DEADPOOL 2 (2018)

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

Like the previous entry,  DEADPOOL 2 is so rife with endless jokes at the expense of serious superhero flicks that I'm tempted to label it a comedy.

After all, it's a given that the imperiled characters in a comedy take their lives just as seriously as those in an adventure film, and at some points I've tended to judge works as comedies based on how often they fire off jokes, which are in tune with the *jubilative* mood of comedy. Yet I rate both DEADPOOLS as adventure-films with sizable comedic content, perhaps because the clash of violent forces seems to me even more vital to the franchise than the multitudinous bon mots. In fact, this film's concentration on violent spectacle goes so far that it came close to alienating me from the character's fictional world.

Like most superhero-film fans, I can selectively edit big action sequences (like 2012 AVENGERS) in my mind to avoid the downer that dozens of people surely died in the chaos. But car-crashes are a wee bit more intimate than giant monsters swarming through cityscapes, and I have some problems with the film's moral compass, comedy or not: that it's OK to endanger dozens of innocents, as long as their fates aren't seen, in order to keep one hyperactive victim-of-abuse from turning to the Dark Side and killing all the people he eventually kills.

But back to Deadpool. In the first film, the "merc with a mouth" completed a reasonably happy arc: Guy Fakes His Death to Spare His Girl, But Returns to Rescue Her From a Dire Threat. However, the writers of DP2 evidently felt that they really put the film's half-villainous, half-heroic protagonist through the wringer. Thus Deadpool loses his one true love, and suffers mightily for the first third of the movie before he can be convinced, by Colossus of the X-Men, to channel his pain into public service.

However, the sublimation formula doesn't work so well at the start. Deadpool becomes a "trainee" X-Man, even though he's not technically a mutant, so that means his first case involves reining in a violent mutant at a "mutant rehabilitation" orphanage. The breakneck pace of the film liberates the writers from any responsibility to state the legal and cultural standing of the orphanage. But as soon as Deadpool meets young mutant Russell Collins (a.k.a. "Firefist"). the merc instantly knows that the authorities at the orphanage have abused Russell. Deadpool immediately tosses aside due process and takes bloody vengeance on one of the abusers, but this gets him kicked out of the X-Men and locked away in a special mutant-holding facility alongside Russell and various other Marvel villains (one of whom, Juggernaut, ends up providing some of the gorier violence of the film).

Then the time-traveling avenger Cable shows up at the prison, expressing a sincere desire to end young Russell's life now in order to prevent him from taking many other lives later. As I said, this is a pretty morally bankrupt premise, though it does eventuate in some very cool fight-scenes between Deadpool and his adversary, who is as grimly serious as DP is antic. Deadpool manages to get clear of the prison but Russell remains confined though still alive. Deadpool then dedicates himself to preventing Cable's next attack on Russell. Conveniently enough, the prison authorities decide to move Russell and other prisoners via an armed convoy. This gives Cable a new opportunity for assassination and Deadpool another opportunity to validate his attempt at heroic altruism, while also making certain that the film isn't forced to stage yet another attack on the prison.

In some of the funniest scenes, the loony would-be superhero enlists a bizarre collection of helpers to attack the convoy, some of whom are based on established Marvel characters. As I said, I would have preferred a little less collateral car-damage, though apparently the writers were also okay with wreaking countless injuries, if not deaths, on the nameless prison-guards attached to the convoy. The greater the violence, the more it seems that in the world of DEADPOOL 2, absolutely nothing matters except sparing the victim of abuse from being further corrupted. In fact, even Cable's motive for killing Russell has more to do with his personal interests-- to prevent the deaths of Cable's wife and daughter-- than with protecting any of Russell's other future victims.

The attack on the convoy prevents Russell's death at Cable's hands, but because he's pissed off at Deadpool, the youth allies himself with Juggernaut. The two of them seek out the orphanage, to enact revenge on Russell's principal torturer. Why Juggernaut goes along with this-- who knows? Cable, giving in to Deadpool's infinite abilities to cock things up, makes an alliance with the merc and his surviving aides. DP asks for just one chance to talk Russell out of becoming a homicidal super-villain before Cable kills him, and Cable assents, not believing the merc has a chance in hell. As a viewer, I knew that Deadpool would succeed in his impossible task, though I have extreme doubts about the hero-villain's ability to effect a "talking cure" within mere minutes.

I've frequently defended the superhero genre against hyper-moralistic attacks, so I don't want to make the mistake of judging DEADPOOL 2 by purely moral standards. Morally, DEADPOOL 2 is nonsense, and I'd often say the same of most "do-over" time-travel stories. But DP2 is also problematic in terms of a superhero film's aesthetic power to mount spectacular violence. The technique of the film is flawless in execution, just as it was in the first film. But whereas the first film glories in the hyperviolence for its own sake, Number Two seems more interested in trying to tie all of the wild violence to a Moral Message, which might be stated along the lines of "Protect the Victims of Society, No Matter How Many People You Kill." I also noticed that whereas the first film had some fun dealing with "female-objectification" tropes, Number Two apparently decides that it's more important to play it safe with a half-dozen "homoerotica" tropes. The first film was more even-handed, while this one seems designed to defuse politically correct criticism.

AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES VOLS 3-6 (2012-13)

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


I finally got around to rescreening the remaining volumes of the EARTH' MIGHTIEST HEROES series that appeared from 2010 to 2013.

The most negative thing I can say against the series is that it doesn't originate any stories, being largely a fannish love-letter to Marvel Comics seen through the lens of Avengers history. (Even the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, in whose respective series were constructed the main building-blocks of the company's mythos, are brought in as guest-stars for the Avengers.) The most positive thing, though, is pretty positive: it's actually much better written and directed than the live-action MCU AVENGERS series.

An ongoing cartoon-series naturally has a lot more "leg-room" in which to explore plotlines than a live-action film-series, which involves a lot more outlay of time and materials. In my review of INFINITY WAR I commented:

I'm somewhat more impressed by the fact that the MCU has managed to translate one of the key aspects of Marvel Comics' appeal-- that of character-based, soap-operatic melodrama-- without being able to utilize the structure of what I term "the fast serial." Such serial entertainments are predicated on being able to attract patrons with characters who can be viewed with high frequency, whether once a week, as with a television serial, or once a month, as with the most popular commercial comic books. 

The show-runners for this Disney XD series clearly sought to capture the headlong excitement of a reader encountering multiple story-arcs within the context of a comic book. For instance, throughout the show's two seasons, whose fifty-two episodes were formatted into six DVD-collections, EMH covers such arcs as (1) the rise of Henry Pym's creation, the super-robot Ultron, (2) the invasion of the Kree, which leads to the creation of a Ms. Marvel independent of Marvel's original version of "Captain Marvel," (3) the concomitant infiltration of the Skrulls, in a plot strongly drawn from Roy Thomas's Kree-Skrull War, (4) the U.S. military's attempt to counter the Hulk with a clone-version called "the Red Hulk," and (5) the incursion of Asgardians upon Earth, in which Thor obviously plays a heavy role. These arcs overlap so often that the effect is almost dizzying, and not all of them are successful, though even the one with the weakest emotional tone, the Thor arc, far exceeds any treatment given the Thunder God in the MCU series.

Because EMH is able to develop its characters in the format of the "fast serial," it's far less dependent on jokes than any of the live-action MCU serials, and thus, even when a given plotline proves lacking, there's always some good character-moments available. Some highlights include:

(1) Henry Pym explaining that he modeled Ultron's original face on the face of an ant, which may or may not have been articulated in some comic I've not read. (It certainly wasn't mentioned in Ultron's 1960s appearances.) In deference to later AVENGERS history, Pym not only shuttles through both his miniscule and gigantic identities, he also undergoes an identity crisis about being a superhero at all. This stands in clear contradistinction to his partner Wasp, who becomes far more invested in being a super-crusader, and who is of course made more badass in deference to current "girl power" themes.

(2) In contrast to the live-action films, Hawkeye and Black Widow are once more allowed to pursue a romantic relationship of sorts, further complicated by being (apparently) at odds in matters of spycraft. They have a couple of well-orchestrated battles, one of which involves what I'll term a "samurai run." In samurai-films this involves two swordsmen running parallel to one another as each watches for an opening to strike at his opponent. It doesn't make nearly as much sense with a woman using a wrist-blaster and a man using trick-arrows, but it's still cool to watch.

(3) The Black Panther joins the Avengers this time with a greater sense of gravitas, with particular emphasis on his ability to formulate long-range plans. A particularly strong scene involves Panther being alone in Avengers Mansion with the obstreperous Hulk. The green giant, observing how Panther sits in quiet meditation, complains that his fellow Avenger "talks too much."

EMH is easily the best overall rendition of the comic-book group, even if it's axiomatic that it probably wouldn't have been made without the success of the 2012 live-action film.

I LOVE A MYSTERY (1973)

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


The once popular radio serial I LOVE A MYSTERY (1939-44), which followed the adventures of crusading detectives Jack, Doc and Reggie, doesn't seem to have had much success in other media. Three low-budget films in 1945-6 are probably the best-known artifacts of the franchise today, and even these aren't entirely representative, since for complicated reasons the films elided "Reggie" and focused only on Jack and Doc.

This telefilm, almost certainly designed as a pilot for a possible series, is the only other artifact of much repute, though it may not be in the spirit of the radio serial. Though MYSTERY first aired on television screens in 1973, it was completed in 1967-- which leads me to suspect that writer-director Leslie Stevens was on some level seeking to emulate the then-reigning success of the BATMAN teleseries.

