HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME (1981), APRIL FOOLS DAY (2009)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I'm gratified to note online info that others besides me regard HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME as an "American giallo." Most slashers of the eighties, good or bad, tend to follow a fairly linear plot, in which some psycho-killer slowly slays victim after victim without much controversy about the murderer's identity. Even when such films end with the revelation that the killer wasn't the expected culprit, the overall narrative isn't substantially different because of the twist ending.

Giallo-makers, though, love to complicate the main plot with tons of data, whether relevant to that plot or not. In the most extravagant Italian productions, the writers often seem to be mocking Poe's basic idea of the "ratiocinative tale." It seems unlikely that director J. Lee Thompson or the four credited writers of BIRTHDAY were intentionally emulating the Italian movies. Even though the 1981 film was one of the more successful slashers, it's possible that the filmmakers were just trying to meld the popular tropes of the slasher-story with more traditional Hitchcockian thrillers.

Ginny (Melissa Sue Anderson) belongs to the "Top Ten," a group of privileged high school seniors who hang out and sometimes scandalize the older residents of the city with dangerous games. Then a black-gloved killer slays two members of the clique before anyone realizes that anyone is in danger. Ginny, who previously underwent brain surgery a few years ago, slowly begins to wonder if she herself may be committing crimes due to some mental abnormality in her psyche, brought on by the death of her mother. It takes a long time for anyone-- Ginny, her father Hal (Lawrence Dane), or Doctor Faraday (Glenn Ford)-- to allude to the accident that took the life of Ginny's mother. For roughly the film, Ginny and her clique-members just go about their daily business, slamming one another or trying to sleep with one another.

Though the first murder is a simple throat-slashing, subsequent deaths are more imaginatively mounted-- again, along the lines of the giallo for "artistic" deaths. One of the standout set-pieces involves a young man getting a deadly shish-kebab shoved down his throat, and arguably the lobby card of this scene remains one of the most famous examples of lurid slasher-art. Some scenes eat a great deal of run-time even when they don't contribute that much to the overall story but the creation of red herrings, as with a continuity involving one of the boys sabotaging the pull-rope of a church-bell. But Thompson et al do an admirable job of keeping tension up even in what are essentially throwaway scenes.

Anderson carries most of the movie with her innocent but determined protagonist, seeking the truth even if she herself is unmasked as a lunatic. Lawrence Dane is equally good, even though it may take a while for viewers to get a handle on his character. Aside from Ginny, none of the Top Ten are more than ciphers, but of the young actors, Traci E Bregman and David Eisner prove better than average. 

I can't say that all the complications add up to a complex symbol-tapestry, but I admire the bravura flourish of the big finish, which the writers reportedly changed during filming-- IMO, for the better. The sociological trope of "killer going after privileged classes" doesn't really gel into anything meaningful, but that too reminds me strongly of Italian giallos.

I can't say 2008's APRIL FOOLS DAY reminds me of much of anything. This DTV movie is, as one may anticipate, a loose remake of the 1986 faux-slasher APRIL FOOL'S DAY, which I reviewed earlier. I don't think the original movie is considered one of the better slashers of the decade, but it has a certain iconic fame for having been among the many such films to play off famous holidays or social events.

And here's all anyone needs to know in comparing the original to the remake:

APRIL '86 was a slasher-take on the tropes associated with TEN LITTLE INDIANS, a mystery.

APRIL '08 is a slasher-take on the tropes associated with I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, which was already a slasher. And since SUMMER was a decent enough slasher, why would anyone watch a hack-version of the previous movie?

All the young men and women being stalked by a killer are flawlessly good-looking, and dull as dirt. I haven't seen the movie that propelled the writer-director team "The Butcher Brothers" to fame, but it's got to be better than this soulless junk. The terrible dialogue, which seems like 75% exposition, fails to put across any character enough to make one identify with any of the protagonists. 

I'm trying to think of one positive thing to say about this dismal DAY, but this time, I just can't do it. Unlike BIRTHDAY, DAY participates in the trope of the phantasmal figuration.

MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "BREAKING UP IS EASY TO DO" (1997)

 

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

The oddest thing about this three-part episode BREAKING (etc.) appears in the opening scene of the third section-- but first, a little backstory. In the previous two episodes, Al and Peg quarrel, and Al takes up separate residence, thinking that he's now going to score with hot young women. (This runs totally counter to his general tendency to avoid cheating on Peg, not out of devotion but out of a perverse sense of being doomed to be "married with children," as seen in this early episode). 

OK, back to the odd thing. Griff and Jefferson visit Al at his new digs, and observe that Al now sports a black eye. Now the viewer knows from the previous episode that Al got a visit from a hot young babe, but not for a reason he would've liked. She just wanted him to fix her shoe heel, him being a shoe-man and all. Al does so, but then  receives another knock at the door, following by a punch in the face from the girl's apish boyfriend. The girl of course does not apologize for her BF's action, but just blandly thanks Al for fixing her shoe.

The viewer knows all this, but before Al can make any explanations, Jefferson says, "Marcy predicted that some woman would beat holy hell out of you." Now, much though Marcy hates Al, and celebrates the possibility of his being permanently kicked out by Peg, this is a weird statement. Al's a big man; why would any average sized woman be able to beat him up? Of course Marcy has seen years' worth of evidence that Peg has verbally emasculated Al-- he even makes a "nutcracker" remark about Peg in this storyline-- but that's not quite the same as physical assault. Al does suffer such indignities at the hands of Peg and other females-- indeed, in this three-parter there's a flashback-montage in which Peg kicks Al off a bunkbed so that he crashes through the floor-- but it's not the sort of thing one sees every episode. My armchair-analysis is that the writers were having fun conflating Al's general humiliation with the idea of physical abuse, even though the viewer has clearly seen that Al did not, in this case, get beat up even by some giant-economy-size female (though this also happened a few times).

The actual plot of BREAKING doesn't merit much discussion, since this is probably the weakest episode of the eleventh and final season. The viewer knows that Al and Peg will get back together, and the script doesn't really come up with any good takes on their ongoing war of the sexes, except in one minor respect. While Al can't score to save his life, Peg puts herself out there and almost immediately snaps up rich suitor Bruce (Alan Thicke). Peg is at least ambivalent: she likes the idea of being a rich man's wife but regrets that Bruce does not have Al's "animal magnetism." Kelly and Bud retaliate for Al's years of indifferent neglect by being largely indifferent to his absence, and of course they pin their hopes on a wealthy daddy who's certainly not a shoe salesman. Bruce, though, makes it easy for Peg and the kids to dump him. Not only does he expect that if he marries Peg she'll have to learn to cook and clean, he also wants the kids to leave and make their own way. So, exit Bruce, leading to the reconciliation of Peg and Al.

Though Al doesn't take any lumps from the gentler sex this time, Jefferson and Bud do. Jefferson again lies to Marcy, leading her to both deck him and drag him home by his leg. As for Bud, once again he gets in trouble functioning as an agent to Kelly's acting career. The two siblings encounter Heather, another blonde bimbo who frequently steals Kelly's acting roles. The two young ladies decide to have it out in the boxing ring, and Bud gets caught in the middle, though he does endeavor to take advantage of Kelly as well. When Kelly trains for her bout by jumping rope, Bud sells tickets to young boys so they can watch her bouncing up and down. But when Bud tries to help Kelly train for her fight, she ends up punching him out twice. On top of that, during the boxing match between Kelly and Heather, Heather swings at Kelly but takes no small pleasure in having hit Bud instead. This leads to one of the few good lines of the story, from Kelly: "Hey! Nobody hits my brother! At least not without dating him first!"

So does that mean that all of the times Kelly has hit Bud-- not only with her fists, but with such things as a jukebox, an electrical barrage, and an arrow aimed at his skull (technically a miss)-- she has felt justified to do so because-- they're "dating?"

THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING (2019)

 

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

For some thirty years now I've seen numerous films in which some denizen of Arthurian Britain invades the modern world, either literally traveling in time or being reincarnated in some contemporaneous body. Most of them are dogs like the 1999 ARTHUR'S QUEST, whose creators are overly impressed with their banal conceptions. THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING, a British production written and directed by Joe (ADVENTURES OF TINTIN) Cornish is a fairly simplified take on the Arthurian mythos, but it's consistently engaging.

First, the prologue relates a D&D version of the conflict between Arthur and his half-sister Morgana. The film skirts the circumstances of Arthur's conception and asserts that after Young Arthur pulls Excalibur from the stone with the help of Merlin, he manages to unite many warring tribes of England. Envious Morgana turns to dark magic and tries to overthrow Camelot, and the story of Arthur ends with Merlin using his magic to imprison the serpentine form of Morgana in some other dimension.

Fast forward to the present. Alex (Louis Ashborne Serkis) is a short middle-school kid who pals around with his pudgy mate Bedders as they try to avoid being targeted by school bullies Lance and Kaye (the latter a rarely seen girl bully). Alex lives alone with his mother, and nothing is said of his father for half the film. By accident Alex stumbles across an ancient sword whose markings suggest Excalibur, according to an old book left to Alex by his absent father. But the unearthing of Excalibur awakens Morgana, and now she has power enough to send demon minions to obtain the sword.

A new boy, calling himself Mertin, enters the middle school, and soon enough he calls upon Alex and Bedders, telling them that he is actually Merlin traveling in time and Alex is the descendant of Arthur.  (I assume Bedders descends from Sir Bedivere but I don't believe it's stated.)  Alex and Bedders only believe this story after Merlin saves Alex from one of the demons. (The effort costs him energy, though, and Young Merlin briefly transforms into Old Patrick Stewart.) The youngsters must then find some way to combat Morgana-- and their best chance seems to be to bring Lance and Kaye into the fold, the way ancient Arthur reconciled warring kings. But can two bullies, implicitly named for archaic figures inimical to the archaic King of Britain, be trusted?

KID does set itself aside from the dozens of films in which bully-characters are just used as convenient targets for vengeance, since in this case Alex must actually manage to convert them to the cause of a noble mission. This is decent melodrama, but nothing exceptional. The script goes awry by introducing the story of the absent father, because it never becomes important to the story, not even in terms of straining Alex's relationship with his mother. The final confrontation with Morgana puts across the action with adequate FX, though the best scene in the film involves Alex knighting the whole student body of his school to battle the demons. (Naturally no kids are harmed during this demon invasion.)

I thought Serkis was a bit too nebbish-y to make a juvenile Arthur, and his line-readings are rather mechanical. Patrick Stewart isn't in the film long enough to make any impression, so I don't know why the producers bothered to hire him. Angus Imrie provides the best performance as Quirky Young Merlin, who excels in instructing the other kids in the Chivalric Code.

I DREAM OF JEANNIE: 15 YEARS LATER (1985)

 

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

Larry Hagman couldn't make this TV reunion-film, as he got an urgent call from DALLAS (that put him in a different pay-grade). But by 1985 Hagman had become so typed as J.R. Ewing that he probably would have cast a discordant note attempting to re-enact the role of Tony Nelson from the fondly remembered sixties comedy show.

Most latter-day reunions of TV-characters are forgettable, and JEANNIE '85 isn't much better than average. Of course, the original I DREAM OF JEANNIE show was largely slapstick froth, so even a bad follow-up wouldn't exactly have been a crime against great art. Further, the last season of the program allowed Tony and his ditzy genie Jeannie (Barbara Eden) to be married, which eliminated one of the two main tropes of the series; that of the man who chased a woman until she caught him. That last season was obliged to pursue the other principal trope, the struggle to keep outsiders from finding out that the respectable astronaut was married to a genie able to wreak miracles with the blink of an eye. Surprisingly, this trope also goes unused in the script by Dinah Kirgo and Irma Kalish. (The latter contributed one script apiece both to the original 1965-70 show and to the Hanna-Barbera JEANNIE cartoon.) Instead, Kirgo and Kalish focus on a motif that only occasionally appeared in the sixties series: the "war between men and women." 

So JEANNIE '85 opens when Jeannie and Tony (now played by Wayne Rogers) have been married 15 years, and they have a middle-school-aged boy, Tony Jr. (Brandon Call), who does not appear to have inherited any genie-genes from, uh, his mother. Tony is just about to retire from his astronaut career, and Jeannie anticipates that she and their son will be able to spend more time with him. But Tony accepts a plea from his superiors to delay retirement and participate in one more manned mission. This breeds an argument between the couple, in which Tony breaks his word. Yet Jeannie's somewhat in the wrong, for she fails to trust Tony's marital fidelity, becoming jealous when he's scheduled to work with a pretty female astronaut.

This plebeian quarrel is exacerbated by Jeannie's scheming sibling (also Eden), who for convenience I will call Jeannie II. This conniving cat would like nothing better than to break up the couple and claim Tony for herself (though in the telefilm she never actually makes a move on the astronaut). Naughty Number Two gets some help from Haji, King of the Genies (Andre de Shields). In the old show, Haji was always an elderly Arab, but in keeping with eighties tropes, he's now a relatively young Black guy who runs a fitness center. However, Haji has some traditionalism in his makeup, for he doesn't like how the younger breed of genies envy Jeannie I's successful marriage to a mortal. To discourage further intermarriage, he abets Jeannie II's plans.

The JEANNIE TV show did sometimes show Tony's male authority being undermined. Even though a genie was theoretically under her master's total command, Jeannie seemed to pick and choose when she would obey her master's orders. In JEANNIE '85, the couple separates because of the quarrel about retirement, and Jeannie takes Tony Jr. with her, to prove that she can make it on her own, without using her genie-powers. Kirgo and Kalish were probably trying to make a general statement about the difficulty of wives trying to market their skills after years of domestic work, but at least they keep the feminist content light. Jeannie II, in addition, continues to seek ways to break up her sister and Tony, and also gratuitously encourages Tony Jr. to help a pretty classmate (a teenaged Nicole Eggert) cheat on a school test.

Eden is game in her dual role, and she's easily the best thing about the telefilm, since most of the script is lacking in the humor department. Two performers from the sixties show, Bill Daily and Hayden Rorke, are given some minor scenes, but they could have been written out with no great loss. Indeed, Tony Nelson doesn't have much to do either. The main story arc revolves around Jeannie's attempts to prove herself and to mend fences with her husband, while trying to keep Jeannie II from messing up her life and that of her son. It's interesting that the characters with the most scenes are Jeannie, her sister and her son, but the writers don't do anything interesting with this conflict. There is one development that almost seems like the two Jeannies are struggling more over Tony Jr than over Tony. Jeannie II tricks her sister into entering her bottle and then traps her with a cork that only another genie can remove. Tony Jr. finds his imprisoned mother and swears to take care of her, while she makes the odd comment, "Don't all boys want to keep their mothers bottled up?" As if to disprove this canard, Tony Jr. taps his latent genie-powers and sets his mother free, just in time for her to rescue Tony from his conveniently-in-peril space-mission. The resolution seems like the writers were told to set things up as if a new series might eventuate-- an unlikely possibility, even though Eden still looked quite fetching in her middle years.

One other odd aspect of JEANNIE '85 was that it was directed by William Asher. Back in the sixties I DREAM OF JEANNIE competed with (and may've been inspired by) the 1964 BEWITCHED. William Asher worked on over a hundred episodes of that show as either writer, director, or producer, and was married to Elizabeth Montgomery to boot. But though the original JEANNIE was Asher's rival, JEANNIE '85 was one of the last few projects Asher directed, the very last being another reunion-film, RETURN TO GREEN ACRES.

