LOLA COLT (1967)

 

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

I never liked video stores for their mainstream items, but for the many oddball flicks that the store managers certainly purchased just to fill empty shelves. Those venues are gone now, but their spirit lives on in streaming services like FLIX, which is where I saw this film. LOLA COLT, starring singer-actress Lola Falana, was an elusive "spaghetti western" that afficionadoes couldn't seem to locate in the eighties and nineties, from what I could learn. For the past twenty years I forgot I'd ever wanted to see it, but something prompted me to go looking-- and there it was. In fact, the FLIX copy didn't even suffer the cuts mentioned in IMDB reviews.

In America the so-called "blaxploitation" genre didn't take off until 1970's COTTON COMES TO HARLEM, though that film had been preceded by a few movies and TV shows that focused on heroic or quasi-heroic black characters in ensembles, including those played by Bill Cosby in I SPY (1965), Greg Morris in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE (1966), and Jim Brown in THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967). Yet Italy had a tiny smattering of heroic black characters in films, albeit in support roles in films like TAUR THE MIGHTY and MOLE MEN AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES. I'm not aware of any female black heroes in Italian cinema prior to LOLA COLT, any more than appear in any other national cinema. Thus I don't know what led some production company to invest time and money making Lola Falana into the first such heroine, beating out Pam Grier's THE BIG BIRD CAGE by five years. (I don't count Grier's appearance in 1971's BIG DOLL HOUSE, where she's not any sort of heroic figure.)

From the one or two short reviews I'd seen of the film, no one seemed too impressed by COLT-- and sure enough, it's a crude, disjointed oater by director/co-writer Siro Marcellini, whose most notable credit is probably writing and directing 1963's BEAST OF BABYLON AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES. The most unusual aspect of COLT is that it doesn't present a protagonist modeled on the Sergio Leone persona of a money-hungry (but good looking) scofflaw. Possibly Marcellini didn't think such a persona would work for a female hero, since she's nearly as virtuous as any standard Hollywood Western crusader.

Lola is a showgirl traveling with three others in a stagecoach, but the girls are forced to stop in the small town of Santa Anna. It might be near the Mexican border since various characters have Mexican names (though everyone looks pretty European to me, particularly a blonde boy named Pablito). One showgirl has become sick, and the others seek a doctor. Though there's no licensed physician, there is a medical student, a handsome fellow named Rod (Peter Martell) who becomes the sick girl's caregiver. The local biddies don't like the presence of the showgirls, but a saloon-owner gives the shady ladies lodgings in exchange for a singing-and-dancing performance. 

However, even before Lola (the only one who performs) gets on the stage, she becomes aware that Santa Anna suffers repeated attacks led by a bandit named El Diablo (German Cobos). Diablo is pressuring the people of the town to sign over their land to him, and he's terrorizing them for that purpose. However, he's taken an odd course to make sure they don't fight back, having abducted an assortment of hostages, whom he keeps jailed at his ranch. Why he didn't just make the landowners sign their property away as soon as he kidnapped their relatives et al-- the script does not say.

Both Doctor Rod and El Diablo take a liking to Lola, particularly after seeing her dance in a skimpy one-piece. Diablo invites Lola to his ranch, where he reveals that his name is the very waspy Larry Stern. Lola lambastes the doctor for the townsmen's unwilligness to fight back, because Lola herself had suffered the depredations of outlaws who killed everyone in her family but her. Still, Lola tries to find a way to undermine Diablo out of a general sense of justice, doing her best to con him without giving up any goods.

Lola eventually leads the townsmen to free their relations, but while the film's building up to that heroic act, the script fills time with long, reasonably well-done fistfights between Rod and Diablo and between Rod and Diablo's main henchman. Most of the other characters are bare stereotypes, though a secondary conflict arises when Rod's local girlfriend Rose gets jealous of the almost-doctor's attentions to Lola. COLT has the minor distinction of being an early Western that ends up validating a white-black romance.

How does Lola Gate stack up as a heroine? Well, she knows how to handle a pistol, though she only shoots two villains in the concluding raid, as well as clubbing two guys with her gun-butt. She's more important to the story as an inspirational figure, so again the last fight with Diablo goes once more to Handsome Doc Rod. I'd still count Lola as a combative protagonist, though Falana's performance is flat and unimpressive, with Martell and Cobos providing the best acting. No one overtly remarks on Lola's skin-color, and even the old biddies are on her side once she liberates the community, so it's hard to say if the filmmakers had any thoughts of responding to civil rights issues with the film. The only time the movie moves even slightly toward the sort of delirious scenes found in good Italian westerns is a late scene in which Lola's next-to-last song in the saloon has her in white robes warbling "Swing Low Sweet Chariot." Yet moments later she flings off the robes, revealing another scanty one-piece and singing another torch song. She's still a showgirl when she leaves with her friends, and when Doc Rod follows her, he seems to join her entourage. (Yeah, that'll work out.)

The sole aspect of the film that justifies (however slightly) my "bizarre crimes" trope is the main villain's odd kidnapping ploy. 

YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM (1972)

 

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

VICE-- which has a much longer title that I refuse to type out-- is one of the all-time best giallos, thanks to a script that plays on all the familiar tropes of the genre while also adapts aspects of Poe's "The Black Cat." Like Edgar Ulmer's 1934 movie of that name, VICE serves Poe by taking a free-form approach to the short story. Indeed, though Poe's story doesn't utilize any of the incest-tropes seen in "Berenice" and "House of Usher," Martino and his scripters produce a ghoulish thriller in which the monstrous feline becomes the symbol for the devouring female.

Count Oliviero Ruvighny (Luigi Pistilli) resides in a run-down Italian castle with his wife Irina (Anita Strindberg) and a few servants, one being the Negress Brenda. We first see Oliviero holding a drunken revel-- one of many, we're later told-- in which he plays hosts to a motley crew of Italian hippies (who even sing an American pop song). The partygoers are there to provide the viewer with various details about their host: that's he's a failed writer and alcoholic, that he was perhaps a little too close to his late mother Esther, and that he owns a black cat, Satan, who belonged to his mother and who more or less represents her influence. 

The Count also despises his wife, scorning her as a "whore." Right away this is a good foretaste of Freudian terrain: for Oliviero only his mother was a saint, while all other women, the women whom he's willing to screw, are prostitutes. Oliviero humiliates Irina before his guests, and she gets even, sort of, by donning a courtly dress owned by Oliviero's mother. He slaps her down, but the message is clear: "if I'm a whore, so was your mother." Yet Satan carries on whatever feminine war of wills existed between Irina and Esther, attacking Irina at times or preying on her pet doves.

When not giving parties, Oliviero cruises into the neighboring town to hook up with younger women. (Oddly, since he's not touching Irina any more, one might say that he's subconsciouly placed her in the same untouchable category as Dead Esther.) The middle-aged Casanova makes a date with a former student, but someone slashes her to death. The police interview Oliviero and he fabricates an alibi. Later the maid Brenda-- whom Oliviero earlier abused at the party, talking about how great colonialism was because it meant he had a sexy Black servant-- capriciously puts one the courtly dress of the Count's mother. Someone kills her in the castle, but Oliviero persuades Irina to help conceal the body and to wash the bloodied dress.

