BUCK ROGERS (1939)

 

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

Based on positive reviews by other serial buffs, I've given BUCK ROGERS two separate screenings since a long-ago first-watch, because I wanted to see if I might be missing something. But no, each time I've found ROGERS extraordinarily dull. And this despite the facts that the serial was produced by Universal Studios, who had initiated the Golden Age of Serials with their FLASH GORDON three years earlier, and that the actor playing Buck was Buster Crabbe, who had essayed Gordon in both the original serial and its 1938 follow-up, FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS.

Now, as my negative review of TRIP TO MARS shows, Universal wasn't able to capture the excellence of the first GORDON there either. Still, at least the sequel still used some of the same elements that brought success to both the first serial and the original comic strip.

The BUCK ROGERS comic preceded the FLASH GORDON strip but the two had different emphases: gosh-wow gimmickery in the first and sexy exoticism in the second. Buck was always more aggressively juvenile than Flash in the comics, but since a lot of serials were aimed at kids, Universal should have been able to duplicate the strip's focus on wild pulp action with lots of sci-fi gadgets.

Instead ROGERS proffers only a smattering of gadgetry. The serial recycles the "bullet cars" from TRIP TO MARS and comes up with a few original concepts, like a molecular teleportation device that presages STAR TREK's transporter. Unfortunately the gadget most often used is also the clunkiest of them all. Villain Killer Kane (Anthony Warde) has gained political control of Earth by controlling key figures with mind-control helmets; helmets that look like nothing more than deep-bottomed cook-pots. Every time I saw one of these idiotic contrivances, my sense of wonder picked up and left.

In the comics 20th-century denizen Buck Rogers alone fell into suspended animation and did not wake up until five centuries later, only to meet future girlfriend Wilma Deering and to learn that North America has been conquered by ruthless overlords. Buck's adventures however only took place in the b&w daily strip, while the color Sunday strips were devoted to the exploits of Wilma's young brother Buddy. The serial posits that two 20th century denizens, Buck and his fellow dirigible-crewman Buddy Wade *(Jackie Moran), undergo suspended animation and end up waking up in the 25th century. The two of them encounter both Wilma Deering (Constance Moore) and another strip-character, Doctor Huer, and both inhabit an enclave, "The Hidden City," from which they oppose the tyranny of Killer Kane. So this sounds like a setup for lots of hard-hitting, ray-gun blasting action, just like the comic strip, right?

Unfortunately, writers Norman S. Hall and Ray Trampe-- who also co-wrote the lackluster TRIP TO MARS-- spend much of their time having Buck and Buddy run around trying to forge a military alliance with the denizens of the planet Saturn. (The Saturnians are played by Asians in an interesting inversion of the hero's first opponents in the comic strip, a corrupt Mongolian regime.) I suppose the script's intent was to increase sympathy for the underdog rebels, who numerically would have no chance against Kane's dominion (though one never sees vast armies at the ruler's command). But endless scenes of Buck begging the Saturnians to support the rebel cause just don't offer much in the way of thrills. Possibly the serial just didn't have a sufficient budget to mount a lot of ray-gun battles and swordfights. This may be why ROGERS underperformed with its audience, and Universal scrapped a plan for a sequel, choosing instead to produce their third and last FLASH GORDON chapterplay.

Buster Crabbe's Buck isn't all that different from his Flash, but since Crabbe was extremely good at playing the good-natured hero type, this could have worked if the script had given the actor heroic things to do. Because Buck has so many scenes with Buddy, Wilma is kicked out of her comic-strip position as the hero's sidekick, and actress Moore has little to do but act resolute. To be sure, Jackie Moran sells the part of Buddy so winsomely that his participation is consistently enjoyable, in marked contrast to the great majority of juvenile actors in adventure-serials. Anthony Warde, though, makes a terrible despot, and not just because I'm used to him playing villainous second bananas. The script tries to sell him as a futuristic gangster, a tough enforcer-type who just lucked onto his hypnotic helmets, but whenever he's on screen he's utterly unconvincing as any kind of leader. Philson Ahn, brother of the better known support-actor Philip Ahn of KUNG FU fame, plays the Saturnian prince Tallen, and he projects quiet dignity in all of his scenes, even if I might wish that the Saturnian part of the story had much less emphasis.

Though I didn't enjoy ROGERS, I gave it a fair mythicity rating simply because the script takes a stab at representing the difficulty of political alliances, however dull the results. Curiously, though Buck and Wilma barely share any scenes, the conclusion references the duo's comic-strip romance. A fair number of serials eschew boy-girl stuff for most of the run-time but toss in the suggestion of a hookup at the very end. ROGERS isn't odd in doing this, but here Buddy attempts to push Buck and Wilma together, almost as if his character were apologizing to the Wilma character for having stolen so much of the spotlight.

THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997)

 

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

I praised Luc Besson's adaptation of the VALERIAN comic album for its emulation of the comic's "protean visual creativity," but in truth Besson had already gone that route in 1997's THE FIFTH ELEMENT, which had its origins in a story Besson began at age 16. But whereas VALERIAN was largely focused on the many forms that organic creation could take, ELEMENT is dedicated to the intertwined forces of creation and destruction. And, unlike VALERIAN, it includes a very good romantic arc.

The characters inhabit your standard multi-planetary space-opera cosmos,  implicitly evolved from a spacefaring culture based on Earth, though an assortment of aliens have become regular citizens of this galactic empire. The order of the cosmos is threatened with an apocalyptic threat, a "great evil" which Besson barely bothers to define. (It turns to be a careening dead planet aimed at Earth, which might be either a conscious or subconscious emulation of the FLASH GORDON comic strip, which was one of the grandfathers of space opera in pop culture.) 

Benevolent aliens hide four stones that can be used to save the Earth from the great evil. Though this maneuver keeps the stones safe from servants of the evil, so much time passes that no one else knows where to find them either, except for a priest named Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm). However, an Earth-ship chances across a sarcophagus containing the remains of "the fifth element," a female warrior designed by the good aliens to interact with the four element-themed stones to rescue the cosmos. Though the warrior is long dead, Earth scientists, apparently motivated only by curiosity, use biotechnology to create a new version of the warrior. Thus is born Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), who does not speak English and flees the scientific compound. She takes refuge in the flying taxicab of ex-soldier Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), and he ends up linking Leeloo up with Vito, the only person with true knowledge of the cosmic threat. However, this linkage isn't nearly as important to the film as the one between Leeloo and Dallas, who's established as a guy looking for love but saddled with a nagging, needy mother. If Dallas didn't mention having been thrown over by his last girlfriend, he'd sound like a nerd.

It's not worth recounting the many incidents by which Leeloo, Dallas and Vito become united in their quest to save Earth, or how they're opposed by nasty munitions-maker Zorg (Gary Oldman) and his bad-alien goons. All said incidents, even the minor ones, are organized by Besson as a visual assault on the audience, full of eye-popping primary colors and bizarre weapons (many of which look cobbled together from diverse parts, like the sort of weapons one might see in an old movie serial.) Willis' Dallas is like Humphrey Bogart's laconic Sam Spade trying to navigate his way through the panoplies of the Ziegfeld Follies, symbolized by the flamboyant, mouthy comic relief Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker). But unlike a lot of eye-candy in Hollywood films, this visual panache represents the efforts of millions of humans who like Dallas are "looking for love," or at least sex whereby to perpetuate their species. This is the ordered cosmos, which Leeloo was designed to defend, even though she was not explicitly designed for "love."

