ATOM MAN VS. SUPERMAN (1950)

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


Where cinematic sequels are concerned, viewers are generally lucky if the follow-up is even roughly as good as the originating work. Serials are no exception to this general rule, and thus it's extremely rare to see a sequel turn out better than the original.

The 1948 SUPERMAN, while successful with viewers, seems to be little more than a thinly plotted reprise of a story written for the Superman radio serial. ATOM MAN VS. SUPERMAN was also derived from a radio chapterplay, and was executed by three of the same creative personnel who worked on the 1948 film, but the difference between the two serials is as the proverbial light/day distinction. In addition, DC editor Whitney Ellsworth represented his company's interests during both serials. Yet because the first story makes precious few attempts to emulate the mood of the comics, I hypothesize that after the 1948 serial made respectable money, Ellsworth may have had a little more clout with the Hollywood crowd, resulting in a Superman serial closer to the source material.

To be sure, Kirk Alyn's one-note portrayal of Superman is pretty much the same. However, whereas SUPERMAN played things very down-to-earth, with the hero spending most of his time rescuing Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane from the thugs of the Spider Lady, the sequel pits the Man of Steel against an "Atom Man," who wields a multitude of super-weapons fit to challenge a superhero. Further, though the Atom Man of the radio serial was not derived from the comics, in ATOM MAN the metal-masked super-villain is Superman's perpetual comic-book foe Luthor. In fact, the serial gets quite a bit of mileage from Luthor managing to convince much of the public-- though not the newspersons of the Daily Planet-- that he has reformed, and that he is actually being threatened by the New Villain on the Block. The idea of making Luthor the "secret identity" of a super-villain is one of the serial's many "shout-outs" to the primary Superman/Clark Kent mythology.

Further, this time the script goes out of its way to give Superman some larger-than-life stunts. Instead of just grabbing hoods and tossing them around, this time he rescues innocents from a burning ship, caps a blazing oil well, and gets exiled to "the empty doom" by Luthor's "space-transporter" device. In contrast to many serials, the script skillfully alternates between these spectacular feats and the more down-to-earth action (like saving Lois from falling out a window), so there's a greater sense of variety between the respective chapters. In the climactic sequence, Superman "bulldogs" Luthor's atomic rocket and sends it into the sea, and though the FX are inevitably simple, there's as much charm to this sequence as one sees in a similar climax in the 1978 SUPERMAN.

In the 1948 script, Lois Lane's primary function is to undermine Clark Kent, and her subordinate Jimmy Olsen simply goes along with whatever she tells him to do. This attitude is actually true to the first year of the SUPERMAN feature, wherein Lois felt that Clark's skill at reporting-- admittedly abetted by his super-powers-- overshadowed her own accomplishments, and she sometimes did undercut him when possible. However, Jerry Siegel didn't keep this trope running very long, at least in part because he wanted to promote a "will they-won't they" romantic feeling between Lois, Clark, and Clark's alter ego. The 1950 serial doesn't have any interest in selling romance, but ATOM MAN portrays Clark, Lois and Jimmy as colleagues who have known each other for some time. A number of small touches-- Lois celebrating her birthday at the Planet office, Jimmy asking Clark how to spell "anesthesia"-- makes the trio seem more rounded. Thus, when Superman does rescue Lois or Jimmy from peril, it no longer seems like a desperate attempt for the viewer's attention, as in the 1948 work. Further, the improved scripting gives actors Tommy Bond and Noel Neill the chance to make their characters more varied and vivacious.

In my review of the 1948 serial, I commented that its villain the Spider Lady lacked any of the charisma of the best serial villains, though actress Carol Forman had distinguished herself with a couple of much better "heavies." Lyle Talbot had played a number of heavies in his earlier films as well, but the script for ATOM MAN gives him a number of strong lines that establish his scientific wizardry and his overweening arrogance. In the last chapter, he abducts Lois and announces to her that he plans to destroy the Earth, remarking that she may soon be the last female member of the human species. Lois astutely mocks him, accusing him of wanting to create a "Noah's Ark," but Luthor calmly agrees with her assessment, showing off the spaceship on which he and his henchmen plan to escape the destruction. I suspect that this story-trope-- in which the villain more or less duplicates Superman's initiating situation of fleeing a collapsing planet-- was also original to the ATOM MAN screenplay, rather than stemming from the radio serial.

Lastly, though most serials progress erratically, leaping from one peril to another, ATOM MAN is relatively well-paced, and many if not all of the adventures proceed logically from their setups. (A particular favorite of mine is the sequence in which Lois pretends to ditch the Planet in order to work for Luthor and get the goods on him.) Even the moments that are a little on the loony side-- like Perry White insisting that Jimmy snap a picture of the oncoming atomic missile, moments before it's going to wipe out them and all of Metropolis-- seem to come about from a sense of fun, rather than poverty of imagination.

PANGA (1991)

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


The most interesting thing about PANGA, aside from racking up another decent if unexceptional Chris Lee perf, is that it was retitled CURSE III; BLOOD SACRIFICE, in response to the use of the "CURSE' title for two earlier but unrelated films. Of the three, PANGA's the only one that actually involves a literal curse.

