THE MUNSTERS' SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS (1996)

 

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

In my review of HERE COME THE MUNSTERS, I speculated that producer John Landis might've had some impact on that telefilm being a better iteration of the MUNSTERS franchise than anything since the sixties. But the second TV-movie from the same production company is not much better than THE MUNSTERS' REVENGE, except in terms of sharing HERE's level of production values. So I guess Landis wasn't responsible for the improvement.

With the exception of a nosy neighbor played by Mary Woronow, none of the cast returns from the 1995 effort. Unfortunately the best one can say is that some of the replacements are adequate, such as Elaine Hendrix subbing for Christine Taylor as Marilyn. But none of the newbies get much story-material with which to exercise their talents.

Almost all of the Munsters are anticipating Christmas, but Young Eddie is depressed because he misses the way the family celebrated the holidays in Transylvania. Herman and Lily get the idea to hold a big party and invite all their monster friends from the old country-- a Gill Man, a mummy, and so on. But these monster-mash characters don't show up until the end of the flick.

Cutting past the unremarkable subplot of Marilyn finding a new beau, the solution to Eddie's problems is set into motion when one of Grandpa's wacky inventions malfunctions. The machine teleports Santa Claus and two of his elves into the Munster house, but without any way of sending the pivotal architects of Christmas back to the North Pole. To make things even more complicated, Santa gets changed into a fruitcake and the elves run off, hoping to get laid.

Because the plot is so weak, SCARY has to be padded with lots of incidental comic business, some of which involved the aforesaid nosy neighbor and some of which involved Herman taking side jobs to make more money for presents. One of the few times the writers manage to dovetail plotlines takes place when Marilyn's boyfriend leads the Munsters to the hiding-place of the elves, who make it possible for Santa to get un-fruitcaked. By helping Santa get back on track for his Xmas run, Eddie recovers his holiday mojo and everyone is happy except the nosy neighbor.

Though there are a few of the slightly grotesque jokes seen in the previous telefilm-- Eddie wants a "Marquis de Sade" toy-- SCARY's overall humor is vanilla and forgettable. I might even rate MUNSTERS' REVENGE over SCARY, simply because the sheer dumbness of the 1981 reunion-flick makes it more memorable.

HERE COME THE MUNSTERS (1995)

 

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

Though I didn't have a clear memory from my 1995 viewing of the TV-movie HERE COME THE MUNSTERS, this time around I found it far more satisfying than the last two iterations. This time the three scripters did a fair job of translating the formulaic appeal of the original series, even though they like the previous writers were largely just journeymen based on their IMDB histories. Director Robert Ginty himself has a degree of celebrity, but mostly as an actor, while it's at least of interest that an executive producer was horror-maven John Landis.

HERE offers a soft reboot of the franchise. This time the four "monstrous Munsters"-- Herman (Edward Herrmann), Lily (Veronica Hamel), Eddie (Mathew Botuchis) and Grandpa (Robert Morse)-- start out in Transylvania in the 1990s, but decide to emigrate to America thanks to the latest assault by angry local villagers. They just happen to have received a letter from their niece Marilyn Hyde, the daughter of Herman's sister Elsa (who looks like the Bride of Frankenstein) and brother-in-law Norman Hyde. The four Munsters think they've been invited to take up residence with the Hydes, so they pack up their belongings and their pet dragon Spot in order to emigrate to the New World. As they enter the country (where it just happens to be Halloween, so everyone thinks they're just costumed oddballs), they're told they must have a sponsor to stay in the country.

Trouble is, once they meet Marilyn (Christine Taylor), the emigrants find out that their potential sponsors won't be able to testify on the family's behalf (not that this becomes a major plot matter). Norman has been missing for months-- which is the main reason Marilyn wrote her relatives-- and in reaction Elsa has fallen into a "Transylvanian trance." Nosy neighbors call the cops on the freaky newcomers, but though the Munsters aren't charged with anything, this underscores that the law is monitoring them. The only good thing about the law's intrusion is that a handsome young cop begins chatting up Marilyn. Still, the Munsters must figure out What Became of Norman, whose restoration will also revive Elsa.

Since none of them are detectives, the script feeds them clues until they make the correct conclusion. Norman Hyde hoped to cure the "homely" appearance of his daughter, so he created a transformation potion but foolishly sampled it himself. His "normal" grotty appearance was altered into that of a handsome go-getter, and thanks to a conniving politician Hyde takes on the identity of Brent Jekyll. The script definitely hits the viewer over the head politically by making Jekyll an anti-immigration ideologue, but the script manages to keep enough silly jokes flowing to distract from the "moral of the story."

