UNMASKING THE IDOL (1986), ORDER OF THE BLACK EAGLE (1987)

 

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

UNMASKING THE IDOL is one of two films made by the same producer, director and writers, most of whom didn't do much of anything afterward, though director Worth Keeter found a lot of work on the Americanized versions of several POWER RANGERS serials. That accidental connection seems fitting, for both of these films, while superficially aping the James Bond franchise, are just about as off-the-wall as any of the feverish fantasies from Japan's sentai series.

In both films Ian Hunter-- who also disappeared from the moviemaking profession after making the second film-- plays Duncan Jax, Interpol agent. Despite looking somewhat like Chevy Chase and sounding like Ray Walston, Jax goes around fighting huge armies of goons, blowing things up, and pulling things like an instantly inflating balloon out of his ass. But this Bond-act is mitigated by the fact that Jax covers up his tuxedo with a ninja outfit. Why does Jax dress like a ninja? The script does not say, though one must admit that James Bond is so often seen doing spectacular stunts with his bare face hanging out that he ought to be ruined as a "secret" agent. Jax seduces one babe early in the film and makes the usual witless double entendres, but his true love seems to be his pet baboon "Boon," whose presence brings a new level of lunacy to an already goofy movie.

Interpol assigns Jax and a small group of tough guys to infiltrate a remote island and take out Goldfinger and Doctor No-- er, Goldtooth and the Scarlet Leader. The former is hoarding gold for some big world-conquering coup, and the Scarlet Leader, who always goes around in a red ninja-suit, is going to use an ancient idol to unleash an occult power. The idol doesn't wear a mask, so I don't know why the title talks about "unmasking" it, though there is a minor revelation when the Scarlet Leader is unmasked. Maybe the writer got the two confused? Or maybe he just thought two buzz-words together might make the concoction sound tastier to trash-film devotees.

To be sure, there's some money behind this wack-a-doodle project, so that stunts and sets are at least competent compared to the real bottom of the barrel stuff. But when one of my main characters is a baboon who goes around wearing a little karate-outfit when he gets in a fight, any attention to verisimilitude has pretty much gone out the window.

After IDOL's "everything and the kitchen sink" approach, Jax's one and only sequel couldn't help but seem fairly restrained, more on the level of your average "Nu-Image" action-flick. Jax is more Rambo than Bond or even Ninja-Bond this time, as he and a whole new crew of mercenaries plunge into the wilds of South America to battle a Neo-Nazi cult, who are also holding prisoner an Interpol lady agent with the winsome name of Tiffany Youngblood. There aren't as many wacky lines as in IDOL, though we do get a tough girl mercenary (Anna Maria Rapagna) state that she hasn't had so much fun since Nicaragua.

One can't fault the villains here, though, for they're just as fanciful and derivative. Baron Tepes, a fat guy with an eyepatch, leads the Neo-Nazis as they plan to dominate the world with a proton-ray satellite. But Tepes himself won't be the leader of the New Order, because he's got Hitler himself on ice and ready to be revived.

Again, a lot of stuntmen go flying from planted charges as the heroes go around blowing things up. Boon the Baboon doesn't appear as much, though he does get a scene in which he pilots a small tank (with a shark-face) against the Nazis. Jax himself has a few distinctive moments, like when he uses a metal wire to saw his way out of a prison, and later uses the same wire to set a trap that cuts off a Nazi motorcyclist's head. But just in case anyone in the audience gets too comfortable with the prowess of the good guys, there's a scene in which the lot of them try to push a big truck down the road to get its engine started, and end up pushing the vehicle off a cliff. (Hey, now we know where the MCU got its model for incompetent heroes!)

Both films have enough goofy action and dumb lines to furnish "so bad it's good" entertainment, and in comparison to the many deadly-dull excuses for adventure-flicks, that's nothing to sneeze at. 

VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN (1968)

 

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

I don't know why producer Roger Corman thought it expedient to rework footage from the Soviet space-film PLANETA BURG into this film, since three years earlier he had already used largely the same footage for VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET. Of the two, the first is probably much closer to the serious intentions of the Soviet original, devoting quite a bit of discussion to the evolutionary parallels between Earth and the "prehistoric planet" of Venus. Possibly the first film didn't justify Corman's expense in having bought the Soviet film, so he sought to recoup his investment by putting old wine in a semi-new bottle. Peter Bogdanovich recollected that  Corman wanted him to shoot about ten minutes of new material, all shots of Mamie Van Doren and other women in clamshell-beach attire, because Corman claimed AIP wouldn't take the film without some comely women in it. The truth may just be that Corman thought that more babes would mean more bucks at the box office.

I confess that when I saw this film on television as a teenager, I found the narrative pretty incoherent, but I was still taken with the romantic theme, one that largely overshadows the scientific content. The 1965 reworking included a subplot in which one of the Earth-explorers hears what I described as a "feminine siren-call" from some unseen but intelligent Venusians, but this subplot doesn't noticeably affect the narrative. WOMEN plays down the stuff about evolution and concentrates on sex, most notably by having the astronaut provide a voice-over about his sense of longing for the Venusian female with whom he has some strange affinity. Since no actors portraying astronauts-- whether original Soviet performers or American inserts-- share any scenes with the Venus-women, the voice-over succeeds-- better than anything else in the film-- at getting across the narrator's lovelorn status.

The basic image of beautiful blonde Venusians walking around the beaches of Venus-- in shoes, no less-- is risible on the face of things. Yet  Corman's commercial instincts tapped into a familiar image of science-fiction worlds inhabited by alluring females. The archetypal effect is almost certainly accidental: the men of the expedition are all about science, dispassionately studying all the scientific phenomena of Venus. When a Venusian version of a pterodactyl attacks them, they simply kill it. When Robot John-- whose appearance here is far less compelling here than in the 1965 reworking-- goes berserk, the guys just abandon his metal ass to the lava.

Despite some iconic similarities to Greek sirens, the Venus-women, however, are all about religion. They worship the pterodactyl-- given the equally risible name of "Ptera". Both the living creature and its graven image appeared in the 1965 reworking but didn't have any great impact on the narrative. Once the Venus-girls are inserted, they have a more direct effect on the story. They want vengeance for the death of their god, so they use their powers-- presumably telekinetic in nature-- to set off natural disasters that harry the explorers. Presumably the lovelorn astronaut is in mental communication with one of the Venus-babes who's not so hostile to the newcomers, but the new footage doesn't spell out just which Venus-girl the Earthman's in contact with. When the astronauts manage to survive all the crap thrown at them-- all without knowing that their mishaps have been purposefully directed-- the women's leader Moana (Van Doren) suddenly decides that the fault lies not in themselves but in their false god Ptera, and orders that her subordinates tear down Ptera's graven image. If the Venus-babes incarnate the trope of "female worlds lusting to be conquered," this trope-- the rejection of paganism for some more advanced religion-- proves complementary in a somewhat artless fashion. The astronauts leave Venus without ever knowing that they've fomented a religious crisis, and one wonders what kind of "true religion" the siren-girls will come with. At the closing, the narrator hopes that he'll be able to return to Venus some day. Maybe he'll come back to a world where the girls-- who may be parthenogenic since they have no men around-- have erected a statue of him?