In 1950's Africa, Geoff Armstrong and his pregnant wife Elizabeth oversee a sugar-cane farm. Geoff has been in Africa long enough to know the ways of the tribes, but Elizabeth is woefully ignorant, while her sister Cindy and her husband Robert are even worse. Cindy and Robert interfere with a witch doctor's ritual, which involves sacrificing a goat following the death of a tribal child. Elizabeth backs up her sister and saves the goat, but the witch doctor curses her and her family. In due time a supernatural sea-beast, incongruously armed with a machete, begins preying on the Armstrongs. Since Elizabeth is the viewpoint character, she lives after the others are killed off, partly due to the aid of local white doctor and magical expert Pearson (Lee).

Direction is competent but generally boring. Toward the end, Pearson is suspected of being involved in the killings, so he tells Elizabeth an unrelated story about how his sister slept with a Black African. The sister's pregnancy resulted in a half-black child that died, and somehow this also called forth the death-demon because no one sacrificed a goat in that instance, either. This backstory adds nothing to Pearson's character and is apparently thrown in as a last-ditch reminder that hey, colonial Europeans did some bad things to Black Africans. But since the story starts off by constructing Elizabeth as a well-meaning naif, this gesture toward real-world relevance is pathetic at best.

SUPERMAN (1948)

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


The SUPERMAN serial was immensely popular in its day, and today it remains historically important for a number of reasons, not least being the first time Superman was played on screen by a living actor. Further, given how often American serials played mix-and-match in adapting characters from pulps and comics, the first chapter treats the hero's origin with considerable reverence, allowing of course for the dimestore production values. And while comic-book editors were hesitant to incorporate kryptonite into Superman's mythos after its official introduction in a 1943 radio serial, the serial adapts this element (heh) from the radio-screenplay to good effect. DC introduced kryptonite into Superman's four-color adventures the year after the serial, and though the poisonous rock didn't become truly ubiquitous in the comics until the late 1950s, it's arguable that the serial played a vital role in encouraging the editors to incorporate what most fans consider an important part of the mythology.

Unfortunately, ninety percent of SUPERMAN's script is just mundane cops-and-robbers, and since the hero is too powerful to duke it out with ordinary criminals, the serial can't pull off what a crimefighting serial can do well: fights between the crooks and the crook-catchers. In addition, the serial pursues the same narrative strategy often seen in the actual comics: since Superman can't be harmed by most perils, the only way to generate suspense is to jeopardize someone the hero cares about: usually either Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen. However, even if a monthly Superman comic imperiled a support-character every single month, the stories were not coterminous, so readers may not have tired of this trope in that format. Even if I'd been watching SUPERMAN chapters once a week, as they were intended to be seen, I tend to think I'd still have become very tired of this schtick, particularly because the production values only allowed for the most basic cliffhangers. Only the charisma that actors Noel Neill and Tommy Boyd bring to the roles of Lois and Jimmy make these low-suspense perils halfway appealing.

True, the story follows that tried-and-true trope of serials: a villain trying to gain control of a super-weapon: in this case, the poorly dubbed "Reducer Ray" (actually your standard "destruction beam.") This trope always involves assorted time-killing plot-threads-- villain tries to kidnap the weapon's inventor, inventor delays villain by asking for special gizmos, which the villain's henchmen must seek out. This trope, however, only works well when the villain has a formidable appearance or when the actor playing him brings a lot of energy to the role. Though Carol Forman had played some visually striking evildoers in both THE BLACK WIDOW and BRICK BRADFORD, her "Spider Lady" just sits around barking orders at underlings and has no moxie to speak of. Her only gimmick is that in her (cheap looking) hideout, she has a big metal web mounted between two walls, in which she can electrocute those who displease her. Not surprisingly, this doesn't happen very often.

As for the guy making history as the "first Superman actor," Kirk Alyn is just fair in the role, projecting a breezy charm in his scenes as Superman. Unfortunately, most of his scenes show him as Clark Kent, and, since the script gives Alyn no help in developing a viable version of Superman's alter ego, he simply "plays down," perhaps trying to make Kent seem fairly subdued. However, Alyn's expression as Kent sometimes looks so constrained as to look constipated.

Lastly, though the early episodes of the serial are adequately scripted, the scripters apparently decided to get goofy in the final episodes. In the most ridiculous scene, Superman captures a henchman, but, instead of taking him to the cops, the hero takes the thug to the office of Perry White, so that the Daily Planet editor can interrogate the man. However, Superman then flies away, having done nothing to bind the ruthless crook. Does the editor call other employees to help him contain the thug? Of course not, and this allows the thug to beat down Perry and toss him out a high-rise window-- and only Perry being able to grab onto a ledge saves him from dying a really stupid death. By contrast, the climactic face-off of Superman and Spider Lady is ably if not spectacularly handled, ending the tedious story on a comparatively strong note.

SWIFT SHAOLIN BOXER (1978)

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

Unlike some stars of Hong Kong kung-fu films, Angela Mao-- probably the best-known female representative of the genre in the United States-- didn't make many films with metaphenomenal content. Moreover, of the few that had such content, some weren't even movies that featured Mao in a starring role, as with both ENTER THE DRAGON and BANDITS, PROSTITUTES AND SILVER.
SWIFT SHAOLIN BOXER is an exception to this trend, for Mao is the featured character and gets the best fights in the story, despite the presence of the iconic Lo Lieh as a villain. However, I can't call it a welcome exception, given that it's a piss-poor story comprised of little more than jumbled set-pieces-- which is probably why it barely has any current online reviews.