Zorg is the opposite of innocent Leeloo. He not only makes all of his riches off munitions, he depends upon mechanisms rather than people for his support. (A funny scene between Zorg and Vito illustrates the folly of this attitude, but Zorg learns nothing from the teaching.) Though he and Leeloo have only one scene together, he represents the human passion for destruction, and as Leeloo learns more about that proclivity, she questions whether the world deserves to be saved.

Holm, Oldman and Tucker all supply fine work in their support-roles, but the film succeeds by virtue of the chemistry between Willis and Jovovich. Leeloo is not a standard adventure-heroine, though she shows off her martial skills in a bravura fight-scene that counterpoints her space-opera violence with the performance of a futuristic opera-singer. Leeloo is, as an exchange between her and Dallas makes clear, both "valiant" and "vulnerable," and their romantic union is as much responsible for the universe's survival as the power of the four elements.

ADDENDUM: Some days after writing this review I read, for the first time, two volumes of VALERIAN which comprised a single two-part story, published in 1980 and 1981 and translated in Volume 4 of Cinebook's VALERIAN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION. In this continuity, some alien freebooters steal four sacred boxes based on the traditional four elements of Earth folklore. This reckless action unleashes element-based monsters on 1980s Earth, causing spatio-temporal agents Valerian and Laureline to get involved. Besson certainly might have incorporated the "element weapons" trope into his narrative, but nothing else in FIFTH ELEMENT resembles the story in these particular narratives by the French comics-creators. Indeed, the theme of heroism in FIFTH ELEMENT is one that isn't often echoed in the rambling, quasi-picaresque tales of the VALERIAN universe. Besson's main point of commonality with Christin and Mezeries is their mutual love of the aforementioned visual creativitiy.

SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS (2003)

 

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

Dreamworks has made a few really strong animated films and a lot of average works, but SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS must be their most schizophrenic. On one hand, Brad Pitt purportedly wanted to do a cartoon-film that his younger relatives could watch, and there's a lot of stuff in SINBAD aimed at a juvenile crowd. On the other hand, writer John Logan stated that his first draft script was "very complex, the relationships were very adult. It was too intense in terms of the drama for the audience that this movie was aimed at." I assume Logan tried to modify that draft to make it more kid-friendly, but he only did so by compromising the characters.

The overarching threat in SINBAD stems from the goddess Eris (voiced by Michelle Pfeiffer and named for an obscure Greek deity). She wants to foment war by depriving the city of  Syracuse of its cherished talisman, "the Book of Peace," though I was never clear as to what power this tome possessed. As for motive, well, Eris just likes messing with mortals. This sounds like this capriciousness might make Eris seem more formidable, but in fact it allows Logan to make her as inconsistent as he pleases.

Sinbad (Pitt) is one of those jaunty pirates who never kills anyone, and he somehow learns that the Book is on its way to Syracuse from some other place. He decides to have his crew intercept the ship and steal the Book for ransom. The pirates successfully waylay the transport vessel (again, without killing anyone), but there's a catch: one of the guardians of the Book is Sinbad's former friend Proteus, Prince of Syracuse. Proteus tries to persuade Sinbad to give up his evil ways, but Sinbad isn't having it. A sea monster attacks the pirate ship, and Proteus' vessel escapes with the Book while Sinbad falls into the drink. He's saved from death by Eris, who wants Sinbad to go to Syracuse and steal the Book for her, for the aforesaid vague reasons.

Sinbad does go to Syracuse but when he beholds Proteus's fiancee Marina (Catherine Zeta-Jones), he loses his resolve and leaves. Annoyed, Eris does the deed disguised as the pirate, framing him for the crime. Proteus believes Sinbad's claim of innocence, but no one else does. In order for Sinbad to regain the missing tome, Proteus swears to stand in for the accused, suffering execution if Sinbad does not return. Marina forces her way on board Sinbad's ship, ostensibly to protect Proteus but maybe more to learn more of the roguish buccaneer. Sinbad, Marina and the unremarkable crewmen then brave assorted hazards from Eris until reaching a fairly contrived climax.

SINBAD is very formulaic, but boasts one very strong action-sequence, when Eris sends mesmerizing Sirens to incapacitate the male pirates. Marina hears the siren-song but she doesn't swing that way, so she manages to save the ship from destruction. But most of the rest of the film is pedestrian.

The character of Sinbad comes unraveled when he reveals to Marina the reason he broke off his years-old friendship with Proteus and turned pirate. It happened when he saw Marina come to Syracuse ten years earlier, which is when Marina became loosely engaged to Proteus (though they're still not even officially a couple ten years later). Sinbad fell for Marina and then simply left Syracuse-- a ridiculous motive that even an older child would see through. 

I don't know what "adult" story Logan might have had in mind. But one possible scenario might be that Sinbad and Marina actually had some affair without Proteus' knowledge, and that Sinbad left over the shame of betraying a friend. In any case, the film wants to have things both ways: Sinbad is an unscrupulous rogue, but he's also a sentimental softie at heart. Even in scenes that don't involve Marina, his character is even more changeable than that of the chaos-goddess. And so the movie has no real heart, and is only slightly diverting at best.

REVAMPED (2007)

 

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

I have no idea how Jeff Rector, the star/director/writer of this vampire comedy, contrived to cast so many familiar faces in REVAMPED. I fantasize, however, that he invited them all to a big soiree, revealed his plans for a vampire flick, and did an Oprah: "And YOU get a role! And YOU get a role..."

Possibly Rector thought the film would do better in video rentals/sales the more actors, "name" and otherwise, were in the film, and for that reason he took what starts as a simple notion and then let it get completely out of control. In essence, only about three characters have any definable arcs:

Businessman Richard Clarke (Rector), contemplates suicide after learning of his wife's infidelity. However, he sees a vampire ad on TV, offering surcease from sorrow if the customer agrees to become one of the undead. Clarke accepts, becomes a vamp, and then gets embroiled in vamp politics.

Driven Jake Hardcastle (Sam J. Jones) wants to kill every bloodsucker in existence. Years ago some unknown vampire turned Hardcastle's wife and teen-aged daughter into undead minions. They tried to kill him, forcing the aggrieved cop to kill them instead.

Fanatic Vladimus (Billy Drago), who wants to read a mystic ritual and sacrifice a virgin so that Bad Stuff Will Happen.

Instead of writing a simple formula tale that pitted these three principals against one another, with only incidental involvement by support-cast, Rector's script wastes a lot of time building up support-cast people who really have little impact on the basic story. I don't KNOW that he did this to include more name actors, but most of the rest of the performers have next to nothing to do beyond burning up running-time. Fred Williamson, Anne Lockhart, Martin Kove, Tane McClure, Reggie Bannister, Vernon Wells-- I'm sure none of them minded the paychecks. But I bet any viewers felt cheated when they saw all these familiar faces playing utterly dispensable roles.