The 1965 film inserted some new footage with American stars Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue, and other online reviews have noted how the Domergue character's name "Marsha" is improbably recycled into the name of a space station or something like that. Van Doren is the only American star in this offering, and none of the other girls went on to even minor Hollywood careers. While at the height of Van Doren's career she was known mostly for playing brassy, lusty modern women, Bogdanovich's photographic skills succeed in giving her natural beauty a haunting quality rarely witnessed in the actress's other movies, either before or after VOYAGE.  

HEAVEN'S LOST PROPERTY: THE ANGELOID OF CLOCKWORK (2011); ETERNAL MY MASTER (2014)

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

I reviewed the two seasons of HEAVEN'S LOST PROPERTY here, but there were also two anime movies spawned by the franchise. The first, like the series, appeared long before the manga series concluded in 2014. The second did appear about three months after the manga concluded, but did not incorporate the crucial aspects of the finale. Regardless, both are probably the most slipshod anime-movie adaptations ever to come out of Japan.

To be sure, the artwork on both looks as good as the TV show, though some fans complained that a movie ought to have looked better. The various characters-- "ordinary pervert" Tomoki and the four artificial "angeloids" with whom he gets saddled-- are on-model and the ecchi humor is about the same. CLOCKWORK certainly wins the award for the best opening, as Tomoki and his crew-- fellow high-schoolers Sohara, Sugata, and Misako, plus the Angeloids Ikaros, Nymph, and Astraea-- are confronted by a Godzilla-sized chicken. Tomoki commands one of the Angeloids to make Sohara giant-size, so that she can cream the chicken-- but the young perv also peers at Sohara's giant-sized panties, earning him a good stomping under her boot.

On the down side, CLOCKWORK recycles a lot of footage from the TV episodes, a practice I've never seen used in a Japanese anime flick. There's a loose excuse for it. The film adapts a manga-arc dealing with schoolgirl Hiyori, who falls in love with Tomoki but who herself is another Angeloid in disguise. She's been sent by the androids' malicious maker in the celestial city Synapse, but his motives don't admit to much examination. The emphasis throughout is upon the tragic fate of the lovelorn girl, counterpointing the expected slapstick with a degree of poignant drama. However, it takes a long time to get to the big dramatic finish. In contrast to most of the short stories adapted to the episodic TV show, this is a full arc, with a combative conclusion as the compassionate Angeloids assault Synapse to save Hiyori.

ETERNAL, as I said, appeared after the manga's finish, but I suspect that the script was prepared at an earlier point. It begins with a fragmentary sequence taken from an arc that was probably incomplete in late 2013-- said sequence being Tomoki ordering Ikaros to fly him to Synapse as part of an ongoing attack. But since the manga-author most probably had not completed the arc at the time of the script, the writers worked around the situation by making the attack-sequence a frame-story to earlier events.

Of the shorter stories that appear within the frame, at least one of them is among the best tales from the original manga, and so I'm not totally irked at this peculiar narrative avenue. I think that the writers of ETERNAL may have guessed that there might be no further animated adaptations of PROPERTY, and so they wanted to spotlight the nascent (but never culminated) romantic arc between Tomoki and his primary Angeloid Ikaros. The manga-author showed some psychological acuity in exploring the peculiar "master-slave" relationship between Tomoki and Ikaros-- all the more peculiar because the "master" doesn't want the relationship, and the "slave" does. However, at base this is an agglomeration of short tales and a frame-story without a satisfying conclusion, even one in a subcombative mode (which is the default here). This choice on the part of the writers must have been frustrating even to readers familiar with the whole manga saga. I can't even imagine a newbie viewer trying to make sense of either movie without having assimilated something from either the manga or the TV series. Both films provide a very disjointed conclusion to this quixotic series.

GOLIATH AGAINST THE GIANTS (1961)

 

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

So finally here's a sword-and-sandal that takes place back in ancient Greece-- at least insofar as "the Acropolis" is mentioned in the prologue-- but do the writers give the hero a Greek name? No, he's "Goliath," despite having no similarity to the Biblical character. In fact, not only is this Goliath (Brad Harris) not especially tall, neither are the so-called "giants" with whom he fights at the film's end. 

There are, however, a couple of reptilian monsters bookending this film, putting the story firmly in the marvelous domain. To be sure, most of the film only shows Goliath performing uncanny feats of strength, there is one problematic moment. The hero falls off a cliff and into a crevice directly under the cliff, on which his "giant" enemies are standing. Goliath then lifts the cliff straight up and knocks the big guys off like tenpins-- a feat that ought to fall into Hercules-territory.

On to the story: Goliath is the entirely mortal leader of a group of soldiers from a city called Bayrath (Beirut?) He and his soldier buddies have finished a foreign campaign and are journeying back home for the first time in five years-- but not for a good rest, because they've also learned that the rightful ruler has been overthrown by a tyrant, Bokan (Fernando Rey). On the way back, they pick up a shapely blonde lady, Elea (Gloria Milland), and Goliath finds her more than a little attractive. However, their ship is whelmed by a sea monster, and though Goliath kills the monster, the voyagers-- principally Goliath, Elea and Goliath's faithful companion Namath-- are forced to swim to the nearest land.

Meanwhile, back in Bayrath, Bokan frets about the possible return of Goliath while he's busy exploiting the people, He gets some reassurance from his main squeeze, whose name I didn't catch but who may be the same as the character IMDB calls "Diamira." Bokan makes a dire allusion to a valley of "giants" to which he's consigned other enemies-- which is the first justification of the movie's title.

The good guys, unfortunately, have ended up in the domain of a group of hostile Amazons, and they try to take the intruders prisoner. Goliath escapes with Elea. Namath almost gets away by taking one Amazon, Daina, prisoner-- but when the other warriors threaten to riddle both of them with arrows, Namath lets her go. However, Daina switches allegiances because of the youth's chivalry. She locates Goliath and Elea tells them where Namath is being held, after which Goliath and Daina leave to rescue the youth. They do so and come back to the hideout to collect Elea, but she's ghosted them, walking off on her own. 

Goliath and his two allies journey to a friendly town in their own country and learn more about Bokan's depredations. Goliath then infiltrates Bokan's court but learns to his consternation that Elea is Bokan's ally, and that she joined their expedition to spy on the heroes. However, this problem is sorted out quickly. Once Goliath gains access to Elea, he learns that Bokan fed her a false story about Goliath having killed all her relatives, when in fact Bokan done the deed. For her part she left off her spy-games because she was falling in love with the burly hero. Soldiers interrupt the conversation, and as Goliath flees he passes through the dungeon, where he kills a gorilla and keeps a spiked wheel from eviscerating one of Bokan's captives.