In yet another indeterminate medieval-Chinese setting, Mao plays Chao Lung, a woman who helps run a tavern, using her fighting-skills as the tavern's "bouncer." She's eventually revealed to be an agent of the Emperor, who is aware of a rebel movement championed by Lo Lieh's character. The incoherent film diverges from Ms. Lung to show two other warriors passing weird tests of their kung-fu skill. One man, identified on some sites as "Emerald Headband," enters some sort of temple (maybe this is the alleged "Shaolin" connection?) and fights a gang of boy acrobats garbed in gold costumes. Elsewhere, in some rural setting, a fellow named Ho Kun (Barry Chan) triumphs over four separate opponents, including a female fighter, possibly essayed by another kung-fu diva, Chia Ling, who's billed as having a cameo. When Ho Kun succeeds in his fourth test, the woman tells him he's now fit to serve the Emperor.

However, there are agents of Lo Lieh about, and one of them kills Emerald Headband, playing a flute that causes the victim to scream and die. Though this is a pretty handy super-power, we never see it again, though at least one other agent of the Emperor is also slain by the mystery assassin.

Ho Kun makes his way to Chao Lung's tavern in order to contact her, so that they can jointly investigate the murders. Chao Lung doesn't like Ho Kun, and they fight until interrupted. Later they make amends and Chao appoints an unnamed young guy to guard over Ho Kun. The villain's agents trap Ho Kun in a cage, but Chao and her buddy break him free. There's also an incomprehensible scene in which men in zombie makeup are either real or fake hopping vampires. Either way, they have nothing to do with the plot.

Finally, out of nowhere, the villain confronts Ho Kun in a countryside studded with colorful parasols.  They fight, and just as Chao Lung and her aide show up, Ho Kun slays the villain. However, Ho Kun has only battled the revolutionary with the idea of taking over his operation, so Ho Kun promptly attacks the two loyal servants of the government. Maybe the traitor can't use his flute's magic under such circumstances, but the flute has weapons inside it, like a spear-point and a chain.  Nevertheless, Chao kills Ho in the end, though he expresses some deathbed regrets for what might have been.

In the American movie biz, filmmakers who are good at special FX or stunt coordination sometimes graduate to the director's chair, where they usually emphasize kinetic set-pieces at the expense of narrative. Since the average HK martial arts film isn't nearly this incoherent, I'd theorize that something of this sort happened with SWIFT SHAOLIN BOXER. Still, though it's merely a bad movie without rising to the "so bad it's good" level, Angela Mao's fighting-skills lift the flick out of total worthlessness.

SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH (1943)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

Of all of the Universal films featuring the Great Detective, SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH sports the oddest title. While a lot of Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories pose no peril to the sleuth, most if not all of the movies under this heading bring Holmes into imminent risk of his own life. Given that fact, one could almost imagine the Sherlock of FACES being forced to duel an angel of doom, or some similar specter. But FACES doesn’t even have a phony ghost, just a passing reference to an alleged spirit in the ancestral manor of the impoverished aristocratic family, the Musgraves.

Odd title aside, FACES has the distinction of being a more entertaining mystery than the Doyle story on which it’s loosely based. The case of Doyle’s “The Musgrave Ritual” is narrated to Doctor Watson by Sherlock long after the events of the case occurred, which by itself takes away some of the immediacy. Holmes’ client, a stuffy lord named Musgrave, approaches Holmes in reaction to what might be called “servant trouble.” Musgrave dismisses his butler Brunton for messing around in Musgrave’s papers, including a copy of a family catechism, the “ritual” of the title. Both Brunton and another servant disappear under mysterious circumstances, and Sherlock’s solution to the puzzle involves using the ritual to unearth an ancient English treasure.

Politically speaking, the short story pretty much adheres to the social status quo. Not so FACES. In keeping with the World War Two setting, the events at Hurlstone, the manor of the Musgraves, actually end up leveling the playing field between the classes. One change from the original story, made explicitly to appeal to wartime audiences, is that the manor has been temporarily converted into a barracks for soldiers who have returned to England to convalesce. This plot-thread doesn’t have any great impact on the mystery’s solution, but it does give the film an excuse to involve Doctor Watson with the Musgrave family. Of much more social consequence is the film’s use of the old chestnut, “young heiress wants to marry outside her class.” Thus, in place of one grumpy, landed aristocrat, we have three relatively impoverished high-class siblings, Snobbish brothers Geoffrey and Philip oppose sister Sally’s desire to marry one of the lower classes, who’s not even a native Britisher, but one of those Yanks involved in the war effort.

Though the butler Brunton still plays a key role in the mystery, the film starts off with a more momentous event: a local doctor is attacked, albeit non-fatally, on the grounds of Hurlstone. Did one of the traumatized patients go amok? But this is never really a serious possibility, especially when one Musgrave brother dies, and the other follows not long after. In fact, Philip dies in such a way as to be strongly associated with Sally-- his dead body is found in the trunk of a car when Sally’s driving it. However, given that Sally is presented as a sympathetic figure—not least because she’s marrying an American swain—Sally is also not even briefly portrayed as a possible culprit. However, the course of Sherlock’s investigations bring him into contact with the Musgrave Ritual, though in this go-round, the catechism is much more elaborate than in the short story. However, the ritual’s purpose remains the same: to pave the way to an ancient treasure, which is also the motive behind the murder. And in contradistinction to the story, where the rich are made richer by the uncovered treasure, Sally proves herself a woman of her time by casting aside the riches when it’s indicated that their use would harm the lower classes. Indeed, the film ends with Sherlock singing the praises of a new Samaritan ethic, implicitly born from the travails of the war, that will make it impossible for men to ignore one another’s suffering.

