a low-budget film from that maker of mockbusters, The Asylum, and it doesn't appear to be based on any current successful film. It's not a perfect film by any means, but it's a better monster-mash than, say, the bloated, near-charmless VAN HELSING.

Doctor Victor Frankenstein (Michael Madsen, practically sleep-acting) is dying. He decides to start harvesting parts from the world's most famous monsters-- the heart of Ramses the Mummy, the flesh of the Invisible Man, and the blood of Dracula-- in order to create a giant homunculus, in which he will transfer his intelligence. To this end, he first sends his undead Monster (Erik Celso Mann) to capture the lord of vampires. But Dracula (Ethan Daniel Corbett) happens to be away from his crypt, leaving behind his daughter Elisabeta (Emma Reinagel). Since she's also a vampire, the Monster drags her back to Frankenstein's castle and sticks her in a cell, so that her daddy will come looking for her and also get captured.

Now, given that I enjoyed MASH on its own terms, I almost feel guilty about pointing out that for the entire ninety-minute length of the movie, Frankenstein does absolutely NOTHING to guide Dracula to Frankenstein's castle. I suspect that writer-director Jose Prendes knew that if Frankenstein observed this bit of logic, then there would be no reason for Dracula to assemble a task force of monsters, and what we'd have would just be another "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" flick. So the mad doctor leaves Dracula to figure things out on his own. Dracula happens to know a (non-monstrous) witch who guides the count to the mummy Ramses. Ramses teams up with Drac and they find The Invisible Man Griffin, and Griffin in turn brings in a friendly werewolf. 

While I'm glad that the various monsters don't do the Marvel thing where they fight before they team up, the lack of an immediate menace means that every time the monsters come together, it's a lot of talking head scenes. Admittedly Prendes' script gives some clever lines to the mummy and the invisible fellow. The wolf-man is a blank slate, but it's cute that his civilian name of "Charles Conliffe" is not the usual variation on "Larry Talbot" of WOLF MAN fame but is rather the name of the father of Talbot's girlfriend in the 1941 movie. Still, it's Corbett's Dracula whose grim sense of purpose lends even the talking-head scenes a degree of urgency. 

For a B-plot, the imprisoned Elisabeta builds up a friendship with the Monster, whom the neglectful mad scientist treats a pliable stooge. Mann does a very pitiable Monster, so that his scenes with the young vampiress somewhat make up for Madsens's equally neglectful acting-job. 

Eventually the Monster Squad finds its way to Frankenstein's hideout, but Dracula is separated from his allies, so that the evil doctor transfers his blood into the giant homunculus. This is where MASH's low budget most lets down viewers, for the giant CGI critter can't interact with the normal-sized monsters. So the goodguy-monsters have to defeat the behemoth with some rather predictable strategy, and the Monster--whose name is "Boris," ha ha-- joins forces against his "father" in the homuculus-body. 

The only other "name" performer in the film is Michelle Bauer, who plays, in very heavy makeup, a resurrected corpse who helps the witch in her divinations. I surmise that Prendes knew he didn't have the money to make an impressive movie, so instead he made a mildly enjoyable trifle with some decent performances, primarily by Corbett and Mann. Worth seeing if you keep your expectations on the low side.

          

DRAGON QUEST/DRAGON WARRIOR (1989-91)

 

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

I'm indebted to this YT channel for providing fansubs for the Japanese anime series DRAGON QUEST, based on a popular 1980s video game that received distribution in the US and other countries. In 1989, 13 of the anime's 43 original episodes were dubbed and released to American TV under the title DRAGON WARRIOR. I presume that the translation company hoped that 13 episodes would "prime the pump" and create viewer demand to see the entire series in English. But this did not occur, and I presume that only fansubbed editions are available for non-Japanese speakers.

As a viewer who was frustrated in the Day to see only a small number of episodes, I'm happy to have some closure. That said, I was never under any delusion that QUEST was any hidden mythopoeic treasure. Even in 1989 I was pretty sure the anime was just a very basic fantasy RPG, in which noble, sword-swinging stalwarts went on quests to defeat evil demons and/or sorcerers. I later learned that there had been a manga prior to the anime, and that the two are only loosely related to either the video game or to one another, though I'm unclear as to when the anime started using different names for the main characters.  There are only a few minor myth-kernels in the TV show at most.

The screenshot above shows the five main heroes. In the foreground is the hero Abel, while his girlfriend Tiala clings to him. At left is the lady warrior Daisy, while to the right, the floating fellow is the magician Yanack and the fellow with the skull-helmet is Abel's pudgy buddy Mokomoko, who provide much of the comedy relief. The setup is that Tiala is the hereditary protector of a magical stone capable of releasing a powerful dragon from its slumber. The devilish-looking Baramos abducts Tiala from her village in order to gain control of the dragon, whose blood can confer immortality. Abel and Mokomoko arm themselves and seek to rescue Tiala. On their way they pick up the aid of the good sorcerer Yanack and the woman-warrior Daisy. Yanack has no real backstory, but Daisy became a warrior in order to seek her lost brother. She originally joins Abel and Mokomoko because she thinks there's profit in their quest, but naturally she bonds with the guys and becomes a hero dedicated to defeating the various minions of Baramos. She also falls in unrequited love with Abel and also must bear the indignity of being ogled by the dirty old magician Yanack.      