I wouldn't quite call MYSTERY "camp," but more "tongue-in-cheek" like Stevens' roughly contemporaneous work on IT TAKES A THIEF. Amid plentiful bon mots, the detective trio--Reggie finally getting a live-action appearance alongside Jack and Doc-- becomes involved in looking for a vanished millionaire named Cheyne (who only appears in one scene, played by a "famous face" in a short cameo). They arrive at the millionaire's island, where his crazy wife Randolph (Ida Lupino) tells them that she has her husband chained to a bomb and will kill him if the detectives don't do her bidding and participate in her weird psychological experiments. The woman with a man's name is frequently compared to a black widow, and seems to have a stifling "s/mothering" effect on her four grown children: three sexy daughters and one long-suffering son with the appropriate name of Job.

MYSTERY is good for a quick watch, but it's not meant to be given much thought, even if one can keep track of the loony plot. It's a film that doesn't appear in a lot of metaphenomenal film-concordances, apparently because Lady Cheyney doesn't use any super-scientific devices or look like Bela Lugosi. Still, she's pretty crazy, and though she's not responsible for the one or two murders thrown in to spice things up, she still takes the film into the realm of the perilous psycho. The automatic bomb also satisfies the "outre devices" trope.

It is however not a combative film. The three detectives-- the best acting coning from David Hartman-- do get into a scuffle with a couple of not very aggressive pet lions, but it's hardly a battle designed to rouse the envy of Samson the Danite.

CELLAR DWELLER (1988)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


CELLAR DWELLER, a low-budget B-flick directed by special-effects guru John Carl Buechler, has one thing in common with the more critically lauded UNBREAKABLE. Both are fantasy-films that involve made-up comic book lore yet show no awareness of how comic books are produced or marketed.

DWELLER's one idea-- that comics-artists can call up a monstrous being called the Cellar Dweller when they illustrate his imagined adventures-- is actually the sort of concept that often appeared in anthology horror-comics, and, for that matter, in anthology TV-shows. There's so little character development in Don Mancini's script that often he seems to be marking time till the big "surprise ending."

Thirty years before the main story, the creator of the comic book "Cellar Dweller" (Jeffrey Combs) dies while trying to rid the world of his beastly creation. This is enough time for a young woman named Whitney (Debrah Farentino under another name) to grow up reading the comic book and to decide that she too wants to be a comics-artist. Whitney petitions to join a "school of the arts" that now exists in the building where the Combs character died. She receives a grant to study at the school, though it seems to function more as an art colony, where various artists just sit around performing for one another. The "den-mother" to the group is Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne DeCarlo), but she seems to function less as a teacher than some sort of glorified housekeeper.

So Whitney starts doodling away, producing her own illustrations of the "Cellar Dweller" character. How a commercial comic book could have been built around a big furry monster who has no particular raison e'tre-- except that he's apparently conjured forth from the human imagination-- is anyone's guess. So the monster appears and kills some of the disposable characters. Whitney finally figures out that the real supernatural is at work, and tries to counter the creature's unexplained rampages. Both the solution and the "trick ending" are less than rewarding.

Farentino gets the most scenes, so she's able to be fairly engaging, despite the paltry characterization. DeCarlo and the others all seem to be bored with their roles, which are-- appropriately for the medium evoked-- paper-thin.

Both writer and director went on to better things, with Don Mancini collaborating on the birth of the "Chucky" franchise while Buechler made a much better monster-flick in the better-than-average FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE NEW BLOOD.

HERCULES, SAMSON, & ULYSSES, ATLAS AGAINST THE CZAR (1964)

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


These two peplum-efforts had three aspects in common. Both starred bodybuilder Kirk Morris, both appeared late in the waning cycle of the Italian muscleman films, and both featured a hero of one ethnicity struggling in a foreign land. The last of these is the most minor distinction, though, since the muscleman films were well known for having their heroes wander hither and yon across the globe.

HERCULES, SAMSON AND ULYSSES was filmed as "Hercules Challenges Samson," which is the better title since the "Ulysses" here barely does anything of importance. I assume his name got pushed to top billing because of some promoter's idea that a third name in the title would bring in better box office. Or maybe the same promoter had seen positive returns for 1962's ULYSSES AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES, and decided to bump up the Ithacan chief for that reason. Surely the world will never know, and even I don't much care.

Hercules, Ulysses and their friends do spend a few quiet moments in their native land before heroic duty calls them to slay a menacing sea-serpent. The heroes succeed, but their boat is swamped by a storm and the Greeks are shipwrecked on the shores of Judea.

This could have been the setup for a potentially fascinating "clash of cultures," but since it's a muscleman film, the script's only concern is to bring about a clash of titans. The one moment of culture-shock comes when the seductive wench Delilah, in league with some of the local tyrants, makes some minor moves on Hercules, seeking to inflame the Greek to fight local boy Samson. It's unclear whether or not Delilah has yet made any movies on Samson, although the two do end up together, meaning that Samson's enervating haircut has yet to take place.