Despite some interesting visual touches—a chamber whose tiles are used as a giant chessboard, and a lightning-bolt that coincidentally causes chaos during Sally’s reading of the Musgrave Ritual—FACES is in every way a naturalistic Holmes-excursion.

FLASH GORDON (1936)

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

The 1936 serial FLASH GORDON, in adapting the phenomenally popular comic strip, proved to be a pivot -point between the old and the new. The world of American serials, dating back to 1912’s WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY, had made only occasional use of properties from other media, such as Tarzan and Craig Kennedy. FLASH was not by any means the first serial-adaptaation of the 1930s, but its unqualified success with the public guaranteed that American serials, until the extinction of the form in 1956, would invest heavily in franchises from comic strips, comic books, and pulp-magazine stories. At the same time, FLASH was among the last productions initiated at Universal Studios by that ambitious family, the Laemmles, before they were forced out by a new (and arguably less ambitious) new regime. Finally, in one department FLASH GORDON was both first and last, for it represents the only time in the sound era that an American serial was aimed at an adult audience, before the form became totally directed at young viewers.

Given how often Hollywood played fast and loose with adaptations of any pre-existing property—and not just with pulp-franchises like Tarzan, but also with literary types like Hemingway and Faulkner—it’s impressive that FLASH hews so closely to the strip, which had only been running for the previous two years. The principal plot-lines are derived from the two sequences I’ve described in this essay, though some chapters adapt the “invisible man” plotline seen in the later “Witch Queen” sequence that had concluded in 1935. Naturally, the serial did not attempt to reproduce the “cast of thousands” battles seen during Flash Gordon’s military conflict with Ming the Merciless, which had not concluded in the strip when the serial began filming, and which would not reach fruition until 1941. Thus the serial had to write its own end for its perfidious villain—albeit leaving an opening for his possible retu rn—as well as sending the serial’s starring heroes back to their native planet.rather than keeping them marooned on the planet Mongo. (Naturally, they, like Ming, returned for the sequels.) Yet almost every change Universal’s production team wrought upon the strip proved a fulfillment of the strip’s original appeal, and sometimes the changes were substantial improvements on the original.

Given that no in-depth interviews with the production team are extant, there’s no way to know who precisely made the decision to adapt the comic strip with almost the same tone of “high Hollywood melodrama” one could also find in contemporaneous adaptations of books and plays. Henry McRae, production head of Universal’s serials, certainly deserves some credit, though credit for FLASH’s flamboyant visual style probably should go to the German-born director of record, Frederick Stephani. Stephani never directed another serial, and it’s been suggested that he probably received aid in the production grind from the uncredited but more experienced Ray Taylor. Additonally, Stephani seems to be one of the few serial-directors who collaborated on scripting, in that he shares credit with three other scribes, including the noteworthy George Plympton. All of these talents seem to be united in the desire to translate to film, with as much gravity as melodrama would allow, the world of Alex Raymond, with its Burroughsian panoramas of medieval barbarism crossbred with science fiction gimmickery.

Obviously there were physical limitations to the state of special effects in 1936. Modern eyes, perhaps spoiled by the breakthroughs of computer graphics, are unlikely to see the aesthetic success of the serial, focusing only upon minutiae, like the fact that Stephani cannot, unlike Alex Raymond, make his live-action Hawkmen look like they have living wings that give them the power of flight. Yet even these qualified failures still convey Raymond’s vision of an exotic world wherein a fearless Earthman continually contends with people who have the powers or aspects of animals, and triumphs over them.

The actors, too, reflect the production team’s decision to pursue high melodrama with great intensity but without any condescending camp humor. I’m not alone in extolling Buster Crabbe to be one of the best possible castings in the history of cinema, period, and indeed, I’d rate his portrayal of Flash Gordon as an improvement on the Raymond original. Raymond’s Flash in the earliest strips is a one-dimensional hero. Forced into an arena, Flash wades into battle and tosses around his opponents, the ferocious monkey-men, like mere dolls. In the serial, Flash is no less stalwart and resolute. Yet in the arena-scene, Crabbe registers real fear when he faces the ape-creatures for the first time, and in his battle he has to sweat blood, so to speak, in outfighting these powerful beast-men. I’m not saying that I would’ve wanted to see Crabbe play Hamlet—his talent lay within a narrow expressive range—but he even has a few sensitive moments here. When Princess Aura tearfully confesses her love to him, trying to win him away from his beloved Dale Arden, Crabbe’s Flash shows more empathy for the woman’s emotional turmoil than the Flash Gordon of the comics could.

In the serial Ming, ably portrayed by Charles Middleton, is about the same as he is in the early strips: visually arresting but not yet possessing much character. However, Priscilla Lawson’s Princess Aura is a huge improvement over Raymond’s version. Raymond shows little empathy for Aura’s amour fou toward the Earthman, and the comics-artist tended to use her as nothing more than a plot-device. But both the script and the direction of FLASH GORDON play up Aura’s doomed passion for all it’s worth. She’s also a woman of action. On four separate occasions she witnesses Flash in peril, and while Dale Arden stands to one side, weeping or carrying on, Aura uses force or guile in order to save her man. As in the comic strip, Aura is eventually given a consolation prize in the form of the rebel prince Barin. However, as if to signify the producers’ secret preference for a Flash-Aura matchup, Barin comes off as rather bland, even after facing off against Flash in a blistering tournament-swordfight.