Clarke, like other characters, gets a few action-scenes, though nothing all that demanding, so I guess REVAMPED counts as a combative comedy, though it's barely ever funny. The oddest throwaway scene comes with Anne Lockhart. In real life she's almost seventy years old, but she's been made up to look much younger. She's presented as a character who might have the hots for Clarke, but all she ends up doing in the confused story is betraying the "good vamps" to the "bad vamps." Then her character is unceremoniously slain by a bad vamp, with the odd assertion, "No one over thirty joins our pack," or words to that effect. It's certainly "funny strange," but-- not "funny ha ha."

TARZAN OF THE APES (1918)

 

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

The very first Tarzan film, starring Elmo Lincoln as the ape man, adapted roughly the first half of Burroughs' book, while a second film, THE ROMANCE OF TARZAN, adapted the other half, or at least something approximating that narrative. ROMANCE so far remains a lost film, but fortunately the first TARZAN stands on its own mythic appeal, despite a few loose ends that presumably would have been clarified by the sequel.

As in the novel, Lord Greystoke and his pregnant wife Lady Greystoke are traveling to Africa when mutineers take over the ship. A well-meaning crewman named Binns (George B. French) persuades the other sailors to strand the English lord and lady on a desolate stretch of the African coast. Lord Greystoke manages to deliver his son but both of the newborn's parents are killed by the hostile apes of the region. Kala, a female ape who has lost her own child, succors the infant aristocrat and raises him as one of her own. Eventually, despite being smaller and weaker than most of his "brethren," the man-child Tarzan eventually becomes "lord" of the other apes and of this corner of the jungle, where he not infrequently comes into conflict with the local Black natives.

Unlike many adaptations of the novel, APES does spend a fair amount of time with Tarzan in childhood, though only at the age of ten, where he's played by one Gordon Griffith. Ten-year-old Tarzan stumbles across the cabin built by his late father and becomes fascinated with the human artifacts. However, in contrast to Burroughs' story, the young ape-man does not teach himself to read the books in the cabin by an unlikely process of deduction.

Instead, Young Tarzan gets introduced to human culture by Binns, the man who saved Tarzan's parents and thus made Tarzan's survival possible. Following the mutiny, Binns gets caught by Arab slavers, and only escapes his captors at the time Tarzan turns ten. The altruistic sailor seeks out the coastline where the castaways were abandoned, and upon meeting the boy, he pieces together what must have happened. Binns stays in Tarzan's company long enough to teach the ape-boy language. Then he leaves, planning to seek out Young Greystoke's family in England while the boy remains with the apes.

I forget what keeps Binns busy for roughly the next ten years, but by the time he does reach England, the boy has grown into a brawny male Tarzan (Elmo Lincoln). Though Binns is never seen again, he apparently convinces the heir to the peerage, William Clayton, to investigate the claim that the true Lord Greystoke still lives. Along with William comes the young American woman he's been courting, Jane Porter (Enid Markey), as well as Jane's father and her maid. In the book, Jane's party comes to Africa in total ignorance of Tarzan's existence.

During the interim Tarzan's mother Kala has been slain by one of the natives, causing even more strife between Tarzan and the Blacks. Tarzan spies Jane from afar and falls in love, though he doesn't stalk her quite as much as he did in the book.

In Burroughs, one of the great apes, not able to get busy with any female apes, abducts Jane from her camp, and she's rescued by Tarzan, after which the primeval man courts the civilized woman. The movie keeps the skeleton of this arrangement, but, perhaps wisely, chose to have a lustful native carry Jane away for a fate worse than death. I'm sure some viewers will assume that the filmmakers meant to equate Black men and apes. I just think it was easier for them to use a Black guy than a man in an ape costume.

The fight between the two big guys, White and Black, is the film's highlight, even though the finish is inadequately filmed and cutaways to Enid Markey screaming spoil the fight's continuity. Tarzan wins, of course, and Enid/Jane becomes a little less histrionic for the romance portion of the story. The plighting of their troth serves as the end of the film, though presumably the sequel would have found new complications to keep them apart, as the books did.

Silent-film director Scott Sidney handles things in an efficient if pedestrian manner. He also directed Lincoln in a 15-chapter serial, THE ADVENTURES OF TARZAN, of which ten chapters survive. Lincoln suggests a stolid nobility but does not project as much charm in the role as his successor Frank Merrill did in TARZAN THE TIGER, to say nothing of being able to touch the hem of Weismuller's leotard. But it's pleasing that the first TARZAN does a better than average job of telling the hero's unique origin story.

TARZAN THE APE MAN (1981)

 

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

When I finished watching John Derek's TARZAN THE APE MAN in the theater back in 1981, I would have fully agreed with the reigning current opinion that it was one of the worst films ever made. Not only did it fail to deliver on the larger-than-life adventure I expected of a Tarzan film, it was ponderous and pretentious, and seemingly more interested in Jane (Bo Derek) than in the titular Ape Man (Miles O'Keeffe in his breakout role). Back in 1981 I doubt that I knew that the director was the fifty-something husband of his twenty-something star, whom he'd married when she was 19. I'm sure I had heard that TARZAN was the first major role undertaken by Bo since her breakout success in the 1979 comedy "10," and that the filmmakers were clearly trying to capitalize on Bo's newfound prominence as a sex symbol.

I also might not have seen in 1981 the movie on which this film was based: the granddaddy of the Tarzan sound films, the 1932 TARZAN THE APE MAN, which cemented Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan as Tarzan and Jane as far as most moviegoers were concerned. In this 2013 review, though, I downgraded the John Derek film thusly:

Since the 1981 TARZAN film made so much of Oedipal currents in the relationship between Jane and her father, it should be noted that yes, [in the 1932 film] Jane does pull off her dress in her father's presence, and joke about how he shouldn't mind since he used to bathe her.  But I don't believe the writers intended this as part of some sexual complex.  The real context would seem to be that Jane, resenting her separation, is teasing him a little with her maturation in order to fluster him and thus have a little power over him.  Old Parker never seems other than paternal toward Jane, though it must be admitted that his death at the film's end does sever Jane's ties with civilization and make it easier for Tarzan to possess his new mate.

What was a minor aspect of the 1932 movie-- a modern young woman's involved relationship to her absentee father, which parallels nothing in the Burroughs book-- becomes ratcheted up to become the main theme of Derek's TARZAN. To be sure, in both films, the father of Jane perishes at the climax, which could imply the story's need to dispose of him to clear the wild man's access to his beloved. But it seems likely that Derek, who wrote other films with Bo, instructed the scriptwriters to build up the Oedipal currents in the triangle between Tarzan, Jane Parker, and James Parker.

Neither film is all that clear as to why Englishman James Parker has remained in Africa for close to twenty years, allowing his daughter to grow from childhood to womanhood in his absence. However, the 1981 film offers a rough reason in that its version of James, as essayed by Richard Harris, is a narcissist obsessed with finding glory through big game hunting, not looking for ivory and "the elephant's graveyard" as seen in the 1932 movie. Harris' James is also a good deal less monastic, for when Jane makes her unannounced trek to her dad's outpost, James has some Kurtz-like affair with a very young Black native woman, seemingly no older than Jane is. 

Jane has come to Africa because her mother is dead, leaving Jane a substantial fortune, and she wants to become acquainted with the father who neglected her for so long. Her attitude toward James is more contentious. Not only does Jane not approve of James shacking up with a very young woman (who isn't Jane?), she doesn't doff her clothes in James' presence, but claims that she's so rich she could buy and sell him. This of course makes the big game hunter rail in florid Shakespearean fashion, but it also makes him desire to prove his worth to his daughter-- who, as one might expect, favors her mother.