As for the fight, the film delivers a good one, with the Greek and the Danite bashing each other about in the ruins of an abandoned city, tossing around stone pillars like spears. However, most of the other spectacles in the flick are subpar, and neither Morris nor the actor portraying Samson (billed as 'Richard Lloyd," but actually an Iranian bodybuilder) have enough charisma to enliven the slow scenes. However, there are some moderately funny scenes here and there, particularly one that takes place at sea, when the survivors of the shipwreck quarrel about eating their homing-pigeons.

ATLAS AGAINST THE CZAR has nothing to do with the Titan of Greek myth, for the hero renamed "Atlas"-- and also "Samson" in some translations-- is just Maciste, Italy's all-purpose hero. It's not even clear what culture the bare-chested hero hails from. He's revived from a long slumber in a cave, and then promptly gets mixed up in intrigues relating to the medieval Czar Nicholas.

Morris's Atlas gets to toss rocks around and to have a big tug-of-war to demonstrate his strength, but it's hard to say if he qualifies as a marvelous hero. However, the element of the centuries-long slumber proves sufficient to confer a marvelous phenomenality.

The intrigues are made duller by the fact that almost everyone aside from Atlas wears heavy fur garments. Thus, one of the genre's most enduring factors-- that of comely women in diaphanous garments-- is dumped out of hand, and nothing quite makes up for that lack.

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (2018)

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


Though INFINITY's opening weekend yielded one of the most impressive box-office bonanzas for a superhero movie, it's not quite the apogee of the genre. True, it duplicates one of the big appeals of Marvel Comics: the multi-character crossover, this time focusing on nineteen principals, in contrast to the mere dozen seen in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. And it's equally true that it's a much more enjoyable and coherent movie than the previous AVENGERS film, the tedious AGE OF ULTRON, which was more concerned with setting up plot-points than telling a good story.

Even critics who dislike superhero movies ought to be able to admire the chutzpah of the filmmakers. Having already sold the mainstream public on films starring both individual superheroes and the assembled Avengers together, the producers chose to "up their game" by crossing over the earthbound Avengers with Marvel's spacefaring crusaders, the Guardians of the Galaxy. Most of the "MCU" films have been planting "Easter eggs" in various superhero flicks in preparation for this mammoth team-up feature, using commendable restraint regarding INFINITY's Big Bad: the redoubtable Thanos. As yet most of the MCU films have avoided cosmos-spanning threats, usually focusing on catastrophes taking place in a restricted spaces, whether on Earth or in exotic realms like Asgard or Xandar. This time, even though much of the action takes place on Earth, or at otherworldly sites already visited by the Galaxy-Guardians, it's explicit that Thanos's evil will affect every sentient being in the universe.

In contrast to the comic-book villain, a sort of cosmic necrophile who wanted to destroy the universe in homage to the Goddess of Death, this Thanos is framed as an obsessed extremist like Erik Killmonger in BLACK PANTHER. However, whereas Killmonger is merely a facile bundle of ideological postures, the writers of INFINITY strive to make Thanos a truly epic villain. His backstory isn't much better delineated than that of Killmonger. Yet Thanos is given a coherent character-arc, balancing his obsession with winnowing the universe's population with his paternal affection for a little girl who will grow to become Gamora, one of his most dedicated enemies.

Not a few reviewers have celebrated the writers' ability to evoke distinct emotions for each of the nineteen characters, as well as assorted support-cast members. I'm somewhat more impressed by the fact that the MCU has managed to translate one of the key aspects of Marvel Comics' appeal-- that of character-based, soap-operatic melodrama-- without being able to utilize the structure of what I term "the fast serial." Such serial entertainments are predicated on being able to attract patrons with characters who can be viewed with high frequency, whether once a week, as with a television serial, or once a month, as with the most popular commercial comic books. The medium of cinema sometimes flirted with such formats, as with weekly film-serials. But in film, most sequels and serials have been separated by considerably more time-- be it about three months, as seen with B-films like the Charlie Chan and Andy Hardy franchises, or three years, like the original STAR WARS series. MCU films are "slow serials" like STAR WARS flicks, and slow serials cannot devote a lot of time to continuing plotlines. For instance, in between ULTRON and INFINITY, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch become lovers, but viewers must fill in the blank spots themselves, rather than seeing the love-affair progress as it would in a "fast serial." That the MCU has "trained" its audience to look forward to such adumbrated dramatics impresses me no end.

Humor, of course, is the MCU's key to making the characters relatable, though since the films can't use drawn-out sequences, jokes and funny character-moments assume far more importance than they did for Silver Age Marvel. The MCU also works with might and main to conceive large-scale scenes of spectacular violence, and INFINITY has some good fight-scenes, though nothing here measures up to the "airport scene" in CIVIL WAR.