Elea turns on Bokan and is sentenced to execution by yet another of those spiky death-devices. Goliath rescues her, which leads to a major battle and the overthrow of Bokan. (I confess I lost track of Namath and Daina in this part.) A secondary villain abducts Elea and unwisely takes her to the Valley of the Giants, where he's slain by what look like spear-wielding cavemen. Goliath shows up and beats all the pseudo-giants, after which he and Elea must flee the second of the film's reptile monsters. They return to Bayrath and live happily ever after.

This is just a decent but unexceptional peplum, and though Brad Harris would go on to star in many Euro-films, here he shows none of his trademark charm, probably because this was his first real movie-role. 

MOLE MEN AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1961)

 

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

Phenomenality first: the main reason this Maciste movie-- in which the "Son of Hercules" is actually called by that name, or something close to it-- qualifies as "marvelous" is because it posits a race of humans living underground who have become albinos allergic to the sun's rays, just like in 1956's THE MOLE PEOPLE. Without that element, almost everything else would fall into the domain of the uncanny-- though I must admit that the climactic destruction wrought by Maciste (Mark Forest) and his Black Bestie "Bangor" comes pretty close to the marvelous.

Wherever the story takes place, both White and Black tribes live in the vicinity, since the Mole Men-- initially all albinos clad in white-- raid slaves from both groups. Maciste interrupts one such raid, saving Bangor (Paul Wynter) from captivity. Despite being just as hefty as Maciste, Bangor's not too keen on following the raiders into  their underground lair, but Maciste talks him into it. 

Down in the subterranean caves, the Mole Men-- no albino Mole Women are in evidence-- are ruled by a grandiose but discontented queen, Hallis Mojab (Moira Orfei). Despite being queen, Hallis's main destiny is to turn out another generation. The smarmy high priest (Gianni "Sartana" Garko) keeps nominating his son for the job, but Hallis isn't too fond of that idea.

The viewer is also shown the reason for all the slave-taking: a mammoth mill-wheel that the mole-people need lots of slaves to turn, in order to churn out "gold and diamonds." I suppose the mill is supposed to be a colossal mining-device. Yet, given that the Mole Men don't seem to be trading with other countries, one wonders what good they get out of gold and diamonds. Maybe they're just symbols of wealth? And the mill is so titanic that I tend to associate it with the magical mill of the Finnish sorcerers of the KALEVALA-- though I suppose the Biblical "Samson at the Mill" trope is the more likely influential.

Then Maciste and Bangor barge in, wanting to liberate all the slaves, starting with a local princess. For once the innocent princess does not become a romantic interest for the main hero-- she gets fobbed off on some minor side-character-- and even old Bangor gets to chat up a cute Black girl-slave in the court. For once, though, the hero's exclusive love-interest is the domineering queen-- and also for once, the guy doesn't look like he's entirely unwilling to hook up with the gorgeous tyrant, in exchange for liberating all the slaves. 

However, the high priest interrupts the love-talk by coming in like a lion-- or, more specifically, he lets a real lion in on the couple. This naturally breaks up the party, and Maciste decides to concentrate on restoring the princess to her people first. Having done that, he returns to the underworld to see what he can do for the other slaves. Hallis doesn't know his intentions, though, so she goes above ground, intending to personally kill him. 

This skillful division of the romantic characters allows for two good effects. While Hallis is above ground, her retainer belatedly reveals that she has nothing to fear from the sun, because she's not of their mole-ish blood. The Mole Men also stole her as a child and placed her on the throne for reasons unknown, possibly just as breeding stock. This is a thunderbolt revelation for Hallis, who's long desired the freedom of the above-ground world-- which she only gets to enjoy for a short time before she's overtaken by cruel fate.

Back down below, Maciste and Bangor liberate various slaves and start a revolt. They finally decide that they need to break the power of the Mole Men by destroying the big mill that makes the slaves useful-- and the two muscle-men do so by forcing the mill against its grooves until its central pillar shatters-- one of the most fascinating FX-scenes in sixties peplum cinema.

This one has some moments of rough poetry, but sadly, not quite enough to elevate it to the level of a similar sword-and-sandal like THE GIANT OF METROPOLIS.

HERCULES AGAINST THE MONGOLS (1963), HERCULES AGAINST THE BARBARIANS (1964)

 

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

These two Maciste films, in which the hero is re-christened "Hercules" for non-Italian markets, were shot close together by the same director and many of the same players. However, though both involve the adventures of Maciste (Mark Forest) fighting Mongols in the 11th or 12th century, there seems no real connection between them, and leading lady Jose Greci wins the affections of Maciste under two separate names. Of course, since Maciste could theoretically pop up at any time and in any place, he may have ended up with a lady fair in two separate eras.

The first film, MONGOLS, is tied to a historical era in that it begins with the death of Genghis Khan in the 11th century. Though Genghis has left behind the commandment to make peace with the West, his three sons plan a campaign of war using the oldest trick in the book: make it look like your enemies attacked you. "The West" that the Khan's sons lust to conquer is a sort of generic Eastern European land, with one city named "Tuleda." Under the command of the war-hungry sons of Genghis, Mongolian forces overrun the city and take prisoner its princess Bianca (Greci), although a young prince escapes. Eventually Maciste finds out about the invasion and he goes to Mongol-town to rescue the princess.

Though Forest does a creditable job playing the doughty hero, the rest of the characters are lame. The three Mongol brothers take turns trying to kill Maciste and failing, the young prince doesn't do much, and there's an Asian beauty, Lijuan (Maria Grazia Spina), who proffers scheming advice to the brothers. None of them really comes alive in the best melodramatic tradition; they all just play rather routine parts from start to finish. The closest one gets to some good drama is that after Maciste wins a tournament, he's offered a choice between his own freedom and that of Bianca. He sacrifices his own liberty for hers, but then a traitor poisons Bianca's mind against the hero and she scorns him. Then the Mongols break their promise and capture Bianca again, after which Maciste breaks free and engages in some lively but unexceptional violence.

According to the opening of BARBARIANS, it takes place in the 12th century, so maybe it's a whole new era after all, though it's the same old Mongol menace. Genghis Khan is back to being alive, thus causing one online review to view this as a "prequel," but this time his forces attack a real target, 12th century Krakow in Poland. (Depending on which Mongol attack was being referenced, the prologue may just have got the century wrong.) 

Anyway, this time Maciste has already gone head to head with the invaders, and they've suffered greatly from encounters with his fantastic (albeit just uncanny) strength. Military leader Kubulai tries to put a good face on his failure, and gets just one more chance to redeem himself. Meanwhile in Krakow, a young half-Mongolian woman, Arias (Gloria Milland) takes refuge from the Mongols in the home of a poor fellow and his daughter Armida (Greci). While in their company Arias learns a secret: that Armida is actually the last heir to an almost extinguished royal line, sent to live in poverty to conceal her from enemies. The Mongols learn of Armida's identity from a separate source and kidnap Armida, killing her father. Arias is later attacked by hostile villagers, but Maciste saves her, at which point she falls hard for the big lug.