Seemingly out of nowhere, James announces his intention to hunt down a mysterious "White Ape" dwelling on a remote escarpment. He doesn't intend for Jane to go along, but she's as bullheaded as he is, and so she joins the expedition. There's a small irony here, for in a sense James creates his own rival by taking his daughter into the ape man's territory.

The script is silent as to how the inarticulate "white ape" happens to live in the jungle, communing with real apes and elephants. However, when the expedition trespasses on his terrain, he kidnaps Jane, which loosely parallels an event in the 1932 movie. The 1981 James Parker, though, fumes and rages like a jilted lover, swearing to mount and stuff the white ape's body.

Though Jane is initially terrified of the vine-swinging man-ape, she eventually becomes fascinated with his male beauty (probably helped by the fact that he doesn't talk). Jane gets wet several times, making it possible for the viewer to enjoy the wet-shirt effect, and she has a few scenes showing off her bared cleavage as well. It's not entirely certain that Tarzan understands that she's the opposite sex or what he might want to do about it, though, and this gives Jane some time to warm to him. She persuades Tarzan to take her back to her father, but James shoots at the ape man, wounding him. Jane makes her choice and helps Tarzan back to a refuge where she can clean his wound and care for him, bonding them even more.

However, the escarpment is also home to a tribe of weird Africans who like to paint themselves diverse colors, like white and green. The natives capture both James and Jane-- I frankly forget what happens to the other members of the party-- and the natives prepare Jane for her wedding to their chief, a big brute called "The Ivory King." The natives' ritual for the impending bride is to coat her with white paint, a foretaste of her coming degradation. This ritual strongly reinforces the idea that Derek had input in the script, for the scene resembles one in 1978's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD. The victim of the painting-ritual in that film? Derek's ex-wife Ursula Andress, to whom he was married from 1957 to 1966.

While Jane is being prepared for her nuptials, James keeps shouting assurances about how she can distance herself from her impending rape by imagining herself to be the goddess Aphrodite. Neither this, nor James's self-flattering casting of himself as Zeus, make any difference to the savages, and the Ivory King spears James to shut him up.

Tarzan arrives with a troop of elephants and engages the chief in single combat while the other natives look on, presumably cowed by the elephants. The fight between Tarzan and the chief isn't all that great, but after so many long soft-core romance sequences, at least it was Tarzan doing a Tarzan type of thing. The film ends with Jane choosing to remain with her jungle lover, and, as in the 1932 flick, there's no mention of marriage.

The film's best asset is its gorgeous location photography, executed partly in Sri Lanka. Derek, who was also cinematographer, showed far more skill in shooting nature than he did in pacing the romance of Tarzan and Jane. O'Keeffe looks imposing but he's not given anything interesting to do compared to the business given Weismuller in 1932. Harris is allowed to flamboyantly overact at fever pitch, and that may have some appeal in an ironic sense. Bo Derek would later become a decent though not stellar actress, particularly in television roles, but at this point in her career her talents were pretty raw. Nevertheless, her performance includes some good moments, apart from her photogenic qualities.

Both versions of TARZAN THE APE MAN position the hero in terms of his erotic and protective appeal to the female lead. The 1981 film-- initially given the risible working title "Me, Jane"-- comes close to suggesting that the young woman has conjured up Tarzan as a solution to her Oedipal conflicts. This might be the reason the white ape's life in the jungle is barely elaborated. Thus Derek's film doesn't focus purely on Tarzan, as do all the other books and movies I've encountered. The 1981 movie is structured more like a standard romance-film, in that both lead male and lead female are equally important to the narrative.

IRON MONKEY (1993)

 

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

Critics sometimes argue about whether a given film is a "director's movie" or a "writer's movie." IRON MONKEY feels like a "fight choreographer's movie," even though in this case said choreographer was the same as the director: Yuen Woo-ping, whose would later choreograph such films as the MATRIX trilogy and CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.

The bare-bones script for MONKEY is ostensibly based on a legend from the history of real-life martial artist Wong Fei-Hung, though from a period when Wong was still a child traveling with his father, and the two of them encountered a masked Robin Hood figure in a Chinese town circa 1858. 

Little Wong (Angie Tsang) and his dad Wong Kei-Ying (Donnie Yen) happen to traveling in this Chinese town, and Wong is forced to fight off some robbers with his superior kung fu skills. The local guards see his abilities and assume that he must be the black-costumed Iron Monkey, who constantly plunders the community's corrupt hierarchy in order to give the riches to the poor. 

In truth Iron Monkey is the double identity of local doctor of traditional Chinese medicine Yang Tienchan (Yu Rongguang), aided by his nurse Miss Orchid (Jean Wang), who also sometimes dons a black masked costume for a few kung-fu stunts. Since Yang doesn't want an innocent victimized by his deeds, he appears at the governor's mansion to demonstrate that he's not Wong. Wong, however, is so desperate to distance himself from the accused criminal that Wong tries to apprehend the fugitive. After a vigorous battle, Iron Monkey escapes. The governor, wanting to enlist Wong's talents, holds his son in prison so that Wong will go hunting for the Monkey, and Wong dutifully tries to bring the supposed criminal to heel, thus inciting the hostility of the lower-class locals. 

Of course after assorted battles the two heroes become allies, but that time real villainy enters the fray: a highly skilled Shaolin monk and his aides in service of the corrupt government. I assume they came in response to someone else's summons, since if the local governor knew they were coming, he would have no reason to involve Wong. The main villain even has a special "Buddha palm" that somehow transmits poison into his opponent's system, and this stratagem almost does spell doom for Iron Monkey.

Aside from admittedly dazzling fight-scenes (including one for the little kid), there are also a few comic bits involving Iron Monkey masquerading as an official. But the characters, as written by producer Tsui Hark, are too blandly  "good" or "bad" to inspire any strong sympathy. Going on memory, I believe Yuen had much greater success character-wise in the following year's WING CHUN, also based on a legendary historical figure, but that film had a different writer.

THE LEGEND OF ZORRO (2005)

 

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

Given the popularity of 1998's MASK OF ZORRO, I'm surprised it took Hollywood seven years to come out with a sequel. And maybe the producers weren't entirely sure the franchise had legs, for the budget was about $30 million less. Would LEGEND have made better box office with a bigger budget? Probably not, for though the script left things open for a second sequel, there are also strong indications of hedging bets with a potential wrap-up.

In my review of MASK I observed that it was in the tradition of many latter-day films that built on the mythos of Classic Zorro. However, it may be significant that few if any of these Latter Zorros proved capable of sustaining an ongoing series.  Before the two-film series of MASK and ZORRO, there had been a few times when some company made a couple of Zorros back-to-back, as with this pair of Euro-Zorros. To my knowledge, any time a company wanted to come out with a series of many episodes-- a comic book, a TV show-- the makers defaulted back to the Spanish California setting.

MASK paid all due reverence to Classic Zorro by having a Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins) train the younger Alejandro (Antonio Banderas) in the art of foxy-swashbuckling. However, the script for LEGEND-- written by two new writers-- omits any reference to Diego. Given that MASK ended with the character finally re-united with his grown daughter Elena, it would have been appropriate to at least mention if Diego had died or moved to Spain in the nine years between MASK and LEGEND. 