Like the TV show, HERE is nothing more than competently executed formula, but the performers are all attractive and poised, and even Eddie gets a subplot about adjusting to an American middle school. It's possible that the success of the ADDAMS FAMILY of the 1990s influenced this project, for there are a few more gruesome (albeit playful) jokes than one saw on the sixties teleseries. For instance, early on Herman remarks on Spot's unfortunate habit of "burying mailmen," and for the first time, vampiress Lily is seen to bite someone, albeit very bloodlessly, just to get that someone out of the way.

Eventually Jekyll's mean-spirited political campaign is cancelled when he reverts to Norman, making it possible for Elsa to be revived as well. Norman and Elsa then conveniently fly the coop, so that the telefilm ends with the expected monstrous Munsters and their "homely" cousin Marilyn ensconced at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. I don't know if the producers hoped for a reborn series, but all that resulted was one more TV-movie the next year, more or less in the same continuity but with a wholly new cast. This time Edward Herrmann takes acting honors, managing to imbue his Funny Frankenstein with just as much sheer energy as had the fabulous Fred Gwynne. Gwynne had passed two years before HERE debuted but one scene provides charming cameos for Yvonne DeCarlo, Al Lewis, Butch Patrick, and Pat Priest.

BLACK CHRISTMAS (2006), BLACK CHRISTMAS (2019)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Since I didn't regard Bob Clark's 1974 BLACK CHRISTMAS as any sort of major classic despite its place in horror-history, I didn't have any objection to writer-director Glen Morgan choosing to revise the original story. The nebulous stalker in the sorority house at Christmas break becomes more fully fleshed out, and this might have worked had Morgan been less over-the-top in his approach.

I expected the remake would dump the subplot in which one of the sorority sisters wants to terminate her pregnancy over her boyfriend's objections, and my hunch was confirmed. I also guessed that, although the salty language was NOT left out, the spectacle of fresh young women being potty-mouthed didn't carry the same anomie I mentioned in my review of the 1974 film. I also expected that the kill count would be elevated to suit modern audiences. So the element of how Morgan reworked the serial killer was of paramount interest.

The 1974 stalker is never seen fully on camera and the audience never knows his identity, though when he's making obscene phone calls to the college women he alludes to a "Billy" which may be the stalker himself, and also to someone else named "Agnes." From these fragments Morgan tries to craft a figure along the lines of Michael Myers. In current times, Billy Lenz (a clever touch, referencing the "lenses" of the eyes with which he scopes out the women) has been institutionalized since slaying his mother and assaulting his sister Agnes. All these crimes rather improbably took place in the same building that has now been transformed into a college sorority house, and once Billy (Robert Mann) escapes he makes a beeline for his old haunt. 

An extended flashback explains Billy's dark past. Born with yellowish skin due to liver disease, as a child he's rejected by his trashy mother Constance. As a child he witnesses Constance and her lover murder Billy's father, but to keep Billy quiet Constance imprisons the boy in the attic, feeding him but not allowing him any freedom. To compound her crimes, one night Constance's lover can't satisfy her, so she goes into the attic and compels her son to have sex with her. She becomes pregnant and bears Billy a daughter/sister named Agnes, who becomes Constance's favorite. Years later Billy breaks free and commits the acts that land him in the asylum.

I revealed all of this simply to make clear that up to this point, Morgan set up a formidably nasty human monster. However, when we get into his stalking of the sorority sisters, Morgan totally loses control of his narrative. It's just one hyper-violent scene after another, with less emotional nuance than one finds in any of the original FRIDAY THE 13TH sequels. Worse, for some reason Agnes, now a grown woman, has become Billy's ally even though he mutilated her when she was a child. One writeup asserts that the script suffered many rewrites, but I'd say that just proves that Morgan didn't craft a hole-proof story in the first place.

For all the flaws of the 2006 remake, though, it's Horror Gold compared to the 2019 reboot. I saw this piece of crap over a year ago and hadn't planned to review it at all, and I include this abbreviated review just for contrast. The 2019 CHRISTMAS is a prime example of an indie director/writer, one Sophia Takai, trying to rework a horror-movie narrative to promote a political agenda. In place of a stalker, the campus menace this time is an "old boys' club" that likes to rape and murder independent young women, and whose members may be possessed by some spirit of toxic masculinity. It's a thoroughly moronic movie, incoherently scripted and poorly directed, with the exception of one early scene in which a young woman is murdered while making a snow angel.