By chance Oliviero's niece Floriana (Edwige Fenech) arrives. At first she seems to be more friendly toward Irina, but it soon develops that she's playing a game that includes seducing her uncle, who has no problem with sexing up daughter-substitutes. Irina catches the dove-killing cat and puts out one of its eyes as Poe's narrator does to his nemesis, but this just increases her mania. Without going into specifics, Floriana plays a game designed to heighten the hostilities between the couple, and this leads to a sex-reversal version of the Poe denouement, with Irina killing her husband and concealing his body behind a plaster wall. One guess what untimely clue exposes her crimes to the police. 

The giallo-killings are nicely grotesque, but they're not as interesting as the many transgressive incidents between the deteriorating aristocrat and the two voracious vixens. There's even a slight suggestion that Irina-- who's something of a schemer herself-- might have actually cared for Oliviero if he hadn't been such a bastard. I don't think the fine points of the plot hold up, but Strindberg gives a fine, multi-layered performance, while both Fenech and Pistilli distinguish themselves ably. 

THE BEAUTIFUL BEAST (2006)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

For my review of this Canadian psychodrama I'm just going to plunge into a summation before drawing any conclusions. So: SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Wealthy widow Louise (Carole Laure) lives on an isolated estate with her grown son Patrice (Marc-Andre Grondin) and grown daughter Isabelle-Marie (Caroline Dhavernas); the same estate where the siblings’ late father drowned in a lake and where Patrice indulges in his one hobby, riding his horse. Both Louise and Patrice are very glamorous while Isabelle-Marie is comparatively plain, and the younger woman's insecurities about her looks seem to be aggravated by the way Louise lets Patrice sleep in her bed. There’s no evidence that mother and son are having sex, partly because Patrice seems withdrawn to the point of helplessness (which could indicate molestation in other circumstances). Still, Isabelle-Marie fantasizes that they’re making "the beast with two backs" (my term) and further imagines the two of them being slain by a horse-headed messenger of death. Later she ogles Patrice when he’s naked and eventually jerks him off when he’s bathing, though he doesn't seem to understand what's happening.

Louise departs to go to a funeral and leaves Isabelle-Marie in charge. The girl abuses Patrice by depriving him of food, twisting his ear and confining him to his room. Louise, who has already sensed that things are getting out of her control, brings back with her a new boyfriend Lanz and announces that they plan to be married. Neither Patrice nor Isabelle-Marie take to Lanz, but the entrance of a new male in the house seems to jolt the sister out of her competition for her brother. 

She attends a party, meets a young fellow named Michael, and eventually gets knocked up but does not get married. While she’s away having her child the jealous Patrice runs down Lanz with his horse, killing him. While Isabelle-Marie is having her baby, she sees a vision of the horse-headed killer watching her, suggesting that on some subconscious level she knows that the killer she imagined is the masculine nature of Patrice, whose sexual feelings she played with. 

Louise evidently allows the authorities to deem the murder an accident, since for the next four years she and her son live together. Patrice seems possessive of his mother but there’s still no evidence that they have sex, though Patrice looks very pleased with himself for having ousted his rival. Louise develops a cancerous growth on her face, marring the beauty that once intimated her daughter.

 Isabelle-Marie returns to introduce Louise to her little granddaughter and seems to want to mend bridges. In truth, the prodigal daughter has a hidden agenda. A few early remarks suggested that Isabelle-Marie might have been molested by her father when he lived, and this suggestion bears fruit. She takes indirect revenge on her father through Patrice, getting her brother drunk and shoving his face into boiling water with the line, “You’re free now; your face won’t look like Dad’s!” 

The little girl witnesses the injury and tells Louise, who ejects Isabelle-Marie from the house. Possibly as a result of Louise seeing how unhinged her daughter is, the widow apparently realizes that she can no longer keep her murderer-son with her and sends him to an asylum, though it may not be a total coincidence that she casts him out because he’s not good-looking anymore. 

A day or so later, Patrice breaks free of the asylum and runs home at the same time when Isabelle-Marie returns as well with her daughter in tow. Leaving the daughter in a safe place, Isabelle-Marie kills Louise by dousing her with gasoline and then setting her afire, possibly (but not definitely) for having failed to protect her from her father. After committing the act, she again sees the horse-headed spectre, now indicating her own capacity for murder. Isabelle-Marie flirts with the idea of killing herself beneath the wheels of a train but changes her mind and leaves on the train with her daughter. Patrice is last seen wandering in the forest, remembering how his sister called him an animal, with the clear implication that when he’s eventually caught this will be the level of his existence; that of an uncomprehending beast manipulated by beauties.

Obviously the title is meant to evoke the literary fable BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, with the obvious irony that it's the "handsome prince" who's turned into a beast, this time by the influence of not one but two women. The suggestions of an "Electra complex" between the three principals is given a relatively light touch compared, say, to Eugene O'Neill's similarly themed MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA, so that there's enough latitude to allow good complexity for its visual symbols-- disfigurement, the horse as untrammeled animal nature. Though the dysfunctional family is beyond hope, and its aberrances will probably get passed on to the innocent daughter, BEAST has the feeling of a drama rather than an irony, in that there are indications that some of the principals might have had a chance at avoiding calamity. The sole metaphenomenal image in the film, that of the horse-headed spectre, is clearly only in Isabelle-Marie's warped brain and so functions only as a naturalistic trope, much like the imaginary phantoms in Ibsen's not dissimilar play GHOSTS.

VAMPIRELLA (1996)

 

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

Where does one even start with a train-wreck like VAMPIRELLA?

First, even though director Jim Wynorski called it his least favorite picture, it's not dull enough to be his worst-- and while I'm sure I'll never subject myself to his entire inventory, I did see the tedium of the KOMODO films, and those are much worse.

Gary Gerani's script is a mess, which is surprising since his previous film-credit-- and the only other one that most fans will recognize-- is the tightly-conceived 1988 PUMPKINHEAD. Wynorski asserted that Gerani was selected because he was a Vampirella fan, and this is evident in that he centers the film around the conflict of the heroine with Dracula, both of whom are bloodsuckers from the alien world of Drakulon. Gerani seems to have taken a few elements from the first comics-crossover of Vampirella and Dracula and crossbred those motifs with the plot of the 1986 SUPERGIRL, wherein the heroine leaves her Kryptonian colony to chase down an artifact on Planet Earth. Here Vampirella (Talisa Soto) pursues Dracula (Roger Daltrey), the slayer of her stepfather, to Earth. (Why Gerani made the victim a "stepfather" rather than a father will probably never be known.) Oh, and on Drakulon the heroine's actual name is "Ella," and she's dubbed "Vampirella" by an Earth-dude.

The film had a short shoot-time in very hot weather, and its low budget is evident in the chintzy look of Vampirella's attire. While the original comics-costume is designed to show off feminine attributes, the comics-character often looks fairly regal in the outfit, and that might have been possible with a design that didn't look like that of a cosplay B-girl. Lead actress Talisa Soto probably could not have pulled off regality, though, much less the physical skills needed for the fight scenes. During said combat moments, Wynorski resorts almost exclusively to quick cuts, and I would tend to think that this was because she didn't know how to block fights adequately. On the other hand, Soto looks okay if not exceptional in both MORTAL KOMBAT and MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION, both filmed in the same period as VAMPIRELLA, so it's also possible that the quick-cut style was chosen to simplify Wynorski's job.