Other minor characters are artfully cast, with highest honors going to James Lipson for his rollicking effort as Vultan, King of the Hawkmen, and next highest to Frank Shannon as the always durable Doctor Zarkov. And with them out of the way, I can at least touch on the most significant change in the serial: the rendering of the comic strip’s plucky Dale Arden into a teary dishrag. (To be sure, actress Jean Rogers plays one of cinema’s best teary dishrags, faint praise though that may seem.) As I noted in an earlier essay, Dale in the comic strip was not an experienced warrior, but she was capable of independent action, and she outshone Princess Aura so much that sometimes Raymond made them look alike. In contrast, Stephani’s team went out of their way to visually distinguish the two characters. First off, the comics’ brunette Dale becomes a platinum blonde, as if to mirror Flash’s blonde locks. But as mentioned before, this Dale becomes every bit the “helpless femme” who can only scream hysterically when her lover is in danger.

The only character-monent Dale gets—and it’s a very odd, nuanced one for an American action-serial—appears in FLASH’s first chapter. The three Earthpeople, having crash-landed on Mongo, have been brought before Ming. Ming boasts that he plans to destroy the Earth, and Zarkov slyly buys time by talking the tyrant into conquering the planet instead. Up to this point Dale, who is of course wearing the prim clothes of a “nice girl,” hasn’t reacted to much of anything. Then Princess Aura, decked out in her pagan finery, pushes past some guards to stand beside her father. For just one shot—before Aura has even looked at Flash Gordon with lust, before she’s claimed him for her own property—Dale lifts her chin and gives Aura a hostile look, as if to say something like, “trashy slut.” Of course, for all anyone today knows, the actress might have been told to react as if Aura had already propositioned the Earthman. But as the scene stands, Dale comes off as overly proper. Given that the rest of the serial downplays Dale in order to play up Aura, this scene is in any case a harbinger of future developments.

In the comic strip, Dale pretends to romance Vultan in order to gain his trust, but only with the ulterior purpose of finding some way to rescue the imprisoned Flash. In Episode 6, Aura gives Dale the idea of makng up to Vultan, and Dale allows herself to be manipulated, even though it’s abundantly clear that Aura’s doing this to clear her own path to Flash. In Chapter 10, the serial reworks an incident from the comic strip in which the witch-queen Azura strips Flash of his memory, so that he makes love to her and forgets Dale. The serial has Aura slip Flash the memory-mickey, with the result that the stricken hero actually does choose Aura over Dale for a short time. Naturally Aura doesn’t get the chance to enjoy the fruits of her deception before that meddling Zarkov administers an antidote. Dale eventually wins the romantic battle, but only by being incredible passive. Some might assume that the serial’s makers were suggesting that female passivity was a prescriptive value. But that theory hardly holds up, given how much the film emphasizes Aura’s courage and cunning as positive virtues.

My explanation for the Dale-Aura change is no more verifiable than any other, but I think it fits the facts better. Alex Raymond’s comic strip was concocted in part to compete with BUCK ROGERS, which like its prose precursor, started out by having Caucasian heroes square off against menacing Mongolians. In FLASH GORDON Raymond throws in a little bit of Oriental claptrap, like giving his villain the name of a Chinese dynasty and dressing him in Mandarin robes. However, Raymmond was primarily interested in popularing his world with weird animal-human hybrids like Hawkmen and Lionmen. Thus after the first six months Raymond no longer refers to Ming’s people as “yellow men.” By the time the serial was in production, even characters like Ming and Barin, who had once been colored with a shade of canary-yellow, were depicted with the same Caucasian flesh-hues as everyone else.

By the time the serial FLASH GORDON films, no one in it looks particularly Asian except Ming. True, Aura is, though not specifically Asian, coded as an exotic “foreign beauty.” But this visual trope doesn’t necessarily signal, as Marxists tiresomely argue, an endorsement of Caucasian hegemony.

Raymond rather indifferently propounded a standard formula designed by please white readers: Asians may desire Caucasians, but not the other way round. Stephani and his fellow writers could not change the formula of the comic strip without displeasing the film’s audience. And yet, I believe that there’s some creative agenda on the minds of the filmmakers. Why, if one is playing to a dominantly white audience, would one downgrade the role of the lead Caucasian female character, making her seem helpless and a little simple-minded, while upgrading the image of the quasi-Asian exotic competition, making her much more dynamic than she is in the original strip?

There are two possible explanations. One is that one or more filmmakers secretly disliked all the “Yellow Peril” tropes in the film, and sought to undermine them through subtext: by making the romance between white man and not-white woman seem infinitely preferable to the more vanilla matchup. However, there seems no way to prove this. The other explanation rests more on the needs of entertainers trying to reach a particular audience. Possibly the filmmakers simply felt that they could generate greater melodramatic interest from adult filmgoers if the serial played up the tragic nature of Aura’s “love that was not meant to be.” I don’t suggest that 1936 female viewers would have wept for Aura the way they might weep, say, over the travails of STELLA DALLAS. But Aura’s sufferings were a trope that would be recognizable to an adult audience rasied on high Hollywood melodrama, so that all of the preposterous fantasy-elements might become more relatable.

For whatever reasons, there was never another American serial even ambivalently aimed at an adult audience, and the two FLASH GORDON serials—whose lack of earthy sexuality looks forward to George Lucas’s cosmos—would be just as juvenile as all the rest.

