HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS (1988)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

Nine times out of ten, any time a movie looks like the actors had a great time making it, the viewer should probably brace himself for a total bore-fest-- examples being two other films the wunderkind Fred Olen Ray directed in year 1988, THE PHANTOM EMPIRE and WARLORDS.

Nevertheless, the kitsch-titled HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS probably ranks as Ray's best movie, just for the moxie it demanded to begin with an absurd premise and follow it to its semi-logical conclusion. Seedy and deadpan-ironic detective Jack Chandler (Jay Richardson) gets hired to scour the bowels of modern Los Angeles for a missing girl by the girl's worried mother, only to find that young Samantha (Linnea Quigley) has gotten involved in an ancient Egyptian cult devoted to sacrificing people with their holy chainsaws. Just to make sure no viewer missed that this was a partial spoof of the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE franchise (of which there had only been two in 1988), Ray cast as the cult's leader Gunnar Hansen, the same fellow who played MASSACRE's main monster Leatherface. On top of that, Ray has scream queens Michelle Bauer and Dawn Wildsmith serve as two of the "chainsaw hookers." 

For most of his investigation, Chandler is blissfully unaware that the chainsaw-murders, in which prostitutes carve up their would-be clients, are taking place at all (there doesn't seem to be much news coverage of these bizarre murders for that matter). But as the snarky sleuth trails Samantha to a strip bar, he's taken prisoner by the Chainsaw Hookers, just on general principle. Samantha helps Jack escape, and he learns that her only reason for hanging around the cult is that she has a vague plan to bring all of the killers down for having sacrificed one of Samantha's girlfriends. Jack falls for Samantha and ends up joining her crusade, though he's not much of a fighter. The film's one big combative scene presents what I assume to be cinema's first depiction of "dueling chainsaws," as Samantha battles one of the hookers (Bauer, if I'm not mistaken). 

One's enjoyment of the film's goofy, thoroughly profane humor will vary by individual: either you like lines like "you could have knocked me over with a pubic hair" or you don't. There's a bit of a quasi-feminist vibe here as the working girls labor to cut their johns into sausages (never shown in detail, of course), though one might point out that they still take their orders from a man they call "Master." Hansen arguably gives the best performance here. Sometimes he's portentous--  he claims that his cult was given "the chainsaws of the gods" by the god Horus. But other times he sounds like an ordinary cantankerous jerk, particularly when he can't get his chainsaw started to slice Jack into pieces. ("My dad used to get the same look on his face with his chainsaw," quips the detective.) That said, Linnea Quigley helped put the film on the trash-film map with her "virgin dance of the double chainsaws." The actress later claimed not only that she danced with fully running chainsaws, but also that she was completely nude and merely wore strategic paint to conceal certain areas.

Though the Master claims to reign over an ancient cult, there's no evidence that anyone has supernatural powers. The cult-leader apparently puts Samantha under hypnotic control, but he's no Svengali, since the feisty female breaks free and subjects the Master to his own sacrificial blade.

THE APE MAN (1943)

 

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

Bela Lugosi made a handful of low-rent Monogram horror films in the 1940s, and some of them are fairly entertaining as cheap entertainment. But I never had much use for THE APE MAN. Perhaps I agreed with all the Lugosi fans who empathized with the skilled actor being economically obliged to cover his face with yak hair and gambol around like a monkey.

Scripter Barney Saracky, who also scripted four other Lugosi cheapies, can't bother coming up with a reason as to why eminent scientist Dr. Brewster (Lugosi) chose to test his ape-man serum on himself. Saracky's more interested in the badinage between his wisecracking reporter Jeff (Wallace Ford) and his photographer Billie (Louise Currie) as they become interested in the murders Brewster commits in order to allay the serum's effects, which cause him to grow extra hair on his face and hunch over when he walks. Brewster's accomplices, a less sanguinary doctor and Brewster's sister, are just there to help explicate the story. Since Brewster's trying to banish his anthropoid traits, it's not clear as to why he keeps a caged gorilla in his laboratory-- except so that at the climax, the gorilla can burst loose and kill the scientist who tormented him. 