NIGHTMARE SISTERS (1988)

 

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

After David DeCouteau finished helming the silly but lively comedy SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-A-RAMA, he evidently had enough resources to churn out a second DTV flick with the same starring actresses: Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer and Brinke Stevens, the "Nightmare Sisters" of the title. Though these three scream queens ruled cheap rental films in the eighties, this and SORORITY were the only times all three appeared together during that decade.

Though the screenwriter went on to greater fame with the first PUPPET MASTER movie, NIGHTMARE is undistinguished junk. Three less than glamorous sorority sisters decide to throw a party at their chapter and they invite three dorks from a fraternity. As entertainment the girls conduct a seance for the boys, but they conjure up a demon that possesses all three ladies. The girls are transformed into ultra-hot temptresses who attempt to seduce the nerds. At least one of the guys counsels his friends not to give in to these strange beings, and this proves fortunate. Three macho lunkheads from the fraternity horn in and try to bed the demonic damsels, and they pay for their temerity with their lives (starting with their schlongs). The nice nerds call in a goofy exorcist, who gets rid of the demon. Thereafter the nerds enjoy the gratitude of the girls, who conveniently don't go back to being ugly ducklings.

If I were being generous I might speculate that the "moral of the story" is that good things will come to guys who don't take advantage of impaired women. But though the scream queens all look good, the dull story doesn't really give them much to do but pose and preen. As actresses they probably enjoyed the chance to play "plain Janes," but the entertainment value of NIGHTMARE is as thin as the movie's premise.

THE MINI-MUNSTERS (1973), THE MUNSTERS' REVENGE (1981)

 

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

In this review I ragged on Rob Zombie for not being able to get right the relatively simple formula-comedy of the 1960s sitcom THE MUNSTERS. But I also mentioned how poor almost all of the other iterations were, with the exception of the one theatrical film that followed the series' cancellation, a movie that had the sense to use a director and three writers who had all worked on the regular show.

Wikipedia states that the one-hour MINI-MUNSTERS special was crafted for an episode of THE ABC SATURDAY SUPERSTAR MOVIE as a potential "back door pilot" to an animated series, but nothing came of it. While such a series wouldn't have been good, it probably wouldn't have been any worse than the same-year launch of a MY FAVORITE MARTIAN cartoon by Filmation. Nevertheless, a lot of the live-action MUNSTERS writers were still around and surely any of them could have done better than the script produced by journeymen Arthur Alsberg and Don Nelson. Maybe those worthies were selected simply because they'd worked on both live-action sitcoms and animated TV shows, or because the pay was too low to attract anyone else. I tend to blame them for the slack script, since director Gerard Baldwin had worked on genuinely funny cartoons for Jay Ward, like BULLWINKLE and GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE.

Despite the confusing title (MINI-MUNSTERS refers to a band organized by Eddie Munster) the main characters are largely the same as in the live action show, except that Eddie is now a teenager, Marilyn is AWOL and only one performer from the old show contributes voice-work: Al Lewis as the indefatigable Grandpa. Alsberg and Nelson apparently thought they'd inject a little topicality re: the 1973 energy crisis, for the conflict involves gangsters who forcefully take over a gasoline company-- which sounds counter intuitive to say the least. Eddie and two teenaged cousins from Transylvania become embroiled with the gangsters when the teens acquire a hearse as a transport vehicle and Grandpa whips up an invention that allows the car to run on music. When the mobsters find out, they think the new source of fuel threatens their profits and they try to seize the invention. Oh, and the hearse is haunted with the ghost of the mortician who owned it. It's all very by-the-numbers, with Grandpa, Eddie and Eddie's cousins getting most of the jokes while Herman and Lily play second fiddle. The special's only merit is that the animation style isn't as bland as that of the then-standard look of Hanna Barbera or the aforementioned Filmation, but it's not memorable either.

It makes a little sense that the showrunners of MINI-MUNSTERS, a cheap Saturday morning cartoon, didn't bother to hunt down the best talent possible. But the people who green-lighted THE MUNSTERS' REVENGE were trying to appeal to the nostalgia of an adult TV audience. To that end, the production company  not only assembled three of the principal actors from the sixties show-- Al Lewis, Yvonne DeCarlo, and Fred Gwynne-- they also reputedly paid Gwynne big bucks to reprise the role of Herman Munster, since the actor was far from sanguine about the effects of said role on his subsequent career.