ADDENDUM: It belatedly occurred to me that I probably allotted too much responsibility to the writers for the final form of the script. After all, Barbara Eden was the one performer who, in terms of pleasing nostalgic viewers, could not have been credibly replaced-- and what would have sealed the actress's participation more than a script in which she was the main focus in her dual role? Whereas the sixties series placed both Tony and Jeannie center stage, here it's really just Jeannie. A different writer penned the true last hurrah for the character, the 1991 telefilm I STILL DREAM OF JEANNIE-- but in that one, Tony is conveniently off stage for the whole tale, and once more the narrative emphasis is on the two Jeannies and Tony Jr.

REPLICANT (2001)

 

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

If a viewer can get past the utterly boneheaded rationale for REPLICANT, this second collaboration between star Jean-Claude Van Damme and HK director Ringo Lam has a little more emotional nuance than the standard American chopsocky.

Seattle cop Jake Riley (Michael Rooker) is forced to retire before he can catch a serial killer, nicknamed "The Torch" because he targets young mothers and burns them alive. The Torch (one of two roles played by Van Damme) even calls the retired cop at his home and taunts him with Jake's inability to catch him.

Then Jake gets another chance from those helpful folks at the CIA. They have perfected a miraculous cloning technology, which they plan to use in anti-terrorist operations. But since they don't want to mess up any of their own cases, they talk Jake into being the handler for their first guinea pig. The agents have obtained some DNA from the Torch, and they use this data to create a fully-grown "blank slate" version of the killer (the other Van Damme, playing his fourth "double role" in his movie career). It sounds like the resulting Replicant is the first time the CIA boffins have actually carried their experiment to its final conclusion, yet somehow they know their clone will have a psychic link to the wanted man. I guess this link would help the agents use other clones to track down hidden terrorists-- or something. As I said, if a viewer can accept all this folderol the way a kid would accept magic beans in a fairytale, said viewer will be better off.

Though in his home life Jake has a wife and a young son, he doesn't prove to be a very good babysitter for a fully adult copy of the murderer Jake hates with a passion. He's verbally and physically abusive, but the Replicant, not having known anything else, accepts Jake's abuse because Jake also feeds him and teaches him some basic facts of existence. During Replicant's education period, the CIA helpfully provides the clone with videos of gymnasts, and, wonder of wonders, Replicant starts imitating them. The script could have claimed that he was unconsciously emulating the original model, since it will be eventually seen that the Torch is also a super-athlete. But after asking the viewer to believe that the CIA would create a clone of a serial killer for a test run, the bit about the kung fu skills is easy by comparison.

The point of the experiment, to get Replicant to track down Torch, often takes a back seat to Jake's attempts to deal with his charge. The CIA doesn't provide Replicant with so much as an elementary education; he just learns really fast and is eventually able to frame sentences and make elementary connections. In due time, Replicant runs across his original self, and though it takes Torch a while to suss things out, eventually he tries to convert Replicant to his cause, because the two of them are essentially "brothers." 

Will Replicant manage to throw off the influence of the only "father" he's known, and bond with a "brother" he knows to be evil? If one has seen a Van Damme movie before-- or, for that matter, any version of TOTAL RECALL-- it's a given that the "blank slate" self is going to turn out better than the original. The developments of the plot are lively but inconsequential, for they only exist to provide excuses for high-kicking action. The only backstory of any importance is the explanation that the Torch formed his psychosis after his crazy mother almost killed him by burning him alive. This makes for a dodgy parallel between the Torch's history and the treatment of Replicant by Jake, and it doesn't help that Jake's character is too thin to make him anything but a Dirty Harry "clone." Knowing that he's angry at the real killer doesn't really make Jake's treatment of the innocent clone dramatically interesting, even when he does "get religion" about Replicant's essential nobility in the last half hour of the film.

Still, the "blank slate" theme acquires some strong resonance thanks to Van Damme's double performance. The actor is better as the soulful innocent than as the nihilistic misogynist, not least because Replicant gets a lot more scenes. Neither of REPLICANT's two writers, Lawrence Riggins and Les Weldon, have produced a ton of outstanding scripts. Weldon, though, racked up more consequential credits as a producer of big-ticket action movies like the 2011 CONAN THE BARBARIAN  and both the first and fourth entries in the EXPENDABLES franchise.

THE LAST DRAGONSLAYER (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, sociological*

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when I sample some streaming movie I've heard nothing about, the best I can hope for is competently executed but unexciting formula-fiction. But THE LAST DRAGONSLAYER, adapted for British TV from a YA fantasy book by Jasper Fforde, is that one happy exception to the rule.

Preteen Jennifer Strange is liberated from an orphanage by a quirky but lovable magician, Zambini (Andrew Buchan) to become his assistant. Through Jennifer's eyes we see the higglety pigglety word of the Jasper Fforde series: a modern-day England in which magic is still practiced even though the people have cars, guns, and television, and people wear a wild melange of modern and medieval attire. Because technology is so much easier, magic users have fallen on hard times, and Zambini himself runs an employment agency that sets up witches and wizards with mundane jobs like rewiring electrical systems.

When Jennifer turns 16 (and begins being played by Ellise Chappell), Zambini mysteriously disappears. Jennifer suspects some magical scheme, but she has no leads, so all she can do is keep running her surrogate father's agency. Various seers begin predicting that the Official Dragonslayer is destined to slay Maltcassion, the last dragon. Ever since a long-ago pact confined all dragons to their own lands, totally separate from human dominions, the dragon-race has been dying out. If Maltcassion dies, all of the dragon-lands will become open for human colonization, which is great news to the realm's grasping king (Matt "THE IT CROWD" Berry) and all of his court-sycophants. The common folk of the town adjoining Maltcassion's realm are no better; one lady hopes to claim free land and put up a parking lot.

Jennifer suspects that if the last dragon dies, the power of magic, which is already behaving erratically for the wizards, will also perish, and she'll never find Zambini. She journeys to the dwelling-place of the Official Dragonslayer, intending to talk him out of killing Maltcassion. Instead, the fellow thrusts the Dragonslayer's sword into Jennifer's hands, tells her she's the destined heir to the office, and perishes. Now everyone, from the dotty king to the howling mobs to annoying TV newscasters, expects the young woman to enter the dragon-lands on the prophesied date and slay Maltcassion, even though the creature has done nothing to break the truce between human and dragon. Jennifer even attempts to communicate with Maltcassion, but the dragon seems to regard their impending battle as set in stone.

I've not read the original novel, but I tend to believe writer Tom Edge (co-scripter of the 2019 biofilm JUDY) must have faithfully adapted the many complicated subplots of the book, particularly one involving how the pact between dragon and human came to be. Edge's script keeps revealing interesting things about the world at a breakneck pace, sort of like BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA with an actual plot. Director Jamie Stone keeps things visually interesting, seeking to compensate for the inexpensive TV-CGI with strong visuals. I knew none of the British actors except Berry, but no one sounds a bad note, and that's partly because the script, unlike so many dull fantasy-films, gives all the actors defining moments. I suppose for some viewers it might be a minus that the telefilm ends with a few unresolved plotlines, which is certainly because the Jasper Fforde book was the first in a series of four novels. I'm sorry the same crew didn't get the chance to adapt the other three parts of the story, but at least the whole story is out there.

Though Jennifer only has two short fights, they're enough to make this a combative film. Still, the emphasis is on comedy: on the attempt of a noble young woman to navigate a society of fools and knaves. The dominant comic mood doesn't prevent some sad moments, but the ending carries a rousing HUNGER GAMES vibe.

THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE (1971)

 

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

IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE is a fun name for a giallo even though its "animal title" was created to play off Dario Argento's groundbreaking THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. To those who would say the context of the fire-tongued reptile doesn't add up to much in the narrative, I'll note that the crystal-plumed bird is something of a "false clue" in Argento as well.

A mysterious killer starts off his spree in Dublin (IGUANA was actually filmed in Waterford, Ireland) by ringing a woman's doorbell and then both splashing her with acid and cutting her throat. He then loads her body in the trunk of a car belonging to Swiss ambassador Sobiesky (Anton Diffring). The police question the arrogant Sobieski and his family, though the only one who provides the film with a solid red herring is grown daughter Helen (Dagmar Lassander). However, the Dublin cops can only do so much since their main suspect-- who apparently had relations with the slain woman as his mistress-- is protected by diplomatic immunity.