The most interesting thing about the script doesn't relate to Brewster's sad fate, but occurs early in the association of Jeff and Billie. Their "fate," if one can call it that, is to become romantically entwined, but they start out by snapping at one another, since Jeff doesn't think women should work in journalistic pursuits. Billie retorts that Jeff must be "4-F" since he's a young guy who's not serving in the army, and Jeff replies that  he's due to enter some unspecified service in a few months. Since nothing else in the story references the ongoing war, it's slightly interesting that the writer thought he had to maintain sympathy for the male romantic lead by affirming that, yes, he was going to fight alongside Our Boys-- even though the actor, about 45 at the time, probably would have been rejected from service. Louise Currie, who turns in the best performance in this trifle, was by contrast fifteen years younger than the fellow she was romantically paired with-- for whatever that may mean. 

THE NINJA AVENGER (1982)

 

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

The best ninja-movies are always IMO those that dispense with logic and just indulge in as much extravagant spectacle as possible. This is definitely not an asset shared by THE NINJA AVENGER, aka THE IMPOSSIBLE WOMAN. Since the lady ninja of the title was billed as "Linda Young," I didn't know that the actress was identical with the minor kung-fu diva Elsa Yeung, though I did recognize two other names in the cast: Don Wong and the Japanese Yasuaki Kurata.

AVENGER's bargain-basement gangster-melodrama is barely worth remembering, much less recapitulating. The film opens with establishing that "Marilyn" (Yeung) carries out hits on witnesses prepared to testify against female gang-boss Madame Nancy Chow. According to the movie's fragmented backstory, Marilyn was once just a secretary eight years before meeting the Madame. Marilyn, who nevertheless possessed formidable fighting-skills, attempted to stop a woman's being raped in broad daylight. The rapists get the drop on Marilyn but Madame Chow just happens to come by, and she sends her criminal henchmen to rout the assailants. Then somehow Marilyn becomes a ninja, using such gimmicks as shurikens, poison darts, and even an exploding toy plane to kill off the Madame's enemies. Did Nancy send Marilyn to ninja school for some reason? If so, in the present day Nancy suddenly decides that Marilyn's become a liability, possibly-- though it's never really stated-- because Nancy fears the cops can apprehend the ninja girl and make her talk. So most of the film consists of the ungrateful crime boss sending assassins after her regular assassin-- one of these being the aforementioned Kurata.

There's also a silly romantic subplot, in that Nancy's brother Willy doesn't know she's been supporting them in their comfortable lifestyle with the wages of crime. Willy falls for Marilyn, but doesn't find out what Nancy's doing till nearly the film's end. When Willy gets caught in a fight between Marilyn and an assassin, Willy gets killed, Nancy dies slaying the assassin, and Marilyn survives to get arrested.

There are at least half a dozen watchable if not exciting hand-to-hand fights, which are AVENGER's only asset-- that, and the amusement value that Marilyn troubles to don full ninja gear for her work but can't be bothered to conceal her bloody face!

FARSCAPE: SEASON TWO (2001-01)

 

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

Prior to re-visiting all four seasons of this show, I'm tending toward the view that Season Two was FARSCAPE's best season. Of course, it helps that this was the last season for "den mother" Zotoh Zhaan (Virginia Hey), whose character would expire in the first few episodes of Season Three. While she was around, she provided a calming influence on the rest of Moya's occupants, who from first to last tended to run around the ship yelling at each other.

To be sure, Zhaan's influence wasn't always needed, for the writers did make the protagonists less extreme once they became more accustomed to one another. Certainly there were no more scenes like the one from "DNA Mad Scientist," wherein the crew-members cut off one of Pilot's arms to serve their own ends. Chiana (Gigi Edgley) provides a much needed source of humor, distinct from the more ironic pronouncements by Earth-refugee John Crichton (Ben Browder). More progress is made with the off-on romance between Crichton and Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black), particularly when Crichton is forced to enter into a royal marriage in the three-parter "Look at the Princess." Following the resolution of that story, the romantic angle gets good exposure in "The Locket," an alternate timeline-tale in which Crichton and Aeryn end up spending their lives together in bucolic contentment. Both Aeryn and Pilot are disclosed to have shared a previous history on Moya in "The Way We Weren't," and though Ka D'argo doesn't find his missing son in this season, the final few episodes set up those events to be developed in Season 3. Even Rygel gets some shining moments, functioning as a lawyer defending Zhaan on an extremely legalistic planet.

