THE PERILS OF PAULINE (1933)

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


From everything I've read about the original 1914 PERILS OF PAULINE-- to this day the only silent serial the average person has heard of-- the titular heroine and her boyfriend were engaged in a series of mundane perils, aimed at them by a scheming lawyer. In other words, unlike some other silent serials, PAULINE had no metaphenomenal content.

The 1933 serial borrowed only the basic image of a girl and her guy fending off dangers in foreign lands, but placed it in the context of weird archaeological adventure. Pauline Hargraves (Evalyn Knapp) and her professor-father travel to various exotic ports in search of an artifact, and a young man, Bob Warde (Robert Allen), joins the party largely because he fancies Pauline. The artifact can give the professor the information he needs to synthesize an ancient poison gas of catastrophic capabilities. As is often the case of serials, the reasons of the "good scientists" for inventing or uncovering a deadly weapon are left largely undefined, and PAULINE gives less reason than comparable serials like 1937's BLAKE OF SCOTLAND YARD. Palpably the real "reason" is that the scientists' efforts motivate vile villains to acquire the same weapon for nefarious purposes-- said villain this time being one Doctor Bashan (John "no relation to the singer" Davidson).

Since much of the original PAULINE is lost, it's hard to be sure how much of an action-girl the main heroine was. However, Knapp's Pauline is certainly not one such. There's a scene in which she sees Bob being attacked by several Bashan henchmen, and takes out a pistol to shoot one of the bad guys, and there are two short scenes in which Pauline has to fend off female attackers. But there's no real sense that she's especially capable in the action department, despite facing her father's enemies with courage. Bob, even though he's simply an out-of-work engineer, proves to be a vigorous hand-to-hand fighter, even though this Universal serial's level of fight-craft is lively but sometimes awkwardly staged. Despite the use of stock footage and pre-existing sets, though, PAULINE does capture the sense of thirties adventure-stories, in which the heroes (admittedly, almost all Caucasian) could freely delve into exotic worlds without ever worrying about passports or revolutions.

Bashan, though he doesn't do much beyond sending henchmen here and there, is the most engaging character in the serial, while the good professor (played by James Durkin) at least seems like a morally upright fellow despite his dubious desire to unearth an archaic weapon. Many reviewers didn't like Willie Dodge, the comic-relief butler to the professor, but I thought that he was easier to take than many such alleged comic types in chapterplays. Maybe I just liked that he sported the same last name as the character "Elaine Dodge," whom Pearl White portrayed following her success in the original PAULINE.

The poison gas doesn't actually become a major element until the last few chapters, but in contrast to a lot of the Eurospy movies of the sixties, at least the super-weapon does make an appearance.

SAILOR MOON R: THE MOVIE (1993)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*


SAILOR MOON S was the first movie-length story in the franchise, but unlike some anime movies based on concurrently running serials,"R" makes no attempt to initiate viewers unfamiliar with the characters and plotlines. The story loosely takes place in the series' second long arc, which also garnered the title "SAILOR MOON R," though the movie's not strictly in-continuity with the series.


For the most part, it wouldn't be hard for a newbie to follow the main premise: that middle-schooler Usagi and her five same-age friends occasionally cast aside their normal lives in order to don the outfits of superheroic "Sailor Scouts," the better to repel invasions of aliens and demons from planet Earth. The average viewer would probably also follow well enough that the Scouts have a couple of talking cats who render them aid, and that Usagi-- who is the unofficial leader, Sailor Moon-- has a boyfriend, Mamoru, who also maintains a costumed identity, that of "Tuxedo Mask." But if one has never seen the series before, I rather wonder what the casual viewer would make of Chibiusa, a grade-school kid who hangs out with the older ladies-- much less the fact that Chibiusa apparently has a major crush on Mamoru and is jealous of his attentions to Usagi. (Usagi, not much more mature than Chibiusa, usually returns the hostility, though it's revealed elsewhere that Usagi and Mamoru are Chibiusa's parents, though neither of them has any memory of this facet of their past lives.)

The only past life with which "R" concerns itself is Mamoru's upbringing on Earth, where he, like Usagi and the other Scouts, was raised as an ordinary human being. His adoptive parents perished in a car crash, but grade-school Mamoru found some solace with a strange young boy, Fiore. Mamoru, not knowing that Fiore is an alien, gives his young friend the gift of a pretty flower (an odd gift between boys, but maybe that's OK with the serial's primary audience of teen girls). Fiore departs to find a corresponding gift for Mamoru, but he's gone so long that Mamoru grows to young manhood and comes to believe that Fiore was some imaginary playmate. Fiore, also grown to teen-hood, then comes back to Earth with his gift, which causes some amusing speculations among the Scouts as to whether Mamoru may have done some "experimentation." However, the Scouts soon learn that Fiore's brought an alien bloom, "the Xenian Flower," to their planet, and they must use their powers to defeat the flower's designs to drain Earth of its life-force.

The highlight of the film is the creative design of the Xenian Flower, which can both scuttle around on its roots and manifest as a half-woman, half-planet hybrid with assorted weird abilities. Psychologically, the narrative focuses on cementing the relationship of Usagi and Mamoru, but their romance as seen here doesn't seem one of the stronger melodramatic developments in the ongoing show.

AMITYVILLE 3-D (1983)

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


It's a real contest for me to decide whether or not the second sequel to THE AMITYVILLE HORROR is duller than the original flick. Though there's a passing reference to the Oedipal murders from the second film, David Ambrose's script largely follows the first film's pattern of subjecting the new occupants of the haunted house to a series of varied spook-scares.

The most interesting thing about the script is that it starts out with a "ghost-busting" expose by two journalists, John (Tony Roberts) and Melanie (Candy Clark), as they get the goods on a phony spiritualist renting the house. Ironically, though the Amityville ghosts (still apparently coming both from an Indian burial ground AND from a gateway to Hell) leave the phony ghost-summoner alone, the interference of the journalists inspires the spooks to start their killing spree, initially targeting the realtor in charge of the property. The ghosts sometimes manifest, as in the first film, in the form of buzzing flies, and again they can strike at targets even though they're far removed from the house (Melanie suffers a car accident not unlike the one that afflicts the Catholic priest in the original flick).