Whereas all previous MCU films have been structured to give closure in spite of overarching plot-lines, INFINITY finally comes to its EMPIRE STRIKES BACK moment, trusting that the audience will accept a true cliffhanger ending and come back for the next chapter. This is appropriate since INFINITY's box-office earnings have exceeded those of each of the recent STAR WARS outings. The outer-space scenes are executed efficiently but with little of George Lucas's elan, but then, as I've noted elsewhere, the "sense of wonder" in the MCU comes at a distant third from the jokes and character-arcs.

I enjoyed the way the film managed to balance so many such arcs, though some characters inevitably get less attention than others. I expect that the second part of INFINITY will be no less impressive in this regard, though I'll be more interested to find out how the MCU manages to "top itself" in its impending "Phase  Four."

THE EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*

If it's true that Curt Siodmak, credited with "screen story" on IMDB was the first person to try figure out how to get a fictional tale out of Donald Keyhoe's non-fiction book FLYING SAUCERS FROM OUTER SPACE, one has to wonder how he approached the task. Ray Harryhausen presumably was charged with everything involved the saucers and their effects, but someone, whether it was Siodmak or producer Charles Schneer, had to decide the basics of the story. Personally, I think it's likely that someone took a close look at the 1953 box-office success THE WAR OF THE WORLDS and used it as a template, though there are some strong points of divergence between the two films.

In both films, aliens come to Earth in strange vessels and seek to conquer the planet. In the Wells-derived film, the Martians make no attempt to communicate whatsoever. In EARTH, the unnamed invaders initially seek to contact one human who heads an American space program, Operation Skyhook, whose main focus in the film consists of launching satellites around Earth. Doctor Russell Marvin and his new bride Carol are buzzed by a flying saucer, which bombards them with seemingly nonsensical sounds. Only by sheer luck-- the fact that the couple had been using a tape recorder around that time-- does Marvin later learn that the gibberish they heard was an appeal from the aliens to make first contact at Skyhook Base, but that the appeal was out-of-sync and therefore incomprehensible. As a result of the failed communication, the aliens land their saucer at Skyhook, but the military perceives them as threats and attacks, shooting one of the extraterrestrials. The other aliens strike back with devastating sonic beams and then take off, abducting one officer, General Hanley, who happens to be Carol's father.

By itself this opening gambit sounds like a setup for a story about "mankind victimizing misunderstood aliens," like another popular SF-film, 1951's THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Yet the 1957 EARTH is nothing of the kind, for after the aliens are repulsed, they lure Russell, Carol, and two other Earthmen into another meeting. The newcomers reveal that they are the last remnants of a race with no homeworld, so they've come to take over Earth. They also reveal that the fate of General Hanley, who has been reduced to little more than a walking corpse after having had his brain drained of pertinent information. Unlike the Wellsian Martians, these invaders offer humankind the chance to capitulate without violence. However, when one of the other Earthmen attacks an alien device, he meets the same fate as General Hanley. Russell reluctantly agrees to take the aliens' message to humankind, though it's actually his intention to thwart the conquest.

Some of these plot-contrivances don't track especially well. The aliens' first activity on Earth, long before Russell deciphers their failed message, is to shoot down all of Skyhook's satellites. Later the aliens make the feeble excuse that they mistook the satellites for weapons-- a mistake I find difficult to credit in a spacefaring race. The aliens' reasons for wanting to contact Russell in particular are weak at best, and their second mistake-- their inability to make their own message clear-- seems equally improbable, though it's admittedly a good writer's device for generating suspense about the aliens' motives. Their initially covert approach is explained as an attempt to keep from spreading "panic" among the Earth-people, but after the conference with Russell, the invaders don't seem the least bit concerned with keeping a low profile. I speculate that the only reason the writers chose the covert approach had nothing to do with consistent motivation, and everything to do with giving Russell Marvin an inside look at one of the saucers, so that he, alone among all Earthmen, would have some inside knowledge about how to defeat them.

Once the purpose of the flying saucers is known, Russell indeed proves the linchpin of the efforts to come up with alien-destroying weapons before the invaders attack. The invaders disclose that they can manipulate time to some extent, though it's never clear in what manner, and that most of their weapons have a basic in sonic technology, although their spacesuits are made of "solidified electricity." Thus Russell, aided by other scientists around the world (talked about but not seen), invents a sonic cannon. A test of the cannon brings down one saucer, and the humans get their first look at an alien without his suit, showing that the creature, somewhat after the fashion of the Wellsian Martians, is a humanoid with an attenuated appearance.

In any case, when the aliens launch their first concerted attack, Russell's cannons go into action, resulting in the great Harryhausen set-pieces, showing them the saucers falling from the sky-- though they also manage to take out a lot of American icons as they go down, demolishing the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument.