On the down side, Season 2 doesn't quite find anything vital for the crew's former nemesis Crais (Lani Tupu) to do. I'm sure the actor preferred getting away from the original "Inspector Jauvert" conception of his character, but the writers never manage to make plausible Crais's shift to becoming the pilot-custodian of Talyn, the offspring of organic ship Moya. Scorpius, a new villain introduced toward the end of Season One, becomes the new "big bad," repeatedly pursuing the crew hither and yon, due to the fact that Crichton's brain has received an unwanted download of "wormhole technology" by some super-advanced aliens. Though there's no question that Scorpius, as played by Wayne Pygram, is creepy, his monomaniacal obsession is no better than that of Crais, and over time the character becomes tiresome. Stark, another malcontent who joins the crew in Season 3, appears a few times in Season Two, but he ends up providing no more than just another weird character who yells a lot. He does function well in the season's big "heist" narrative, which provides more sheer adventure than the average episode.

Still, both "The Locket" and "The Way We Weren't" provide strong drama with a strong sense of the anarchic. Possibly their dramatic excellence will be outdone by later episodes, but as yet, these are top of the FARSCAPE line.

THE VINDICATOR (1986)

 

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

I'm amazed to see a criticism of this lively film-- sometimes billed as FRANKENSTEIN '88-- as being "unevenly paced." It may be nothing but a good formula-film, but something's happening onscreen every moment, with a very clear arc for each of the many characters (except for a teenaged character who gets knocked off late in the film, mistakenly cited on Wiki as the daughter of the main couple). 

Said main couple are Carl Lehman (David McIlwraith) and his pregnant wife Lauren (Teri Austin). Carl works for ARC, an aerospace research institute headed by a corrupt manipulator named Alex Whyte (Richard Cox). Carl and Whyte butt heads because Whyte's been siphoning off institute funds from Carl's projects in order to pay for a secret project. When Carl gives Whyte static about an investigation, Whyte, like your basic comic-book villain, decides that Carl would make a good subject for the project. Whyte has one of his many criminal flunkies set off a bomb in Carl's lab, killing Carl-- after which Whyte uses his technology to turn Carl's burned body into a cyborg-soldier. One prominent feature of the cyborg is that it's programmed with a "rage factor," designed to make the cyborg erupt into a killing frenzy-- a facet that certainly seems counter-intuitive if Whyte's real purpose is to turn out cybernetic astronauts

Cyborg-Carl-- never called "The Vindicator" in the film, although some characters do call him "Frankenstein"-- proves so powerful that he breaks free from the institute and goes looking for his wife, initially confused about what's happened to him. After a gratuitous encounter with street-punks demonstrates how mighty Cyborg-Carl has become, Whyte seeks out a commando-for-hire, the aptly-named "Hunter" (Pam Grier, initially seen involved in a kendo duel) to corral the robotic renegade. This becomes the film's main plotline, consisting of Whyte's various gambits with Hunter or with other henchmen to capture or destroy Carl Lehman. But the script makes the various gambits distinct enough that they don't become repetitious, even if Lauren is inevitably placed in the position of "damsel in distress." I particularly liked a stunt in which the cyborg is lured into a trap designed to offset his superhuman strength: a pool full of hardening resin. The likeness to comic books is emphasized by an end-battle between Carl and Whyte, outfitted in a cyborg-suit. 

Both the script and Jean-Claude Lord's direction balance the film's focus on incident with a certain number of pathos-moments. That said, basic pathos and action are all the film offers, in marked contrast to the greater ambitiousness on display the next year, in the mega-success ROBOCOP. The Frankenstein references seem out of place, since the Shelley monster was a tabula rasa who's never in touch with any aspect of a previous existence. Carl Lehman bears more resemblance to some of the humans-turned-robots in comic book features such as ROBOTMAN and DEATHLOK, or even (if one substituted vegetable matter for mechanical parts) SWAMP THING. If anything, Whyte is the only character who resembles anything from Shelley, being that he's a scientist so obsessed with his project that he totally divorces himself from all ethical matters.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE FLASHPOINT PARADOX (2013)

 

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

When I saw FLASHPOINT years ago, I wasn't aware at the time that it launched the franchise known as the "DC Animated Movie Universe," which is a subset of all of the (mostly if not entirely) direct-to-video animated films featuring DC Comics characters, a set of movies dating back at least to 2007. I don't remember whether or not I read the original comic on which the story was based, but the video is said to be true to the source, which also inspired one past adaptation in episodes of the FLASH teleseries and may figure into a future live-action movie if those plans bear fruit-- all of which means that the original story impressed others more than it did me.