Maciste then journeys to the camp of the Mongols, where he volunteers to undergo any ordeal to liberate Armida. After the hero beats the Mongols' mightiest fighter-- who, curiously, is a big Black guy-- Genghis allows Maciste to live but pursues his plan to have Armida marry one of his sons. 

Maciste leaves, rallies some troops, but ends up back in Mongol clutches, semi-betrayed by Arias, who tries to capture him for her own delectation. But Kubulai plans to kill Maciste despite their deal. Instead he kills Arias and Maciste breaks free. Maciste escapes and mounts an attack on the Mongols by the Polish army, ending the picture in a big end-battle. There's no final duel between hero and villain, possibly because Maciste had already defeated all three Mongol brothers in the big tournament scene.

Though formulaic, BARBARIANS offers its players much better dramatic moments, particularly Greci, whose character has to struggle with learning about her hidden destiny. Forest's Maciste again seems to settle down with the heroine, in marked contrast to all those flicks in which the restless hero just keeps on wandering.

MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE (1976)

 

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

The second and last of the "One Armed Boxer" films was also a knowing swipe of a successful 1975 Shaw Brothers film, THE FLYING GUILLOTINE. This excellent online essay  sums up the provenance of the bizarre, head-chopping titular weapon, explains how Shaw got bogged down in the production of their own sequel to the successful first film. Since no one could copyright a legendary weapon, Jimmy Wang Yu co-opted the idea for his own film. I've not got around to reviewing the 1975 film, but suffice to say that I felt Wang Yu's movie an immense improvement.

It's been a little while since the end of ONE ARMED BOXER, and Tien, still one-armed, now runs his own dojo and lives a quiet life. However, two of the assassins he slew in the first film were students of a nasty old fellow named Fung Sheng. Despite being both elderly and blind, Fung is a skilled assassin in the service of the corrupt Emperor, and a master of the flying guillotine weapon. Fung can't abide having anyone slay his former pupils, so the old guy burns down his own house and sets off on a quest for vengeance, knowing only that the students were slain by a one-armed man. Fung's hearing not only allows him to navigate his way flawlessly, it allows him to listen for any mention of any one-armed man-- and when he finds one, the master immediately executes the fellow, without even bothering to check if he's the right one.

Fortuitously, there's a massive tournament somewhere near Tien's bailiwick, and he and his school are scheduled to appear. In contrast to modern tournaments, this one is a total bloodsport game, though there don't seem to be audiences as such, only a panel of judges offering some prize or other. Combatants can choose to fight with or without weapons, pitting any type of martial art against any other, and if a combatant dies, he dies. During the opening battles, the audience witnesses a variety of exotic fighters, the standouts being a barefooted Muat Thai expert and an Indian yogi who, apparently emulating the idea of the "India Rubber Man," can stretch his arms a foot longer than their normal length.

Then Fung shows up, wantonly killing another one-armed fighter, alerting Tien to his danger. When one tournament-official tries to stop Fung, the Guillotine Master slays him and brushes off the efforts of the man's daughter Shao (Lung Chung-erh). Fung wanders off and somehow enlists three of the fighters to his own cause-- the two mentioned above plus a Japanese swordsman. All three practice disciplines similar to some of the antagonists from the first BOXER film, but this time there's no mention of Tien's superhuman strength, so one might fairly assume that it wore off. This may be one reason that this time the One Armed Boxer uses tricks and traps to gain an advantage over his opponent's talents. I won't detail any of those traps here, except to say that some of them fall into my category of "diabolical devices," and that none of the traps detract from Wang Yu's spirited battles with this new set of enemies. I personally would rate the final battle between Tien and Fung to be the equal of anything staged by such masters of the genre as Lee, Li and Chan.

The plot is still simple, being about the prevention of vengeance than its accomplishment, though there is an interesting subplot in which the Japanese swordsman woos the grieving Shao. Lung Chung-erh only gets one major fight in the story, but it's a good one nonetheless. Even though some of the martial-arts abilities are clearly fantastic, I subsume even the "stretchy-arm fu" under the category of "superlative skills" because they're supposed to stem from manipulation of the "chi" and all that jazz.

THE ONE ARMED BOXER (1971)

 

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

I've only rarely been impressed with the direction of Hong Kong "chopsockies" from the sixties through the eighties. Most of these entries favor flat, mid-range almost stagey shots of the principal actors, whether they're fighting a big battle or engaging in talking-head activity. Then I watched the two "One Armed Boxer" films back to back, both of which star Jimmy Wang Yu, probably due to his meteoric rise to stardom thanks to his performances in THE ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN and its first sequel.

While his acting may have contributed to his getting the director's job, in both of these films Wang Yu showed an impressive facility with many of the techniques pioneered in Western cinema-- quick cuts, well chosen close ups, and angled shots. I haven't seen any of Wang Yu's other directorial efforts, but will make the effort to check them out now.

Wang Yu also wrote six of the films he directed, but though the two BOXER films are well written compared to the usual fare, they aren't extraordinary in the script department. Both are set up to provide the put-upon hero with an array of bizarre enemies for a series of end-fights, though BOXER #1 takes much more time to built up the hero's special status.

The hero, Tien Lung by name, is one of many students at a dojo run by Master Hang Tui. He and his fellow students get into a fight with the students of a rival school, the Hook Gang. The Hooks' master, one Chao, is also a purveyor of such criminal activities as prostitution and opium dealing. That first fight escalates as the two schools quarrel (the main sociological element of the film). Finally Chao brings in several professional assassins, all skilled in different martial arts, to decimate Hang Tui and all of his students. Only Tien Lung survives, but only because one of the evil swordsmen cut his entire arm off.

Providentially, Tien Lung is rescued from death by an old pharmacologist and his lovely daughter Jade. Tien is naturally distressed about losing an arm, but he swears to carry out vengeance for his school somehow. Jade, already taken with Tien, appeals to her father, who gives Tien a rare drug, designed to amp up his strength to superhuman levels. Yet, in the movie's most memorable scene, the hero can only obtain this power by subjecting his surviving arm to a burning torture. This practice is familiar from many kung-fu films, and seems to convey the notion that practitioners of the arts can gain great powers through acts of self-abnegation.

The transformation takes place, and soon Tien is seen smashing stone objects with his lone fist. Conveniently enough, all of Chao's assassins have remained in the vicinity, and Tien announces his quest for vengeance by slaying two of them. Chao summons Tien for a showdown at a rock quarry and the hero faces down all of his enemies. I didn't get much sense that Tien's fabulous strength played that much of a role in the battles, with one exception. The scene in which the Hang Tui students were slaughtered portrays a Hindu assassin who tries to disconcert enemies by walking on his hands when he fights. The method by whichTien counters the Hindu at the climax is one of those of those deliriously crazed events for which the kung-fu devotee lives to ferret out. 