So how did Alsberg and Nelson get the writing assignment AGAIN? Well, there's no knowing what sort of negotiations went on behind the scenes of REVENGE. But I noticed that, prior to REVENGE, the two only shared producer credit on one other project, the 1972-73 teleseries BRIDGET LOVES BERNIE, and then filled in the rest of the seventies decade scripting undemanding fare like HERBIE GOES TO MONTE CARLO. Possibly the two writers actually used their MINI-MUNSTERS credit to push for their participation in REVENGE, not only as writers but also as "co-producers" (whatever that might mean).

If anything, the script they produced for REVENGE is even more dire and condescending that that of MINI-MUNSTERS. It starts with the First Family of Fright visiting a wax museum in their unspecified city, where they see statues of many famous monsters, like the Hunchback and the Gill Man-- and also of themselves. Or rather, four of them: Herman (Gwynne), Grandpa (Lewis), Lily (DeCarlo), and Eddie (KC Martel). This time out Alsberg and Nelson allow for a Marilyn (Jo McDonnell) to keep the nostalgia fires burning, and she takes a photo of the other four with their wax-statue doppelgangers. All five members of the family are blithely incurious as to why anyone would make statues of them, given that they are not, in their own little world, celebrities of any kind.

The little old statue-maker is no clearer as to his motives for duplicating the Munsters, but his duplicates aren't just statues, but ambulatory robots, meant to be sent out to commit crimes. Doctor Diablo, a bargain-basement super-villain if ever there was one, is tediously played by a mug-happy Sid Caesar, and not only does he not explain why he ripped off the images of the Munsters, he takes his sweet time getting around to revealing his master plan, such as it is. I *think* the various petty robberies committed by his automatons are test runs for a museum-theft. Why Diablo decided to set up his operation in a wax museum, and how he enlisted his coterie of assistants are things not to be contemplated. He also never uses his Lily and Eddie effigies for anything, so who knows why he made them at all.

Diablo only uses his Herman and Grandpa robots to commit crimes, with the result that only the two of them are pursued by the local police. Like their robot duplicates, Lily and Eddie don't have anything to do and are usually just seen sitting around the Mockingbird Lane house with their Cousin Phantom (Bob Hastings), who's supposed to be some funhouse-mirror version of the Phantom of the Opera. So most of the movie is about Herman and Grandpa running around getting into assorted fixes, probably to justify the hefty salary given Fred Gwynne. But once again, although Gwynne and Lewis still play off one another well, the jokes reveal how little Alsberg and Nelson "got" the original show's form of humor. In fact, the new character of Cousin Phantom gets one of the few memorable bits, as he uses his "operatic" voice to shatter glass at a fortuitous opportunity.

The one consistent virtue of REVENGE is that the writers, perhaps as a consequence of downgrading Lily's forceful persona, upgrade that of Marilyn. In the sixties show she's just a standard pretty girl with no personality. This Marilyn is highly offended by the police coming after her beloved relations, and her fiery demeanor catches the attention of a handsome young cop named Glen (Peter Fox). The romantic B-plot of Marilyn and Glen at least has a decent narrative arc, sold in part by this Marilyn being somewhat more acerbic than her predecessor. She also infiltrates Diablo's lair by posing as one of the mad scientist's female robots and later steals a control device for the robots from one of Diablo's minions. But her good minor arc, though it comes closer to the model of the sixties show than anything else the writers attempted, doesn't really compensate for all the tedium of Herman and Grandpa messing around. 

I can't imagine that the telefilm earned stellar ratings, since it would be another seven years before the characters were revived for a second TV show, THE MUNSTERS TODAY, in 1988. This was in turn followed by two more TV movies, a busted pilot and the aforementioned Rob Zombie endeavor. The franchise may never have worn as well as THE ADDAMS FAMILY, but I suppose all those iterations at least put the First Family ahead of MY FAVORITE MARTIAN.

DRACULA (2006)

 

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

Given that Bram Stoker's original novel depends on an ensemble of characters writing letters about the menace common to their lives, I think it's foolish to complain that cinematic adaptations of DRACULA ought to stick close to the book. Indeed, two of the best regarded adaptations, the 1931 Universal movie and the 1958 Hammer film, take huge liberties with Stoker's extremely complicated prose narrative. Thus I won't complain about this telefilm adaptation purely because it changes the original story, but only if I think the changes proved counter productive.