So the local constables bring in a ringer to investigate the family, former cop Norton (Luigi Pistilli). It seems counter-intuitive to choose as your undercover guy a cop fired for having abused a suspect who then committed suicide in front of Norton's eyes. However, maybe the phlegmatic commissioner-- the one who coins the iguana metaphor for the killer-- is impressed by the fact that Norton's really, really bugged by his past mistake and seems to want absolution (assuming Norton's not the killer, since the script implies as much a few times). Of course Norton's undercover operation comes with fringe benefits, for it apparently hinges on his managing to chat up Helen and sleep with her while he's investigating.

Subsequent killings-- mostly with knives and acid, though one does involve a sabotaged bobsleb-- all involve people somehow tied to the Sobieski family. Viewers get to see a POV of the killer wearing dark glasses, so of course Helen and one or two other characters are also seen wearing dark glasses. There's an aimless subplot about blackmail and we also meet Norton's elderly mother and teenaged daughter, who live with the ex-cop. (One hears no more about the daughter's mother than about what Norton was doing to put food on the table before he got this undercover gig.) 

Director/co-scripter Riccardo Freda imitated the bloodiness of other giallo but none of Argento's stylish setups. Allegedly Freda used a pseudonym because of his dissatisfaction with the film, and because he wanted Roger Moore for Norton and couldn't get him. In truth, though the Norton character is nothing special, Pistilli imbues his role with a convincing nervous intensity, which is probably more than Moore could have accomplished. The other performances are just OK (including such figures as Valentina Cortese and Dominique Broschero), and the wrap-up is largely nonsensical. It hinges on the killer being a madman who just wanted everyone he knew to be unhappy, which may be the weakest giallo motive I've ever seen. (He also wears a disguise at one point, which is I assign the film my "outre outfits" trope.)

Oh, and the iguana metaphor? The commissioner compares the mystery killer to an iguana he (the commissioner) almost stepped on in Africa because the beast was so good at concealing itself. (Isn't it the chameleon who's a good hider?) Also, the killer's use of acid reminds the old cop of the fact that iguanas can spit a sort of venom, though he admits that the iguana is harmless to humans. (I looked it up: the iguana possesses atrophied venom glands, so his venom is weak.) The film IGUANA is somewhat atrophied in its power to entertain, but at least it has Luigi Pistilli and a few decent kill-scenes. Oh, and once or twice I got a feeling of that favorite Italian-movie theme, the corruption within the ruling class.

SAILOR VICTORY (1995)

 

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

I've never understood the rationale of ultra-short OVA serials. I assume that they're primarily directed at what used to be the home video market, and I suppose a short OVA might have more chance to catch fire than any of the one-shot show-pilots that used to fill time on commercial TV. But it's still a pretty slim chance, so maybe there's some economic reason behind the practice, like a studio intending to take a monetary loss for tax purposes.

In a semi-futuristic Japanese town called Mikado, all we know is that this otherwise modern-looking world is that a lot of people have access to battle-mecha. Criminals (one mastermind in each of VICTORY's two episodes) use mecha to pull off robberies, knowing that the Mikado cops will unleash-- SAILOR VICTORY! And Sailor Victory is five high-school girls in sailor-suits who can merge to command three fighting robots.

Wait, what? Five girls command three robots? I don't think the creators of this OVA knew whether they wanted to do VOLTRON or BUBBLEGUM CRISIS.

The robot-on-robot action is forgettable, but the character designs are OK, and I suppose the jokes were too. However, an hour after watching it, the only joke I remember is the team's tech-girl fits one of the mecha-robots with a drill-hand, and the robot's pilot objects because drills aren't feminine enough.

ANT MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA (2023)

 

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

"My whole life happened because I messed up. The only thing I didn't mess up is you."

I quote this forgettable quote from the middle of QUANTUMANIA because it's a good distillation of the MCU's still-reigning "girl boss" dynamic. In the scene, Ant-Man's teenaged daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) admits that she's got herself and her whole family in trouble because of conducting quantum-universe experiments on the sly. But this rare admission of wrongdoing by a female MCU character must immediately be minimized. And so Scott "Ant Man" Lang (Paul Rudd) tries to make his grown daughter feel better by beating up on himself for past misdeeds.

As with the previous two films, the scripts always call for Lang to be something of the "lovable loser." He starts out the first film about to be released from prison, though first he has to get beat up by a big black inmate who has nothing to do with the story. Then he gets whaled on by Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), adult daughter of Henry and Janet Pym, the former Ant Man and Wasp (Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer), because she wanted her to follow in her daddy's size-changing footsteps. In the sequel, Ant Man is constantly ragged on by both his female partner and his prospective father-in-law, while the majority of the story centers upon the character of a "sympathetic girl boss villain." So, now Scott's daughter Cassie, grown to young womanhood, creates a conduit that sucks her, Scott, Hope and Hope's parents into the same quantum universe in which Janet Van Dyne spent a thirty-year exile. But hey, it's SCOTT who needs to apologize.

Incidentally, the movie starts out with Scott having to bail Cassie out of jail because she shrunk a cop's police car. Her reason for doing so? Oh, the cops were both forcing homeless people out of some area, and tear-gassing "peaceful protesters." The movie gives Cassie an out for all of her actions-- which are admittedly not as bad as those of the Valkyrie character from THOR RAGNAROK-- so it's mildly amazing that she even gets to proffer an apology.

But in truth Cassie herself is mostly a conduit to throw the emphasis upon the elder Ms. Van Dyne, who in her thirty year exile made contact with the inhabitants of the quantum realm, trying to help them overthrow the tyrannical Conqueror and, in her off hours, apparently sleeping with one of the rebels (played by a poofy Bill Murray). "I had needs," Janet explains to her husband, who responds by stating that he tried to date someone else after Janet's apparent death, but he just couldn't do it because Janet too was so awesome. 

Some time before her rescue, Janet managed to seal off the tyrant from access to the higher realms, and once she's back in the quantum realm, Kang the Conqueror wants out. Most of the plot feels like a reprise of an old LOST IN SPACE episode (alien entity attempting to escape his confinement), crossbred with an even moldier "overthrow the local tyrant" plotline. Both plotlines are rendered nugatory in that the Conqueror Also Known as Kang (Jonathan Majors) is the dullest MCU villain of all time. But just so the MCU can have another impotent male to kick around, Kang at some point came across the near dead body of Darren Cross, the villain from the first film, and turns him into an unreasonable facsimile of the comics-villain Modok. He contributes cheap laughs rather than menace, though I supposed viewers with a giantess-fetish may like the scene where Cassie Lang (with no prior training, BTW) turns herself into a giant in order to thrash the pathetic super-stooge.

This third ANT-MAN outing is directed by the same fellow who helmed the first two, Peyton Reed. But where the first one was a mildly entertaining confection, and the second a boring action-flick, QUANTUMANIA may be the ugliest  MCU film of all time, though I suppose Reed's not responsible for the ghastly design of the micro-world and its denizens. Reed shows no talent for all these high-octane adventures in the sub-atomic world, and the script by Jeff Loveness is just one long cliche with bad jokes. Rudd and Douglas soldier on through all the nonsense, Lilly has almost nothing to do, and Pfeiffer gives a dull and uncommitted performance. Strangely, though I despised the Cassie character, Kathryn Newton gives a lively performance, and may have a bright future ahead of her, once people forget this awful flick.

There's the usual hype for more MCU crap in the credits sequence.

BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD; SEASON ONE (2008-09)

 

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

For all three of its seasons, the Cartoon Network series BATMAN:THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD served up a tongue-in-cheek version of Batman distinct from either the camp aesthetic of the 1966 show or the "noir swashbuckler" approach of the 1990s animated series. Indeed, in a Comics Alliance interview, producer James Tucker said, "We wanted to make it the show we watched when we were kids. Brave and the Bold is the show I thought I was watching as a kid. I didn't get all the jokes, so everything was deadly serious."