In essence, FLASHPOINT is just another iteration of the "butterfly effect" of time-alteration, as put forth in Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story "A Sound of Thunder." In most of these "time gone wrong" stories, someone or something alters the established course of history, almost always making things many times worse than in the original history. Flash, the central hero of this Justice League tale, accidentally causes a "time boom" with the exercise of his super-speed. As his perpetual enemy Professor Zoom explains, this phenomenon has the same effect as a sonic boom, disordering the entire timeline. Thus, one day Flash, in his secret ID of Barry Allen, wakes up to a word that at first seems only different in small, personal ways-- his dead mother is alive, his former wife is married to someone else. But the personal expands into the cosmic. The whole world is now ravaged by an insane war between Wonder Woman's Amazons and Aquaman's Atlanteans. Many of Flash's old comrades in this reality are radically changed as well. From the instant of his landing on Earth, baby Kal-El has been confined to a military lab for study, rather than becoming the hero Superman. Batman still exists, but Bruce Wayne was slain in Crime Alley, while it's his mourning father Thomas Wayne who became a Robin-less Caped Crusader.

The voice actors do a creditable job with this downbeat drivel, particularly Justin Chambers as Flash and Kevin McKidd as Thomas Wayne. But though Jim Krieg has some good scripts to his credit, he can't do anything to relieve the thudding tedium of this really bad alternate history, which I tend to lay at the door of the original comics-writer. Possibly the worst conception is that the war between Amazons and Atlanteans doesn't start from any believable sociological cause, but as a result of a romantic grudge: married Aquaman has an affair with Wonder Woman, and his wife Mera gets killed by the Amazon Princess during a confrontation. I assume the original writer thought this was tragic; I just thought it stupid. There's never any real psychological substance behind the characters' actions, not even in Flash's realization that he must let his mother die to save the universe, in marked contrast to a similar trope in the classic STAR TREK episode CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER. 

The only virtue of this overbaked twaddle is that its success led to other, better entries in the DC Animated Universe.

 

BATMAN VS. THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (2019)

 

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

I have not read the crossover-comic on which this video is based, but a quick perusal of the comic's writeup on Wiki suggests that the DVD follows the broad outlines of the comic's plot. The Ninja Turtles and their venerable foe The Shredder end up carrying their grudge fight from the Turtles' version of New York into Baman's Gotham. After the inevitable "fight because of a misunderstanding," Batman, two of his Bat-Brood, and the four terrapin terrors team up against Shredder, his ally Ra's Al Ghul, and most of Batman's regular rogues' gallery. The heroes win and everybody goes back to their normal worlds.

I suspect that the nature of the video may have encouraged its scripters to really lay on the jokes with a vengeance. The original TURTLES comics, for all the absurdity of the premise, pursued their course of "serious funny animals" in the style of Frank Miller with only minimal humor as I recall. However, all of the cartoon and live-action adaptations played up the wild and crazy aspects of the four Turtle brothers, and for better or worse, most people think of the characters as dominated by comedy. 

But in the case of BATMAN/TURTLES the video, it's a welcome change from all the super-serious Batman DTV flicks. Batman of course remains bereft of a sense of humor, but Batgirl and one version of Robin are around to make certain that Michelangelo doesn't get all the funny lines. But the action-scenes are given good attention as well, particularly the early face-off between the Caped Crusader and the ninja teenagers. A long mid-film struggle pits the good guys against most of Batman's enemies, all mutated by the all-purpose mutagen, "the Ooze," brought to Gotham by the evil Shredder, and most of this sequence is strong, though I could have lived without seeing Mister Freeze mutated into a polar bear. This sequence, with its extensions of the Bat-rogues, is also the main reason that the video gets a "fair" mythicity rating-- although it of passing interest to hear Ra's Al Ghul make an arch comment on Batman's tendency to induct "children" into his crusade, given that the Turtles are, like Robin and Batgirl, more or less adolescents.