Given that all of the other characters are ciphers-- not least Carol's father, who only exists to get brain-drained and thus cause Carol grief-- Russell and Carol have to carry the burden of making the invasion relatable in a human sense. Hugh Marlowe is good within the limitations of the role, but Joan Taylor, though she's given some decent lines, doesn't ever get beyond the limitations of being the obedient hausfrau.

TERROR OF THE RED MASK (1960)

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


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

It seems incongruous to type "spoilers" for a penny-ante swashbuckler like TERROR OF THE RED MASK, whose place in history comes down to being one of assorted Euro-thrillers made by star Lex Barker after he shed the loincloth of Tarzan (so to speak). Yet for me the only points of interest in this routine flick consist in revealing the identity of the titular freedom-fighter, the Red Mask.

Ineluctably, RED MASK is just another take on the "Zorro" formula, this time transplanted to 15th-century Italy, where the crimson-attired crusader battles against the tyrant duke Astolfo. However, most Zorro-imitations make clear from the beginning that the viewpoint character is also the person who is, or is destined to become, the masked avenger of the title. Instead, Lex Barker plays Marco, a roving warrior-for-hire who is hired by evil Astolfo and who gets wooed by the film's two lead females. Marco, not the Red Mask, gets all the best action-scenes, and the film's simple story consists of two simple plotlines: the Duke's attempts to uncover the identity of the Red Mask, and Marco's decision as to whether to stand with the freedom fighters against the exponents of tyranny. This focus on "the guy who helps the masked avenger" rather than the avenger has sometimes shown up in comedies like 1955's THE COURT JESTER, but rarely in straight action film. Occasionally there have been cases where the centric protagonists shared billing with an ally of some sort, as seen in both HERCULES AND THE MASKED RIDER  (where "the Rider" is the star) and in THE THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES (where the Stooges are in the ascendance). But from the title, one would expect the Red Mask's "terror" to be the focal point of the narrative.

It's no surprise when Barker's manly Marco decides to help the oppressed, or, depressingly, that he chooses the virginal court-lady (Liana Orfei) over the fiery gypsy (Chelo Alonso). There is a slight surprise in the Mask's identity, for it's none other than Karima the female gypsy. She's only seen in costume a couple of times-- the only reasons this film gains "uncanny" status-- but she does sword-fight a little in one scene, so she's at least more than just a pretty face. The "terror" of the title may be her own Poe-esque guilt, because at one point she poisons a man who loves her because he's on the wrong side. Later she gets guilty about her deed and hears voices, and ends up dying while the Good Girl gets the Good Guy.

Thus the film does also possess a little cachet in depicting a female swashbuckler, though the Red Mask's secondary status next to Barker's star-turn won't put her in the same league with the Black Whip and other distaff duelists.

INVISIBLE STRANGLER (1978)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


I'm not meaning to damn INVISIBLE STRANGLER with faint praise by stating that there are many, many worse films. I'm just emphasizing that, while it's not especially good, one could watch it in a mood of pure escapism and find oneself slightly diverted.

There's probably some story behind the fact that the credited director is John Florea, while of the two persons cited on IMDB for uncredited director-duties, one of those two is the screenplay-scribe Arthur C. Pierce. Florea, Pierce and Gene Fowler Jr all had numerous credits directing and/or writing for television, and in most respects STRANGLER looks like a made-for-TV movie. It's a little more stylish than most such telefilms, particularly in respect to coming up with ways for the titular killer to knock off his victims.

This is one of the few films, along with NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY, in which a killer focuses only upon mature women, in contradistinction to the PSYCHO model. As the film opens, the strangler of the story, Roger Sands, resides in prison. He's made liberal use of the prison library, however, particularly with respect to studies of the occult sciences. He demonstrates his newfound telekinetic powers on an unruly cellmate, and then turns invisible, simply walking out of prison while the guards search for him.

He kills one victim, calling her "mother" as she lolls in a bubble-bath, but somehow the invisible man leaves behind very visible fingerprints. Police lieutenant Barrett (Robert Foxworth) learns that the killer is Roger Sands, the adult son of a famous celebrity model who tried to keep her son out of the public eye, the better to maintain her illusion of sexiness. Finally Roger snaps and strangles his mom, and then starts trying to kill other mature celebrities who remind him of his maternal unit. He attacks five women but fails to kill any of them, allowing them to testify at his trial and have him put away. The newly empowered Invisible Strangler then picks up where he left off, killing all of his mother-substitutes while Barrett and his subordinates try to head him off.