And yet, there's a lot of humor in BOLD. But it's the humor of the hipster-insider, who can gently mock the familiar tropes and yet still invest them with sincerity-- something the camp teleseries only did intermittently. Batman often makes wry comments about the absurdity of his own situations, in a way Adam West never would.

Of course, Adam West wasn't constantly encountering nearly every legacy character from DC Comics, from space aliens to quirky robots to mystical menaces from the long-dead past. The tongue-in-cheek approach allows the reader to credit that the relatively powerless Batman can navigate all of these situations, counter all these super-powerful threats, with nothing more than his wits, skills, and a handful of utility belt weapons. 

Tucker and his fellow showrunners followed closely the template of DC"s "revolving teamup" title, THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, which for most of its run focused on Batman having done-in-one crossovers with various DC characters. Thus there are almost no continued stories in BOLD, and only one or two continuous character arcs, like Batman playing mentor to new hero Blue Beetle. This discontinuous approach was the way the comic book game was played at DC Comics for roughly the company's first forty years, and significantly, most of the characters are adapted from the three "Comic Book Ages" during that era. But there's a strong attempt to emulate what many call the "Silver Age wackiness" of the 1960s, when the staid DC authors began to loosen up in an attempt to fight their competitors.

Only hardcore DC fans will appreciate the dissonance of having, say, Batman team up with western hero Jonah Hex to thwart the JLA-enemies, the Royal Flush Gang. Indeed, most of the episodes start with short teaser-vignettes like the one just mentioned, that have nothing to do with the main story of the episode. The teasers exist just to prepare the viewer for all the improbable character-and-concept collisions, whether they know DC history or not.

Most of the episodes are good, airy fun, eschewing any noir atmosphere for a Bat-aesthetic I've termed "Candyland Batman." In the same interview quoted above, Tucker also mentioned that they sought to make the action elements resemble Jack Kirby crossed with Dick Sprang. This was necessary because Sprang, one of the fan-favorite Bat-artists, was prized by DC not for fight choreography but for his fine illustration skills. Ironically, Kirby, despite having worked with DC at various times, was not the sort of fine artist DC editors usually desired. But his in-your-face dynamism certainly enlivens the comparative flatness of the Candyland aesthetic.

There are episodes in which the writers are just a bit too "twee" at times. In "Trials of the Demon," Batman time-travels back to Victorian England. He meets Sherlock Holmes, who immediately deduces that for the hero to dress in a Bat-costume, he must have suffered some terrible childhood trauma. 

Some episodes are overstuffed with too many characters to cover up a repetitive plot, as with "Duel of the Double Crossers" and "Journey to the Center of the Bat." On the other hand, "Legends of the Dark Mite," in which the Caped Crusader must contend with the mischief of Bat-Mite, works because Bat-Mite is a manic Batman-fan. Thus when he conjures up a couple dozen weird Bat-villains from several decades, it's an indicator of his obsession. The episode also contains shout-outs to the 1940s Daffy Duck cartoon short, "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery."

That said, the only episode whose mythicity can be graded better than "fair" is "Mayhem is the Music Meister." The titular villain, voiced by Neil Patrick Harris, has the power to enslave anyone who hears his melodic singing (complete with instrumentals out of nowhere). In addition to enslaving Batman's allies Aquaman, Green Arrow, and Black Canary (but not Bats, who's prepared with earplugs), the Meister briefly makes use of such "favored villains" as Grodd, Clock King and Black Manta, and also busts a few dozen briefly seen Bat-foes out of prison. Yet in that case, what makes all the multifarious elements work together is the script's repertoire of differing styles of music, from ballads to show tunes to rock'n-roll. The music numbers are further enhanced by a rare romantic subplot, in which Black Canary pursues the Cowled Crusader, but ends up becoming entwined with Green Arrow (as per the relationship of the latter characters in the comics). 

(I note in passing, though, that some fans were squicked out when Batman was also romantically pursued by The Huntress, who in this version was not related to the hero, but who in another iteration was the daughter of an alternate-Earth Batman.)

The show would keep the same basic format for two more seasons. Given its commitment to non-continuous episodes, it sometimes seems to me like a love letter to Batman editor Jack Schiff, who steered most of the Bat-comics for over twenty years, and who arguably promoted the idea of a "hero's rogue's gallery" more than any other DC editor of the Golden or Silver Ages.

THE RETURN OF THE MAN FROM UNCLE (1983)

 

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

This reunion of the principals from the 1960s series has a subtitle, but what it should have been named was, "The You Can't Go Home Again Affair."

Wikipedia asserts that writer-producer Michael Sloan created the script for RETURN at age 19, when the original teleseries was still airing. And indeed the telefilm looks like a juvenile assemblage of "cool moments" executed by someone who had little ear for the show's signature tongue-in-cheek humor.

I say "little ear" rather than "no ear" because Sloan does a decent job in catching the voices of superspies Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) as they're reunited fifteen years after both of them resigned from the superspy agency UNCLE. Because their original spy-chief is deceased (in keeping with the passing of the actor who played him, Leo G. Carroll), current UNCLE head honcho John Raleigh (ex-AVENGER Patrick MacNee) seeks out the two ex-spies for help with a current crisis.

A new incarnation of THRUSH has appeared, as major schemer Justin Sepheran (Anthony Zerbe) breaks jail. His agents steal a major nuclear weapon and threaten the world with nuclear blackmail, in addition to asking for a ransom delivered by Solo. Raleigh brings together Solo and Kuryuakin, who immediately fall back into all their old routines.

However, when Vaughn and McCallum aren't playing off each other, the rest of the narrative is dull as dirt, despite such guest stars as Zerbe, Geoffrey Lewis, Keenan Wynn, and Gayle Hunnicutt (given a particularly weak character, given that she's the female lead). There's a cute moment in which George Lazenby, driving a car with plates marked "JB," saves the UNCLE guys with a souped-up car, but this, along with the perfs of Vaughn and McCallum, is about the only memorable movie moment. Sloan went on to write all of the TV-reunions of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, which I remember as being marginally better.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978)

 

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

I was tempted to validate Ralph Bakshi's LORD OF THE RINGS as having "good" mythicity just because he managed to treat Tolkien's epic fantasy with a sense of high seriousness, in contrast to the only previous adaptation of the author, Rankin-Bass's 1977 THE HOBBIT. Even the fact that Bakshi's RINGS could not adapt the whole book, and that he was never able to produce a sequel to complete the full adaptation, would not have necessarily disqualified the movie in my mythicity canon, given that I have on occasion included one or two unfinished works there.

Yet seriousness is not enough. I don't claim to have the only possible take on the deep mythopoetics of the Tolkein epic, but one theme I identified in this essay centered upon the nature of identity in human beings, animals, and supernatural creatures, and how such identity was nullified by Sauron's creation, the One Ring. I appreciate how Bakshi-- a fan of the epic since its publication in the 1950s-- exerted himself to fit in all the major incidents of the book's first two parts. But the true meaning of the Ring's threat to identity got lost in the shuffle. Bakshi reproduces with great fidelity all of the events of Frodo's misuse of the Ring at the Prancing Pony, and he even shows the horror of the customers when Frodo disappears. But there's no sense of what's going on in Frodo's head, what sudden temptation makes him distance himself from his fellow creatures.

This particular example ties in with another limitation in Bakshi's version. The novel may deal with an ensemble of heroes, but the central struggle is that of the Ring-bearer Frodo, and to a lesser extent that of his faithful retainer Samwise. Bakshi does not really "get" any of the hobbits, not even the much less complicated Merry and Pippin. From first to last they seem to be like water-carriers to the more grandiose figures of wizards and elves. I hypothesize that Bakshi was so focused upon doing justice to Tolkien's epic scale that the homey charms of the hobbits were utterly lost on him-- which is ironic for an animation director who made his bones depicting the "everyman" character of Robert Crumb's FRITZ THE CAT. As a comparable irony, I noted in my review of RETURN OF THE KING that the Rankin-Bass people seemed comfortable with the homey stuff but not with the grandeur.