By this year of 1850, California is about to join the United States the married couple Alejandro and Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) have remained the only ones who know of Alejandro's double identity, and not even their young son Joaquin is aware of his father's true nature. But Elena does not like her husband's costumed excursions, and this seems to be the start of deeper issues, for a day or so after Alejandro's last escapade, Elena sues him for divorce. Elena's real reason for so doing are connected to her being blackmailed by ruthless American agents who want her free to spy upon the Spanish don Count Armand (Rufus Sewell). 

Alejandro, who knows nothing of the pressures upon Elena, is by turns confused by Elena's rejections and heartily jealous of the upper-class Spaniard Armand (thus reiterating the class-conflict aspect of the first film). As a way of striking back at his competition, Zorro begins investigating the activities of Armand's men, one of whom, a bigoted white guy, the hero has had previous dealing with. Zorro learns what Elena was charged to learn: that Armand plans to conspire with an early version of the Southern Confederacy in order to overthrow the American government.

Director Martin Campbell returns to boost the weak script with a fair quantity of athletic fight-scenes, and this time Elena, who had just one sword-battle in MASK, has four well-executed fight-scenes that don't treat her as if she were a guy in a dress. But the plot itself is nonsensically unworkable (involving soap-bars made of nitroglycerin), and the distortions of history are unnecessary. I can forgive the movie claiming that California statehood took place two years earlier than in the real world: the date may've been moved just so that Young Joaquin could be about nine years old. I can even understand the filmmakers not wanting to reference the unsavory conditions of the Mexican-American War, which was the proximate cause of California's annexation by the U.S. But why bring the Confederate States of America into the matter, eleven years before the CSA existed? Is it that the scripters thought that no one in the audience would remember dates that well? The CSA wasn't even strictly necessary to the plot, since Armand is tied to a generations-old secret society that wants to cripple American power. But I suppose even in 2005 the practice of virtue signaling was beginning to become a major Hollywood strategy.

Though the audience is supposed to resent it when a villain says that Alejandro's "Zorro 2.0" is past his shelf date, the script suggests that Zorro does not belong in the world of the late 19th century. Given that LEGEND is about half as entertaining as MASK, this was definitely a good place to end this short-lived franchise.

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, SEASON TWO & THREE (1967-68)

 

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

There's not a lot more to say about the second and third seasons of the Filmation SUPERMAN that I didn't say about Season One. None of the episodes introduce any further characters taken from the Superman comics, although the episode "Superman Meets His Match" pits the hero against his only Kryptonian opponent, a mindless humanoid beast whom Superman must defeat more by guile than might. (Like all the other Filmation aliens, the Kryptonian critter is poorly designed; they shoulda adapted the comics-monster known as The Flame-Dragon from Krypton.)

Sixteen new Superman episodes were produced, which I assume aired in the same format as Season One, with a Superboy episode sandwiched between two Supermans. (As with the previous DVD, no Superboys are included here, which I view as no great loss.) For the third and last season, the same format was kept except that all the Superman episodes were two-parters, in which the first part would be a cliffhanger, followed a Superboy short, and then concluding with the second half of the Superman story.

Possibly the most interesting thing about the last two seasons is the listing order of the episodes, given that I don't think that the order as presented on the discs and on Wikipedia is veracious. Is it really logical that Filmation would have aired an episode called "The Return of Brainiac," and then only issued Superman's first encounter with the computerized villain in Season 2? Or that Filmation would debut their version of The Prankster not in the one episode devoted to him-- listed as belonging to Season 2-- but in the first villain team-up, "Men from APE," which is allotted to Season One? Having been about eleven or twelve when these seasons aired, I seem to remember seeing the Prankster in his one solo episode BEFORE seeing him in the team-up. On a related note, though I watched the show repeatedly, I never saw a local broadcast of two second-season episodes, "The Halyah of the Himalyas" and "The Atomic Superman." I would have remembered the latter had I seen it, since it was largely a beat-for-beat remake of a Superboy comics-original, "The Atomic Superboy."

I very much enjoyed the cliffhanger-format of Season 3 back in the day, since the hero was more often placed in real jeopardy. Strangely, even though there's an episode with the Warlock in which he directly states that his magic can't harm Superman, two other episodes feature the Man of Steel being strongly affected by magic. In the winsomely titled tale "The Japanese Sandman," the titular villain almost causes the hero to fall into slumber with his magic sands. And in the Scotland-set "The Ghost of Kilbane Castle," a Scottish specter plays his ectoplasmic bagpipes to deprive Superman of his flying-power. (Love the heavy Scots accent: "Hoot! A flying man! Me magic pipes'll bring him doon.")

Speaking of accents, in "Japanese Sandman" Clark and Jimmy visit Japan on assignment, and all four Japanese characters-- two villains and two almost-victims-- speak accented English dialogue. If this DVD gets any woke reviews online, they will probably claim that the mere presence of accents makes the episode racist. For the record, there's no ill intent signaled by the accents; the producers most likely imagined that the audience would not expect foreign nationals to speak English with absolute perfection. The Sandman of the story is more or less a malignant genie, and his name comes from a 1920 American song. But though there was no such Sandman-figure in Japanese mythology, curiously a Japanese boxer adopted "Japanese Sandman" for his billing in 1930.

One other trivia-tidbit: in contrast to Season One, Lois Lane suspects Clark's identity in two separate stories, though nothing special comes of these moments.

MURDER BY INVITATION (1941)

 

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

Some online reviews call this a rip-off of the 1939 movie THE CAT AND THE CANARY, itself an adaptation of a 1922 stage play. But in truth INVITATION is a modestly pleasing inversion of the old chestnut "quarreling heirs gather for will-reading, and one tries to knock off all the competition." This time, rich old lady Denham (Sara Padden) invites all her relations to her mansion to see which of them is worth leaving her money to. In other words, she doesn't wait till she dies to see how she can screw over the relatives she likes least.

None of the potential heirs look at all sympathetic, for the movie starts out with them attempting (and failing) to put the old lady into an asylum for her eccentric behavior. This includes keeping some if not all of her money at her mansion rather than in a bank, so maybe the heirs are somewhat justified. Among the audience viewing the court battle are newspaper columnist Bob White (Wallace Ford) and his secretary-girlfriend Nora (Marian Marsh), but neither of them is invited to the mansion rendezvous of Denham and her relations.

Then one of the relatives is knife-murdered by a black-masked figure who emerges from a sliding panel, so Bob, Nora and a photographer drive out. In contrast to many old dark house flicks, the sheriff in charge of investigating the death knows Bob's newspaper rep and bends over backward to let Bob solve the case. Then someone swipes the body of the murdered man and commits a second murder. While the sheriff frets, that body disappears too. Later, as if the killer had some special grudge against the columnist, both corpses turn up in the closet of Bob's guest room.