Despite the death of the realtor, John moves his family into the cheap-as-dirt house, and they all suffers assorted hauntings. The most impressive sequence involves the death of the family's teenage daughter, giving Tess Harper (John's wife) the chance for major grief. But none of the hauntings are anything special, though I rather liked the makeup job on the ghost-or-demon that pops out of the hellgate at the conclusion.

I never saw the third flick in 3-D, and probably never will. I don't think I missed anything.

NIGHTMARE (1964)

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Though screenwriter Jimmy Sangster wrote a variety of "psychological thrillers" throughout his career, the five that he wrote in the early to middle sixties seem to be the ones most oriented toward imitating the commercial success of the Hitchcock oeuvre. As yet I have not reviewed the third one, 1963's MANIAC, or the fifth, 1965's HYSTERIA, but I have done so for 1961's SCREAM OF FEAR and 1962's PARANOIAC. however, and I'm going to hypothesize that 1964's NIGHTMARE is probably the best of the Hitchcockian batch.

In all five flicks, Sangster depends on some character(s) formulating an extremely complicated scheme to deceive some other character(s), presumably emulating the success of contemporaneous films like Clouzot's 1955 LES DIABOLIQUES and Hitchcock's 1958 VERTIGO. NIGHTMARE is arguably more dependent on gimcrack plotting and unbelievable coincidence than other Sangster psycho-thrillers. But no one in the sixties went to see these films for the plots; they went to see people terrified by uncanny threats, even when it was fairly clear (to the viewers) that the threat was being stage-managed by insidious schemers. NIGHTMARE is interesting in that it follows the pattern of VERTIGO by revealing the nature of the scheme roughly at the halfway point, and then allowing the viewer to watch the schemer(s) hoist on their own petard.

At the end of my PARANOIAC review I opined that its narrative didn't justify a reading along the lines of Freud, or even Hitchcock-Freud. NIGHTMARE, however, makes a clever use of subterranean symbolism, as well as placing so much emphasis on female characters that it would probably score points with ultra-feminists if the film hadn't been turned out by male authors (Freddie Francis directs, and would later re-team with Sangster for HYSTERIA).

Teenaged Janet Freeman (Jennie Linden) starts out at boarding-school, but at mid-term she's sent back to her ritzy English home because her constant nightmares disturb her dorm-mates. Back on the young woman's eleventh birthday, Janet's mother unaccountably went mad and knife-killed her husband. The mother was consigned to an asylum, and though alive, never has any direct impact on the story. However, Bughouse Mama still shows up in the dreams of teenaged Janet, inviting her to take a Walk on the Mad Side. Miss Lewis, a teacher and potential "good mother," escorts Janet to her home, which is maintained entirely by servants and whose financial affairs are overseen by a lawyer named Baxter (David Knight). In her conversation with Lewis, Janet evinces a strong desire to see Baxter again, strongly suggesting at the least a teenage crush on an older (and married) man. However, when Janet and Lewis show up at the Freeman house, they learn that Baxter has sent a new servant, Grace, who's supposed to be Janet's "companion" but who is actually a professional nurse. Being back at home, though, doesn't bring Janet any peace of mind, for she starts seeing a female spectre in the halls, but this time it's a woman Janet doesn't recognize at all. Some days later, Janet's about to celebrate another birthday, and for the first time ever, Baxter brings along his wife. Horrors! It's the weird woman Janet saw in her delirium, and Janet's terror moves her to snatch up the cake-cutting knife and stab Mrs. Baxter to death. So Janet has her fears of madness confirmed, as the law falls for the plot and consigns the teenager to an asylum (after which she's never physically seen in the film again, though her presence returns in a figurative manner).

Then it's revealed that the weird woman in the halls was Grace in disguise, and that she's conspired with Baxter to drive Janet mad in order to-- well, it's not exactly clear. Baxter's just the family lawyer, so I was never clear as to what he was going to get out of sending Janet to the crazy house. He does marry Grace in jig-time, though, as the two of them apparently not at all concerned about society's raised eyebrows. However, Janet has friends who promptly (and pretty unbelievably) gaslight the gaslighters. In reaction Grace goes so bonkers that she accuses Baxter of helping Janet escape the asylum so that Janet can kill Grace, and then she knife-kills Baxter. At the close Janet's helpers reveal to the murderess how they played her, and even reveal that (somehow) Janet has made a full recovery and is due to be released soon.

To judge by the way Sangster tosses plausibility out the window, he must have believed that his audience wouldn't fault him on the outrageous nature of either the villains' scheme or the avengers' counter-scheme. And I don't fault him either, because I'm more interested in the way NIGHTMARE incorporates Freudian psychological myths.

We don't know if Child-Janet, on the day of her eleventh birthday, nurtured any jealousy of her mother's relationship with her father. Still, the mother's murder of the father has the effect of taking away the most important man in Janet's young life. There are no suggestion that teenaged Janet has ever considered boys her own age, and, had Sangster been forced to address the issue, he could have argued that her fear about inheriting her mother's insanity would have kept her isolated from the opposite sex. The one man for whom she shows regard is Baxter, who like her late father is another older married man, though this doesn't keep her from being interested in him. Baxter and Grace apparently believe that Janet's fear of her negative maternal image is so strong that it can be transferred to another target, simply by having Grace waltz around the family abode in a mask of Mrs. Baxter.

It's not clear that Baxter is aware of Janet's feelings for him, but clearly whatever he gains from her incarceration wouldn't keep him from still exploiting her. But it's important to note that even though the scheme depends on Janet making a correlation between her mad mother and a strange female spectre given flesh, it's still interesting that by killing Mrs. Baxter, she's killing someone who could've barred Janet's access to her substitute father-figure. In the real world Janet certainly wouldn't make a full recovery after slaying an innocent woman. But in the world of psychological myth, Janet's slaying of Mrs. Baxter is also the killing of the "bad mother." Indeed, even though Janet is entirely absent from the latter half of the film, one could view the entire denouement of NIGHTMARE as a transference of Janet's psychic fear to her victimizer Grace. Janet's helpers stage-manage things so that Grace believes Janet has escaped the asylum, and that Baxter is meeting some other woman even after having married Grace. But Grace jumps to the conclusion that Janet is the other woman, and though the conclusion makes no logical sense, it makes symbolic sense. Grace, by exploiting Janet's fear of insanity, has in essence engendered her own madness, even to the point where she, unlike Janet, duplicates the husband-killing deed of the institutionalized Mrs. Freeman.