The 2006 DRACULA was produced by the English company Granada TV, while both director Bill Eagles and writer Stewart Harcourt seem to have been very basic journeymen talents from their IMDB profiles. Thus, most of their choices seem predicated on simplifying the story to fit an hour-and-a-half format.

In the novel, Lucy Westenra is pursued by three suitors, while Lucy's friend Mina waits for her fiancee Jonathan Harker to return from Transylvania. Harker learns the true nature of his client Count Dracula and escapes the count's castle, and eventually assembles Mina's three suitors and their guide Van Helsing against the vampire's threat to England and to both Lucy and Mina. 

Harcourt, not unlike Jimmy Sangster working on HORROR OF DRACULA, sought to simplify. Harker does not escape Dracula in Transylvania but is killed by the vampire, and the Count, rejuvenated by the Englishman's blood, shows up in England, not exactly looking like Harker but much more in a Don Juan mold than the appearance of Rejuveniated Drac in the novel. Harcourt dumps one of the novel's three suitors and starts the story with Mina accepting the suit of Lord Arthur Holmwood and rejecting that of Doctor John Seward (who has no connection to any asylum or any patient named Renfield). Seward, who's sometimes written out of DRACULA adaptations, then assumes the role of central hero. The most chimerical change, though, is that Holmwood becomes a subsidiary villain. 

Harcourt's Holmwood has been victimized by a sexually transmitted malady long before Dracula arrives on English shores. I don't know if the screenwriter was influenced by learned academic essays correlating the real disease of syphilis and the imaginary plague of vampirism. Yet Harcourt seems to want to indict English gentry for complicity with the vampire invasion, just as many of the Hammer films go out of their way to critique the nobility. Holmwood contracts the disease in utero, thanks to his father transmitting the infection to his mother, and the young man agonizes that he cannot enjoy his nuptials with Mina without passing on the disease. But in another original concoction, the desperate lord conspires with a local occult society, which in turn uses Holmwood's money and influence to bring Count Dracula to English shores, with the idea that the vampire count can cancel out the nobleman's disease with his special blood. In effect, then, England's invasion by "the other" is also an invasion by its own corrupt ruling class. It's a novel notion, though I don't think Harcourt used it to foster any deep sociological observations.

Once in England, Dracula reneges on his deal, failing to cure Holmwood and killing all of his occultist allies. His only concern is to seduce both Mina and Lucy, and as in most versions Lucy is quickly converted to undead status, forcing Holmwood to stake her. Seward finds Van Helsing, formerly a captive of the occult society, but he doesn't contribute much to the proceedings. Dracula doesn't manage to vampirize Mina even partly as in the novel, and despite a few scenes in which she seems almost ready to replace the late Harker with Don Juan Drac, she too has very little to do. Seward, Van Helsing and Holmwood team up and manage to destroy the count, though Holmwood pays for his actions with his life. Then the survivors attempt to pick up the remains of their lives, while a coda shows that for no damn good reason the king-vampire yet lives despite having been well and truly staked.

DRACULA 2006 isn't precisely boring, though it's only sporadically engaging. There are no exemplary action scenes and only one erotic scene between Marc Warren's vamp and Sophia Myles' Lucy. David Suchet, the one "name" performer, contributes a wild-eyed, completely forgettable Van Helsing. The movie as a whole is not precisely forgettable, and it's a slight improvement at least on a few of the lesser Hammer films about the vampire count. But I can't imagine anyone ranking it among a best twenty Stoker-adaptations.

A SNOW WHITE CHRISTMAS (1980)

 

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

Perhaps fittingly, a day or so after I eulogized Filmation in this review, I learned of one of the company's most mediocre productions while searching the title A SNOW WHITE CHRISTMAS for this unrelated review.

This TV special was in theory a sequel to the traditional Snow White story (though not without some influence from the classic Disney version), taking place maybe fifteen-sixteen years after Original Snow White married her Prince Charming (now "King Charming," which doesn't have the same ring). But the star of the story (such as it is) is the couple's teenaged daughter, who's also called by the same name as her mother, though I'll call her Snow White Jr. for slightly greater clarity.