Vampirella's quest for vengeance is needlessly complicated. Dracula leaves Drakulon with Vampirella in hot pursuit, which means that she has to get arbitrarily delayed so the villain can get properly set up on Earth. While Vampi is delayed, Drac manages to create a vampire cabal so extensive that a paramilitary police group, Purge, is created to fight Drac's power. (The leader is given the name of Vampi's comics-boyfriend Adam Van Helsing.) In addition, Drac finds time to pose as a grunge-rock singer named Jamie Blood (he sings one number in a club, where Vampi-creator Forrest J. Ackerman has a cameo). AND he develops an orbiting satellite-system to block sunlight from the planet so that vampires will be able to rise to dominate humankind.

Like many a Bond-imitator before her, Vampirella is able to find her nemesis by just pointlessly wandering around while clues drop into her lap. Despite being motivated by vengeance, Vampirella as acted by Soto often seems tentative and uncertain, which seems not an intentional choice but merely reflective of Soto's inability to project a strong personality. (FWIW, I don't think Wynorski's avowed choice for the role, Julie Strain, would have been any better.) Soto often has a deer-in-headlights look to her and she's not even forceful in her few bloodsucking scenes. She and Richard Joseph Paul (playing Adam) have a couple of romantic encounters but don't manage any chemistry, not even when Adam chains up Vampi to keep her from fanging him, and she breaks free and does so anyway.

Daltrey is the only actor who's having fun with his super-villain role, but no one would claim that he's trying to put forth a considered take on the master vampire Dracula, even in an alien incarnation. Hard to say if this DTV's existence has kept investors from attempting a better take on comics' favorite lady vampire, since her costume would not be very politically correct today. 

MAN FROM ATLANTIS I-IV (1977)

 

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

Back in the seventies there was an upsurge in live-action superhero shows. The success of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN TV-films in 1973 launched the successful series the following year, and 1975's NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN also spawned its own serial. In 1977 Universal-TV optioned a handful of Marvel characters, but only the first two INCREDIBLE HULK pilot-movies led to a regular show. According to one online source, Marvel's SUB-MARINER was at least considered, and in 1978 a notice did appear in Stan Lee's "Bullpen Bulletins" to the effect that a Prince Namor pilot would be produced-- though no such pilot was ever made. While any number of internal factors could have caused the studio to decline the Atlantean prince, one of those factors could have been that by early 1978 industry insiders *might* have noted that another original-to-TV super-type with an underwater theme was due to be cancelled after four TV-movies and thirteen episodes.

The first film, MAN FROM ATLANTIS, introduced audiences to an amnesiac young man (Patrick Duffy) who's found passed out on the beach. ER doctors can't tell what's wrong with him, but by chance an oceanography expert, Elizabeth Merrill (Belinda J. Montgomery), stops by the ER room and realizes that the fellow's "dessicated lungs" suggest that he may actually be a water-breathing humanoid. Submersion in water does revive the stranger, but he does not know who he is. Through her military connections Elizabeth is able to get the odd man-- who also has webbed fingers-- assigned to her laboratory, where she examines his water-breathing propensities, gives him the name "Mark Harris," and speculates that he may be the last survivor of legendary Atlantis. Though Mark learns English quickly, he understands nothing about surface civilization and usually appears in a state of passive bewilderment. A Navy officer wants to use Mark for undersea missions, and up to a point Mark cooperates, though he's not entirely cool with human disregard for the oceans. 

During one Navy mission, Mark stumbles across an undersea city. However, it's not Atlantis, but a modern construct by an obsessed mad scientist, Mister Schubert (Victor Buono). Schubert is a modern Captain Nemo, so enchanted with the seas that he has no use for humankind and plans to decimate surface populations with the help of his cadre of brainwashed scientists. Mark prevents Schubert's scheme but Schubert escapes to appear in later episodes. A grateful Navy releases Mark from their oversight, and though Mark considers returning to the depths, he's bonded with Elizabeth and a few other surface-dwellers to the extent that he stays with them at the laboratory, investigating oceanic phenomena.

The second outing, "Death Scouts," is possibly the best of the four TV-movies. The audience sees a trio of divers taken over by alien (possibly microbe-sized) beings,  though one of the three perishes. Mark and Elizabeth encounter the two alien-possessed humans and are deceived into believing that they share Mark's origins, partly because they too have webbed hands. The aliens do their best to convince Mark that he's one of them, and that gives the story the most emotional resonance. Mark, despite not being the most emotive individual around, keenly wants to believe that he's found his origins, and he argues with Elizabeth when she points out inconsistencies. In the end the aliens-- whose aims were never clear to me-- perish, as do the bodies of their hosts, leaving Mark with no answers.

"Killer Spores" unfortunately repeats the basic idea of "Death Scouts" with only minor revisions. The titular spores are Earth-organisms that have existed in the sea's depths for generations untold, and though Mark remembers nothing about his own background he remembers having seen the spores conquer animals in the sea. For vague reasons the spores begin preying on surface-humans, whom they can turn into virtual zombies, though sometimes they merely cause strange emotional outbursts. Mark is eventually able to communicate with the spores and talk them into ceasing their assault.

Last comes "The Disappearances," and this one seems to be determined to recycle the "enslaved scientists" trope from the Schubert movie. This obsessed mastermind is the mundanely-named "Doctor Mary Smith" (Darleen Carr), but she isn't concerned with wiping out humankind. She plans to launch an arc into space with her captive scientists in order to colonize a better world, and Mark must find some way to stop her and her gang of henchmen. The daughter of the show's producer has a role as Mary's more virtuous sister.

All of the ATLANTIS movies and episodes were the only items produced by "Solow Production Company," and the regular show's failure presumably led to the company's demise. All of the movies move with a snail's pace because they're horribly underwritten in terms of providing strong plot action and character conflict; the hour-long episodes may be a little better on that score, though I've no real memory of the show from my original viewings. The man with his name on the company was Herb Solow, whose most famous credit was that of a producer on Original Star Trek. Solow was not involved with the creative end of that series in more than minor ways, like suggesting the use of the "Captain's Log" voiceovers. Apparently Solow learned next to nothing from his association with the Roddenberry series, and I must say that my impression of Solow from the "backstage-at-the-Trek" book he co-authored is that he was more concerned with having things run smoothly than providing entertainment for an audience. In these four movies there are only infrequent inspired moments-- the world-weary performance of Victor Buono as Nemo-wannabe Schubert, or the attempt to describe the strange civilization of the Death Scouts. These moments, and a few factoids about the world of the seven seas, keep ATLANTIS from being as brain-dead as a completely ordinary series like THE POWERS OF MATTHEW STARR. But there are not enough bright spots to give these four films more than a poor rating for mythicity.

BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL (2017)

 

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

I have a nodding acquaintance with the 1993-2012 manga BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL, having read two or three of the collected tankobon volumes. Thus I can vouch for the fidelity of the film's treatment of the manga's premise, though not some of the specific adventures of the samurai-hero Manji. I believe director Takashi Miike was probably faithful to the manga overall, if only because IMMORTAL is a very episodic movie, feeling much like a concatenation of separate, albeit related, exploits.

During the Japanese Shogunate era, a ronin named Manji (Taguya Kimura) runs afoul of a gang of rogue samurai. The evil swordsmen kidnap Manji's young sister Machi for the purpose of forcing him to surrender so that they can capture him and collect the bounty on his head. However, the rogues' leader is so nasty, he kills Machi just for spite. Manji goes berserk and kills all the samurai, though he suffers many mortal wounds. But a strange Buddhist nun prevents his expiration, for reasons that we never know in the movie proper. The nun places "bloodworms" into Manji's body, possibly magical creatures that can repair the bodies of their hosts. All of Manji's wounds heal, and even a severed limb re-attaches itself. But with the death of his sister Manji has no real reason for living, though he carries on with his drab immortal existence as before, accepting commissions to kill evil men.

The mysterious nun then gives Manji a new reason to live. Teenaged girl Rin Asano (Hana Sugisaki) has just lost her father, a master swordsman, to a society of assassins, and she trains herself as best she can to take up the sword to seek vengeance. The nun approaches Rin and tells her that she can only gain vengeance by soliciting the help of a bodyguard-- specifically, the immortal Manji. Manji doesn't want the job, but it just so happens that Rin is a dead ringer for the late Machi. Thus the nun's ploy succeeds: Manji's guilt motivates him to become Rin's protector, which means that he ends up cutting a bloody swathe through the gang of assassins-- whose deaths may be the nun's goal.

Thus the movie breaks down into a series of challenges in which Manji faces a number of colorful opponents. Some wear bizarre outfits, such as Kuroi, who wears the mummified head of Rin's slain mother on his kimono, while others use bizarre weapons like Makie the female assassin, who conceals a bladed staff inside a mandolin. And for good measure, assassin Eiku Shizuma is an immortal like Manji, meaning that he too can withstand wounds that would kill a mortal man. Moreover, he's somehow acquired an antidote that can expel bloodworms from an immortal's body, and when he exposes Manji to the chemical, the samurai temporarily loses his phenomenal healing powers. However, Manji survives all of these trials until facing down the leader of the assassins and all of his other cult members in an epic sword-clash.

I consider the bloodworms "metaphysical" in nature because of a line in which the nun claims she derived the creatures from the body of a Tibetan lama, which makes them sound like the products of some arcane magic. To be sure, Eiku doesn't say how he formulates his anti-bloodworm antidote, and I've no idea if this concept echoes anything in the manga, But the core of the movie is the psychological relationship between Manji and Rin. Initially, Rin is so obsessed with her father's slaying that she's okay with Manji going through lots of pain, if not threat of death, for her vengeance. But as she begins to think of him more like a brother, she becomes more reluctant to involve him in her troubles. At one point she even leaves him behind, planning, rather foolishly, to take on all the assassins by herself. Just to undercut her noble quest, one assassin tells Rin that her father brought his death on himself through his overly strict moral code.

Without a doubt, there's as much carnage here as in any of the celebrated "Lone Wolf" films of the 1970s, and Miike handles the big action-scenes just as well as he does the small, intimate moments between the two "siblings." However, whereas the authors of the "Lone Wolf" series frequently discoursed on the nature of Japanese society during the feudal era, Manji lives in a world consisting of almost nothing but good and bad samurai, almost like a video game.

The denouement leaves things open for a possible sequel, but to date there have been no further live-action films for BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL. It's probably only coincidence that Marvel Comics' own "healing factor" hero Wolverine showed an odd penchant to become an "older brother figure" to younger girl-heroes like Shadowcat and Jubilee, though there's no reason to think that the manga's creator read X-MEN.

A WHITE DRESS FOR MARIALE (1972)

 

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

Eight years after Romano Scavolini directed MARIALE, he enjoyed some notoriety thanks to the British ban of the horror films called "video nasties," which included his 1980 film NIGHTMARE. I have not seen that film, nor any of the other films Scavolini worked on, though I have the impression that this quasi-giallo MARIALE is his only other movie to have received circulation in an English language dub.

I call the film a "quasi-giallo" because it does spotlight a half-dozen brutal murders as do real giallos. However, there's no detective work in ferreting out the killer, nor does the script give viewers any real suspects except the titular Mariale (Evelyn Stewart). The film's structure approximates that of the "old dark house" mystery, in which a bunch of people get stranded in an isolated locale while a killer knocks them off one by one. That said, MARIALE's two writers may have produced the more wildly colorful "old dark house" flick ever made, for the brightly lit "mansion of murder" is full of sumptuous furnishings and art-works.

A prologue establishes that as a child Mariale was somehow present when her cuckold father caught his wife (clad in the white dress of the title) and her young lover canoodling in the forest and shot them both. What happened next, no one knows, for the script catapults Mariale to her adulthood. She lives in the aforementioned mansion, which may or may not be her family's property, since she's married to a slightly older man, Paolo (Luigi Pistilli, about ten years older than Evelyn Stewart). Paolo, Mariale and a barely speaking servant (who keeps cages of animals in the basement) live at this country estate in isolation, partly because Paolo keeps Mariale doped up due to her past trauma. But at some point Mariale gets access to a phone and invites a half-dozen friends to drive out to the estate for a party. The partygoers descend on the mansion and Paolo can't come up with a reason to get rid of them, so they stick around for a big dinner (that winds up looking like a parody of the Last Supper).

The party animals apparently knew both Mariale and Paolo prior to their isolation, though the script never offers specifics of where any of them met. They're all raging assholes, particularly the Italian fellow who insults his Negro wife by calling her a "monkey." The black woman doesn't seem as nasty as the others, though one wonders why she married a foul-mouthed racist. The scripters couldn't care less about any relationship except that of Massimo (Ivan Rassimov), Mariale's former boyfriend, who clearly wants her to cheat on her husband with him. The guests' cavortings fill roughly twenty minutes before the killings begin.

The writers provide no red herrings to distract from Mariale, so it's no surprise that her trauma has made her a psycho-killer. Her old friends are an unsavory lot (and dumb, since after the first killing no one suggests running to the cars and driving away). But she has no particular grudge against any of them. The final sequence suggests that she has some sort of father-complex, possibly as the result of some incestuous act between her and her murderous sire. She may have been seeking a father-image in marrying the older Paolo, though the script does not say so. Does his act of drugging her translate to parental abuse? Maybe, but since the party animals are all sex-mad, and Mariale's mother died due to an act of illicit sex, maybe she invited them to her abbatoir so that she could use her old friends as symbols of the transgressions of her mother and the mother's lover.

There's only one moment where Paolo is explicitly compared to the dead dad. At the climax, Massimo catches Mariale killing her last victim, and grapples with her. Paolo comes in with a shotgun, rattles off a vague explanation about Mariale's craziness, kills both Mariale and Massimo, and then eats lead himself. In the shot where Paolo shoots Mariale-- who is clad in the same bullet-riddled dress her mother wore when slain-- director Scavolini flashes back to the opening scene showing the mother being shot by the father, so no viewer can doubt that there's some parallelism intended.