The other major debit of the Bakshi Version relates to his dependence on rotoscoping. I thought he did a creditable job with all the major characters, but he renders all of the orcs and similar horrors as vague silhouettes, sometimes with fangs or red eyes superimposed. I realize that it would have cost a lot more to do even semi-individualized Spawns of Evil, but every time I saw those specters, they looked like nothing but cost-saving measures, not fearsome warriors.

Nevertheless, I like all of Bakshi's grandiose figures, though for some reason Aragorn looks like a Native American guy. Gandalf, voiced by William Squire, steals every scene he's in, and his confrontation with the Balrog in the mines of Moria is every bit as dramatic as the live-action depiction in Jackson's FELLOWSHIP. On the whole, though, Jackson manages to excel both Bakshi and Rankin-Bass in being able to balance the bucolic and the resplendent. But Bakshi provided a very enjoyable precursor to a classic adaptation.

CONSTANTINE: CITY OF DEMONS (2018)

 

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

While watching DEMONS I had no idea it was a compilation of the episodes of an animated web series. The episodes seem just as seamless as if the movie had been conceived as a continuous DTV movie.

DEMONS is also a loose adaptation of the graphic novel HELLBLAZER: ALL HIS ENGINES, but the script by Marc DeMatteis takes the straightforward story by Mike Carey and adds various unnecessary complications.

This was the first animated film featuring Constantine (voiced by Matt Ryan, who played the live-action character in a 2014 TV show) in solo action, as opposed to his previous ensemble action in JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK. For that reason DeMatteis may have felt himself justified in interpolating aspects of the character's origins. Thus, after Constantine is contacted by his old mate Chas to save Chas's little daughter Trish from a mystic coma, a support-character relates how Constantine and Chas both experienced "the Newcastle incident." This forces the script to focus more on Constantine's past deeds than his current quest to liberate the little girl, as well as various other victims of the coma-spell (only briefly referenced in DEMONS).

As in the graphic novel, Constantine and Chas journey to Los Angeles to meet the demon behind the spell, and as in the novel, it's a corpulent demon, Beroul, whom the two men can't attack because the evil entity has the spirit of Trish inside him. Beroul blackmails Constantine into becoming Beroul's enforcer, to knock off his demon-competition. In due time the malcontent magician figures out how to summon the Aztec death-god Mictlantecuthli in order to destroy the demons-- though this still leaves him with the problem of how to liberate the spirit of Trish from Beroul's gullet.

DeMatteis, apparently drawing on a few lines in ENGINES where Constantine expresses discomfort in the City of Angels, adds a new player: Angela, the "collective consciousness" of the entire city. This spirit takes on the form of a sexy babe and tries to get jiggy with the hero to convert him to her cause-- which, rather redundantly, also involves getting rid of Beroul's competition. This duplication of motive proves inferior to Carey's original scenario, in which Beroul makes common cause with Mictlantecuthli, and it also has the effect of diminishing the mythic presence of the death-god, who is implicitly tied into the "collective consciousness" of L.A.'s Hispanic people, some of whom shared bloodlines with the Aztecs. Since the death-god is played down, DeMatteis also elides the ENGINES character Melosa, who is not an Aztec cultist but is loosely tied to such contemporaneous descendants.

The most unnecessary addition, though, is that Beroul is not really Beroul, but a mask for Constantine's old enemy Nergal, the devil who was involved in the Newcastle incident. In the comics this entity is a recurring menace, but here he's vanquished in roughly the same way that Beroul is in ENGINES, purely for the sake of tying the Los Angeles caper into Constantine's origin narrative. In addition, although the innocent Trish is saved, DEMONS gives both Chas and Constantine a much more downbeat conclusion to their heroic endeavor.

Though I found Angela unnecessary, as are a crew of "Constantine mini-me's" that appear in response to her spell, I still rate the film's mythicity as "fair" because of the depictions of the operations of occult magic, both those original to the screenplay and those derived from the graphic novel. I note in passing that DeMatteis' humorous moments are inferior to those of Carey. The animation is, like most of the stuff produced by the DCAU, well-done, with some harsher violence than usual when Beroul shows Constantine some of his "home movies."

HELLBOY: BLOOD AND IRON (2007)

 

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

Following SWORD OF STORMS, BLOOD AND IRON was the second of two DTV animated films released in the wake of the successful live-action HELLBOY movie. The story, co-written by the hero's creator Mike Mignola, adapts a continuity from the comics entitled WAKE THE DEVIL, which I have not read. A comment on the DVD extras asserts that WAKE was a very complicated storyline, and this may explain why IRON seems to be a loose assemblage of scenes with Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and his demon-busting buddies, well, busting demons.

A prologue establishes how a young monster-slayer, Trevor Bruttenholm (John Hurt), comes across a malignant female vampire somewhere in Eastern Europe, and after various efforts, he manages to slay it. However, the vampiress Erzebeth Ondrushko (clearly based on the real medieval figure of Erzebeth Bathory) survives by placing her spirit into a nearby iron maiden. (Though the film's subtitle references the famous Bismarck quote, where "blood and iron" signified the importance of power politics, the only significance here seems to be that Erzebeth drinks blood and also bathes in it like her namesake, while her spirit hides in an iron maiden.)

In later years Trevor comes across Hellboy as a child, an orphan-demon abandoned on the mortal plane, and he raises the demon-child to become a righteous ally to humankind. Trevor also forms the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, whose agents include such hyper-powered phenoms as the fire-wielding Liz (Selma Blair), the merman Abe Sapien, and "human metal detector" Sydney Leach. Trevor learns that the BPRD has received a request to investigate odd phenomena at a mansion in the Hamptons, and for some obscure reason the elder statesman that all three of these super-agents accompany him on the investigation. Perhaps he's had some psychic intuition, because until he and his aides arrive, they don't know that the mansion's owner had the place decorated with items derived from Eastern Europe as a publicity stunt. And among those items is a certain iron maiden.

Another DVD comment asserted that the makers were trying to avoid doing a standard vampire yarn. But of course most vampire stories don't have heroes with super-strong hands or flame-powers, so IRON is really a superhero story taking place in a vampire-haunted house. To give the superheroes foes worthy of their mettle, the vampiress-- who needs lots of help to reconstitute herself-- calls up several other magical aides, one of whom is her patroness, the Greek witch-goddess Hecate (Cree Summer).

Once the monsters start popping out of the walls, the plot largely goes out the window, as the spook-fighters battle such menaces as harpy-hags and Hecate in the form of a giant snake-woman. The battles are well animated but neither the goddess nor her vampire acolyte shape up to impressive villains. Hecate recognizes Hellboy as a sort of kindred spirit and tries to get him to join with his own kind, but there's no great suspense about whether the hero will resist this temptation.

Compared to SWORD OF STORMS, which had the advantage of dropping Hellboy in the midst of unfamiliar Japanese boogiemen, IRON is a little, shall we say, undernourished.

XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS: SEASON ONE (1995-96)

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

Xena, first featured in a three-part episode of HERCULES THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS, started her quest to mend her previously destructive ways in her titular series. The first episode teamed the character, played by Lucy Lawless, with her boon companion Gabrielle (Renee O'Connor), who supplied most of the show's comedy relief. The first season is also fairly rough in terms of its symbolic discourse, though several episodes contain myth-kernels that would receive greater development in later seasons. As in previous reviews of TV seasons, I will denote the level of mythicity in each episode with either a P for poor, an F for fair, or a G for good.