SON OF GODZILLA (1967)

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


Though I wasn't crazy about the idea of SON OF GODZILLA back in the day, a recent revisit reveals that it's not that bad, and definitely stands as the best Godzilla film by Jun Fukuda, certainly more fun than the previous GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER.

In addition, even though Ishiro Honda is the revered master of all things Godzilla, he did a much blander version of a roughly similar story three years later in YOG MONSTER FROM SPACE. Both films dealt with small groups of human beings confined to an island full of bizarre monters. But even though all of the human characters of SON are just as negligible as those in YOG, the Fukuda film comes up with more interesting events to torment the people.

SON begins with a scientific expedition attempting to control Earth's weather for the purpose of feeding an overpopulated Earth. Unfortunately, they've chosen to set up their experiment on an island where some giant mantises-- possibly leftovers from prehistoric times, like Godzilla?-- are roaming around. In addition, Goro, a nosy reporter, parachutes down to the island, thinking that he's going to get some sort of scoop there. The scientists, having no transportation off the island, must reluctantly accept Goro into their midst. While there Goro spots a comely sarong-clad beauty, though no one believes him because the scientists think the whole native population was evacuated. Later they find out that the young lady, name of Raeko, is actually the offspring of a Japanese couple who died on the island and left Raeko to grow up alone, though she knows many of the island's secrets.

When the scholars run one of the weather-tests, a mysterious radio broadcast from the island-- which is also seen "calling" Godzilla out at sea-- disrupts the machine and causes a chain reaction. For four days a "radioactive storm" besieges the island, though Goro and the scientists protect themselves in their bunkers. The radioactivity causes the mantises to become larger-- hence their new name "Gimantises"-- though this seems a needless elaboration, since the island already has a couple of really, really big monsters. One, not seen until over halfway through the film, is giant spider Spiga, who has apparently been around long enough that Raeko can tell Goro all about its habits. The other, however, is still in its egg, and it's a baby of the Godzilla species, later named "Minilla." The Gimantises uncover the egg, crack it open and try to prey on Minilla. Godzilla shows up and kills one of the mantises, after which the Big G apparently decides to adopt this leftover member of the species.

With even more monsters in residence, the scientists now want to call for aid in getting off the island, but their radio's shot. Goro finally wins over Raeko into meeting the scientists, and they use her island-knowledge to escape some of the creatures. While the humans struggle to repair the radio-- which they eventually use to signal their people-- Godzilla has assorted scenes trying to teach Minilla the art of being a giant monster. However, by the climax Godzilla and "son" are forced to fight the other monsters for supremacy. The humans all escape and also use their device to put the two Godzillas "on ice," for the time being.

The chemistry between the actors playing Goro and Raeko enlivens all of the human-focused scenes, given that the scientists are a pretty dull lot. The main attraction, though, is the spectacle of Godzilla playing "daddy." Some of Fukuda's antics are OK-- I rather liked Minilla playing "jump the rope" with his sleeping parent's tail-- but I could have done without Minilla throwing a childish temper tantrum. Minilla is also shown using the same atomic breath Godzilla has. Perhaps this was the real purpose of the radioactive storm, to provide some tie to Godzilla's own origins, but none of Fukuda's characters ever think about such discrepancies.

THE EROTIC CIRCUS (1969)

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


I watched EROTIC CIRCUS on Youtube, and the best thing about this low-budget sexploitation feature is the title. However, the alternative title-- ORGY IN THE PSYCHO HOUSE, which is the title that appears on the Youtube print-- is actually a lot more appropriate.

PSYCHO's long shadow envelops CIRCUS just as it does many other 1960s horror films. I imagine that other low-budget grindhouse productions ransacked the Hitchcock oeuvre before this one, but I have to give credit to writer-director Henri Pachard-- in his third film before he went on to a long. long career in hardcore flicks-- for sticking somewhat close to the PSYCHO pattern.

The "psycho house" is a farmhouse out in the bleak countryside, inhabited by an older, unnamed woman (billed as "Mom" on imdb), her adult son Jaimy, and a weird caretaker, Yenos, who's seen axing some unfortunate woman to death in the film's first few minutes.  Mom's brother Louie, a coke dealer, takes it into his head to come visit, bringing along two skanky ladies, implicitly involved with him in making erotic films. Mom receives her visitors with ill grace, and the stage is set for indiscriminate murder, interspersed by either visual fantasies about sexual encounters or Louie trying to gross people out in one way or another. Louie's the first victim of the mystery killer-- kept decorously off-camera as Louie is knifed to death-- and the girls are next.

Despite the clumsy sequences with the caretaker, clearly Pachard wants the viewer to suspect weak, passive-looking Jaimy. But, big surprise, it's Mom doing the killings. It's really not much of a surprise, since early on some non-specific sexual activity between mother and son is indicated, and a final sequence glosses this. After having killed all the intruders, Mom then spends several minutes applying a dress and makeup to Jaimy. Then the film ends, making clear that this time, "Norma," not "Norman," is really the guilty party.

IMDB reviews assert that this probably wasn't the full film, not least because there's not much real-time bump-and-grind. However, there's enough perversity on display that CIRCUS almost seems like the sexploitation version of the old saw about vaudeville-- i.e., if you don't see your fetish on display, just wait a minute and there'll be another one.