One can poke logical holes in many if not all of Alfred Hitchcock's best films. What made the "Master of Suspense" such a formidable film-presence, though, was his ability to suss out the symbolic depths of the stories he adapted to film, even if he changed some of those stories in radical ways. NIGHTMARE, though enlivened by Freddie Francis's direction, shows more facility with symbolic discourse than most of Hitchcock's imitators-- even though, for all I know, Sangster may have had no more regard for NIGHTMARE than any of his other cinematic children.

ADDENDUM: I re-scrutinized the sequences in which Baxter and Grace more or less discuss the motives for their crimes, and Sangster barely devotes any time to the subject. Baxter's main motive for wife-killing was apparently to get his wife's money, but some dialogue implies that with Janet out of the way, Baxter as executor of the estate has some control over said estate, which sounds pretty phony. But though this contrivance is suspect in the legal sense, it provides a symbolic function insofar as it gives Baxter and Grace the excuse to take over said estate, in effect usurping the positions of Janet's lost parents.

BLOOD BATH (1966)

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


Both the production history and the functional narrative of BLOOD BATH prove incredibly convoluted. Yet, even though the plot of this chop-shop concoction from Roger Corman's AIP company is hard to follow, there are some interesting mythic aspects to the story as a whole.

The consensus on that complicated history seems to be that first Corman bought a spy thriller shot in Yugoslavia, and then added more scenes to the footage to make it into a horror film for American release. This version, which included new scenes of actor William Campbell as a deranged painter, eventually appeared on American television as PORTRAIT OF TERROR. But prior to that, Corman wanted more changes to make the movie viable for release to cinemas.

Jack Hill was assigned to rewrite the script and to direct more new scenes, and thus he seems to be the person most responsible for the better elements of BLOOD. Hill's altered version still did not please Corman, and two years later he assigned another director. Stephanie Rothman, to shoot yet more scenes, and then BLOOD BATH finally enjoyed a general release in 1966. (To further complicate things, even more scenes were shot to pad the feature when it came to television under the alternate title TRACK OF THE VAMPIRE). Rothman's main contribution was to give Hill's mad painter a vampiric nature, though since she no longer had access to actor Campbell, she had to use another actor wearing vampire-fangs, as well as re-dubbing some of Campbell's dialogue.

More than one reviewer has noted that Hill, in moving the original film's action from Europe to Venice Beach, California, may have patterned his revision of the script after Corman's earlier directorial effort, 1959's A BUCKET OF BLOOD. At the very least Hill was probably emulating the way BUCKET's writer Charles Griffith had drawn upon California's beatnik culture as a backdrop for the murderous career of would-be sculptor Walter Paisley. Both films play upon the beatniks' reputation for exaggerated artsiness, as BLOOD shows by starting off with a scene where a pretentious beat named Max shows off his system of "quantum painting," which consists of shooting one of his own canvases with a paint-gun. That said, the beats in BLOOD come off a little better than the ones in BUCKET, and the starring psycho-killers of the two films could not be more different.

Whereas Walter Paisley has no actual artistic talent, and merely impresses his gullible audience with his counterfeit creations, Alberto Sordi hearkens back to earlier, more magisterial wax-museum fiends. At the start of the film, he's apparently been killing women and turning them into wax statues for some time, but he doesn't exhibit them, merely keeping them in his studio. Implicitly they inspire him to execute a financially-successful series of paintings known as "Dead Red Nudes," showing women both undressed and impaled.

Sordi's studio is presumably a leftover from earlier versions of the film, as is his relationship to the building, which boasts an Old World clock-tower. In a dialogue that may also recycle older elements, Sordi informs one of his intended victims that once his family owned the building, but now he's forced to live in it as a tenant, employed to keep the clock running. Possibly the clock-tower was meant to be one of those many edifices transported from Europe to the U.S. brick-by-brick, but Hill's script doesn't trouble with such details. Sordi claims that the clock has been in operation since the 11th century, except for one time, when Sordi's ancestor Erno-- also an artist-- was burned at the stake. (Presumably Hill's script had Erno accused of being a witch, which Rothman changed into accusations of vampirism.) The broad implication is that Erno's troubles also took place in the Old World, but Hill isn't overly concerned with Sordi's loss of his clan's high-class privileges.

Instead, Sordi is obsessed with Melizza, a long-dead woman who betrayed Erno Sordi to the Church. Sordi still has his ancestor's painting of Melizza, and relates to his victim the allegation that Melizza's soul was captured in the painting. As if to prove that the mistress of Erno still has some occult impact on the life of the modern artist, Sordi's currently dating Dorean (Lori Saunders), a woman who's a dead ringer for Melizza. Sordi fears the spectre of Melizza, but he's fascinated with her, imagining that she appears in his dreams (where she's of course also played by Saunders). His obsession with killing women presumably started out as the compensatory desire to wield power over females, though of course the insertion of the erratic vampire element adds another complication.

After Sordi kills the film's first-seen victim-- Daisy, who just happens to be the girlfriend of "quantum artist" Max-- Daisy's sister Donna teams up with Max to go looking for the missing woman. This allows Hill to repeat the story of Sordi's evil ancestor, at which Max scoffs. However, Sordi in his "vampire" form tracks down Donna and murders her on a merry-go-round. This could have been the film's best visual sequence, except that there are spectators on the carousel when the scene starts, all of whom mysteriously vanish during the murder.