Somewhat like the original, Snow Jr. is largely a passive figure harried from pillar to post by a more active enemy, the same "Wicked Queen" who tormented Jr.'s mother. (The Queen is voiced by Melendy Britt, best known for doing the dialogue for She-Ra.) The Queen wasn't killed at the end of the original story, but just went away somewhere for the time it took for Snow Jr. to become a young woman. The villainess immediately takes up residence in her old castle, hangs her magic mirror on the wall, and asks if these days she the Queen is the fairest in the land. This time, the nasty glass informs her that she's outclassed by *two* fairer females. 

Borrowing a trope from Disney's Maleficent in its version of "Sleeping Beauty," the Queen curses the whole kingdom of Charming and Original Snow with a freezing spell. Only Snow Jr escapes in the company of her maladroit comedy relief Grunion. They wander around pointlessly until they're taken in by the Seven Giants (improbable cousins of the Seven Dwarfs). Not much happens until the Queen learns that her old enemy's daughter is still free. In one of the few developments that really resembles the folktale, the Queen tries three times to kill Snow White, and on the third effort succeeds in sending the young woman into a death-like sleep. I won't trouble to state how the princess is brought out of this state, except to note that the film eschews any rescues by handsome strangers.

The Giants finally get off their asses and storm the Queen's castle. This version of the envious evildoer has already been showing off world-class magicks, and she conjures up a trio of demons. However, Filmation finds a solution to avoid an expensive battle-scene, as one giant's mammoth hiccups scare the demons away. In an eleventh-hour revelation, we learn that the Queen has been expending too much power against the advice of her mirror, who seems to function as a familiar, the one touch of originality here. The Queen and her mirror destroy themselves with a magic overload, after which, as mentioned, Snow Jr gets revived and all's right with the world.

The animation is uniformly poor, the script lacks humor or pathos, and almost all of the character designs suck. One podcast review said Snow Jr looks like a conflation of Hanna-Barbera's Judy Jetson and Filmation's Sabrina the Teenage Witch (though I see only the latter influence), while another review said that this version of the Queen favors Evil-Lyn from the HE-MAN cartoon, though HE-MAN was two years down the road. The Queen, given a severe beauty (but not an overt copying of the Disney version), is actually IMO much better looking than either of her rivals. So on balance the only significance I find in this snowy Xmas (in which the holiday has scant relevance) is as an anticipation of how Filmation would soon ramp up its production of femmes formidables in the eighties before the company closed its doors in 1988.

CHILL OUT, SCOOBY DOO (2007)

 

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

CHILL was the next to last project to which the co-creator of the Scoobies, Joseph Barbera, contributed before his passing in 2006, and the DTV film is dedicated to the characters' designer Iwao Takamoto, who passed in 2007. It's a shame, then, that CHILL provided a thoroughly mediocre entry in the Mystery Inc franchise.

Given that the story is largely set in Tibet, the animators made an effort to impart an exotic flair to the visuals and the music, initially reminding me slightly of the "Monster of the Monastery" episode of the sixties JONNY QUEST. American professor Jeffries, with the help of local guide Pemba, goes looking in the snowy mountains for the legendary land of Shangri-La, until both behold what looks like a giant white-furred Yeti.

In Paris, Fred, Velma and Daphne are vacationing while awaiting the arrival of Scooby and Shaggy, who are traveling separately for unclear reasons. However, though the other two Scoobies think they're flying to Paris on a charter flight, they've actually been abducted by French creature-hunter Alphonse Lafleur. Lafleur flies the duo to the Himalayas, intending to use them as bait to lure out the Yeti, again for unclear reasons (though admittedly Shaggy and Scooby have spent of their existence being so used by their best friends).

The other three learn of the abduction and catch a fast plane to Tibet. Meanwhile Scooby and Shaggy get involved not only in LaFleur's Yeti hunt but also in the troubles of the other cast-members-- Jeffreys, Pemba and his music-loving sister Minga, the High Lama of the local lamasery (for some reason uninhabited by any other priests), and eventually, previous acquaintance Dell Chillman, a radio jock the heroes met in an earlier exploit. 

Some of the jokes are OK, but CHILL froze me out by including not one, not two, but three unfunny chase-scenes with really mediocre songs. (Though the movie's not technically set at Christmas, Shaggy and Scooby respectively dress up like Santa and Rudolf to pull a ruse of the rampaging Yeti.)  The identity of the Yeti--  or rather, the Yetis-- held zero interest. Oh, and the Shangri-La subplot is barely justified.

For Scooby completists only.

BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)

 

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

Director Bob Clark's BLACK CHRISTMAS is one of those popular horror movies whose technique I can admire even though it doesn't reach me emotionally. For some time, I couldn't figure out how to approach it critically.

Then, on my most recent re-watch, I realized that the main element of the story-- a psycho who sneaks into a sorority house at Christmas-time to kill the occupants-- is given a deeper vraisemblance than most of the later slashers by the nature of the murderer's victims. Though only the character of Barb (Margot Kidder) goes out of her way to fill her speech with expletives, there are frequent reminders, even in the person of the mature house-mother, that modern young women are no longer innocent little flowers. There had been a number of prominent mainstream films with lots of adult language since the institution of the ratings system in the late 1960s, but few if any had focused so intensely on female potty-mouths. 

In an odd way, the psycho is a more extreme case of unrestrained speech, for he first intrudes on the sorority sisters with "heavy breathing" telephone calls, in which he either crudely insults the women or mocks them with phony voices. Whether or not such callers abused telephone technology in earlier decades, the seventies seems to be the era in which the practice of obscene phone calls became a dubious part of the American cultural underbelly.

It's thus no coincidence that while the psycho preys on his victims, viewpoint character Jess (Olivia Hussey) has a falling out with her boyfriend (Keir Dullea) because she's become pregnant and plans to abort the child. Jess, while presented as a sympathetic character, has no motive to seek the abortion except that she doesn't want to marry Peter and feels that having a child would inhibit her career goals. Since her decision is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner, the script doesn't make a strong case for or against abortion as such, and so the topic seems to have been raised to contribute to an overall sense of anomie.

CHRISTMAS is a tense film but as I said, not deeply involving. The killer applies the name "Billy" to himself and speaks of a forbidden encounter with someone named Agnes. I tend to doubt that the writer meant to encode any strong meaning in these fragmentary revelations, though Hitchcock's PSYCHO could have influenced the writer's approach to the material. I've heard that the 2006 reworking builds up the psycho's backstory, though none of the remakes have attained the cult status of Clark's movie. Oddly enough, he also directed another Yuletide film that had precisely the opposite effect to this one's ironic posture-- even though the 1983 CHRISTMAS STORY worked in a certain amount of "cussing" as well.

A SNOW WHITE CHRISTMAS (2018)

 

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

While this 2018 DTV flick is no match for the classic rom-coms of the 1990s, at least the script rings in enough changes on the classic "Snow White" template that it doesn't seem as pedestrian and predictable as most current romance movies.

This SNOW still includes an innocent young woman and her evil stepmother, but this time their conflict is over money, not their respective physical charms. Blanca Snow (Michelle Randolph) is a good-hearted woman with a strong jones for all things Christmassy. Her father died a year ago, but his will is supposed to come into effect on December 25. On that date, the father's estate will be divided equally between Blanca and her stepmother Victoria (Carolyn Hennesey). Scheming Victoria wants the whole estate, and though she's not a queen, she's encouraged by her fellow conspirator Zane (Rich Barnes), her "magic mirror" adviser, who's so obviously swishy that he could be labeled another kind of "queen."

Somehow the conspirators find a criminal hypnotist and get her to erase Blanca's memory, so that she'll just take up residence elsewhere. If Blanca is absent for the critical reading of the will, the whole estate goes to Victoria. This is clearly a deflection from the stock idea of killing one inheritor so that another one will get the bounty. Yet in the real world it's doubtful that a will would specify that an heir, especially the daughter of the decedent, would get eliminated just because she's not physically present on a certain date. Such a stipulation is even more arbitrary than many of those in archaic folktales. Nevertheless, the hypnosis scene is amusing because Zane's loose talk accidentally qualifies the hypnotic spell, with the result that now Blanca's memory erasure will only persist until she falls in true love.

And here we have the other fairly clever aspect of SNOW, because during Snow's amnesiac exile she encounters two studs she met in her old life, one whose last name is Prince while the other's first name is Hunter. Given some of the bad rap that heroic princes get these days, nearly no one will be surprised at which hunk gets to make Blanca's heart go pit-a-pat so that she regains her true self and foils the plans of the evil queen-- oh, and his mistress too.

Randolph plays the good-as-gold Blanca straight, which means that she's not particularly compelling. Hennesey and Barnes get all the funny lines, as well as receiving a modestly amusing comeuppance. Oh, and as icing on the cake, during her exile Blanca gets some moral support from a Christmas band-- whose players number seven.