The script by Pierce and two other writers is entirely by-the-numbers, showing no interest in Sands' character except what's needed to keep the pot boiling. The lieutenant and the women he protects are similar ciphers, though somehow the producers got an unusual number of former big-names to participate in this lowbrow exercise, such as Elke Sommer (who gets the most screen time), Sue Lyon, and Leslie Parrish. Stephanie Powers plays Barrett's ditzy girlfriend, who I suppose was intended to serve as the film's sole comedy relief. It's no reflection on Powers' talents to say that she's not successful.

Aside from a few stylish scenes-- like one in which a victim is invisibly strangled in front of witnesses, who have no idea what's happening to her-- the film is a workmanlike diversion, and nothing more.

THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF (2001)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, cosmological*


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS


Anyone who ignores my spoilers will have only himself to blame when he reads my assertion that BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF is at base an update of Conan Doyle's HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES.

Once again, we have a menacing animal set loose on a rural community. Doyle's fiendish hound is based on a legend that Doyle makes up, but in the film, director/co-writer Christopher Gans and his writing partner Stephane Cabel invent a fictional take on the 18th-century story of the Beast of Gevaudan. The mystery of this storied beast was never solved, but Gans and Cabel come up with a semi-rational explanation for their creature, thus moving the film into the uncanny domain of the "phantasmal figuration."

In HOUND, there's a schemer using the devil-dog for the purpose of profit. In WOLF, it's a mysterious "brotherhood" which, much more implausibly, uses a living beast to create the illusion of a hellish wolf preying upon the residents of Gevaudan Proviince. The fact that the rural citizens begin complaining to the King of France is also part of the brotherhood's plans, though I for one never saw what the beast's rampages were supposed to accomplish.

King Louis XV, though plagued with political concerns related to the impending French Revolution, responds by sending soldiers to hunt the alleged wolf. He also sends the royal naturalist to preserve the beast's body when it's killed: one Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel LeBihan). Gregoire is no retiring taxidermist a la Norman Bates, though, but a well-traveled knight who's adept at fighting with weapons and bare hands. At Fronsac's side is his Iroquois blood-brother Mani (Mark Dacascos), who's no less adept a fighter, though his kung fu high-kicks certainly don't make one think of Native American fighting-styles. Fronsac is intrigued with the reports of the gargantuan wolf, especially since he's traveled in many lands and seen many exotic animals; at the same time, he incarnates the rationalistic scientific spirit of the times. In contrast, Mani, the last of a tribe wiped out by the British, is a priest with unique medicinal skills and an apparent sensitivity to other forms of life. He is of course the first Native American seen by the locals of Gevaudan, but the character's appeal extends to the audience as well: whenever Dacascos is on the screen with LeBihan, the former steals some if not all of the scenes from the latter.

Gregoire also becomes embroiled in sussing out the local aristocracy and royal hangers-on, even before he's actively looking for a human agency behind the wolf-creature. He's also more than a little fascinated with a young woman, Marianne, daughter of the local Count. Though for the most part peasants are the ones being killed, and Gregoire is their ally against the brotherhood, the film spends an awful lot of time with Gregoire associating with the moneyed classes.

The script isn't so much opposed to capital, though, as to religion. One of WOLF's most striking scenes begins in HOUND-esque fashion, with a helpless peasant-woman being pursued across a field by an unseen pursuer. She tries to climb up onto a large boulder, and the camera tightens its focus on her as she's seized by the beast, still off-camera. As she's flung about in the creature's jaws, her body causes her arms to flail so that briefly she resembles the figure of the crucified Christ-- and just to make sure no one misses the comparison, director Gans superimposes the image of a crucified Christ-icon over the scene. This sort of visual trope takes on new significance when it's eventually revealed that the Brotherhood is a crypto-religious organization. That said, the script is less than engaging on its implied philosophical issues.

At base, WOLF is designed to compete with American-style action-movies, and it's one of the few French commercial films to successfully duplicate the feverish fight-scenes of that idiom, as long as one can invest in the concept of kung-fu Indians. There's also a minor use of a drug able to simulate death, so that the film also manifests an "outre devices" trope, and an "astounding animal" trope that pertains to the nature of the beast.

It's a good thriller, most engaging in the first half but becoming less well organized in the latter scenes. But its take on Revolution-era politics leaves a lot to be desired.

THE BOOGEY MAN (1980)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, metaphysical*


A lot of psycho-killer films imitated HALLOWEEN, but German writer-director Ulli Lommel, who once appeared in the films of "New German" director Rainer Fassbinder-- belongs in a special category all to himself. Viewers acquainted with John Carpenter's masterwork will immediately recall that the little kid in the film calls Michael Myers "the Boogieman," and so it's not at all surprising that an enterprising filmmaker might choose to recycle the name for another psycho-flick. And the setup for the main body of the film is about as derivative of HALLOWEEN's setup as it could be-- at least in its broad detail.

Yet Lommel didn't just turn out a carbon copy of a hit. True, BOOGEY MAN isn't any sort of "deconstruction" of psycho-killer films, as one might expect from a director with a long history in avant-garde cinema. It's far too incoherent and badly constructed for that. But there are some points on which Lommel reverses the Carpenter formula.