The viewer also finds out that although Sordi has been busy killing women and turning them into his artistic property, Dorean complains that he hasn't even "made a pass" at her during their dates. Clearly, though he's drawn to the Melizza lookalike, he also fears her as his nemesis. This instinct is proven right at the end. In vampire-form Sordi tries to attack Dorean. She escapes with the help of the somewhat heroic beatniks, but then chooses to take refuge at Sordi's studio. The mad artist has reverted to his human self, but Dorean's appearance causes him to lose it. He ties her up and prepares to both kill and immortalize her. At this point, the soul of Melizza-- who took no particular exception to all the other slain women-- suddenly intervenes. She causes some of Sordi's wax-embalmed victims to rise up and force him into his own wax, while the beatniks arrive to help Dorean out of her bonds.

It's hard to say why Corman liked Rothman's interpolations of Sordi's vampirism. Rothman certainly had no space to explore the traditions of vampire fiction in this cobbled-together melange, but maybe Corman simply thought vampires were more commercial than mad painters. The element of Melizza's mystic painting, for which Hill has taken credit on Youtube, is more compelling, and one may fairly ask why the Melizza-ghost only intervenes when her modern lookalike is in danger. Hill does not enlarge on this situation, but it does seem possible that Dorean really is Melizza's descendant, even as Sordi is that of mad painter Erno, and thus Sordi's breaking a sexual injunction by attacking Dorean. What I find most enjoyable about BLOOD BATH is that Hill consistently shows everyone in his world as being fascinated with both sex and death when they're couched in the abstracted world of art. There's no fear of the "male gaze" in this world, which seems fitting for the man who later directed films like THE BIG DOLL HOUSE.  Even simple Daisy wants to see her beauty given representation, and becomes angry at Max when he does a conventional portrait of her and then ruins it with his paint-gun. Even without Rothman's changes, I doubt that Hill's original script explored the themes of transgressive art in any depth. But despite the film's flawed execution, Sordi is still an interesting monster, half indebted to the example of wax-sculptors like Henry Jarrod of HOUSE OF WAX, and half to the long shadow of Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO.

PARANOIAC (1962)

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


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS


This film's title is undoubtedly beholden to the success of 1960's PSYCHO. However, Jimmy Sangster's script, said to have been loosely based on a Josephine Tey novel, bears less in common with Hitchcock than various "old dark house" thrillers.

Once again, rich English people got troubles. The progenitors of the Ashby clan both died years ago, so that now the Ashby mansion is inhabited only by two grown children, Simon (Oliver Reed) and Eleanor (Janette Scott), and by their aunt Harriet. But no one says much about the dead parents. Eleanor cares only about mourning her lost (and favorite) brother Tony, who apparently committed suicide in the ocean when he was fifteen, though the body was never recovered. For his part Simon shows every sign of becoming a hard-drinking wastrel, who continuously duns the family lawyer for extra money. However, only on a specified date will both Eleanor and Simon divide the wealth left to them by their parents. Eleanor's behavior suggests that she may commit suicide to be with her beloved brother, and Simon intimates that she'd be better off in an asylum-- which would make it possible for Simon to enjoy the entire bequest.

With only weeks to go before the inheritance date, a stranger saves Eleanor from drowning herself. Eleanor sees in him a resemblance to the dead Tony, and indeed he claims that he is Tony. He survived his suicide attempt and went wandering for several years, until he finally chose to return to claim his part of the inheritance. Eleanor is thrilled to have him back, while Simon and Harriet are more ambivalent-- and with good reason. Sangster quickly reveals that Tony is an impostor with only a nodding resemblance to the deceased brother, and that he's been coached in the family's history by his co-conspirator, the son of the family lawyer. However, "false Tony" is at heart a decent fellow, and he dislikes deceiving the vulnerable Eleanor.

Then Tony gets a taste of some night-time weirdness: an unseen individual playing the piano in the family chapel, and a clown-masked figure who attackes Tony with a bill-hook. To further complicate things, Eleanor's feelings toward her supposed brother began to become more amatory, which causes her distress, though one could rationalize that on some subconscious level she's aware that he's not really her brother. Tony is then invested enough to ferret out the truth: the real brother didn't commit suicide, but was killed by Simon. All of Simon's later irrational behavior springs from his guilt over the murder, and to keep him from going completely off the rails, Aunt Harriet has been donning her clown-masked outfit, which somehow convinces the crazed Simon that she's a live version of Tony. Yet on some level Simon's  aware of the truth, because he's got the mummified brother of the Real Tony (paging taxidermist Norman....) stowed away in the chapel.

Possibly the Tey novel is better on psychological acuity than Sangster's script, since none of the characters in the film hold up to close scrutiny. Harriet's costumed ritual is never really explained, though her wild attire looks forward to the more bizarre serial killers of eighties slasher films. Eleanor's brush with incest doesn't really amount to anything, since the viewer knows Fake Tony's not really her brother. Simon-- played in scenery-chewing style by Oliver Reed-- is unquestionably the central figure of the family romance, though the title "paranoiac" doesn't really apply to him. When he's explaining his crime to his listeners, he never expressly says that he killed Tony out of greed for the estate, and Sangster seems to let the audience assume that to be the case, since earlier viewers have seen him willing to put Eleanor away for  the sake of filthy lucre. Since all three Ashby offspring are supposed to be in their teens at the time of Tony's murder, I find it interesting to wonder if Simon might've murdered Tony precisely because Eleanor treated Tony as her favorite. But I confess there's nothing in the film to support reading it in a more Freudian (or Hitchcockian?) manner.

A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


Of all of Roger Corman's directorial works from the fifties decade, A BUCKET OF BLOOD is probably the most well-liked film. It certainly has its fair share of charms, ranging from a witty script by Charles B. Griffith and a captivating performance by film-fan favorite Dick Miller as the witless psycho-murderer Walter Paisley.

Griffith almost certainly knew of earlier films about madmen making murdered corpses into wax statues, since HOUSE OF WAX, the quasi-remake of 1933's MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, had appeared in theaters six years previous. But in both of these horror-films, the wax-sculptors were obsessed with the artistry of their endeavors. In contrast, Walter, a lowly busboy at a cafe, is a wannabe who has no artistic talent or ambition. Influenced by the high-flown, art-obsessed yammerings of the cafe's beatnik clientele, Walter has delusions of attempting sculpture in order to win the heart of his female colleague Carla, whom he's longed after for years, and who is also desired by their mutual employer, the cafe-owner Leonard (not one of the beats, though he constantly wears a beret to imply his affiliation to their artsiness). Leonard is in essence a slightly more "hip" version of Walter, in that neither man cares about art, even in the pretentious manner of the beatniks, but only with the filthy lucre that follows artistic success.