The quest for vengeance is the only real drama in the story, and despite some suggestions of romance Jade doesn't appear in the sequel. However, two of the assassins whom Tien slays are utilized to set off the action for the sequel-- a rare example of strong continuity in any series of HK martial arts films.

IRON MAN AND CAPTAIN AMERICA: HEROES UNITED (2014)

 

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

See, now THIS is the middling level of quality I expect from Marvel Animation product. IRON MAN AND HULK, the only other iteration to use the "Heroes United" rubric, was a pleasant surprise, getting some good mileage out of the familiar "heroes must work out their differences to defeat menace" trope. But possibly this worked because, even in the original comics, there hadn't been all that many character-encounters between the Armored Avenger and the Green Goliath. Possibly the writers were challenged somewhat by the breaking of new ground.

In contrast, there's not all that much one can do with the same plot when you combine Iron Man and Captain America, who in the comics have a history of strong alliance, even if neither of them have exactly been best buds at any time. Despite the script's attempts to make Cap a rule-follower and Iron Man a fly-by-the-seat pantser, the characters as portrayed don't really have any substantial differences. The live-action AVENGERS films of the MCU grafted a sort of automatic competitiveness between the two, and UNITED II is clearly riffing on that, though not with the same ideological rigidity seen in the MCU. Here the two heroes are at least seen to like and respect each other despite the competition, but not anything more interesting than that. Given that the two characters have rather disparate backgrounds, someone could have come up with a good "work out their differences" script. But this is not it. In fact, the producers even shoehorn the Hulk into the story in the last twenty minutes, which might be an appeal to those who find the two main heroes a bit too vanilla.

The villains raise other concerns. Whereas I complained that UNITED I dumped a few too many villains into the mix and muddied the story, here the viewer just gets two-- the Red Skull and his subordinate, the Taskmaster-- not to mention a small army of Skull-flunkies, that is. Given that the villains' plot is so rudimentary-- the Skull plans to use Captain America's blood to breed a new wave of Nazi soldier-soldiers-- the story might have benefited from the mastermind having a whole contingent of costumed servitors, more or less on the model of the "Skeleton Crew" stories of the nineties CAPTAIN AMERICA comic. Instead, the Skull gives orders, the Taskmaster fights the heroes while plotting to overthrow his boss, and the Skull outmaneuvers his minion. Big deal.

The Skull himself is a problematic villain. In the comics he's rarely been used well when not authored by Lee and Kirby, the two men who revived him from the dust of his Golden Age incarnation (wherein Kirby had illustrated the character though it's my understanding he did not technically create the crimson headed fiend). Possibly because the DVD is aimed at kids, there's almost nothing said about this Skull's politics, so he might as well be a standard non-political world-conqueror. Even the idea of his hijacking the super-soldier serum doesn't conjure with the Nazi fantasies of "the ubermensch." 

UNITED II is a very safe, very boring DTV, with just a handful of decent animated battles to redeem it.

CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE (1961)

 

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

I've only watched the English-language version of CURSE OF THE DOLL PEOPLE, which ostensibly included some new scenes added by its American distributor while others from the original Mexican movie were deleted. So it's possible that a subtitled version of the original release might have been more interesting.

Still, the plot is so basic that I doubt the original had much complexity to add. Four archeologists journey to Haiti and rip off an idol from a voodoo temple, and a voodoo priest pursues the criminals back to Mexico to wreak vengeance. None of the victims possess more than the most basic characterization, and even the vengeful priest, though physically impressive with his Charles Manson looks, has no character to speak of.

However, the viewpoint character is not just the usual expert in both science and the supernatural, but is also a highly educated female, Karin (Elvira Quintana). Karin lectures his scoffing colleagues on the formidable powers of voodoo, and though she's not a crusading Van Helsing, eventually she will seek to block the priest from killing any more not-quite-innocents. Indeed, Karin's lectures on voodoo religion is the main thing that leads me to grade the film's mythicity as fair.

However, the priest is a little more inventive than the usual voodoo master, for he doesn't use the average hand-sized dolls, but the "doll people" of the title. These manikins stand about three feet tall, being of course played by midgets, though the players wear masks of human features which do not move normally and add to the dolls' general creepiness. Being small, the doll people have to sneak up on their victims before impaling them with their poison needles. In addition, the priest brings along a regular-size zombie for heavy lifting, and the zombie shows himself invulnerable to bullets.

The pacing is fairly slow, so there's not a lot of suspense until the conclusion, where Karin unveils a counter-measure to nullify the evils of voodoo. Despite some predictable sequences, this was a good effort by director Benito Alazraki, who went on to direct the first definitive Santo film.

TEX AND THE LORD OF THE DEEP (1985)

 

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

I've never read any of the TEX comics, which became very popular in Europe since Italy published the first serial in 1948. Tex, whose full name is Tex Willer, is largely unknown in the U.S., and this movie-- henceforth abbreviated to LORD-- seems to be the only English-language translation of the character into any medium.

The movie is said to have been an unofficial pilot for a television series. But despite its having adapted sequences from three of the comic serial's arcs, and despite having the directorial services of Duccio Tessari, LORD flopped at the Italian box office, so there was no teleseries. Possibly the budget was limited from the get-go because any teleserial would also have been similarly limited.

LORD starts out moderately well, using long shots of Western natural wonders and a portentous voice-over to introduce the audience to the upstanding ranger Tex Willer (Giuliano Genma), who pals around with a stalwart Indian buddy and the real-life scout Kit Carson (thus making this stand-alone film a sort of crossover-work). Tex is seen avenging some Indians from white scumbags who've been selling them liquor. 

Then the plot proper starts, as Tex and his friends track some bandits who've ripped off a convoy of Army rifles. The heroes learn that the bandits may be working with a mysterious cult of living Aztecs who possess strange magical abilities. Tex and his buddies even witness one such ability, when a survivor of the convoy raid is subjected to some force that melts away the flesh of his face, leaving a skull (the only good effect in the film).

Meanwhile, the film segues to showing the Aztecs, who plot to conquer the world by uniting the Indian tribes against the White Man, and continuing their age-old custom of sacrificing human beings to their gods. The Aztecs, one of whom is female, debate their next move, while Tex and his friends seek them out-- 

And the two never meet. The remainder of the film trails off as Tex's band fights with some of the bandits, but the heroes never meet the Aztec plotters, and the latter are apparently defeated when their alchemical weapon goes awry. 