The plot is murky and the characterization illogical, but clearly the writers were shooting for some psychological myth here, perhaps one slightly akin to the previous year's HANDS OF THE RIPPER, where the Ripper's daughter begins her own career of carnage after learning her father's true nature. I'll give Scavolini and his writers a "B" for effort, even if their execution of their motifs rate only a "D."

THREE SUPERMEN AGAINST THE GODFATHER (1979)

 

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

The collaboration of Italy and Hong Kong for 1973's SUPERMEN AGAINST THE ORIENT wasn't quite bad enough, so the Italians took their property to Turkey, to see if the Turks could make an even worse movie. They succeeded.

This incoherent mess starts off with a scientist inventing a time-machine and briefly jaunting back to Byzantine times. But that's the last time-traveling you see, as the rest of the film is all about a Mafia "godfather" who sends his goons to steal the machine. He's being challenged for power by his daughter and her lover, who steal some of his drugs, and I think the godfather wants the time-machine to... find the drugs? Anyway, this time there's a new agent in charge (Turkish actor Cuneyt Arkin), but he acts like he's been around for other entries. He complains that he's always getting crossed up by his two partners (Sal Borghese and Aldo Canti, the latter returning to the franchise for the first time since the first film).

After the set-up, it's just one boring slapstick scene after another, in which the heroes' bulletproof costumes never get a work out, since none of the alleged gangsters ever shoot at them. There are a lot of scenes in a hospital, where I think the scientist is a patient for some reason, but those scenes merely exist so that a sexy nurse can get pursued by both heroes and gangsters. The only reasons to watch this, if you're not an insane superhero completist like me, would be to see an English-language superhero flick from Turkey (famous for its unlicensed adaptation of various franchises) or to watch Spanish actor Aldo Sambrell trying to do something with the nothing role of the Godfather.

SUPERMEN AGAINST THE ORIENT (1973)

 

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

I gave a "fair" review to the first movie in the Italian "Three Supermen" series but I imagine it'll be the only one that scores that high. SUPERMEN AGAINST THE ORIENT is probably typical of the series, in finding some reason to assemble the three heroes against a barely memorable threat. In this case it's something about breaking up a drug ring in Hong Kong. (The project was a co-production between an Italian studio and one in Hong Kong.)

There's no continuity with the first film but ORIENT simply recapitulates the pattern with three new characters: intelligence agent Robert (Robert Wallace) and two ne'er-do-well thieves (Sal Borgese and Antonio Cantafora). The latter performer also went under the name Michael Coby and played the civilian identity of SUPERSONIC MAN.

Since I'm not watching these films in chronological order, I don't know how they developed their schticks, but I noticed that, whereas the first film had the two thieves being outwitted by the suave agent, here the agent is more of a dull stick whom the clever crooks can manipulate. When the three adventurers accept the mission to go to Hong Kong, they're told to seek out a martial artist named Tang (Lo Lieh). The merry pranksters set Robert up so that he ends up fighting Tang in a tournament, where, not wearing his super-suit, he gets creamed and put in the hospital. (It's all good though, because when Tang learns Robert's an agent he uses "kung fu magic" to heal all his wounds in minutes.)

After that slightly memorable set-piece, the rest of the film settles down to a bunch of badly choreographed fights of the three red-suited heroes fighting drug smugglers. Tang and a female agent, Suzy (Shih Szu) also dress up in red leotards and provide the only hint of good fighting in the film. I imagine Shih Szu is the only female to do the red tights in the series, and that's the film's sole claim to cinematic "fame."

RAVAGERS (1979)

 

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

I've read that RAVAGERS was based on a well-written post-apocalyptic novel, but there's no trace of anything good here. The movie looks like something that might have been cranked out in the early, pre-STAR WARS 1970s, when the majority of science fiction films were a bunch of grim warnings about dire futures-- though even the dullest of these is more exciting than this dreary flick.

RAVAGERS was issued in the same year as Australia's MAD MAX, but it feels as if director Richard Compton and writer Donald Sanford (both guys with lots of TV credits) saw MAX and tried to do the exact opposite. Some years after the apocalypse, Falk (Richard Harris) and his wife Miriam live a hardscrabble existence, somehow dodging the attentions of the titular Ravagers, violent raiders who may or may not be mutants of some sort. The Ravagers find Falk's hideaway and kill Miriam before Falk kills them, Deeply bereaved, Falk remembers Miriam's desire to find a fabled realm where plants and children still grow, so he reluctantly goes in search of this promised land.

At first, all Falk finds is a batty old fellow, Sergeant (Art Carney), who threatens to kill Falk for trespassing on his long-abandoned military installation. However, after Falk disarms the old crazy, Sergeant decides that Falk is really his superior, "the Major," and Falk can't convince him otherwise (which, for what it's worth, resembles a plot-thread in MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME). Sergeant doesn't know anything about any promised land, but he guides "the Major" to a small human enclave where one can get liquor-- and women.

I'm not sure how much time is supposed to have passed since Falk lost his wife, but he's duly intrigued by one woman of the tribe, Faina (Ann Turkel). At first their relationship is strictly business, with Falk trading tobacco for sex. However, after the deal's done, Falk talks in his sleep about his dead wife. This is enough for Faina to sniff out a potential mate, and from then on, both Faina and Sergeant follow Falk on his quest. The frustrated hunter says something like, "I don't want you dead, but I want you gone." But his wishes are ignored.

After a lot of wandering with no violent altercations, Falk and his allies stumble across a group of ex-military people holed up in a beached battleship. This still isn't the promised land, but Falk tries without success to convince these isolated guardians to join his quest. The leader (Ernest Borgnine, only in the film for one scene) refuses, and then the matter is rendered academic. For some reason, the Ravagers attack the ship, killing many of the residents. Falk gets an even larger coterie to follow him around looking for the promised land, and then-- the film ends.

Despite some scattered fight-scenes that make this a combative film, RAVAGERS is never exciting, while Falk and Faina, who comprise the film's only half-interesting character relationship, never reach a satisfying conclusion. The movie almost feels as if the makers thought they were doing a pilot for a TV-series, and it's only of slight interest in that it shows former A-list star Richard Harris slumming in the superhero idiom.

RETURN OF THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN AND THE BIONIC WOMAN (1987)

 

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

"Did you want your son made over in your own image?"

This is a pretty intense line coming from a character in the gosh-gee-wowie world of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, especially being spoken by Michael Austin (Tom Schanley) to his father Steve Austin (Lee Majors). The character of Michael never appeared on the TV shows but was at some point conceived by Steve with a mother from a short-lived marriage. (She's conveniently out of the picture, of course.) The line is all the more interesting because making over this would-be spinoff hero in the image of Steve Austin is exactly what the producers of the telefilm had in mind. Thus when Michael suffers a terrible accident, he loses exactly the same body parts that Steve did-- one arm, two legs, and an eye, though Steve's son does get one extra enhancement: his eye can shoot lasers in addition to being able to see great distances. The line is also interesting because the two bionic wonders before Michael were given their makeovers by the government without their express consent, and the producers of the TV-movie apparently couldn't resist repeating the trope of the "forced conversion." (Didn't any of these people ever enter a real hospital, where the physicians almost always have to ask for consent for any operation?)