In contrast to many Bat-films, this one captures some of the innocent absurdities that once dominated both the Batman feature and comic books generally.

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK (2017)

 

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

Prior to watching the JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK DVD the first time, I read the first six issues of the comic book on which it was based. Years later, I recall nothing about the comic book or its premise except that it didn't impress me. In contrast, I did rather like the DARK video-- which uses a different lineup of supernatural avengers-- but didn't get around to reviewing it until now, since I decided to give a look at all of the "Darkseid War" DCAU installments.

Violent demon possessions around the world lead the regular Justice League to suspect an occult menace, and Batman, the League's most bankable member, gets tasked with forming a "Justice League" of magic-users to handle the matter.  This legion consists of Zatanna (not yet a JLA member in this universe), Jason Blood and his powerful alter ego The Demon, the spectral Deadman, and (getting most of the narrative attention) raffish thaumaturge John Constantine. Swamp Thing, though shown on the DVD cover, is brought in as a contributing "guest star," not really any more a part of the group than minor guest-stars like Superman and Wonder Woman. Additionally, minor character Black Orchid also appears, as well as a version of DC's "House of Mystery."

Constantine's centrality is emphasized by the fact that, in order to suss out the cause of the possessions, the group must seek out one of the Brit wizard's old magical colleagues, Ritchie. The investigation gives the dark-leaguers the info that their main foe is an ancient magician named Destiny-- loosely based on classic JLA foe "Doctor Destiny"-- and they further learn that Destiny may be tied in with a previously established JLA foe, Felix Faust. This leads to a big battle royale between Faust and the dark-leaguers, but the Faust trail turns cold and the heroes are forced to find the real villain behind Destiny's malicious magic.

The Jason Blood/Demon backstory gets a decent "B-plot," but all of the other heroes largely take a back seat to Constantine. It's problematic as to whether a PG-13 cartoon is sufficient to translate the ironic appeal of this R-rated character, but DARK handles the cocky anti-hero magician well enough. The video's main problem is its simple structure: once Faust is revealed to be a red herring, the identity of Destiny's real confederate becomes obvious, and that character sustains no interest. Only occasionally does the script manage to get across the peculiar appeal of the occult, which I believe DC Comics usually channels better than does their competitor Marvel, and that's the main reason I give this a "fair" rating. It does help my assessment that the film's version of the Felix Faust is made into far more of a badass than the one in many of the comics, so that may have swayed my opinion somewhat.

BOA VS. PYTHON (2004)

 

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

Most of the American-made mashups of "colossal critters" don't involve combining two or more monsters who had their own features, after the fashion of such kaiju-characters as Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra. DINOCROC VS. SUPERGATOR, while not very memorable for any other reason, was at least preceded by one feature apiece for the two reptilian rowdies.

BOA VS. PYTHON at first looks to be following that general model, since the same production company had brought forth both PYTHON in 2000 and BOA in 2002. The starring creatures get killed at each film's conclusion, but death has never been a barrier to the resurrection of profitable monsters. The original Godzilla perishes at the end of his 1954 debut. The Big G who then appears in GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN, and who later chalks up some twenty-thirty films later, is supposed to be another "Godzilla-saurus" of the same species. Thus it would have been easy for the makers of BOA VS. PYTHON to have a new pair of monsters of the same species as the originals.

Instead, the producers only followed half the formula. In the original PYTHON, the big beastie was a genetically bred monstrosity, and VS. suggests that some laboratory out there has once more produced another in the series. At least, that's the logical conclusion when a ruthless millionaire promoter has a titanic python shipped into the U.S. from parts unknown, for the purpose of organizing python-hunts for rich assholes. FBI agent Sharpe investigates when the python breaks loose from its transport and kills some people, and some of his dialogue suggests that he's familiar with the events of PYTHON. Thus VS. is in continuity with PYTHON.

However, in the original BOA, the colossal critter was a gigantic prehistoric snake who made things hot for the prisoners in an Antarctic prison. The boa of VS., while still pretty big, has been nurtured in a laboratory, possibly with genetic enhancement as well. 