THE CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR (1968)

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


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I'll get the expected complaint out of the way first: that it's a shame that a movie starring Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff and Barbara Steele doesn't boast a script worthy of the actors.

To be sure, Steele has such a small role that I suspect that she was only engaged for a few days, so maybe her greater participation was off the table from the get-go. But both of the characters played by Lee and Karloff share the stage quite a bit with viewpoint-character Robert Manning (Mark Eden), so there's no excuse on that front.

ALTAR's biggest failing is that Robert is a bland lead, given a bland mission. His brother Peter disappears while traveling for the brothers' antique-dealing business, and the only clue is a note that leads Robert to a small English town called Greymarsh. Robert checks out a mansion occupied by an urbane fellow named Morley (Lee) and his cute niece Eve (Virginia Wetherell), but neither of them can adequately explain the note's provenance or Peter's disappearance. No one in Greymarsh gives Robert any help, though strange old duck Professor Marsh (Karloff) gives the young man lots of background on the town's supernatural history. In particular, the Morleys had a witch in their family centuries ago, one Lavinia (Steele), a green-skinned, horn-headed sorceress seen only in visionary sequences.

Robert, with the aid of Eve, continues stumping around trying to solve the mystery, though the character as written never seems all that torn-up by his brother's disappearance, or even being told (by Michael Gough's creepy butler-type) that Peter is dead. Robert himself has visions in which he sees his brother being judged by Lavinia and her costumed cultists, after which Robert expresses total ignorance of all this occult business. Professor Marsh is happy to toss out tidbits about Pan and Herne the Hunter, but the script doesn't really have much to offer in terms of pagan lore-- even though Chris Lee would play a slightly similar type of character five years later in another pagan-horror film, THE WICKER MAN.

In the end (remember those SPOILERS), there's no real witch, only Lee playing at being a warlock, and using some very unlikely hypnotic techniques to control people's beliefs about a recrudescent Lavinia. Only at the end is there a small suggestion that Lavinia might be real. Lee, stranded on the roof of his burning mansion, seems to be surrounded by the image of the green-fleshed sorceress, while on the ground Robert and Eve react as if they too are seeing this apparition. But since both of them have been somewhat under Morley's mesmeric aegis, it's also possible that they're just seeing what Morley wants them to see. The scene seems to be more of a last-minute "gotcha" than a serious reversal of the story's main thrust about mysticism-via-hypnosis.

Lee and Karloff definitely give their thinly-conceived roles far more gravitas than the parts deserve.

LANCER: "A SCARECROW AT HACKET'S" (1969)

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


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I've usually found the western teleseries LANCER to be a weak-sauce version of BONANZA (middle-aged patriarch works a ranch in the Old West with his adult sons). That's why I was surprised to find that one 1969 episode of the series provided one of TV's better "weird westerns."

The trouble begins not with the Lancer family (consisting principally of patriarch Murdoch and his sons Scott and Johnny) but with one of their neighbors, Silas Hacket, who with his young son Jeremy works a small nearby ranch with a cornfield (and the titular scarecrow, though it doesn't get a lot of visual emphasis). Silas falls ill and passes away, but not before making the eerie claim that he wills his land back to the devil, who gave it to him. The Lancers take young Jeremy under their wing, assuring him that they won't honor such an extravagant claim and that the ranch will become the youth's properly.

However, a newcomer (Pat Hingle) arrives at the Lancer ranch, ushered in by a blistering wind that the newcomer himself calls "infernal." He introduces himself as Absolem Weir, and presents evidence that he has a lien on the property. Murdoch promises to have the local lawmakers investigate Weir's claim, but clearly his sympathies are with Jeremy. Further, Absolem-- who perhaps borrows his first name from the rebellious son of Biblical king David-- seems uncannily omniscient about everyone at the Lancer ranch, particularly Johnny, who has a quasi-criminal past as a gun-for-hire. Absolem even displays the Batman-like talent for disappearing whenever someone's looking away from him.

While the lien is under investigation, Absolem takes it upon himself to visit the ranch in question, and he seems to be exert a charismatic influence upon Jeremy-- perhaps because Jeremy needs a new father-figure. However, Absolem's conversations-- in some cases taking place in that dismal cornfield with its scarecrow-- seem to focus more on tempting Jeremy to cross over to some darker existence. He shows off an ability to handle a gun, and though he doesn't exhibit any supernatural talents as such when he and Johnny come to blows, there's a peculiar moment wherein Weir spitefully spooks Johnny's horse by uttering a cougar-like cry.

Despite all of these devilish suggestions, the Lancers' investigation indicates that Weir's lien is phony. This disclosure leads to a concluding gun-battle between Johnny and Weir. Yet scripter Samuel Roeca and director Marvin Chomsky (the latter best known for three STAR TREK episodes) still manage to keep a sense of the unfathomable. The two men fire at each other from cover, and Johnny's fire hits not Weir but the implacably standing scarecrow. When the other Lancers show up, Weir has simply disappeared, this time for good, as the land is ceded back to the rightful owner.

It's not a perfect episode. Too late in the story, Johnny remembers a legend about the devil wanting to "grow souls" in some barren piece of land, a legend which would've been more effective toward the beginning of the narrative. But it's certainly a better metaphenomenal western than seeing Hoss Cartwright dress up like the Easter Bunny.