I don't remember exactly why the quest becomes a matter not of just rescuing Tiala but also about finding holy objects that will make it possible to resurrect the dragon. Appropriately the objects are a Holy Sword and a Holy Grail, mirroring (if only unintentionally) the sexual propensities of Abel and Tiala, who are implicitly a holy couple whose unison can redeem the fallen world. Baramos is just a dime-a-dozen magical menace, but the scenes of the heroes, as well as their encounters with ordinary folks, allow for much better character interactions than one sees in most American-made animated TV shows. A couple of storylines involve Baramos corrupting or controlling the relatives of the heroes and causing Daisy to fight her lost brother and Abel to battle his father. So far as I can tell, it's not recounted as to how Baramos was far-sighted enough to suborn these characters. This is particularly true of Daisy's brother, who's actually raised from childhood by a villainous minion, long before Baramos could possibly have known that Daisy was going to be one of the heroes who opposed him. Still, QUEST also isn't afraid to knock off some of the lovable side-characters, such as a "nice monster" who befriends Tiala.

Still, good design triumphs over limited TV animation, and QUEST always feels action-packed. And one extra benefit of the American dub is that the translation company produced what I consider a superior theme-song, complete with quick cuts from the episodes, that I still find stimulating thirty-plus years later.

      

STEEL FRONTIER (1995)

 

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

Now THIS, unlike some of the sludge I've recently reviewed from the defunct PM Entertainment, is what the company was capable of when it put good people in charge of their low-budget action-movies. I've seen other good formula-flicks from director/co-writer Jacobsen Hart and co-writer Paul Volk, but STEEL FRONTIER is an exceptionally good reworking of the post-apoc subgenre and of the westerns that partly inspired them.

Once again, some idiot dropped the Bomb, and that instantly flung the remnants of humanity back into the framework of the Old West, with scattered enclaves of hard-working tillers of the soil, continually menaced by wasteland savages (cannibals called "roach-eaters") and by a roving gang of ruthless bandits. In deference to the influence of MAD MAX, this gang of "Death Riders" use automobiles rather than horses to cross the desert, and the bandits themselves seem to be rogue members of the US army. That their leader (Brion James) is given the name "Quantrell," emulating that of the post-Civil War raider, indicates that the writers wanted to allude to the power of the military to foster tyranny. Other members of the Riders include Quantell's second in command Acker (Bo Svenson), the leader's wimpy son Julias (John C Victor), and other weirdos, one of whom is named Chickenboy in reference to his feathery attire.        

 We meet the hero first, though, when he has to mercy-kill one of the Death Riders' victims: a man with his legs torn off, left to die in the desert. This is the taciturn Yuma (Joe Lara), whose origins are never revealed, though there's the suggestion that he might have been, like Mad Max, an enforcer of the law. Some reviewers compared Yuma to Jesus, I guess because he has long hair and because late in the film he gets wounded in the side. But there's a clever allusion to Yuma's real nature in a conversation between Quantell and Acker, where Quantrell opines that he doesn't like his gang's name because "Death rides alone." And who does director Hart immediately cut to, riding alone on his motorcycle to his death-dealing conflict with evil? Only one guess allowed.

 There are no great surprises to the plot. The Riders take over a peaceful town and began heaping indignities upon the residents, including beautiful Sarah (Stacie Foster) and her young boy. Yuma shows up and joins the Riders in order to whittle them down from within, before making an all-out assault, aided by Sarah and some of the more courageous townfolk. Quantrell, who's left town to coordinate with other members of his gang, finds out about the rebellion and leads more bandits to wipe out the whole town. Instead the bad guys are taken out and heroic Yuma gets the de rigeur final battle with the main villain, before cycling off into the sunset.

Aside from the allusions to Yuma being both Jesus and Death, the writers provided the actors with lots of quick emotional moments. Quantell, raging when he finds that Yuma killed his son. Sarah trying to get the cowardly populace to fight back. Sarah's son trying to save his mother from rape with a slingshot and undergoing a rite of passage as he manages to kill the idiot Chickenboy. Svenson confessing to Yuma that before the Bomb fell, he'd hoped to become an astronaut, and wondering if some of them are still in orbit above the ruined world. And though I've rarely been impressed with Joe Lara, here he does a fine job of putting across his version of a "man with no past." And for once, the usual PM policy of punctuating the drama with explosions, gun-battles and fistfights works to good effect.