Agent Sharpe somehow finds out about the big boa, cared for a scientist named Emmett (David "STARGATE TV show" Hewlett), and the agent decides that he can use the boa to hunt the python. But first the boa has to be further enhanced with tracking technology, garnered from yet another scientist, Dr. Bonds (Jaime "SON OF THE BEACH" Bergman). Though there's a hint of romance between the two name-actors, they're mostly there to exchange bits of information about matters herpetological.

The simple plot is improved by a few touches of humor, such as the opening, in which the promoter attends a match between a pair of wresters nicknamed "Boa" and "Python." There's also a few moments of female nudity, which one doesn't usually see in such films-- though the most attention-getting sex-scene in VS. takes place off-camera, when the male python gets it on with the female boa. Later the boa lays eggs, which led me to check out the actual possibility of such constrictors interbreeding-- and as it happens, it does seem to be possible. But Papa Snake eats his young, and Mama Snake has a problem with that, thus paving the way for a modestly animated colossal critter battle at the climax. 

  

BOA (2002)

 

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

After 2000's PYTHON garnered some measure of popularity, its producers at UFO International tried to duplicate that success with another giant constricting snake, BOA. An alternate title for the film is NEW ALCATRAZ, the name of the site of the conflict, a "black ops" prison located in Antarctica and clandestinely maintained by thirty unnamed world nations-- which is at least a more creative locale than one sees in colossal critter flicks. However, director/screenwriter Philip J. Roth-- also a producer on both monster-serpent movies-- doesn't take maximum advantage of his script's elements.

The film's opening moments, in which a "new fish" to the prison is informed that his new home is totally off the international grid, offer some potential sociopolitical conflict, since it's a given that all of the inmates are absolute rotters, guilty of numerous acts of terrorism. The best use of this potential would have been to have the prehistoric Boa come to life and start preying upon the prisoners, who would be in the position of "undesirable heroes" as they sought to survive against both the monster and their guardians.

However, Roth sucks away that potential by using more sympathetic figures as his viewpoint characters, a married paleontologist couple, the Trentons (Dean Cain and Elizabeth Lackey). I suppose Roth, a veteran of dozens of DTV films, brought in Cain in a sympathetic role in order to help sell the film to vendors. But though Cain is as charismatic as possible here, both scientists are fairly dull when they're not reeling off factoids about prehistoric snakes, all for the benefit of a troop of American commandos sent in to rescue the inmates.

The titular monster, by the way, is not as formidable as the Python. The latter was supposed to be a genetic creation, which provided at least a mild rationale as to why the Python ignored gunfire. But the Boa's just a big snake that's been hibernating for centuries, so why does it shrug off rounds of automatic fire? 

There are a few basic "who's the snake gonna kill next" thrills to be had, but the convicts, who are billed as the "worst of the worst," aren't adequate foes for the Boa. Go back to CON AIR if you're in quest of "demented super-convict" jollies.

THE BLACK ABBOT (1934)

 

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

THE BLACK ABBOT apparently borrowed the title of a 1926 Edgar Wallace thriller, and maybe the base idea of a mystery taking place in a mansion adjacent to a long defunct monastery. The book is said to deal with a ghost of a dead abbot who haunts the premises, protecting a lost treasure, but the ghost is actually the creation of thieves. 

Writeups for this "quota quickie" claim that the abbot's ghost in this flick is also an illusion foisted on the mansion-dwellers by crooks. But as I watched the film, I never saw an actual spectre, real or phony. Many characters in the ensemble-- the members of the rich family, their colleagues, and two young swains courting the family's young heiress-- have a few moments where they *think* they've seen a ghost, but unless I blinked at the wrong moment, they never actually see anything. I suppose I would still consider this a phantasmal figuration, albeit one created by the victims, not unlike the superstitions ruling many of the characters in WEIRD WOMAN. 

There are some dastards hiding on the grounds, but their purpose is not to search for treasure. Instead, they kidnap the head of the rich household and hold him in the monastery. The family members and their friends bring in the constabulary, while they also get some advice from an American guest who may know more about the affair than he claims. 