Though RETURN was conceived as a back-door pilot for a series starring Michael Austin, the first hour of the show is all about Steve Austin and Jamie Sommars (Lindsay Wagner). Both of them retired from the OSI about a decade ago, with Steve taking up some sort of fishing gig while Jamie apparently took classes to become a licensed therapist for the underprivileged. Former boss Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) approaches Steve about coming back to the fold to stop a terrorist operation, Fortress, because Steve dealt before with its obsessed leader Stenning (Martin Landau). Though Steve refuses, he's soon forced to return to the spy biz because Stenning, despite being in prison, is aware of the bionic duo's powers and begins sending thugs to harvest their mechanical organs. This contingency forces Steve and Jamie to reunite after years of estrangement, with all the attendant emotional turmoil.

As for Michael, Steve just happens to be in the process of seeking a connection with his grown son, a pilot in the Air Force. Despite his having been raised by an aunt, Michael seems fairly neutral toward his famous sire, knowing him only as an astronaut. Shortly before Michael has his transformative accident, Steve reveals his abilities to his son. Michael thinks bionic enhancements are cool, until he's forced to get them himself. Naturally, Michael doesn't spend much time grousing about his fate. Jamie transfers from whatever her regular gig is to become the therapist to Steve's offspring. Michael makes rapid progress as a bionic wonder, all leading up to the final confrontation with Fortress. Wikipedia's assertion that the producers had the successful film "Top Gun" on their minds is confirmed when Oscar asks Michael to come work for him "if you ever get tired of being Top Gun in the Air Force." 

The bionic stunts here are as good as anything on the older shows, and some of the dialogue is a good deal better, courtesy of Michael Sloan, who would also write the next two TV-films with Steve and Jamie (but no Michael). Lee Majors's real son Lee Majors Jr has a minor supporting role as a young agent of the OSI, and he DOES reprise that role for the other two bionic-reunion flicks. One interesting aspect of the script is that Fortress is said to be some sort of "America for Americans" reactionary group, which is a bit surprising since the TV shows usually steered clear of real-world politics. Martin Landau does his usual professional job as the Big Bad, ranting about how the country allows aliens to infect its "bloodstream," or something like that. And yes, it's fun to see the chemistry between Majors and Wagner for the first of three final collaborations.

THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS (1957)

 

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

I'm among the first to celebrate the wonky charms of B-level science fiction films of the fifties, and I've often found hidden complexities in their apparently simple setups. In fact, one year after director Nathan Juran completed this journey into cerebral horror, he helmed ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN, a movie whose mythic elements are often ignored due to its (intentional) risible moments. But there's nothing comparable in THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS. 

Steve March (John Agar) is an independent scientist who never has to punch a time-clock. (Late in the film it's revealed that he's working on a grant; would've been nice to know that going in.) He and a junior scientist named Dan (Robert Fuller) operate a small lab in the country where they monitor radioactivity for some reason. Not far away lives Steve's fiancee Sally, and (in a separate residence) her father John, who's also a scientist of some sort. One day Steve and Dan detect an unusual burst of gamma rays near "Mystery Mountain," so after a barbecue with Sally, Steve and Dan lay plans for an expedition. Dan, who's not going be around that long in the movie, tellingly reminds his superior Steve that he Dan is the real brain of the team.

The setup is moderately intriguing. When Steve and Dan reach the mountain, they find that some force has hollowed a new cave in the rocky mass, though there's no evidence of human trespass. The guys scan the area with their radiation counters but evidence of radiation seems to wax and wane. Then the two scientists meet floating brain-alien Gor, presumably the source of the variable radiation. Gor announces his plans to conquer Earth, kills Dan with a ray blast and then possesses the body of Steve. Later it's said that Steve and Dan are absent from their lab for about a week, but all the action at the cave seems to take a couple of hours, so I don't know why Gor's plans were delayed.

In due time Gor seeks out Sally and initially fools her, but he becomes intoxicated with Earth femininity (maybe all those lady brains back on his homeworld just lack a certain something). Using Steve's body Gor tries to make love to Sally on the spot, but her dog senses that Gor's an enemy and interferes. Sally's a little freaked out but doesn't yet suspect the awful truth.

Because "Steve" starts talking crazy about taking over the world, Sally and her father check out the cave. They not only find the dead body of Dan, they're also approached by a second alien brain, Vol, who has tracked Gor to Earth in order to stop the evildoer. Vol informs the duo that Gor has some vulnerabilities, in that once every 24 hours he must exit any body he possesses in order to get oxygen. Writer Ray Buffum doesn't develop this idea so it comes off as entirely jury-rigged in order to set up the climax.

Vol possesses Sally's dog in order to keep an eye on Possessed Steve. The fact that the good guys have to wait around gives Gor the chance to begin his campaign of terror. He intimidates a gaggle of Army generals by demonstrating his telekinetic ability to blast planes out of the sky, and then demands a summit with world leaders to introduce himself as Earth's new ruler. Joyce, her dad and the brain-possessed dog must find a way to ambush Gor when he leaves Steve's body-- which leads to a scene where Steve attacks his enemy the floating brain with a fire axe, and then acts like he doesn't believe Sally when she tells him about a second, separate brain in town.

I can see why some fans like the goofier scenes of AROUS, which has resulted in its becoming a minor cult-film. And if I thought the script was at all clever, I wouldn't mind the cheapjack alien-effects, which consist of balloons painted to look like brains with eyes. But Buffum's script is as journeyman an effort as most of his other credits. (His best film-work might be the "teensploitation" flick TEENAGE CRIME-WAVE.) Agar, a limited actor given to lots of "Joe Everyman" roles, can't pull off the scenes in which he becomes the "evil ID" of an alien conqueror. I like the basic idea of a disembodied alien who gets horny for Earth-chicks-- he is, after all, from Planet "Eros"-- but given the G-rated requirements for B-films of the time, there was no way that a writer like Buffum could deliver on this premise, even indirectly.

THE MYSTERY OF MAMO (1978)

 

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

The first LUPIN III animated movie barely has the lovable criminals indulging in crime at all, as they get caught up in the business of thwarting a mad world-conqueror. That said, MYSTERY OF MAMO is still predominantly a comedy, always on the lookout to inject slapstick and wild chases into the business of madman-foiling.

Fittingly for the first cartoon-movie, the script also stresses the "eternal triangle" between Lupin III, his two allies-in-thievery Jigen and Goemon, and temptress Fujiko Mine. Lupin, Jigen and Goemon are like a three-man Beatles of Crime, and Fujiko is Yoko Ono, constantly playing on Lupin's desire for her and messing up the well-planned plots of the master thieves. I'm not a Lupin expert, but by the time of this movie I would imagine that this trope had become well-established in the comics and TV shows. Unlike Yoko Ono, Fujiko never quite manages to sunder the bonds of guy-loyalty, and since the main characters never age, Lupin never really has to make a final choice between adventure with his buddies and commitment to the love of his life.