It's just as well that INVITATION is a comedy, full of goofy one-liners, because when everything's wrapped up the bizarre actions of the murderer make no sense whatsoever. Denham starts out being somewhat sympathetic because she's eccentric but clearly not mad in the courtroom scene. But after the first murder, she shows utter indifference to the death of a relative in her house. Scripter George (HOUSE OF HORRORS) Bricker probably wanted to keep open the possibility that the old lady dunnit, but since this would be overly obvious, no one's likely to buy Denham as the perpetrator. Thus Denham's continued indifference to both a second and third murder indicates loses her whatever sympathy she'd gained. Both starring character Bob (who does not actually solve the murders) and all the supporting characters are tedious ciphers, so the only reason I gave the film a fair mythicity was due to the refreshing angle on the "gathering of the heirs" trope.

There are a fair number of pop-culture references here. Bob mentions THE CAT AND THE CANARY early on, and makes the "meta" assertion that he can't be killed because he's the "handsome juvenile lead" of the movie. A neighbor-character talks about his hobby of gardening and explains that he loves to smell flowers, which prompts Bob to compare the guy to the children's book character Ferdinand the Bull. The jokes aren't great but are certainly better than what passes for humor in most "old dark house" films.

ANGEL COP (1989)

 

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

ANGEL COP is a six-part OVA series that posits a future-world in which Japan has become the most powerful economic force on the planet. In the real world, Japan's "economic miracle" fizzled out roughly two years after the year COP came out. Obviously a lot of productions both before and after this series presented "Japan-centric" societies, so this makes an interesting contrast to a series like GUILTY CROWN, where Japan has been forced to knuckle under by other nations.

Precisely because Future-Japan sits in the catbird seat, other entities seek to kick them off that lofty perch. The most persistent foes are a Communist group, the Red May, which initiates terrorist actions to de-stabilize the economy. These threats are so great that the normal police force cannot fight such foes, and the government institutes the Special Security Force, a team of total badasses who are better able to take precipitate action.

Angel Mikawa, the "cop" of the title, is the epitome of ruthless justice, though her partner Raiden is more concerned with protecting innocents from criminal attack. As if to signal the futility of kinder and gentler special agents, Raiden is apparently killed in a firefight, leaving Angel free to pursue her extreme form of justice.

But a third force enters the game. Three bizarre mutants-- little girl Freya, dignified Asura, and FBB Lucifer-- begin attacking the agents of the Red May, killing the provocateurs when possible. When the special agents try to rein in these vigilantes, the agents too are killed or incapacitated, thanks to the fact that the mutants, called "Hunters," have fabulous psychokinetic powers. 

Angel's mission becomes even more complicated when a mysterious armored warrior enters the fray. This proves to be a Robocop version of Raiden, given cyborg-powers, so Angel gets some high-level help there. In addition, both Asura and Freya defect from their cause, providing aid to the special forces. Lucifer, an enormous blonde woman with the most powerful psychokinesis, becomes the main villain, and seems able to defeat the attacks of any other opponent.

Angel prevails, of course, but in the process she uncovers corruption in the Japanese government, which created the mutants for the same purpose the Communists have: to de-stabilize the culture-- though the motive is profit, not ideology. And the real culprit behind the corrupt officials are their foreign backers, the Americans. Though this may be standard America-bashing, at least this time it's in keeping with the hostility real-world Americans held toward Japan's "economic miracle" in the eighties. Allegedly the original backers were said to be American Jews, which suggests that the creator had bought into the "Elders of Zion" conspiracy theory. None of this, if true, survives in current translations. 

Angel and Raiden never become more than schematic sketches of their respective views of "justice" and "mercy" respective. The only approximation of a character-arc is that Angel starts out as utterly ruthless in her focus on her job. She ends up sacrificing Raiden (with his encouragement) to take out Lucifer, but she regrets having to do so. All the rest of the time, she's just a standard badass, only impressive when she dons her own set of cyborg-armor in the last couple of episodes.

One interesting tidbit is the OVA's use of a FBB villain in 1989. Women's bodybuilding had increased in the very late eighties, but FBB images didn't really become common until after Linda Hamilton played a pumped heroine in TERMINATOR 2. It would be interesting to know how prevalent such figures were in Japanese entertainment during this period. 

THE DOUBLE-D AVENGER (2001)

 

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

THE DOUBLE D AVENGER is said to have had a theatrical release in the US. But I sincerely doubt the film, written and directed by one William Winckler, ever would have been made had if its producers had not counted on making money off DVD editions. Said DVDs were almost certainly focused primarily on reaching the fans of "so bad it's good" films, not just because the film has a low budget and terrible jokes, but also because one DVD edition included a commentary by Joe Bob Briggs, notorious for ironically championing bad movies in his reviews and TV appearances.

AVENGER, though, has none of the charm of the "so bad" films that helped create the fandom. If the movie is like anything from the sixties sexploitation era it references, it would be comparable to dopey nudie comedies with names like 50,000 B.C. (BEFORE CLOTHING). Winckler sought to capitalize on the fandom surrounding the works of Russ Meyer by casting three actresses who had appeared in Meyer-films. Star Kitten Natividad had appeared in BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA-VIXENS, Haji FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!, and Raven de la Croix from UP! I should note that de la Croix-- whom most filmbuffs probably know better from Wynorski's LOST EMPIRE-- only has two scenes as a doctor consulting with Natividad's main character, while Haji essays one of the villains.

Heroine Chastity Knott (urgh) runs a successful bar where most of the female patrons seem to share her ginormous proclivities. Chastity's doctor informs her that Chastity has breast cancer, but there may be a solution if she travels to South America to seek a natural cure-all, known as the "cockazilla plant." Chastity goes all in (I guess the film's bad puns are catching), finds her way to the plant, and avails herself of its properties, though a boob-alicious amazon informs her that the plant can also bestow super-powers.

Sure enough, once Chastity returns to the U.S,, not only is her cancer cancelled, she possesses super-strength and near-invulnerability. She will find she has two weaknesses: lemonade juice (which is somehow inimical to her breasts even though she's not lactating) and being hit on the back of the head. If I didn't know that the whole script was moronic, I would think this a reference to a trope in Golden Age WONDER WOMAN comics, where that Amazon, though able to wrestle tanks, frequently did succumb to blows upon her head. (Winckler tosses in a couple of references to the seventies WONDER WOMAN TV show, and presumably paid Universal for the privilege of riffing on the theme song.)

Conveniently, some villains surface. It seems that Al Underwood, owner of a titty bar neighboring the one Chastity runs, thinks he's losing business to the competition, so he sends his three exotic dancers (one of whom is Haji) to kill Chastity. They all have super-weapons provided by a mad scientist who was a regular at the titty bar, but surprise; they can't kill Chastity, though they do manage to slay her date. So Chastity whips up a costume and the titular name for her masked identity, and seeks to make the malcontents pay for their crime.

All the humor is excruciating from start to finish, with the possible exception of one visual joke (though I can't guarantee that others viewers won't find this one as stupid as all the rest). That one visual joke: the villains flee "the Double D Avenger" in a jeep, and she makes them run off the road by falling to the ground and doing pushups. See, because her boobs are so big and strong they can create a mini-earthquake-- oh, well, it wasn't funny enough to be worth the time it took to describe it. On a related note, the Avenger is probably the only costumed heroine ever to knock her enemies out by hitting them with her bosom rather than her fists. I guess that makes AVENGER a combative film, though possibly the most improbable one ever.