There's nothing fresh about the story, but I was very impressed with director George Cooper's handling of the actors. In contrast to many "old dark house" flicks, Cooper uses a lot of closeups to emphasize the emoting of the players. The director's techniques must have worked pretty well on me, given that I wasn't familiar with any of the British thespians, or even the one American guy, character actor Ben Welden. And though the film wasn't very funny, I liked the delivery of the two comedy-relief characters, a maid and butler played respectively by Davina Craig and the suspiciously named "Earl Grey." There's also a minor conflict in which the heiress chooses one swain over the other, and then begins to wonder if he's in on the kidnapping job. I don't know any of Cooper's work except another old-dark-house show, 1933's THE SHADOW, but as my review makes clear, I found that one underwhelming.

THE RETURN OF THE FROG (1938)

 

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

I've not seen the 1937 British movie THE FROG, to which this work is a sequel, but like many works based on Edgar Wallace thrillers, this one uses some of the "mystery mastermind" tropes that were also popular in both American and continental serials. 

The crime-chief "The Frog" evidently wasn't captured in the first film, though once again he's being pursued by a fifty-something Scotland Yard sergeant named Elk (Gordon Harker, who played the same part in the first film). The opening is the most memorable scene, as a gang of toughs lounge around a seedy pub taking their marching orders from a frog-- a big porcelain frog with blinking eyes, through which the hidden mastermind communicates to his followers. The evildoer's main agenda is to get rid of a dangerous witness, and when Elk gets in his way, the Frog hops after the phlegmatic policeman as well.

The YouTube version of the film I watched had terrible sound, so I can't comment in detail on any of the mystery angles of the plot. Una O'Connor of BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN fame plays the role of a fence, and Elk plays a paternally protective role toward a young woman getting mixed up with gangsters, though I couldn't suss out Elk's relationship to the girl. For some reason Elk and the young woman are together when the Frog tries to kill them by flooding a room with poisonous gas. I also didn't follow how Elk just happened to have two gas-masks on his person to meet the emergency, but it's a fun scene even without the explanations.

Maurice Elvey, whose biggest credit these days might be for a bunch of silent Sherlock Holmes adaptations, directs in a fusty, stage-bound style, so that even a couple of fight-scenes prove boring. The Frog's identity is revealed at the end and he's captured, though I believe he gets at least one more appearance in a 1959 remake of the Wallace novel, FACE OF THE FROG.

PYTHON (2000)

 

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

Though I review a fair number of "colossal critter films" here, my main reason for bothering with a time-killer like PYTHON is because its producers wove its continuity and that of another TV-flick, BOA, into the 2004 crossover-film BOA VS. PYTHON-- both of which I loosely plan to get around to.

PYTHON is the usual mix of bland characters bouncing off one another with their quarrels and love lives until they become aware of a giant, genetically mutated snake on the loose in their small American town. While the snake gobbles up various humans with relish, a unit of NSA agents try to kill it without undue publicity. For some reason there just happens to be a snake-expert in town, Doctor Rudolph (Robert Englund), and he lectures the NSA guys on the snake's powers as a "pure killing machine." This led me to hope for a major battle-scene between the python and the armed agents, but perhaps predictably, the hunted takes out the hunters rather easily. This naturally leaves the ordinary folk the task of finding some last-ditch means of executing the predacious serpent.

The only memorable melodrama here is the rivalry between two local swains over a local girl, and one of the guys is a deputy investigating the mysterious deaths. In the latter role William Zabka gives the slim characterization his all, and he and Englund provide the only moments of thespian intensity. The big snake is better animated than many lesser CGI efforts.

THE 7 ADVENTURES OF SINBAD (2010)

 

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

I've seen worse mockbusters than this rip-off of the then-current big-studio film PRINCE OF PERSIA. Still, its only good scene appears early on, and it's all downhill from there.

Adrian Sinbad (Patrick Muldoon) owns an oil company, but at heart he's an adventurer like the famous Sinbad from which he's implicitly descended. When Adrian gets news that his oil rig in the Indian Ocean has been destroyed by Somali pirates, the young millionaire doesn't get on the phone with some mercenary group. He and his aides fly a helicopter out to the area, apparently with the notion of taking on the pirates themselves. A storm downs the copter, and though most of the occupants make it to an uncharted isle, Adrian is alone on the beach when he has a close encounter of the crustacean kind. He drives off the giant crab with pistol-fire, but after it departs, the flustered fellow starts yelling "CRAB" at the top of his lungs. And as if to mock him for being the only witness to the big beastie, along comes one of his aides, who immediately thinks he's imagining things. 