Mamo, the aforementioned madman, attempts to expand the triangle into a quadrangle, at least temporarily. The tangled plot is hard to unravel-- it begins with an exact duplicate of Lupin being executed for his crimes, and only much later is it revealed that this was a clone produced by Mamo's super-science. Mamo also contracts with Fujiko to use her wiles on the real Lupin to get him to steal the Philosopher's Stone for its power to give immortality. Fujiko goes along with the scheme not just for her usual motive of crossing up Lupin, but because Mamo has promised her an immortal existence and she apparently hopes to get Lupin to "commit" to her for all time. (Certainly neither Jigen nor Goemon is invited to join their leader in this artificial paradise.) Mamo allows Fujiko to think this is a possibility, but his true plan is to eradicate the population of Earth with nuclear warfare and then to repopulate the world with the spawn of Fujiko and himself.

Mamo is, like a lot of world-beaters, an ugly little shrimp (visually based in part on singer-actor Paul Williams). Thus he's the opposite of the Man Who Can't Be Tied Down; he's the Man Who Wants the Woman Tied Down-- though at least he's faithful in his fashion, not alluding to any other paramours. Mamo's backstory is very confusing in that he claims to have lived for thousands of years, collecting real celebrities as different as Lao-Tse and Hitler for his private menagerie-- though, given his mastery of cloning, the prizes in Mamo's collection could be clones of the originals. He controls such fantastic super-science that a clever thief and his gang shouldn't be able to oppose him. But Lupin, called an "idiot savant" in one English translation, has the advantage of not knowing any better.

In contrast to some of the later "neutered" Lupin projects, the master thief's lubricity is on full display here, and he has many funny moments pursuing Fujiko, who knows how to push his buttons and then leave him hanging. The relentless cop Zenigata has a lot of strong moments here as well. At one point, he's told to lay off chasing Lupin and to take early retirement, at least partly because the police aren't sure whether or not the original Lupin may have been executed. But Zenigata replies that as long as one Lupin exists, it remains the driving force of the cop's life to bring him to justice someday. His obsession for the law is just as meaningful, and just as funny, as the "will-they-won't-they" dance between Lupin and Fujiko. Jigen and Goemon have less to do as the hero's boon companions disgusted by his unprofessionalism, but they have their dedicated moments.

The only real debit of MYSTERY OF MAMO is the design for Fujiko. I don't know how she'd been depicted in the TV animation up until 1978, but come on, guys-- that's not the face of a really sexy woman!

ADDENDA: I should note that the translation I saw is also very unflattering to the Americans involved in fighting Mamo, though they're represented by just one obnoxious FBI guy.

THE ADVENTURES OF SMILIN' JACK (1943)

 

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

ADVENTURES OF SMILIN' JACK was the longest running aviation-themed comic strip, in which the titular pilot had a number of improbable and light-hearted exploits. The serial, appearing in theaters a little over a year after the US joined the Allied war effort, was explicitly a morale-building film about Japanese aggression in the Pacific theater. The "Jack Martin" of this story, played by one Tom Brown, is never given the "smilin'" monicker and for the most of the serial has only one expression, that of grim determination. He also spends very little time in his plane. He's a civilian pilot who plans to go back home and enter the Air Force in the months just prior to Pearl Harbor. However, Jack gets involved helping the Chinese Nationalist army fight a Japanese spy organiation known as the Black Samurai (whose name was probably derived from a real-life fifth column group, the Black Dragons). 

Japan presumably occupies large parts of China at the time, and according to the script their main ambition is to cross through mountainous terrain to reach India. (It would have been nice to state why the Japanese want India so badly-- petroleum reserves maybe?-- but the subject is not addressed in detail.) The mountains are inhabited by an isolated tribe known as the Mandan, and rumor has it that the tribe know a hidden pass through which armies could enter India. Jack and his allies-- mostly the sister of a captive flier and a junior Chinese officer-- enter Mandan to solicit the secret from the king of the realm, but Japanese spies attempt to do the same. 

Surprisingly, the serial keeps up the quest for this information for the length of all thirteen episodes, even though that requires some of the Mandan people to leave their domain in order to confer with the United Nations, making them targets for the spy ring. However, most of the suspense is generated through talk rather than action, as there are only a couple of decent fight-scenes and one cliffhanger-trap. 

What makes some of the espionage-threat work is that, even if a mountain pass isn't all that exciting, one realizes that much of the strategy of large-scale wars depends on the warring nations making allies, even non-combatant allies, for the purpose of resources. The turpitude of the Japanese regime is constantly stressed, but without any overt racism. Late in the serial Jack reacts with horror when he learns from a Japanese officer that Pearl Harbor is going to be attacked without previous declaration of war, and the script does a good job of selling that wartime sense of betrayal.

The villains don't like each other either. Though a Japanese man named Kageyama (Turhan Bey) is head of the Black Samurai ring, he's obliged to take orders from a German female plotter, Fraulein Von Teufel, whose surname means "devil" and who's essayed by Rose Hobart. Bey and Hobart generate good chemistry hating one another, and the serial delivers on its subordinate theme of "no honor among thieves." One wishes that the serial had given these talented actors more to do than to stand around talking out their next plans.

The aforementioned trap is administered by Von Teufel, who imprisons Jack beneath a row of spikes being lifted by an incoming tide. This alone might not qualify the serial for uncanny status, but the spy-mistress also utilizes a concealed weapon predating those of the cinematic James Bond: a pencil that can fire poisonous darts. 

A number of familiar faces add to the watchability of JACK, such as Sidney Toler, Marjorie Lord and Keye Luke. It's a handsome looking but slow-paced effort, nowhere near either the best or the worst of chapterplays.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003)

 

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

Though I didn't like many of the changes the TWO TOWERS made to Tolkien's book, those in RETURN OF THE KING are largely justified. Within the context of a book, it wasn't wrong to devote pages and pages to the parallel encounters of Merry and Pippin with, respectively, good ruler Theoden and corrupted steward Denethor. But I'm very glad the film didn't devote so much time to those encounters. For instance, Film-Merry doesn't spend any time learning the ropes of Rohan's military service in the film; he just hangs around until it's time for him to fulfill his main role, that of rendering aid during Eowyn's struggle with the Witch-King of Angmar. 

Gandalf's overt motive for taking Pippin to Gondor is the same-- to protect the Hobbit after he messed with the Palantir-- but the scenes in which Denethor rejects the re-ascension of the royal heir Aragorn seem to me more dramatically pleasing than in the book. Denethor clutches his possession of the Gondor throne in the same way that victims of the Ring become slaves of its power. Denethor's irrational rejection of his younger son Faramir in favor of a fantasy-memory of the late older son Boromir is also true to Tolkien's observations on evil's power for self-deception and self-annihilation.

In my review of RETURN, I complained that there was too little Gollum for my taste, even though I found the ending of TOWERS fully effective: the questing Hobbits separated after Gollum betrays them to the giant spider Shelob. Jackson and company chose not to end TOWERS on that doleful note, moving all the plotlines concerned with the Hobbits' entrance into Cirith Ungol into RETURN. This makes it possible for the film to build up Gollum's presence more than one sees in the third part of the trilogy. Jackson et al surely intended to give Gollum greater emphasis, given that RETURN begins with a flashback to Gollum's beginnings, when, as the Hobbit Smeagol, he murdered his near relation to possess the "precious" Ring of Power. By foregrounding the way Smeagol's life was ended by the sudden intrusion of irresistible Evil, the film makes clearer the irony that the Ring's evil is defeated in part by one of its own vessels.