I don't think one can blame this incoherence on budget alone. LORD just seems to be one of those bad-luck films in which everything just goes wrong and everyone involved just wants it to be over and done with it. Genma had an impressive career playing heroes in westerns and in sword-and-sandal flicks, but it's impossible to judge whether or not he could have done a good version of this character, since his work is undercut at every turn. The flick doesn't even play to the sword-and-sandal tradition of playing up a hot evil queen, since the female Aztec's scenes are short and unmemorable.

GEMINI MAN (1976)

 

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

GEMINI MAN is one name for the ninety-minute pilot film for a short-lived 1976 series about an invisible government agent. There's a longer name for the pilot, but I don't feel like typing it.

The year before, the same production company had attempted to launch THE INVISIBLE MAN a series about an invisible do-gooder played by David McCallum. When that show tanked, the producers attempt to beat the invisible horse further by launching GEMINI MAN.

To be sure, the idea of a series about an invisible secret agent has some definite appeal, though not even the longest lasting one, the 2000-02 INVISIBLE MAN, quite tapped the full potential. Here it's clear that the series-makers have modeled their hero Sam Casey (Ben Murphy) on the affable model of Lee Majors' "Six Million Dollar Man." Like the Majors character, Casey comes from nowhere and has no particular aim in life beyond going wherever his bosses send him on his missions. Murphy delivers the goods in this respect, and the other cast-members do what's required of them but the idea of a kid-friendly world of international espionage didn't work this time. Even the introduction of a "ticking-clock" element-- Casey can only remain invisible fifteen minutes a day or he'll die-- failed to add any moxie to the pedestrian execution.

IRON MAN AND HULK: HEROES UNITED (2013)

 

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

Most of the original animated DTV movies made from Marvel comics-characters have been relentlessly mediocre, in contrast to the DC cartoon-films, which generally vary between the excruciating to the excellent. To be sure, in the 2010s Marvel cartoon serials have probably been better than those from DC, but often the stand-alone animations can't quite seem to capture the soap-operatic appeal of Marvel characters (though the live-action movies have similar problems there, as well).

Still, this time out the "brave and bold" teamup of Iron Man and The Hulk works much better than one might have expected. Naturally, these characters are extrapolated from the live-action Marvel movies, wherein the regular identities of both super-crusaders-- namely, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner-- become science-buddies. Refreshingly, though, UNITED goes in a less predictable direction, in that I don't even remember Banner being mentioned. 

At the start of the opus, the two heroes have served in The Avengers together, but Iron Man doesn't really have any sort of buddy-relationship with Banner's green-hued id-monster. However, UNITED is the story of how the two of them work through their differences in order to take arms against a sea of troubles.

The troubles, of course, are an assortment of Marvel villains, though most of them-- the Abomination, the Wendigo, and a couple of Hydra scientists-- don't do much more than set up the plot-action. The nub of the conflict is that Iron Man and Hulk get trapped aboard one of Stark's ships, which in turn falls under the control of a new version of a Hulk villain: Zzzax, a sentient electrical entity. Whereas the character in the comics just goes around shocking people, this Zzzax is pretty adroit about using his powers to over-write electronic programs with an eye to controlling the world's energy. The monster even has some minor characterization, slamming Earth's humans for wasting energy.

The action is pretty good-- Hulk is blinded at one point and has to depend on Iron Man to be his eyes as they fight a Stark-created band of robots called "Mandroids." But the barbs that the two heroes toss at each other while trying to beat their enemies are the short movie's highlight, and for once, the limited animation wasn't a huge problem.

THE GIANT OF METROPOLIS (1961)

 

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

GIANT OF METROPOLIS is one of the few "sword and sandal" films to which I've given a good rating. Its quality may have something to do with its appearance in 1961, which predates the descent of the "Italian muscleman" films into total predictability. It's also of interest that this was one of only five films directed by Umberto Scarpelli. Though he might have left filmmaking for any number of reasons, it's somewhat fitting that his last work for Italian cinema turns out to be among the best in its genre-- though, to be sure, Scarpelli is not credited as having conceived the main idea, only for providing dialogue. Since the script's three writers don't have a ton of outstanding credits to their names, perhaps METROPOLIS is just one of those occasional "perfect storms" of creativity.

The title alone suggests ambition on the part of the creators. The basic idea derives from the myth of Atlantis, a super-scientific civilization destroyed before the rise of recorded history, and a prologue even establishes that the action takes place on "the continent of Atlantis." But the city is plainly named after the future-city of Metropolis as seen in the classic 1927 Fritz Lang movie, though there's no real attempt to follow the plot-action of the silent film. I suspect what happened was that the writers were inspired by the basic pattern of Lang's masterpiece, which was a melodrama about the struggles between the high and low classes in a future-city-- including both romantic and familial conflicts. Lang's film is basically optimistic at the conclusion, and the city of its title is seen to endure all of its travails. However, since Scarpelli's film follows the pattern of the Atlantis myth, the only positive thing about this Metropolis is that its destruction clears the path for younger, less corrupt descendants.

Hulking Obro (Gordon Mitchell) wanders with his savage-looking tribe-- possibly cast out from some other land?-- until they come near the continent of  Atlantis. Like Moses seeking the Promised Land, Obro's aged father dies before the tribe reaches its goal, and as he dies the old man turns over the stewardship of their people to Obro, and encourages the hero to seek out Metropolis.

This doesn't turn out to be good paternal advice. When the savages approach the city, weird magnetic vortices assail them, and all but Obro are disintegrated. No reason is given for Obro's survival, but the city's ruler becomes curious about the stranger and orders him brought into Metropolis-- which will be a mistake on the ruler's part, though possibly one he was destined to make.

King Yotar (Rolando Lupi) is not your routine city-tyrant. Yotar is the heir to a long Atlantean tradition of super-science, and he will do anything to keep Metropolis on top of things, particularly because of dire stellar predictions about the city's demise. Most of the populace has been converted into obedient zombies, but one thing you've got to say for Yotar: he doesn't play favorites. Instead of letting his own father pass away peacefully, Yotar has transferred his dad's intelligence into an artificial body, so that Yotar can consult him whenever he pleases.

He doesn't treat his immediate family any better. His first wife died, leaving him a nubile daughter, Mercede (Bella Cortez), who initially thinks that her father hung the moon. But Yotar's second wife Queen Texen (Liana Orfei) knows better. Though she loves her husband, she fears his propensity to try to control her and everyone else. Her greatest concern is with his plan to transfer his father's intelligence into his small son Elmos. This transfer will give Elmos eternal life, but at the cost of his childhood. Yotar doesn't see why this should be a problem; doesn't everyone want to bypass the troubles of childhood? 

He doesn't seem to harbor any dire plans for Mercede, but there's a peculiar scene in which she does a revealing dance before his throne, flanked on either side by a white male dancer and a black male dancer. One can't help but think of Salome dancing to impress her stepfather, and the addition of her dancing with a racially mixed pair of males adds a little race-fetishism to the fire. Yotar shows no overt reaction to the dance. However, when he leaves his throne-room, he immediately seeks out his current queen and embraces her, despite her protests that he only wants to control her. Later Obro will comment that Yotar is not a villain, just a man mistaken in his priorities-- and the fact that the King doesn't have any designs on his daughter would seem to bear this out.