After that, though, the film becomes a tired rehash of the 1961 MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, with absolutely no consistency about the nature of the bizarre beings inhabiting the island, which include a Cyclops, some sirens, a demon, some giant birds called Rocs, and a giant turtle (whose back provides one of the two islands on which Adrian has his adventure). There's an extremely vague explanation for all the weird entities about alien crystals, though one character claims that there's a spiritual being who's unleashed all the chaos in response to the oil spill. 

The aforementioned character is Loa (Sara Desage), who first appears to Adrian as a scantily-clad barbarian girl with a spear. It's soon revealed, though, that Loa is actually a modern girl who got stranded on the isle when she and her father came looking for a legendary utopian civilization. Somehow Loa became separated from her father, so she took up wearing barbarian-gear and painting her face for no particular reason. Oh, and when she and Adrian do find her lost father, not only is he ruling over the lost utopia, he calls her "Ana," not "Loa." Possibly the writers amalgamated two unrelated characters but didn't bother to smooth out the rough patches, for Loa also talks like an oracle half the time, claiming that Adrian must fulfill a prophecy to save the world from the supernatural thing-- maybe a creation of the alien crystals, like all the other critters? But even that rationale is probably giving the matter more thought than the writers did.

Loa shows more toughness than Adrian as she helps him fight off the Sirens, but all the characters are pretty worthless-- like the film itself.

DAUGHTER OF THE JUNGLE (1982)

 

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

IMDB asserts that the English dub of this Italian jungle-flick calls the titular daughter "Luana," in emulation of the 1968 film of that name. I'll use that name for the character Sabrina Siani plays herein, though I couldn't swear that the jungle-girl, who only speaks gibberish and a few English words here and there, ever applies that name to herself. The two dopey guys who make contact with her at first call her "Jane" after the wife of Tarzan. Later they find the helicopter in which the girl's parents died, with a convenient diary. They figure out that she's an orphan turned jungle-dweller, and start calling her "Susan" in accordance with the diary's revelations.

There are various similarities and differences between the 1968 film and this one, starting with the fact that the first is set in Africa and the second in South America. Although the jungle-girl in both films is the selling point, both Luanas are fairly passive, and all the action is provided by the subsidiary male characters. However, in the sixties film, the male support-cast are a bunch of good and bad tough guys, and in the eighties one, it's Ringo and Butch, a couple of supposedly American college students. These schmoes get mixed up in fighting off a comical bunch of thieves, including one-eyed boss Dupree. a stutterer and a big guy with a high squeaky voice. On a minor note, though there are no man-eating plants in the 1982 flick, at one point the guys get caught in a net and one goof thinks they're being eaten by a Venus flytrap.

I'll pass over the details of how the two goofs find themselves lost in the jungle. It's of some modest sociological interest that, not long after the two wastrels start fantasizing about getting action in the naked jungle, they get taken in by a tribe of dark-skinned Indians, who immediately try to marry one of the guys to a lustful but homely woman. When the goofs refuse this honor, they're almost burned at two stakes. Dupree and his men accidentally rescue Butch and Ringo, intending only to use them as manual labor before killing them.

Butch and Ringo escape the raiders and stumble across the treetop house of partly-naked Luana, who apparently speaks the local lingo but lives apart from the neighboring tribes, accompanied only by a comedy-relief chimp. She does have an elephant she can call up with the usual jungle-yodel, but there's no indication that she has any special power over animals. Both girls try to seduce Luana, who ends up favoring Butch. However, she also gets a trifle violent, wrestle-tossing one guy to the ground, when they investigate the downed helicopter that Luana associates with her mostly forgotten trauma.

The wrestling-toss got my hopes up for another Sheena-type jungle-girl, but Luana isn't a real fighter, being easily overmastered by the thugs in Dupree's employ. She's apparently never seen a gun before, because when she faces down Squeaky Voice he simply shoots her in the leg. She never even summons her elephant to rout the bad guys; they're defeated rather when the college clods train the local natives to become a jungle militia. 

Director Umberto "Cannibal Ferox" Lenzi keeps up a steady stream of silly incidents, none of which are funny, but at least the film isn't entirely dull, particularly when the svelte form of Sabrina Siani is on stage.