I wasn't wild for TOWERS' many original scenes in which poor Eowyn pined after the unobtainable Aragorn. However, in RETURN Eowyn's ill-fated love works to strengthen the scene in which she masquerades as a male soldier to join the fight, and takes Merry into battle with her. Their importance to the story defies conventional wisdom as to war being the exclusive business of Men (as Aragorn tells Eowyn), but it's not some putdown of "the patriarchy." Rather, Eowyn and Merry should be thought of as "the stones the builder rejected," able to overcome superior forces of evil through sheer pertinacity. I didn't care for the book's scenes in which Eowyn "settled" for secondary hero Faramir, but the parallel scenes in the film are much shorter. Moreover, they're easier to take because the film's Faramir is more fallible than Tolkien's original.

In the books Saruman and his pawn Wormtongue cease to be major players in the conflict once Orthanc is destroyed, though Tolkien gets one last use out of them as poisonous influences upon the Hobbits' bucolic home in the Shire. But it makes sense to get rid of these secondary villains quickly within the context of a sprawling movie. 

The Shelob-battle is given a different arrangement. Whereas in the book Gollum lures both Sam and Frodo into the spider's lair, Jackson has Gollum sow discord between the boon companions by playing upon Frodo's suspicions of anyone who might take the Ring from him. Frodo separates from Sam, allowing for lots of heady drama about friends parted, but Gollum can't resist trying for the Ring again. The two fight-- giving viewers a foretaste of their struggle in Mount Doom-- and for the first time Gollum learns that his "master" plans to destroy "the precious." As in the book Frodo still gets paralyzed by Shelob's sting and Sam manages to drive off the monster, though on this occasion Tolkien's description of the battle is better than the cinema version. From then on, most of the beats of Sam and Frodo's journey follow the book closely enough.

Jackson leaves out all the events of "the Scourging of the Shire." Yet a lengthy coda following the destruction of the Ring makes clear that both Frodo and Bilbo cannot go back to their old bucolic life, though they can receive the honor of passing into the Gray Havens of the Elves. This prefigures the passing of all the non-human inhabitants of Middle-Earth, as the Time of Men begins. Some found the coda too long, but it captures much of the melancholy of Tolkien's signature creation-- and that more than makes up for the few missteps along the way.

BEAST OF BABYLON AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1963)

 

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

This peplum benefits from a better-than-average grounding in real history and at least three charismatic players, though none of those assets keep the film from devolving into the usual cliches at the end.

The "Babylon" of the title is the Neo-Babylonian Empire of the sixth century, and the "beast" is named Balthazar (currently rendered "Belshazzar") and played by Piero Lulli. There was a crown prince of that name at the time that the Neo-Babylonians fell to the invading forces of Cyrus the Great, but it will come as no great surprise that the script for BEAST plays fast and loose with history.

The Persian king Cyrus gained great repute as a liberator of imprisoned peoples, not least because he released the Jewish slaves kept captive in the Babylonian Empire. The scripters for BEAST, one of whom was the director, turn Cyrus's wave of conquest into a crusade to abolish the ancient custom of slavery, in line with the narratives of liberation common to the strongman-films.

BEAST's strongman-- who of course is not any "son of Hercules"-- is Nippur (Gordon Scott), natural heir to the Babylonian throne. Nippur has been gone from his native city for many years, which he refers to as his "exile." However, since Nippur is said to have enjoyed a close relationship with Persian lord Cyrus in his absence, it seems likely that the script implied that he was gone due to a system of royal fosterage. This comes in handy when Nippur returns to Babylon, doesn't like how things have gone, and whistles up Cyrus to invade and overthrow the bad rulers.

His father the rightful king Sargon is absent as well (apparently imprisoned and kept hostage, though he's never seen). In the absence of both king and prince, Nippur's cousin Balthazar rules as regent, assisted by the high priestess of Ishtar, Ura (Moira Orfei). The script asserts that at some time in the past Babylon had banished both the custom of slavery and the corollary use of slaves for human sacrificial rites, and so Nippur is furious to see that Balthasar and Ura have brought the bad old days back.

Despite his uncanny strength, Nippur can't kick Balthasar off his throne, so he contacts an underground rebel alliance as well sending messages to Cyrus, who shares Nippur's progressive antipathy toward slavery and human sacrifice. Nippur also gets some possible help from Ura, who falls hard for Nippur's nipples and tries to persuade the hero to kill off Balthasar and rule a kingdom of evil beside her. However, Nippur's already fallen for a sweet young slave girl, so Ura gets nowhere with her seductive wiles. 

Once all that has been established, the rest is predictable routine, and only the principals Scott, Orfei and Lulli distinguish themselves from the dullness. Genevieve Grad plays the nice slave girl but she has nothing much to work with even if she does get the hero in the end.

THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971)

 

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

Director Sergio Martino completed two of his earliest giallos back to back in the same year and with two of the same writers contributing to his scripts. Neither this one nor CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL represents the best work of either Martino or his scripters, but it's arguable that they provided Martino with training for some of his better efforts in the genre later on. 

Of the two 1971 efforts, I felt that the script for SCORPION'S, while nothing extraordinary, provided a better array of victims and suspects while Martino's direction was more fluid. By contrast, I found VICE clunky and obvious in terms of both plot and characters. Admittedly, I'd seen VICE before over ten years ago, so it's possible that I retained some memories of its plot-twists, at least on the subconscious level. But visually I found it boring as well. 

A "razor killer" is on the loose in Vienna at the same time when Julie Wardh (Edwige Fenech) and her husband Neil return to the city for Neil's diplomatic business. Viewers learn that Julie's "vice" is not all that strange as vices go, for prior to her marriage she was regularly seeing a lover named Jean (Ivan Rassimov). Through flashbacks we see that Jean is a sadist, but it's not quite certain that Julie is a masochist, though she does allow Jean to inflict cuts in her flesh to satisfy his fetish.

At a party Julie's friend Carol introduces Julie to her cousin George (George Hilton), and slightly later Julie starts sleeping with George to allay the boredom she feels with her "safe" husband. But a caller threatens to reveal Julie's affair to her husband, Carol is slain by a razor-wielding murderer, and Julie almost meets the same fate. Is it a coincidence, or is Jean the Razor Killer? Or is all part of an even more devious plot, one of those beloved giallo schemes in which sane men pretend to be mad?

The film's greatest shortcoming is that Julie is not particularly sympathetic, despite getting targeted by a killer. I've only seen a couple of films made by star Edwige Fenech prior to VICE, so I can't get a sense as to her level of acting-skill at the time, though she had made over a dozen films of various kinds before 1971. All I can say is that a lot of giallos have been able to put across some basic heroine-sympathy despite the sketchiness of the main characters, and this one did not.

The film got my hopes up by starting out with a portentous quote from Freud about violence, but this turned out to be nothing but window-dressing for a murky story.