Walter, nebbish that he is, accidentally kills both a neighbor's cat and an obnoxious undercover cop, and his idea of coating them in wax originates as a method of concealing the bodies. However, he gets the inspiration of showing off the clay-coated feline off to the cafe-attendees as if it's a genuine sculpture. The adulation Walter receives-- not least from Carla-- is as much of a drug as those the beats utilize, and thus he puts the body of the waxed-up cop on display as well. From there it's a quick progression to killing people on purpose and then putting them on display-- though, because Walter is such a doofus, his handiwork is found out in jig time, and he ends up paying the ultimate price.

The satire of the West Coast beatnik scene, and of pretentious artsiness generally, is somewhat repetitious, and there's no sense that Griffith or Corman knew anything but authentic Beat art like that of Ginsburg and Ferlinghetti. But Dick Miller's performance anticipates the horror film's increasing dependence on the trope of the "nerd gone wild."

JOKER (2019)

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


I wasn't especially stoked to see JOKER, based on rumors that it might take some inspiration from the Moore-Bolland KILLING JOKE, of which I was not a fan. It turned out that the Todd Phillips-Scott Silver script only draws upon one aspect of the graphic novel: the idea that Batman's most notorious villain started out as a failed stand-up comic. The film's structure is much more indebted to Martin Scorcese works like TAXI DRIVER and THE KING OF COMEDY, and I'm moved to wonder if, prior to Phillips getting the nod for the directorship, he and Silver might have skewed their screenplay in the Scorcese direction specifically because the famed director was briefly attached to the project. If so, Scorcese's departure did nothing to cause Phillips and Silver to distance themselves from their inspiration. At the very least, someone behind the scenes remembered that
Robert de Niro had essayed the main role in KING OF COMEDY, that of a deranged comedian who kidnaps a talk-show host, and performed a shout-out to that film by casting de Niro in the role of a talk-show host idolized by Arthur Fleck, the Man Who Would Be Joker.

Circa 1981, Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix, who dropped a lot of weight to look as bony as the master criminal) lives in low-rent Gotham City squalor with his mother, and works as a hire-a-clown. Despite being victimized by both street-thugs and his boss, Fleck constantly tries to follow his mother's injunction to put on a happy face. In fact, he often can't help it, since he suffers from the condition of pathological laughter, of bursting out into nervous guffaws at the most inopportune moments. One such moment takes place on a subway, where Fleck, clad in his clown-gear, lets loose some involuntary chortling in the presence of three dissolute Wall Street roysterers. However, Fleck just happens to have a gun on him this time, and goes Bernhard Goetz on his tormentors.

Because Gotham City is a sinkhole, the idea of a clown-avenger strikes a chord, and protesters begin donning clown-makeup, anticipating the modern dissident's "V for Vendetta" masks. Wealthy Thomas Wayne-- father of Bruce, only twelve at this time-- excoriates the wastrels who would idolize a murderer, but this merely feeds the fires of discontent. To be sure, though Phillips's scenario has obviously taken some cues from Christopher Nolan's revision of the Batman mythos in BATMAN BEGINS, the script doesn't indulge in Nolan's empty-headed Marxism. In Phillips' Gotham, cruelty pervades all classes, and though lip service is paid to the corruption of those in high places, the people on the bottom rungs show themselves to be just as willing to kick off people further down. This marks JOKER as the Fyrean form of "the irony," in which all righteous order has departed. Even the suggestions that the heroic Batman will be birthed from this chaos don't lessen the sense of overall despair-- and in addition, this is a subcombative drama, given that this nascent form of the Joker has no real enemy to strive against.

Joaquin Phoenix is present in almost every scene, so it's entirely his movie, and it succeeds purely through his energetic presence. The last third still drags, though, as the script writes itself into a hole vis-a-vis the fatal encounter of Fleck and his talk-show idol. On a side-note, I have the same
continuity-oriented difficulty with JOKER that I did with KILLING JOKE-- that if an author makes the Joker sympathetic by imagining that he started out as a witless loser, it's nearly impossible to imagine criminal genius arising from such an unlikely source. That said, some accounts hedge the film's bets by stating that there's no proof that Fleck becomes the authentic Joker who will go up against Batman, that Fleck himself may be an inspiration to a superior fiend-- which is an "out" that Alan Moore could not have utilized.

DEAD HEAT (1988), THE TUXEDO (2002)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy,*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*


In this review I'm pairing two films that have absolutely nothing to do with one another, except that they're both incredibly bad action-films despite having "A" level money and/or stars behind them.

So-- which is worse?

I hadn't seen DEAD HEAT since the late eighties, and screening it again only made me more aware of its shortcomings. This is one of the many "buddy cop" films popular during that decade, though most such films start out by emphasizing some incompatibility between the two officers. In contrast, sole credited writer Terry Black-- whose other credits are a handful of TV episodes-- makes Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo) and the punnily-named Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) almost identical in being "rule-breaker" types who perpetually aggravate their frazzled captain. It's kind of like teaming Mel Gibson with another Mel Gibson (LETHAL WEAPON appeared the previous year), with the only real difference being that Roger dresses in a natty fashion while Doug wears sporty muscle-shirts. Oh, and nothing is said about Doug's romantic history, whereas Roger has apparently had a fling with a lady mortician working for the cops.

Doug and Roger have an altercation with robbers who seem invulnerable to gunfire, but the cops manage to take out the thieves-- at which point the coroner reveals that the men seem to have already died before being killed, in that they have a special preservative in their veins. This clue causes the buddy-cops to investigate the facility from which the chemical came. During the investigation Roger is attacked by another undead killer, and as a result Roger is slain. However, by that time Doug has learned that the company has a "back from death" machine, and uses it to bring Roger back. However, the effect is not permanent, for as the investigation continues Roger's body begins to deteriorate. Eventually, the two cops-- whose belated incompatibility is that one's dead and one's alive-- find the people responsible for the reanimated robbers, one of whom is played by Vincent Price in a handful of unimpressive scenes.