SINS OF THE PAST (F)-- For her first good deed, Xena seeks to thwart the plundering of a helpless village by Draco, one of Xena's old warlord-allies and a former lover as well. Draco warns that the people of Xena's home village will reject her due to her past, as indeed they do. The innocent but adventurous Gabrielle petitions to join the warrior princess. Initially Xena refuses, but she's won over by the young girl's pluck. Even though Xena prevents Draco from destroying Xena's home town, the heroine remains largely estranged from her place of birth.

CHARIOTS OF WAR (F)-- The warlord Cygnus wishes to destroy a defenseless farming community, and he complains that his only son Sphaerus isn't up to the task, in comparison to his late son Stentor. Further, when Xena defends the farmers, it's revealed that Cygnus thinks Xena guilty of killing Stentor. This is an OK meditation on the consuming desire for warfare but nothing special.

DREAMWORKER (F)-- Marius, ruthless worshiper of the dream-lord Morpheus, kidnaps Gabrielle to become the god's bride. The priest hurls Gabrielle into a dream-universe, where she will become Morpheus' prize if she makes the mistake of killing anyone in the dream. Xena uses a mystic ritual to follow Gabrielle into the dream-verse and keep her friend from making a fatal error. The script doesn't hold together well, but the concept of Gabrielle's "blood innocence," her freedom from Xena's taint of killing, takes on much greater importance later on.

CRADLE OF HOPE (F)-- King Gregor is warned of a prophecy that he will lose his throne to a fatherless child, so he sends his men looking for that fateful infant. Xena and Gabrielle find and protect the child, and also guard over a woman named Pandora, a descendant of the famous one. This Pandora preserves the original Pandora's Box, and claims that it still holds its one good entity, the spirit of Hope. The two plotlines of Pandora and the baby don't line up well, but the name "Hope" would be given to a major character in a later season.

THE PATH NOT TAKEN (F)-- Arms dealer Mezentius kidnaps a young bride whose marriage would have sealed a treaty between two rival kingdoms. The warlord plans to foment war between the kingdoms and then clean up selling weapons to both sides. Xena pretends to have returned to her evil ways in order to deceive Mezentius and rescue the bride, but this strategy also means deceiving an old ally, Marcus, who then appears again in MORTAL BELOVED.

THE RECKONING (F)-- Gabrielle becomes Xena's lawyer when the warrior princes is falsely accused of murder. The whole thing is a setup by Xena's former mentor, Ares God of War, essayed for the first time by actor Kevin Smith. Ares tries to persuade Xena to return to her warlike ways under his tutelage, but she tricks him and remains her own woman. There's an odd line about how Xena has never seen him in this form before, but she doesn't say what he looked like before. Later episodes will imply that the two might have been lovers as well as teacher and student.

THE TITANS (P)-- Gabrielle accidentally unleashes three of the gigantic Titans of elder times, For a short time they obey Gabrielle, thinking her a goddess. Then rebellious Hyperion exposes her as a mortal, and he lays plans to force Gabrielle to unleash other sleeping Titans on the world. Xena has to pull Gabrielle's hash out of the fire.

PROMETHEUS (G)-- Xena's first crossover in her own series is also her first strong mythic episode. Hercules' perpetual sparring partner, the Goddess Hera, causes the Titan Prometheus to be bound. This action deprives humanity both of Prometheus' gift of fire and, for some unstated reason, the ability to heal wounds. (Did the writers mix up Prometheus with Philoctetes, the Greek soldier with the unhealing wound?) Xena and Gabrielle seek a special sword that can sever the Titan's bonds, but Hercules and his sidekick Iolaus are on the same mission. It's revealed that the person who cuts the Titan's chains will be slain, so naturally each hero competes to make sure he, or she, is the one to nobly sacrifice his or her life. The episode provides Gabrielle's first encounter with Hercules and Iolaus, and Hera appears in the guise of a pair of hovering eyes and a disembodied voice.

DEATH IN CHAINS (G)-- King Sisyphus is destined to die when Celesta, goddess of death and sister to Hades, takes possession of his soul. The selfish mortal traps Celesta in his castle, but this means that no person on Earth can perish naturally. Hades himself sets Xena on Sisyphus' trail, and on the way Gabrielle has what seems to be her first romance with a young man named Tallus.

HOOVES AND HARLOTS (F)-- Xena and Gabrielle pass through the territory of the Amazons, just in time for a new outbreak of hostilities between the tribe of female warriors and the neighboring tribe of Centaurs. There is of course a third party manipulating the two tribes to fight one another. Still, there's a lot of good Amazon action, and Gabrielle becomes an Amazon princess, another story-trope that will be played up later on. She also gets her familiar fighting-staff here.

THE BLACK WOLF (F)-- Xena tries to help a gang of revolutionaries, led by the mysterious Black Wolf, against a tyrannical warlord. The fights are the best thing here, particularly one in which Xena comically humiliates the warlord's second in command. The comedy relief character Salmoneus, who'd been introduced in the same HERCULES episode where Xena debuted, meets Gabrielle for the first time.

BEWARE GREEKS BEARING GIFTS (P)-- This is the first episode to center Xena in a specific period of Greek history, making her contemporaneous with the Trojan War. In due time that specificity would go out the window. Xena and Gabrielle infiltrate Troy in order to render aid to Helen, but they can't stop Troy's fall thanks to a certain horsey gift. One of the Trojan defenders is Perdicas, the suitor Gabrielle left behind in her hometown, but though she's more impressed with him now, she remains committed to her path with Xena. Perdicas departs the fallen city accompanied by Helen, seeking freedom from being a war-prize.

ATHENS CITY ACADEMY OF THE PERFORMING BARDS (P)  -- This episode holds a smattering of slightly amusing jokes about Gabrielle attending a Greek version of a "school for the performing arts." But a few laughs can't mask the awfulness of a godawful "clip show." Lucy Lawless barely has any new scenes, but along with clips from Xena-episodes, the producers included a few clips from old Italian peplum-flicks for extra yocks.

A FISTFUL OF DINARS (P)-- A dull treasure-hunt episode, wherein Xena and Gabrielle try to prevent a god-weapon from falling into the hands of rotten treasure-hunters. One of the rapscallions is Petrocles, Xena's ex-fiancee, but the script doesn't play off their animus in any creative way. Petrocles does make a pass at Gabrielle, but this doesn't develop into any meaningful drama either.

WARRIOR... PRINCESS (F)-- Xena has her first meeting with a "Princess Diana" who is Xena's dead ringer, meaning that Lucy Lawless gets the chance to play a double role. Xena masquerades as the helpless royal in order to thwart assassinations and to make possible an advantageous marriage. Good fights and good comic byplay.

MORTAL BELOVED (F)-- One consequence of Xena's good deed in "The Path Not Taken" is that her old friend (lover?) Marcus perishes as collateral damage. Then Marcus' ghost appears before Xena, summoning her to the underworld to sort out a problem. The evil shade Atyminius has stolen the cap of invisibility from Hades, and this somehow empowers him not only to control the destinies of other shades, but to impinge upon the living world as well. This episode is fairly light on battle scenes because it places the most emphasis on the renewed relationship of Xena and Marcus. Lawless get her first real chance to do some strong romantic emoting on the show.

ROYAL COUPLE OF THIEVES (F)-- Another support-character from HERCULES, the thief Autolycus, crosses over into the Xenaverse. The warrior princess drafts the wily burglar into helping her recover, from a thieves' auction, what appears to be the Ark of the Covenant. The McGuffin is pretty unimportant as the episode spotlights the fractious partnership of Xena and Autolycus. Xena shows that she has a talent for the thieving life, and she gets to fight another master of her "Greek kung fu." Gabrielle barely appears, but the true owners of the ark seem to be itinerant Jews, though this is never stated outright.

THE PRODIGAL (P)-- Gabrielle becomes the prodigal daughter to her home village, as she returns there to re-evaluate the adventuring life. Her sister Lila resents Gabrielle for running off, but the greater threat is a troop of marauders. The village has hired a protector, the famed Meleager (Tim Thomerson), but he's a drunk who's lost his nerve. (CAT BALLOU anyone?) Xena only appears in scenes at the start and the closing. And what's with the concept of road-thieves who run down their victims with a wagonload of logs?