And to conclude with the elephantine udders in the room-- yes, all three featured actresses still have big ones, but they themselves were all in their fifties during 2001. I can't say I found them, and even a couple of younger knocker-knockouts, particularly fetching. Indeed, the only one I liked was the actress playing the Black Amazon of South America, but she only got a minute or two of screen time.

Oh, and Forrest J. Ackerman has about five minutes in the film with Haji, Natividad, and a wax dummy of the Frankenstein Monster in the background. I doubt he appeared in the flick for any big paycheck, so the drool-factor may have been paramount in his case.

THE LOST EMPIRE (1984)

 

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

In my review of DEATHSTALKER II I wrote this of director Jim Wynorski:

Along with 1984's THE LOST EMPIRE, this sequel to 1983's DEATHSTALKER are the only movies from writer-director Jim Wynorski that I found diverting. Like his mentor Roger Corman, Wynorski had the ability to inject some fair humor into movies whose main appeal was T&A, but like Corman, Wynorski often neglected quality in favor of quantity.

I've thought about reviewing EMPIRE for some time now, but I couldn't seem to get a handle on it. The film is a tongue-in-cheek adventure in which three gorgeous babes journey to an island full of other women joining an evil mystic cult. In contrast to most T&A films, EMPIRE's heroines are all tough girls skilled with weapons and in hand-to-hand combat, whose dialogue alternates between imitations of hard-bitten Clint Eastwood lines and spacey pop culture quotes. Inquiring minds want to know: if the gorgeous babes can kick the butts of all the guys they meet, are they being exploited? Is the power of the male gaze really greater than the power of the female foot in the nads?

Quick summary of the nearly nugatory plot: policewoman Angel Wolfe (Melanie VIncz) learns that her beloved brother was killed by gem thieves looking for a jewel reputed to hold magical powers. The thieves' boss turns out to be the mysterious Doctor Sin Do (Angus Scrimm of PHANTASM fame), who maintains a cult on a remote island. Doctor Do is always open to more nubile young females joining his cult, but for some reason, he only allows them to apply in groups of three. So Awesome Angel recruits two other hotties to join her in her quest for vengeance, and they both put off washing their hair that night to help a girl out. One ally is Whitestar (Raven de la Croix), an Amerindian heroine who just wants to have fun. The other is Heather (Angela Aames), currently serving time in the kind of women's prison where the guards let the prisoners settle their quarrels with splashy catfights. (Heather gets a fairly lengthy fight with prisoner Whiplash, played by Angelique Pettyjohn of STAR TREK fame.) Although Angel was the cop who arrested Heather, she's able to arrange Heather's release within an hour or so to help out the investigation.

So once the girls are on the island there are various small altercations with the lustful guards while they try to figure out Sin Do's game. Their masquerade is ruined when Angel's FBI boyfriend Rick infiltrates the island too, and the girls have to come to his rescue, getting the other girl cultists to join them in fighting the bad guys. Angel finds out that Doctor Do, by stealing the gem, is able to match it with its mate and summon magical powers. Angel manages to vanquish him anyway and all the good people escape the island before it explodes.

I only give EMPIRE a fair mythicity rating for excelling CHARLIE'S ANGELS (the TV show) in combining sexploitation with feminine empowerment, at least in a humorous fashion. (Actually EMPIRE could also be a forerunner to the more spectacular charms of the two CHARLIE'S ANGELS feature films.)  Mentioning the director's tongue-in-cheek attitude ties into my insight that the only two things he's good at are depicting sexy women and making dopey jokes. EMPIRE is better in its depiction of sexy girls, while all the jokes are lame. (He even resorts to the old standard, "How would you like a bust in the mouth" with the expected pun.) In contrast, DEATHSTALKER II doesn't have nearly as many hot babe characters but some of the jokes are genuinely funny. None of the actresses can really fake-fight, but they look sexy doing their punches and karate chops, and Wynorski supplies many such scenes for those that like them. 

NINJA ACADEMY (1989)

 

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

When is a movie with a big fight at the end not a combative movie? When it's NINJA ACADEMY.

That's a little coy, of course. My formulation of the combative mode depends on the idea that a work is only combative when one or more of the central characters participate in significant combat. Here, the big end fight is between the villain and one of the support-characters, as was also the case with 1962's THE THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES.

That categorization aside, NINJA clearly copied the main schtick of POLICE ACADEMY: "misfits make good in demanding roles despite all their eccentricities." The big difference is that the goofy cops in POLICE ACADEMY have to prove that they can keep order in society, while the goofy students of NINJA are just trying to master ninja skills to gain some psychological security. They do end up defending their school against a rival ninja school, located just next door (like MEATBALLS), but that's a secondary consideration.

So the usual collection of weirdos-- a wise guy (the romantic lead), a mime, a nerd, a survivalist nut, a couple of hotties, and a British James Bond type who needs re-training. They get hard training from the sensei China (Gerald Okamura) and slightly milder treatment from his cute adoptive daughter Gayle. Okamura is nearly the only actor who has a long list of support-credits and so may be recognizable to some viewers, but most of the others didn't do much beyond this film.

That said, the performers do put a fair amount of energy into the nonsense, and the result is that it's a fun film if one keeps one's expectations low. The principals don't wear ninja costumes that often-- in fact, most of what they do looks like standard military training-- but almost all their enemies appear in full masked regalia. The spy-guy uses a couple of uncanny devices to help him get through the demanding courses, and the closest thing to a subplot is the wise guy trying to romance Gayle. The film winds up to a fairly impressive fight-scene between support-character Chiba and the leader of the mean ninjas. A silly little film, but maybe diverting if you're in the right mood.

ZATOICHI AND THE CHEST OF GOLD (1964)

 

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

Given my complaints about the fourth Zatoichi film, I'm more than merely pleased to see that the fifth is the best one since the original. GOLD is, in addition to being the first Zatoichi filmed in color, the first of three installments directed by Kazuo Ikehiro, who gives Film Five a more fluid visual style than any previous entry.

This time the script pays little attention to romance, and concentrates on societal conflict. The blind masseuse-swordsman wanders into a conflict between simple villagers and one of the local overlords, to whom they must pay annual taxes. Given that Zatoichi himself is low-born despite his samurai-level sword-skills, this puts him in good standing as a liminal figure, able to comprehend the viewpoints of both classes.

The villagers have assembled a chest of golden coins in order to pay their taxes to taxman Gundayu, but when they try to take the chest to the taxman's locale, bandits raid them, led by the formidable, whip-wielding Jushiro (Tomisaburo Wakayama, famed as the star of the later LONE WOLF AND CUB films). Zatoichi kills some of the bandits but one of them manages to abscond with the gold. The villagers are distraught, asking the taxman for more time to pay, but Gundayu threatens them with the power of the law. Zatoichi must play detective to find out who has the gold.

While the fruits of the swordsman's labor reveal rottenness in the upper class, it's noteworthy that the low-class villagers don't come off that well either, since in their desperation some of them accuse Zatoichi of the theft. Some of the mystery-plot is draggy, but the hero performs four separate sword-fights, and at one point he proves his superlative skills by using his sword to split a coin thrown into the air. Jushiro, with whom Zatoichi duels at the climax, isn't just a standard tough opponent. He's an even more negative incarnation of the upper class, telling Zatoichi that the masseuse is a worm he'd love to cut to pieces. The climax, in which Jushiro fights with both whip and sword, is a welcome change from the usual chambara conclusion. As noted, there are some minor romantic elements but the strong plot could have worked without them.