By the end of the movie, even the "dead/alive" incompatibility is erased, when Doug too is zombified. But, lame though the zombie-humor is, I couldn't help feeling that the order of transformation was wrong, since Piscopo's persona in the film was edgier than that of Williams, so that the former might've been a little funnier doing dead-body jokes.

On a small psychological note, while I'm usually impatient with queer readings of films in this subgenre, I could actually see it applying here-- partly because of the cops' sartorial difference, and the fact that they end up as fellow zombies more or less stuck with one another (for all that the film's last line riffs on CASABLANCA: "I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship."

As bad as HEAT is, though, I would say THE TUXEDO is worse, perhaps because Jackie Chan has more talent in one foot than Joe Piscopo has in his whole body.

Chan plays Jimmy Tong, a Chinese-American who drives a taxi and longs after a pretty Chinese woman, though he can't work up the nerve to ask her out. He gets a job as a personal driver for a smooth fellow named Clark Devlin (Jason Isaacs). Devlin takes a fancy to Jimmy and lets Jimmy see his ritzy apartment, though he warns the driver not to touch a special case with a tuxedo inside. Their conversations suggest to Jimmy that Devlin is a James Bond-like superspy, and Jimmy asks his employer for advice on girls. Jimmy acts toward Devlin like a mentor, even though at the time Chan, pushing fifty, was almost ten years older than Isaacs.

Then Devlin appears to perish in an exploding car, and Jimmy, having only rudimentary knowledge of the spy's agenda, decides to seek out his killer. He dons the mysterious tuxedo and finds that it's a genie's lamp that can do almost anything: prompt him with the knowledge he needs in any situation, or force Jimmy's unskilled body to perform athletic wonders. By dumb luck Jimmy contacts a newbie spy from Devlin's agency, a young woman named Del (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and convinces her that he's the legendary Clark Devlin. Together they investigate a terrorist corporation out to pollute U.S. reservoirs with a fairly ingenious plot involving "water strider" insects.

As in many of his later films, Chan mugs through his part, while Hewitt tries to match his lunacy by playing her character as equally loopy. Chan's role seems like an idea that might've worked a little better for a younger actor, particularly with respect to his mooning over an unrequited love, but the actor's attempts to act cute at nearly fifty years of age are doomed from the word go. In some scenes Chan is aided by FX to accomplish his stunts, but there are enough real athletics to please the devoted Chan-fancier. But in my case, the lameness of the superspy routine and the paltry characterizations make THE TUXEDO inferior even to a dog like DEAD HEAT.

THE HANGED MAN (1974)

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


Here's a "weird western" that bears a nodding resemblance to 1999's PURGATORY, in that both concern western protagonists with an ambivalent relationship to death.

Seasoned gunfighter James Devlin (Steve Forrest) has been sentenced to hang for vague reasons in a small western town (is there any other kind, in westerns?) Though the gunfighter has a cute young senorita (Barbara Luna) who wants him to live for her, Devlin seems philosophical about his impending doom. During a pre-execution conversation with a friar, Devlin makes three "lucky guesses" about the friar's state of mind, and then shows off his set of Tarot cards, a gift from a gypsy woman he once helped. Naturally, the card that interests the outlaw most is the Hanged Man, though Devlin mentions that the card doesn't signify death, but a major change in one's life.

The execution goes through as planned. Later, Devlin lies in state, with the friar and the senorita talking nearby-- and then he simply gets up. He can't immediately speak-- though that changes later-- and his first communication is a note to the friar, reading, "What did Lazarus do with the rest of his life?"

The local lawmen don't know what to do: since Devlin's been executed, technically he's outside the boundaries of the law. Once the gunfighter can speak again, he reflects on the need to make a change in his old, sinful life. Conveniently, two innocents--a young widow-woman and her cute son-- need help against a land baron/mine owner named Halleck (Cameron Mitchell). In addition, the young woman was specifically widowed because Devlin killed her husband, though this dramatic point is understated to the point that some may miss it entirely.

Some online reviews asserted that Devlin received mind-reading powers after his "resurrection," but I saw no indication of his possessing any special potency, except for his having unaccountably survived hanging. Still, at least one of Halleck's henchmen considers Devlin a supernatural being, and the hero' climactic battle with Halleck's forces takes place in a dingy mine where a smelting-furnace makes everything look the fiery hell to which the villains will eventually descend.

Since this was a pilot for a TV series, the film is quick to send Devlin off on a quest to save other people in a "Fugitive"-like pattern. Luna's character is pretty much forgotten, and the script promotes a cranky old man for comedy relief who adds nothing to the mix.  The story's main trope is closest to that of the phantasmal figuration, since one never knows whether or not Devlin's come back to life for purely natural reasons-- though the fact that he did so gives him an aura of special *potency* like those of the PURGATORY outlaws-- even though their resurrection is literal and thus marvelous in nature.

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949)

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


My one-sentence review of this film: I liked it better when they called it SON OF KONG.

Obviously I don't mean that MIGHTY JOE YOUNG is a remake of the 1933 sequel to the classic KING KONG. But just as SON was a less violent film with a more genial giant, so too is JOE. It's also the last time that KONG's three major prime movers-- Cooper, Schoedsack, and O'Brien-- returned to the icon of a colossal ape-- though to be sure, without any of the prehistoric trappings.

There's also no hint of transgressive sexuality anywhere in JOE. Whereas Kong's strange amour fou toward Ann Darrow always seems strange and inexplicable, Joe orients toward his human friend Jill Young (Terry Moore) rather after the fashion of infant to mother. SON doesn't venture into deep psychological waters either, but at least there's a sort of murky father-son dynamic between "Little Kong" and Carl Denham, the man indirectly responsible for Big Kong's death. Joe Young, who starts out looking like a commonplace baby gorilla, becomes Jill's pet on her father's African farm when she's only eight. But as they both grow to maturity, Joe is almost entirely under Jill's maternal thumb, despite the fact that, for no stated reason, he grows to the unusual height of twelve feet.