ALTARED STATES (G)-- If ROYAL COUPLE was over-respectful toward some sort of proto-Jews, ALTARED assails the dangers of unquestioning faith with a reworking of the Old Testament story of Isaac's near-sacrifice. Xena and Gabrielle interfere when a 12-year-old boy Icus is marked for sacrifice by the worshipers of his tribe, led by Mael. Icus's older brother. (The names Icus and Mael are altered versions of Isaac and his brother Ishmael.) The father of both boys, Anteus, is the stand-in for the Biblical Abraham. Anteus sincerely believes that his unnamed God has ordered Icus' altar-sacrifice, but Xena and Gabrielle eventually learn that Mael has faked Anteus' messages from God. Mael wants his brother dead because Anteus was going to promote Icus above Mael. An odd subplot is that these quasi-Jews have had their will sapped by eating a type of bread accidentally laced with the hallucinogen henbane. This has nothing to do with Mael's plot, since one source of the bread is Anteus' estranged wife Zora, who's returned to her pagan faith in opposition to the sacrificial ritual. The bread may have little to do with the main plot but it does give a dosed Gabrielle some funny scenes. Mael, in addition to attempting indirect fratricide, is also hostile to the ideal of powerful women, giving a speech about Xena being an affront to normal male-female roles. This may have been a small shot at evangelical Christians of the nineties, but the script keeps things from being preachy by emphasizing the tortured faith of Anteus, and a force that intervenes to prevent the sacrifice.

THE TIES THAT BIND (F)-- While Xena and Gabrielle seek to free a contingent of slaves from the dealer Kirilus, they encounter Atrius, an older man who claims to be Xena's father, who left Xena and her mother during the former's childhood. While this is going on, Kirilus, who worships Ares, is visited by the war-god, who manipulates the mortal into pressing an attack against Xena. After a lot of time-killing incidents, it's revealed that Atrius is actually Ares in disguise, attempting to lure the warrior princess back into his service. The episode is interesting given a later plotline that could have revealed Ares to be Xena's real father, though this idea was reworked into the third-season episode THE FURIES. TIES is notable for being the first time Gabrielle ever strikes Xena, albeit with the aim of bringing her to her senses.

THE GREATER GOOD (F)-- The best aspects of this episode got played down in the final cut, with Gabrielle trying to come to a separate peace with Xena's horse Argo. Xena, while trying to rescue guest-star Salmoneus from the warlord Talamedeus, gets hit with a slow poison. It almost incapacitates her, but she's able to school Gabrielle in the fine art of impersonating a warrior princess. The deception doesn't keep the warlord at bay for very long, though, and Xena appears to perish of the poison, causing both Gabrielle and Salmoneus to mourn. However, Xena recovers for some reason and kicks the bad guys' asses.

CALLISTO (G)-- Ares appeared far more often in the XENA series, but Callisto (Hudson Leick) remains the princess' most mythic foe. She technically made an "appearance" in GREATER GOOD, as she was the unseen assailant who hit Xena with a poison dart. But in this episode, Callisto challenges the heroine not only physically, but also morally, by claiming to be a survivor of one of Xena's past misdeeds. While Xena mordantly ponders the fruits of her past evils, Gabrielle has a considerably more humorous encounter with another new support-character, would-be warrior Joxer (Ted Raimi). The episode's climax is the season's most impressive set-piece, with Xena fighting Callisto and her men atop a huge fortification while Gabrielle is held by a rope that will burn through any moment. But a far more insidious indicator of Callisto's Satanic nature appears when she orders the soft-hearted Joxer to act the part of a warrior he thinks he is, and simply cut Gabrielle's throat.

DEATH MASK (F)-- Another family reunion episode for Xena. It had been established that Xena became a warrior princess to avenge her younger brother Lyceus, but for the first time she gets a chance to take down the man who led the marauders, the warlord Cortese. When Xena and Gabrielle are attacked on the road by masked bandits, Xena recognizes the masks as the kind worn by Cortese and some of his commanders. A little later, Xena meets another masked man, but this time it's her older brother Toris (never mentioned before and never seen again). Toris has infiltrated Cortese's troops as a strategy to get close enough to kill him, though Xena hopes for justice rather than vengeance. Xena also thinks that Cortese is working with a spy in the service of the local monarch-- only to learn that Cortese himself had become that monarch, and is using the bandits to plunder his people (which is the only reason he now wears the mask while in battle). Toris' rash desire for vengeance makes him a captive of the raiders, and Xena must rescue him. Toris' "survivor guilt" character arc is underwhelming. Cortese, having been established as the mortal who caused Xena's corruption, loses all mythic stature when he's reduced to the level of a double-identity schemer.

IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE? (F)-- Xena and Gabrielle seek to end a civil war between the Mitoans and the Thessalians, and in the process they come across the Amazon Ephiny, last seen in HOOVES AND HARLOTS. Ephiny is now pregnant by her centaur husband, who was slain during one of the local battles, so Gabrielle takes the Amazon to the local Temple of Ascelapius for further care-- the same temple where many of the war-wounded turn up. Xena captures Mitoan general Marmax and transports him to the same temple so that he can see some of the carnage up close. Xena, who knows a lot about battlefield medicine, butts heads with Ascelepian priest Galen, whose idea of treatment is to have the temple-god bless the injured. DOCTOR is a surprising close to the first season of an adventure-series whose episodes usually focused on all sorts of wild combat and frequent fatalities, for most of the episode's "action" involves desperate attempts to pull injured patients away from the grip of death. Oh, and Xena invents artificial respiration.

PIXELS (2015)

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

PIXELS is just another "underdog comedy," in which social outcasts find that they, and only they, can preserve the world against destruction. I'm not sure of the trope's provenance in cinema but I saw similar ideas propounded in dozens of Stan Lee fantasy-tales of the sixties, and I'm sure there must have been several precursors in prose fiction.

As middle-school kids, Sam, Will and Ludlow are nerds obsessed with video games. Sam gets a rare moment in the sun, competing in a major videogame contest, but he loses to an upstart named Eddie "The Fireblaster." Inexplicably videocassette footage of the competition is loaded into a time capsule and sent into space as a representation of human culture to any aliens who might open the capsule. I think comic books would have been better, but that's me.

As adults, Ludlow has become a conspiracy nut and Sam (Adam Sandler) is an electronics installer. Will (Kevin James) is rather more prosperous, having become President of the U.S., but at heart he's still a nerd, hanging out with Sam so they can discuss important topic like their favorite hot celebrity. Sam later gets further humiliation when he encounters a hot chick named Violet (MIchelle Monaghan), and she puts him down for his low-paying occupation. But Sam starts to get payback when he's summoned to the White House-- where Violet also works, as a military aide-- and asked to consult in his capacity as a videogame expert.

It turns out that some metamorphic aliens did encounter the space capsule, but because of all the war-games inside, they thought Earth was challenging them to combat. They allow the challengers to pick the "weapons," and thus they start attacking in such forms as the invading ships of Galaga, a giant Pac-Man, and the almost inevitable Donkey Kong. The three super-nerds are joined by Sam's old rival Eddie (Peter Dinklage) and together they must mount a defense against the quixotic aliens.

The director and writers keep things as superficial as possible, though there is an odd line, by an alien in the form of "Q-bert," to the effect that his people were once a grim race without any happiness. (I suppose another probable model for PIXELS might be the Classic Trek episode A PIECE OF THE ACTION.) The plot, and Sam's romantic arc with Violet, follows very predictable courses, but I graded the mythicity as fair just because the film does get kind of "meta" about including all these videogame references. There's no attention to the dynamics behind each fantasy, though, in marked contrast to the superior WRECK-IT RALPH. 

In terms of crossovers, there are none here, since Q'bert and Pac-Man and the rest are all fake versions of the game-characters, also in marked contrast to WRECK-IT RALPH.