JUDGE DREDD (1995)

 

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

Regarded as just another high-octane summer blockbuster, JUDGE DREDD makes pretty good adventure-fare. However, it doesn't really come close to adapting its source material, except in terms of outward visuals. Stallone offended many fans by the number of times he doffed his Judge's-visor. But he looks great in full Judge regalia, and the scenes of him ordering his gun to fire this or that special ammo are good fun. His character has far too many sentimental notes for the real Dredd, who craps bricks bigger than Chuck Norris. Still, there are times when Stallone tapped into his Inner Cobra, when he shows personal outrage at the scumbags who are the bane (albeit also the justification) of his existence. Once or twice Sly even gets the Dredd sense of humor right.

Mega-City-One looks pretty good, too, even though the film's was helmed by one Danny Cannon, primarily a TV-director without much range, going from good formula like GOTHAM to dreck like GOTHAM KNIGHTS. The movie begins from the viewpoint of Fergee (Rob Schneider). a citizen returning to the City after a justified imprisonment for computer hacking. Cannon successfully gets across the grandeur and the chaos of Mega-City, which is something of an anti-Metropolis (Fritz Lang's, not Clark Kent's).

Whereas Metropolis was defined by a struggle between the ruling elite and a lower-class proletariat, trouble in Mega-City usually stems from various flavors of the middle class, crowded into a massive city that is their only hope of survival amidst a nuclear wasteland. The middle class makes the technocracy function, but their follies continually threaten the city's security. Thus in the comics the Judges are created to deal out rough justice to keep the burgeoning population in line at all times.

One will find no acknowledgement of this cold equation in the DREDD script by William Wisher Jr and Steven de Souza. To these writers, Judge Dredd is just an anal-retentive meanie who sentences minor offenders like Fergee to more jail time because he Dredd has no social life. Stallone's Dredd won't open up to the humanizing influence of fellow Judge Hershey (Diane Lane), nor will he take advice about ethics from his symbolic father-figure Fargo (Max Von Sydow). So Mister "I Am the Law" must find out the hard way that he too can be victimized by Blind Justice, when renegade Judge Rico (Armand Assante) successfully frames Dredd for murder. 

Fargo, through fatherly self-sacrifice, manages to get Dredd's sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Ironically, Dredd escapes this injustice thanks to vicious wasteland-criminals. Such is the Angel Family, whose scion "Mean" becomes one of Dredd's regular sparring-partners in the comics. These scavengers shoot down the prison transport-craft holding Dredd, Fergee, and other prisoners. Dredd survives to kick all the freaky criminals' butts, while Fergee survives to tag along making the usual one-liners of the standard comedy-relief for an action film. Then Dredd, with Fergee in tow, must return to Mega-City to clear his name and stop Rico's foul plans. He gets just a little additional help from Hershey as they face off against honest but misled Judges, crooked Judges, and a killer robot. Oh yeah, and Dredd must also learn that not only that Man was not made for the Sabbath, he must also learn that everything he thought about his origins is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Most of the dramatic beats of the Wisher-de Souza script are pedestrian and familiar. Yet I give the writers their due in another department: DREDD is never dull, zooming from one big action set-piece to another with very little down-time. In this DREDD is at least efficient formula in comparison to many of its bungled 1995 competitors, particularly BATMAN FOREVER. I could have lived without the whole Stallone-Assante conflict about who betrayed who and for what reason, and I didn't need to see Stallone bellow "I am The Law" with the demented fervor of a soccer-fan cheering on his team. Still, the makeup people did a fine job with Mean Angel, who has a rousing fight with Dredd, so I'm thankful for modest favors. Oh, yeah, and Diane Lane gets into a lively catfight with Joan Chen, just so the female lead is able to bring something to the table.

TMNT (2007)

 

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

I don't know why it took over ten years for Hollywood to attempt another Mutant Turtles film, even if the last in the live-action series did not perform well. In fairness, though, back in the nineties there was little evidence that any superhero franchise could have "legs" beyond three or four films. After all, both the eighties SUPERMAN series and the nineties BATMAN series flamed out with a dismal fourth flick.

TMNT made decent box-office, though, and part of its charm is that animation of any kind will always be more efficacious than live-action as far as depicting high-octane superhero thrills. But the other part of the movie's charm is that it got the Turtles, however briefly, out of their pizza-munching comfort zone.

The plot discretely hops over the events of Movie Three and addresses what happened to the teenage terrapins after their nemesis Shredder dies at the end of Movie Two. Writer-director Kevin Munroe gets maximum benefit out of seeing the four happy dudes suddenly at odds. Through the viewpoints of the Turtles' human buddies April O'Neil (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Casey Jones (Chris Evans), the audience learns the primary cause. The brothers' rat-sensei Splinter (Mako, in one of his last roles) sent Leonardo to South America to hone his ninja skills. Whatever Splinter's motives, the result is that the other three become somewhat divided by the departure of the oldest brother, who had always been the de facto leader. Donatello and Michelangelo both get mundane jobs that don't involve revealing their turtle-tude. Raphael, always the angriest and least patient of the quartet, secretly dons an armored costume and becomes a solo vigilante, taking out his rage on the criminal element. April is so concerned at her friends' fragmentation that she journeys to South America to talk Leonardo into returning. But Leonardo, who may be going through a crisis of self-confidence (Munroe never clarifies this), refuses.

But Raphael is right to keep patrolling the streets, for a new menace is at hand. Businessman Max Winters (Patrick Stewart), who is actually an ancient general cursed with immortality, has a plan to get rid of his ageless nature and to live a normal life. Problem is, his plan involves opening the same dimensional portal that bestowed immortality on him, and the first time the portal opened, it unleashed on Earth thirteen monsters, which I *think* have just been hidden away in remote places, like Bigfoot. The menace also involves four of Winters' contemporaries who got turned into stone statues, whom Winters re-animates, However, the generals then form their own agenda, as does Karai (Zhang Ziyi), leader of a faction of the Foot Clan. (For some reason the film is cagey about Karai being the adoptive daughter of Shredder, as she is in most iterations, but perhaps Munroe hoped to do a Big Reveal in a sequel.)

Munroe's save-our-dimension plot is overly complicated, but it's mostly backdrop for sorting out the ennui plaguing the ninja crusaders. Leonardo does return to New York of course. And when he does, he finds that in addition to coping with the new threat, he must seek to bring Raphael's animus under control. The duel-between-brothers is the film's highlight, more impressive for its emotional tenor than for the actual animation of the fight-scene. I particularly like the fact that Munroe does not try to psychologize Raphael's anger. It just exists, an elemental part of his nature that he has to rein in for his survival and that of his siblings.

Once the Turtles do band together against their enemies, the film remains enjoyable but only a little better than average. One minor asset is that April, usually a side-liner in the action scenes, actually "gets her ninja on" and performs a few swordplay moves-- her ninja-gear all yellow, like her jumpsuit from the eighties cartoon. Kevin Munroe voiced possible plans for another animated movie but fate and Nickolodeon had other plans. Still, TMNT remains an above-average effort with a property that seems fairly resistant to innovation.