Joe also proves utterly obedient to Jill even when she's seduced by two representatives of modern civilzation-- also substitutes for Carl Denham and John Driscoll-- into taking Joe to Hollywood. The older
"seducer," impresario Max O'Hara (Robert Armstrong, also returning to the Kong-well along with the three prime movers), only wants Jill and Joe to perform stunts at his African-themed nightclub, but when the two of them aren't happy in the Big Time, he ends up helping them escape a dire fate. Gregg (Ben Johnson), the younger "Driscoll" analogue, has a less figurative romantic interest in Jill. Although Joe and Gregg get off to a bad start-- Gregg almost shoots the big ape when the latter attacks O'Hara-- Jill accepts Gregg's courtship later, and Joe never turns so much as a ruffled hair in Gregg's direction.

In my SON OF KONG review I complained that the film was too contrived for me, but at least it continued the Denham  character-arc in an interesting manner. JOE is even more contrived, and while not without some melodramatic appeal, SON starts looking better by comparison. Admittedly, JOE may score somewhat better in allowing audiences more empathetic interaction with the big anthropoid, allowing them to get a taste of what Kong's fate would've looked like had he been forced to perform monkeyshines for Denham.

Joe gets a couple of physical contests in the film, playing tug-of-war with ten human musclemen, and fending off some hostile lions, but MIGHTY JOE YOUNG is even less focused on the combative value than SON OF KONG.

THE EIGHTEEN JADE ARHATS (1979)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


Understandably, no one's ever made a successful mashup of the kung-fu action-genre and that of the murder-mystery. EIGHTEEN JADE ARHATS provides a good example of why even chopsocky-filmmakers never attempted this very often.

The main heroes of this fight-fu extravaganza are a justice-seeking traveler, Kung Chi Ya (Lee Jan-Wa) and a woman looking for her family's killer, Sing Pei Pei (the more celebrated kung fu diva Polly Shang Kuan). In fact, Kung seems a bit of a rogue-- he challenges Sing to a fight when they first meet, apparently just because he thinks she's cute-- but devotes himself to her cause as if it's his own. For her part Sing is perpetually aggravated by Kung, but retaliates by trying to get him in trouble. Not that either of them needs any help with that; most of the film consists of Sing and Kung being attacked by various exotic assassins, presumably sent by the unknown murderer to shut them up. I didn't catch any killers using overtly marvelous powers, just weird outfits (some assassins dress up like ghosts) or peculiar weapons (a female tries to trap Kung in a bed with a spiked canopy). Finally the killer is lured out of hiding when Sing claims to possess nine of the lost Jade Arhats (Buddha-statues) that can confer great power on adepts, but this is just a bluff, the supposedly magical statues have no more existence than the Maltese Falcon of film-fame. There's one dubious moment when Kung appears to call upon the power of *chi,* but I don't think the kung-fu move he uses qualifies as marvelous.

The starring actors make a good duo, despite the fact that there's no romance apart from the two of them sniping at each other. As chopsockies go, this one is at least colorful and lively at all times.

JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. THE FATAL FIVE (2019), AQUAMAN: RAGE OF ATLANTIS (2018)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) *poor,* (2) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *adventure,* (2) *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*


For Silver Age kids, the quintet of villains known as the Fatal Five were among the best villains introduced during that era. All five-- the half-human Tharok, the Emerald Empress, Mano of the disintegrating palm, the axe-wielding Persuader and the ultra-powerful Validus-- were badasses as few DC villains were. However, in addition to being badass, all five also had certain limited but evocative characterizations, and that's what is missing from this tedious new Justice League original video. Under the direction of Sam Liu, the five villains are badasses with no depth, existing just to be the story's villains-- and three of them are given very bad visual re-designs, on top of it.

The story begins in media res, with three of the Fatal Five using a time-travel device to leave the 30th century-- the era of their foes, the Legion of Super-Heroes-- and seek out the 21st century, in search of their two missing comrades. One Legionnaire, Star Boy, also travels in time to stop them. (It wasn't clear why he was the only one of the two dozen Legionnaires able to do so.) However, this version of Star Boy needs some 30th-century medications to stay sane, and he forgets to take them along with him. He goes a little nuts, gets captured by Batman, and spends a month or two in an asylum until he finally remembers who he is and why he's looking for the villains. When Batman finds out Star Boy's true nature, he brings the League into the matter, but by that time the three members of the Five have set in motion their plot to liberate their partners from the custody of the Green Lantern Corps, with the unwitting help of Earth's current Green Lantern, Jessica Cruz. (Some scripter thought it would be a brilliant touch to give Jessica the risible name of "Limelight," which does not appear to be a thing in the comic-book original.)

The plot collapses like a deck of cards when one looks at the paltry excuse given for the Legion to send the two villains back in time-- namely, that in all the myriad worlds of the 30th century, no one has the power to contain Validus and the Empress, so they must be imprisoned by the Green Lanterns, who no longer exist in the future era. This is a lame excuse to set up the many physical battles between the League and the Five, most of which are forgettable, except for a half-decent contest between Wonder Woman and the Persuader. There are two "B-stories:" teenaged superheroine Miss Martian trying to earn the respect of the older Leaguers, and "Limelight" suffering from a crippling anxiety that she only manages to overcome at the climax. Indeed, that climax is so focused upon letting the young female Lantern beat up the whole Fatal Five that the character is very nearly a "Mary Sue."

Star Boy, like various other Legion characters, functions as a guest-star in the story, despite getting more screen-time than the rest.

I have no great love for Lego versions of superheroes or anything else, and the spectacle of watching such characters devolve into broken-up bricks leaves me cold. Still, even though AQUAMAN: RAGE OF ATLANTIS also focuses upon a hero with a psychological crisis, the script handles the story with comic aplomb. (I pretty much have to designate RAGE a comedy, given that the end-threat is a gigantic device with the acronym SLURP.)

Despite the title, this is a Justice League adventure that just happens to place its emphasis on the importance of being Aquaman. The King of the Seven Seas gets humiliated in an encounter with Lobo, who's then driven away by the rest of the League.