In my review of HALLOWEEN, I summed up its famous prologue thusly:

The prologue informs us that at the age of six little Michael Myers took a knife and stabbed his sister after she'd made love with her boyfreind.  Yet, though this inevitably conjures the spectre of incestuous sexual jealousy, Carpenter and Hill only indirectly invoke Freudian explanations of Michael's malice.  Then they undercut the standard psychological interpretations by having their Voice of Authority speak not of the Oedipus complex but of an "evil" that has left Michael bereft of any normal affects.  It's also inevitable to associate the stalker's knife-attacks with the employment of a substitute phallus, but one must ask: is it because Michael suffers from negative compensation, or because he has, in some inexplicable way, become the literal incarnation of "the Boogeyman?"  Does he attack young women because he's attracted to them, or because, being sheer evil, he opposes everything that symbolizes life?

I don't know whether or not Lommel shared any of my opinions on Carpenter's theme, but BOOGEY MAN seems to be embracing Freudanism even as Carpenter rejected it.

If there is a Freudian  "primal scene" in Carpenter's prologue, it consists of pre-adolescent Michael witnessing such a scene not between his father and mother-- the template employed by Big Sigmund-- but between his sister and her boyfriend. In Freud's reading, the young male should feel hostility toward the male possessing his mother, but Michael defies this model, choosing not to attack the boyfriend but killing his sister instead. However, Lommel re-reverses the situation. This time, a pre-adolescent boy witnesses his mother making love to her new lover, and he slays the man, leaving the mother alive, who is later referenced but plays no further role in the story.

But wait; there are two kids watching the adults make out. The mother's never-named lover punishes the boy Willy by tying him to his bed, while the mother sends Willy's sister Lacey to her room. However, Lacey, who's seen Willy abused like this before, gets a butcher knife from the kitchen and cuts Willy loose. Willy then takes the knife and interrupts the coitus by stabbing the Bad Not-Dad to death. So this time the evil boy has a sister helping him, and if there's one coherent character-point communicated when the movie proper starts twenty years later, it's that Lacey feels guilty about giving Willy the weapon that makes him a killer.

The movie proper begins with Lacey married and with a kid, living on a farm with her aunt and uncle. Willy's there as well, but he hasn't spoken since murdering his mother's lover. The mother is still alive somewhere, and to some extent she sets off the new round of violence, sending Lacey and Willy a letter that she wants to see them again before she dies. They never do go see her, but Lacey starts having dreams that Willy may start killing people-- specifically, sexy women-- which speaks to her ambivalence about her brother's sexuality. Lommel seems to support the possibility that Willy may go on a Michael-rampage soon. A sexy neighbor-girl corners Willy in the barn, trying to get friendly, and he nearly strangles her to death, obviously revealing an extreme level of trauma about his mother's choice in lovers.

However, Willy isn't the menace. Lacey actually unleashes the real menace-- the ghost of the slain lover-- when she visits her mother's old house, urged by her husband to get some closure with her past. When Lacey looks into the mirror in the room where the murder took place, she sees the figure of the unnamed lover. Spooked, Lacey smashes the mirror, but this apparently has the effect of releasing the ghost to go on a killing spree-- though he seems strangely more preoccupied with Lacey than with the person who killed him.

The pseudo-logic relating the ghost and the various mirrors he inhabits makes no real sense-- especially the revelation that possessed mirrors can be destroyed by water! But on the plus side, Lommel's emphasis on extreme close-ups makes his take on psycho-killers seem unusually claustrophobic. Without dwelling on all the filler-deaths, Lommel does deliver a really lively conclusion when Lacey's husband brings in a priest to exorcise Lacey, and possessed Lacey, a shard of mirror in her eye, radiates supernatural power, nearly killing her hubby and definitely killing the priest-- though he does succeed in ridding her of the glass shard and destroying it. Oh, and in this big conclusion, Willy finally recovers the ability to speak, though he doesn't say much of anything, beyond helping the husband transport the ghost's mirror and dump it in the well.

It's probably a waste of time to put such a vacillating flick on the psychiatrist's couch. Nevertheless, it's slightly interesting that although Willy is set up to look like another Michael, Lacey is both the person who revives the evil ghost and the person through which it manifests. She's also the one who apparently fantasizes about her brother killing hot women, which isn't totally off-the-beam since he almost does kill one woman. But the fact that she's both the one who unleashes her brother's madness and the malice of her mother's lover makes me wonder if she's not the true "boogieman" of the movie.

Later Ulli Lommel repaid the viewers who made his horror-film a box office success by releasing not one but two sequels to BOOGIE MAN, both of which critics have described as amateurish psuedo-spoofs which depend heavily on recycling a lot of the first film's footage. I plan never to see them.