Yotar, tasked with prophecies that the stranger may spell the city's doom, subjects Obro to assorted ordeals. In an arena Obro is forced to fight a big hairy cave-guy, and later gets defeated by a gang of vicious pygmies. Yotar even tries to show the hero that muscle is no match for scientific magic by forcing Obro to struggle against magnetic forces-- which struggle Obro loses, unlike most such challenging feats in these type of films.

However, Texen and her minister Egon liberate Obro, wanting him to use his martial prowess to dispose of Yotar's guards so she and Egon can prevent Elmos from being subjected to his father's experiment. Egon's insertion is necessary because when Yotar finds out about Texen's betrayal, she takes her own life-- which doesn't seem to be a very good strategy for taking care of Elmos. However, her sacrifice earns Obro another ally, for Mercede sees Texen die, and she turns against her father and succors the stranger-- with whom, inevitably, she will become romantically linked.

I'll conclude my account there, for from then on the die is pretty much cast as to what's going to happen to the Atlantean kingdom. But all of the dramatis personae of METROPOLIS are much more vivid than those of the average historical epic, largely because they're all playing off the hubris of Yotar, who only realizes the evil of his actions in his last moments. The basic theme of seeking to control others, even for their own good, makes much better drama than tinpot tyrants who just want to beat the people down. Mitchell, though not capable of nuanced acting like his cast-mates, nevertheless has an impressive presence, especially when he's mowing down guards with what looks like a Samson-style "jawbone of an ass." 

THE DOOR WITH SEVEN LOCKS (1940)

 

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

THE DOOR WITH SEVEN LOCKS was the second English adaptation of an Edgar Wallace novel to reach American shores, and it shows an attempt, if not always a successful one, to craft a British-made thriller considerably less fusty than those of the thirties. Director Norman Lee, who's currently not remembered for much beyond DOOR, does a good job of keeping the mise-en-scene fairly lively despite having to execute loads of mystery-oriented talking-head scenes.

Since I'm not likely to ever read the 1926 Wallace mystery, I did glean a few details about the source material from Goodreads. The movie seems to be faithful to Wallace's concept. On his deathbed, an English lord bequeaths a hidden treasure to his heirs, but they can only get the riches under assorted complicated circumstances, including the use of seven special keys designed to open the door to the treasure. The keys enter the custody of an executor for roughly the next ten years, so that a foreign heir, who knows nothing of her blood relation to the lord, has time to grow up and became young June Lansdowne (a striking Lilli Palmer). A friend of the family somehow learns of June and contacts her about the legacy, so she and a comical girl-friend fly to Great Britain. The two ladies arrive just in time to see an organized conspiracy by some of the heirs-- including sinister Doctor Manetta (Leslie Banks of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME) A young local cop, Dick Martin (Romilly Lunge), gets drawn into June's troubles, patently because he fancies June. 

What's surprising is that in content this quasi-Gothic mystery is identical to dozens of others from the period, this is one of the few to qualify for the combative mode, in that Martin has a lively battle with a burglar who breaks into June's room, later battles Manetta's mute servant, and finally fights the evil doctor at the film's climax. Possibly the novel is just as comparatively violent, given that some reviews intimate that Dick is the main character in the source novel. In the original story Dick and June have to contend with some sort of mad scientist. But the scripters of DOOR, one of whom was also the director, chose to place more emphasis on the character of the conspirators' leader Doctor Manetta. Without reading the novel I can't be sure, but I don't think it's coincidence that Leslie Banks' most renowned character, Count Zaroff, displays a sadistic mindset, while Manetta claims to be a descendant of the Spanish torturer Torquemada. Zaroff also had a mute servant, as does Manetta. Manetta also keeps a roomful of exotic torture-devices, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that he uses them on innocent victims. Still, the torture-room is the site of the end-fight, and one of the devices, an iron maiden, plays a decisive role in the fight's conclusion.

Lunge, an actor I'd never encountered before, does nicely with his heroic role, but Palmer and Banks are the most magnetic performers. The funny girlfriend isn't very amusing, but there are a few good lines. An elderly cop is asked whether or not he can read, and he replies, "Not in the daytime. I took a reading-course at night school." 

THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING (1964)

 

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

Despite the exploitative title, there's not a lot of screaming in this EARTH. Hammer horror-director Terence Fisher teamed with Harry (THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH) Spalding to produce a nicely photographed but somewhat disappointing tale of staunch English villagers coping with a mysterious alien invasion.

Though EARTH resembles some later bucolic English tales of horror and/or SF, this time Fisher and Spalding were working for an American maker of B-films, which under various names (Lippert, Regal) had also released cheapie SF-films like KING DINOSAUR. Possibly thanks to Fisher and his production team, EARTH looks better than a lot of similar low-budget fare, though Spalding's script doesn't come up to the level of the photography.

After a memorable opening in which the audience sees various English residents inexplicably stricken dead-- particularly the engineer of a still-running train-- the film focuses upon a handful of survivors who assemble in a small village. Most of the characters are fairly typical tweedy English types, aside from one transplanted American pilot, Jeff (Willard Parker). No firm reason is given as to why these particular people survived the phenomenon that slew many others. To their consternation, the half-dozen survivors witness two strange armored figures stalking the village's empty streets. When one woman approaches the two strangers, one of them kills her with a touch. One armed survivor empties a pistol at the armored men, but they walk away, paying the attack no attention.

Two more people make their way to the village, a young man and his pregnant young wife-- and from then on, the peril of the young mother and her progeny almost takes priority over the alien menace. Though the E.T.s don't show any interest in the villagers, the woman they killed comes back to life as a zombie until being slain again. Later, one of the villagers runs down an armored man in a car, revealing that it's a robot. The space-robots change a few other locals into zombies, but since the audience is never privy to the motivations of the robots' masters, it's not even certain that the robots zombify people on purpose or not.

Like a few other similar films, the aliens remain unknowable, the dramatic focus being on the interaction of the motley crew-- though there's not much drama, since none of the characters are memorable. It is interesting that the American guy automatically takes charge of the situation, though he doesn't end up doing much, except at the end he suggests that the remaining villagers go south to look for more human beings. It feels like a quick finish, given that none of them know whether or not even more aliens may be lurking about. In comparison to the tight thrills of THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH, EARTH never delivers on its promise.

STAR ODYSSEY (1979)

 

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

For some reason, I happened to look at a 2012 review I did for two Italian SF-schlock-fests, and I thought that I did a poor job explaining why the second film, STAR ODYSSEY, was crappy. So I re-watched the film on streaming. I wasn't expecting to find anything meritorious in ODYSSEY-- the last-released of four such schlock-fests directed by Antonio Brescia. But I thought that if I ever get round to citing it for THE GRAND SUPERHERO OPERA, I should have something more substantial to say about it.