Aquaman remains fairly chipper despite this setback, and invites his crimefighting buddies to join him for a visit to Atlantis, where the heroes meet Aquaman's wife Mera for the first time. However, Aquaman's half-brother Ocean Master has conspired with the evil Red Lantern Atrocitus to brainwash the citizens of Atlantis, so that they (including Mera) turn on their former king.

The heroes escape via dimension transporter, accidentally ending up on a near-waterless world. This happens to be one of the worlds victimized by Atrocitus, thus illustrating his plans for Earth. The script's means of giving Aquaman the chance to prove himself on a desert-world is pretty clever, but a lot of the Aqua-morale boosting gets tedious. The heroes return to Atlantis and have it out with the many pawns of Atrocitus. There's also a B-story showing a couple of Batman's aides, the "Barbara Gordon" Batgirl and the "Damian Wayne" Robin, fighting off invading Atlanteans, and Lobo not only comes back but is given a credible reason to lend aid to the heroes. Despite their participation in the overall battle, Lobo, Mera, and the two Bat-spawn all rate as "guest stars" within this light-hearted outing for the JLL (Justice League of Legos).

GALAXIS (1995)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*


GALAXIS, a name that is referenced nowhere in the rest of the movie, went under a couple of other names in its rental days, but essentially it's a catchpenny amalgam of numerous tropes from STAR WARS, TERMINATOR, and a host of other SF-action films. It's only got two things going for it: the charms of the very tall Brigitte Nielsen as alien heroine Ladera (though, to be sure, those charms don't include good acting), and the fact that both writer and director make the film look fairly good despite its low budget, probably because both men were principally "visual effects guys" for the majority of their respective careers.

On a far-off space-opera planet named Sintara, a megalomaniacal fellow named Kyla (Richard Moll, foreshadowing Kylo Ren, perhaps?) attacks the planet's defenders in order to steal a mystical crystal. The crystal functions as a catch-all for just about everything the writer wants it to be, for while Kyla wants it to give himself great super-powers, the crystal is also integral to the heart and soul of the Sintaran people. As its guardian Lord Tarkin (a more derivative STAR WARS reference) hilariously explains, the crystal "is the antithesis of our ways." Hmm, maybe the writer was reading his Hegel and got his synthesis mixed up with his antithesis? Or maybe he just tossed in any old ten-dollar word he happened to think of? Either way, the rest of the script is depressingly humdrum after that howler.

Tarkin (no Moff) is killed by Kyla, who absconds with the crystal. Before Tarkin dies, he confides to his sister, warrior-woman Ladera, that there's a twin of the crystal on a world called Earth. Somehow this crystal's existence is supposed to be a stop-gap against its being snatched by an alien overlord, but when Kyla (somehow) finds out, he follows Ladera to Earth, believing that he can double his powers with the second stone.

Having got all the expository set-up out of the way, the rest of the film is just action, action, action, distinguished only by Ms. NIelsen's charms as a tough-girl heroine. (At one point she blocks a gunman's shot with her gauntlet, like she's Wonder Woman.) She fights Kyla and various Earth-thugs, has a little romance with a nice Earth-guy, secures the crystal and goes home.

Oddly, in a slightly later work called SURVIVOR, the same writer used the names "Tarkin" and "Kyla" again, even casting Richard Moll in the latter role, though the SF-scenario had nothing to do with the setup in GALAXIS.

THE DEVIL'S BRIDE (1968)

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



I've recently finished and reviewed the 1934 Dennis Wheatley occult thriller THE DEVIL RIDES OUT,  and, having done so, I gave another look at the British film adaptation, given the same title in Great Britain but renamed THE DEVIL'S BRIDE for American audiences.

I remembered liking BRIDE quite a bit, and so, once I'd read the book, I was cautious not to fault the movie simply because it didn't follow the book in some particulars. As it happens, BRIDE does follow the Wheatley novel pretty closely, thanks to a strong script from Richard Matheson. Most of what Matheson leaves out is the B-story in which the American Rex Van Rijn romances the neophyte Satanist Tanith and persuades her to join the forces of good.

And yet, even though Matheson and director Terence Fisher follow the same basic patterns of the novel-- reproducing most of the book's studious reproduction of occult lore-- I don't rate BRIDE as highly as DEVIL RIDES OUT.

I certainly can't fault Christopher Lee. He channels the stern but humane character of the occult expert Duc de Richleau perfectly. In the novel the Rex character serves as the Duc's strong right arm, and it's certainly not actor Leon Greene's fault that a lot of the material that firmed up Rex's character is omitted from the screenplay-- but those cuts still have the effect of making Rex a fairly inconsequential figure. The other "two musketeers" of the book, Simon and Richard, don't exactly glow with charisma in the book, and so their characters in the movie are no better than they have to be. Charles Gray plays the main villain Mocata with oily grace, and contributes the second best performance, and even Richard's wife Marie, though not a major character, gets a strong scene in which she has to fend off Mocata's insidious mind-control. The only actor who proves an actively bad choice is young Niki Arrighi, whose high-pitched voice makes her Tanith entirely insufferable.

I tend to think that Fisher's direction, coupled with Arthur Grant's cinematography, is more at fault, for BRIDE doesn't visually sustain the pulpy thrills of Wheatley's novel. Admittedly, even had Fisher had all the money in the world, I'm not sure how a film in 1968 could have rendered an apparition like the Goat of Mendes so that it seemed like more than a man in a costume. But even some of the scenes that could've popped-- like one in which Rex and the Duc storm a Satanic ritual ground in one of their 1929 automobiles-- are handled in routine fashion. Fisher only seems on solid ground when he's having Chris Lee dominate a scene with no more than his sonorous voice-- possibly because he'd worked with Lee so often prior to BRIDE. Without the needed visual emphasis-- something that does come across in Wheatley's prose-- Lee's voice isn't enough to translate the occult lore into a thing of mythic wonder.

Though in the novel-series the Duc's fellow musketeers may be as important as he is, in BRIDE "the Duc stands alone," being the primary hero of the story. BRIDE takes its place among many other adaptations-- the 1939 HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES film, for one-- that, despite being faithful to stories with deep mythic resonance, gets all the partss right but somehow miss out on bringing them into a whole greater than the sum of the parts.