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999)

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

As in the previous Brosnan-Bond film, the villains are fairly down to earth in terms of their technology-- once again, involving an attempt to unleash a nuclear bomb, though this time, the villain is out to create a capitalistic hegemony rather than to foment war between nations. However, Bond's super-car is back, complete with a surface-to-air missile, which is enough to boost the movie into marvelous territory. Bond himself has a new gimmick, a flash-bomb inside a pair of glasses, and in the film's rousing opening action-scenes he pilots a submersible boat in pursuit of an assassin.

WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH is the first and last Bond film directed by Michael Apted. It's also the last Bond writing-credit for Bruce Fierstein, after he received sole billing for TOMORROW NEVER DIES. For whatever reason, Neil Purvis and Robert Wade, who share screenplay credit with Fierstein on WORLD, apparently became the new favorites of the producers, for the two of them remained attached to the franchise all the way through 2015's SPECTRE.

WORLD shows some of the ambitiousness of GOLDENEYE in terms of redefining Bond for the nineties. As in GOLDENEYE there are some attempts to tweak Bond's image as a ladykiller, while still allowing him to bed three women in the course of the film. Yet the film emphasizes Bond's role as a spy engaged in battling real-world terrorism, which in this case is entwined with a particular capitalistic enterprise. In the aforementioned opening scenes, Bond, seeking to learn who killed a MI6 agent, is used as an assassin's pawn in killing British oil magnate Robert King. Moments before King is slain, Bond sees the tycoon conclude a meeting with Bond's superior M (Judi Dench), and a past romantic vibe between M and King is strongly implied. Despite a long pursuit of the person responsible for the bomb, the agent is unable to keep the assassin from taking her own life, ostensibly out of fear of a mysterious "him."

MI6's investigation suggests that Robert King was killed by terrorists targeting a pipeline under construction in Azerbaijan. Further, M had an involved professional relationship with Robert King in addition to any unverified personal attachment. Years ago King's daughter Elektra was kidnapped, and King came to M for help. Instead of liberating Elektra, M sought to use Elektra as a means of trapping her kidnapper, noted terrorist Renard. M failed to trap Renard, though a later attempt on the head terrorist left a bullet in the man's brain, while Elektra managed to get free sans M's help. Now Elektra King (Sophie Marceau) has inherited her father's firm, and Bond suspects that Renard may seek to attack her and her company once more.

The ambivalence of the Greek name "Electra"-- which I'll address shortly in more detail-- may give the game away early. Bond, as he so often does with women he seeks to protect, falls into bed with Elektra, but in a reversal on TOMORROW NEVER DIES, he finds out that his new conquest was previously seduced by a villain, in this case Elektra's former captor Renard. The two are both partners in romance and in crime, and their long-range plan is to trigger an atomic meltdown to eliminate other pipelines in the vicinity, so that Elektra's hegemony will be unchallenged. Elektra willingly collaborated in the slaying of Robert King, partly because she blamed him for not ransoming her (she also blames M, and comes close to snuffing her as well), partly because the British magnate "stole" the Azerbaijan oil-lands from Elektra's mother, though we never hear much of anything about this alleged theft. Bond, aided by a requisite Good Girl (Denise Richards), leaps through a series of action-hoops to head off the holocaust, though in terms of stuntwork, none of the set-pieces equal the one at the film's opening. However, in terms of emotional resonance, none of Bond's athletic actions prove as grueling as his fatal confrontation with Elektra, in which, in contradistinction to his normal gallantry, he's forced to shoot her dead to keep her from launching the nuclear option.

In some quarters Elektra King was touted as movie-Bond's first "head villainess," as opposed to a henchwoman like Pussy Galore or Xenia Onatopp. However, Elektra doesn't really have the mojo to full that role. Part of her failure as a villain lies in the fact that her vengeance is set into motion by a more experienced male terrorist, even though there are a few moments in which Renard becomes somewhat subordinate to Elektra. Moroever, actress Sophie Marceau just doesn't have the talent to pull off a role of such emotional depth. Both Brosnan and Robert Carlyle (who plays the bitter, doomed terrorist Renard) act Marceau under the table.

Authors don't always use Greek words to reflect their original associations, but I think Purvis and Wade had some knowledge of both the Greek myth of Electra and the appropriation of the name by psychology. In the latter discipline, an "Electra complex" was one in which a grown daughter has become fixated upon her father, whether emotionally or erotically. Carl Jung coined the term as a response to Freud's "Oedipus complex," and the reference grew out of Electra's role in Greek myth. In this myth-cycle, the Greek lord Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War in triumph, only to be murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegistus. Only Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, seeks to avenge her father, manipulating her younger brother Orestes into slaying the two people responsible for Agamemon's death.

Interestingly, Purvis and Wade turned the original Electra situation on its head. In their hands, Electra honors her mother and views her father as a thief, though this orientation probably came about after Robert King, on the bad advice of M, failed to save Elektra. Thus the daughter-figure in WORLD resents both the father and a "bad mother," reversing Electra's focus on her mother and a "bad father." This is probably as far as the parallels were meant to go, though Bond does serve Elektra's ends the way Orestes does those of his sister. Renard bears no strong comparison to anyone in the Greek tale. However, since he's probably named for the folkloric trickster-fox Reynard, he might be seen as an embodiment of Elektra's own treacherous nature.

This is also one of the few Bond films in which the villains have some human dimension, with the result that M's ruthlessness with regard to innocents doesn't leave her looking very heroic.  The darker aspects of the storyline bid fair comparison with the similarly doleful 1997 espionage-teleseries LA FEMME NIKITA.