Here's what I originally wrote, along with an addendum written a little while later:

The most one can say of COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS is that it was probably conceived prior to the success of STAR WARS, so there's few Lucas-isms here.  In contrast, the insanely bad STAR ODYSSEY has all the requisite borrowings-- cute robots, laser-looking swords, and a daring Harrison Ford-like hero.  But where COSMOS at least moves along well, ODYSSEY bogs down from the first and never picks up. 

Avoid except for "so bad it's good" parties.

ADDENDA: I should be a little more specific about the way in which STAR ODYSSEY "bogs down."  I don't mean that it's dull in the sense that nothing happens, but that it's dull because stuff is happening all the time, but none of it adds up to anything.  One hears about some film-shoots where the writers are literally making up the script as they go along.  This tendency may be aggravated in many special-effects films-- even those with little money behind them-- because their makers are always trying to whip up visual scenes that may "grab" the audience.  Brescia and his screenwriters have clearly seen STAR WARS, but they don't seem to have apprehended that the strength of its narrative drive.  ODYSSEY feels more like a knockabout comedy, in which one goofy stunt happens after another.  Appropriately, the only characters who seemed consistent as characters-- even though they were still not very interesting-- were two comic robots.  In a very *tiny* show of originality, Brescia's robots aren't *exact* clones of R2D2 and C3PO.  Instead they're a robot husband and wife who constantly carp at one another throughout the movie.  Again, they weren't good-- but I can remember them a little better than the copies of Han Solo, Princess Leia and Darth Vader.

So, upon watching ODYSSEY again, what more is there to say?

The main plot consists of an unprovoked attack on future-Earth by unidentified invaders (more described than shown). Later the commander of the enemy forces is Lord Kes, who possesses vague mental powers and who looks like someone pressed a waffle-iron to his face. (I thought of this before reading the same description on an MST3K site.) 

Somehow Doctor Maury (Ennio Balbo), the resident genius on Earth (who also has vague psychic powers), determines that the enemy ships are made of the metal "indirium," and that therefore Earth can only prevail if they concoct "anti-indirium." To that end, Maury and his niece Irene assemble a team of rag-tag reprobates to run around on missions that, in theory, have something to do with mounting a defense for Earth. As noted above, this is just an excuse for a lot of knockabout fights, one of which involves some of Maury's agents breaking some others out of space prison. 

The strange thing about this imitation STAR WARS is how little attention Brescia devotes to the young heroes. The biggest name in the cast is Gianni "Sartana" Garko, playing a Han Solo clone with the halfway-amusing name of Dirk Latimer, but he has no real memorable moments even though he can do mental Jedi mind-tricks. The females are a little more liberated than in many Italian space-operas-- a blond chick deals out a karate chop and Irene wields what's supposed to be a cheapjack energy-sword. But all of the heroes are designed to do nothing more than run around having pointless fights with Kes's very small army of blond-haired golden robots. ODYSSEY gives most of its character-moments to acerbic Doctor Maury, who *might* be a minor shout-out to the grey eminence of acerbic Doctor Benson in 1961's BATTLE OF THE WORLDS. 

And that's all I found in my second viewing of STAR ODYSSEY. As before I affirm that the two comical robots are the best thing in the movie-- and you know that you're on Bizarro-Earth when the best thing about an Italian space-opera is its comedy relief.

 

 

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH (1967)

 

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

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH has such a delirious basic concept that I almost wanted to award it the status of "good mythicity" based on that alone. Said concept seems to be an extrapolation of the cartoon joke where some character hits the ground so hard he ends up in China. In this case, however, the Chinese decide they're going to tunnel up to our hemisphere and not just invade the West, but reduce it all to nuclear rubble.

The opening is a grabber: in a major American metropolis (which never for a moment looks like anything but Great Britain), the cops get called about a "listening incident" The disturbance is caused by geologist Arnold Kramer (Peter Arne), who lies on the sidewalk pressing his ear to the concrete and claiming he can hear some mysterious intruders crawling around underneath, like "ants." Understandably, the cops take Kramer to the funny farm. However, by good luck Kramer's acquaintance Jonathan Shaw (Kerwin Mathews) visits the supposedly insane man, and Kramer's rants acquire meaning for Shaw when Shaw realizes that there have been some inexplicable seismic events, one of which devastated an underwater military project of Shaw's.

After many, many scenes of humdrum talking heads, with characters who can barely be distinguished from one another (and none of whom seem American, save Mathews), the military comes to the inevitable conclusion: mysterious forces are tunneling up from the Orient. Reconnaissance reveals an even more horrible truth: that the invaders, Chinese Communist soldiers led by a renegade general, have come with a supply of nuclear bombs. Despite the threat, the "American" army doesn't want to send more than small expeditionary forces down into the tunnels, which certainly works out for the low budget of this thriller. In one of the later expeditions, Kramer, Shaw and various soldiers journey first to Hawaii to pick up a lady spelunker , Tila Yung (Columbian-English beauty Vivienne Ventura) to help them navigate beneath the earth. The mission seems to be to blow up the invading forces before they can do the same to the West-- and with their own nuclear explosion, no less. Definitely a case where "tit for tat" probably wouldn't work out too well for the fellow passing out "tit."

Going by the Oriental sound of Tila's name, I'm tempted to believe that the only reason she's introduced-- given that she does little that affects the plot-- is to show the "Americans" as being able to enlist "an Asian of their very own." Ventura doesn't look the least bit Asian, but she's in good company, since almost all of the other "Chinese" actors are played by Caucasian Brits, including the renegade leader General Chan Lu (Martin Benson)-- which casting decision makes BATTLE look even more absurd. There's only one genuine Asian in the cast: Paula Li Shiu, playing a character with a non-Asian name, "Doctor Arnn," which sounds exactly like the last name of the actor playing Kramer. She's the only woman working with the Chinese invaders, and her sole function is to be their resident brainwasher. It just so happens that a brainwasher is needed after Shaw's expedition is captured by Chan Lu, and Arnn seems in her small way to incarnate that Occidental fear of being mind-controlled by all the clever Orientals seen in pop fiction from Fu Manchu to THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.

However, Shaw's imprisoned forces escape, and even though Tila hasn't been much use in consulting, she gives a fair account of herself in battle, stabbing two invaders to death. The action scenes as filmed by Montgomery (TERRORNAUTS) Tully aren't organized enough to qualify for the combative mode, and quite frankly I was never that invested in the struggles of the heroes, precisely because there's hardly anything but accents to distinguish one from the other. Since the menace of the tunneling terrors seems to get most of the narrative emphasis, I would say that this SF-thriller is structured more like a straight horror film, where the insidious monster is the star of the show.