BRAVESTARR-- THE LEGEND (1988)

 

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

While no company wants to fail, if that's what fate has in the cards, it;s generally best from the POV of posterity to go out on a high note. 

Filmation Studio had many high and low points in its twenty-something years of existence. The last animated teleseries from the company, the "space western" BRAVESTARR, recapitulated in almost equal measure most of the studio's good and bad habits. But the main problem with the teleseries was that, unlike most celebrated toys-made-into-cartoons, the toy line didn't appear in stories until a year or so after the series had run its course from 1987-1988. Then, as if to gamble on a big-screen version of their last effort, Filmation rolled the dice with BRAVESTARR-- THE LEGEND, something of an "origin story" for the show's heroes and villains.

I concur with one online review to the effect that the animation on this project was the best the company had ever produced, particularly in the opening scenes, which loosely riff on the Superman story. A mysterious father-figure of Native American ethnicity, later given the name Shaman, has just escaped some great catastrophe in a spaceship. Shaman's only companion aboard ship is an unnamed young man, also a Native American, in a cryosleep-capsule. However, though the audience doesn't know anything about the relationship between the two, Shaman uses the ship's equipment to send the capsule down to a planet inhabited by a society of galactic marshals, while providing a soliloquy, for the benefit of the viewing audience, about how the young man will someday become a great hero, implicitly the Marshal Bravestarr of the title.

While I can see why the filmmakers wanted to put off a long origin-tale to keep from slowing down the story, here it's better to explicate the backstory right off. Prior to the catastrophe, the Shaman lived with his people, the Amerindian-looking "Tribe," on an unnamed world. The Tribe was attacked by monstrous "broncosaurs" under the control of a huge bull-demon (I think) named Stampede, who was seeking some sort of power-source controlled by the Tribe. But Stampede's attack causes the power to run wild and destroy the whole planet, and all of the people except Shaman and Bravestarr, though Stampede escapes to another planet, later to be named New Texas. 

After Shaman deposits the roughly teenaged Bravestarr on Marshal-world for his training (which we never see), Shaman pursues Stampede to New Texas, planning for some reckoning in the distant future. At the time the planet is sparsely populated by a handful of "Kerium miners." Stampede, aware of Shaman's arrival, decides to suborn an evil mortal as his right-hand man, and finds a convert in a miner named Tex, who betrays his partner McBride and leaves the latter to perish in the wilderness. Stampede transforms the evil miner into Tex-Hex, a nasty zombie-looking magician, and Tex-Hex begins gathering other evildoers into his circle. Shaman finds and saves McBride, sending him to a medical planet for assistance. This action ensures that other members of the galactic society learn of McBride's discovery of huge veins of the precious mineral Kerium, resulting in a "Kerium rush." The settlers of New Texas are imperiled by the influx of lawless emigrants and from Tex-Hex's gang, so they send for a marshal.

In "real" movie-time, Marshal Bravestarr's advent to New Texas follows the origin-teaser. He arrives in tandem with two other passengers: "good prospector" McBride and his adult daughter J.B., a feisty young woman who's also been assigned to New Texas, but as a galactic Judge. In an incident that probably could not have appeared on the TV show, Bravestarr and J.B. first meet when he seems to be ogling her butt from afar.

Once on New Texas, Bravestarr's life is just one character-intro after another. He gets hassled by Tex-Hex and other roughnecks but trounces them easily, in part because he has special animal-powers that are never well explained. (Had they been a bequest of the power-eruption that destroyed the Tribe's world, that would've been another good Superman-trope, but I don't think the powers' origin is specified.) He meets a diminutive comedy-relief furball, "Fuzz," who belongs to the indigenous Ewok-ky "Prairie People" of New Texas; eventually Fuzz will become Bravestarr's deputy. After some more flare-ups with the local owlhoots, Bravestarr eventually meets Shaman, who reveals his extremely indirect role as a director of the hero's fate.

Shaman's main function in the story is to direct Bravestarr to go looking for a special weapon. This results in the hero's most compelling encounter, when he meets Thirty-Thirty, the last surviving "Equestroid," an anthropomorphic horse-man with cyborg-parts (which may have something to do with his ability to assume a four-footed horse-form). Bravestarr thinks he's supposed to claim Thirty-Thirty's weapon, a big blunderbuss, and they have a really good fight-scene, one of the best in animated features and certainly the best one Filmation ever produced. Once the two formidable badasses have taken each other's measure, Shaman belatedly reveals that the "weapon" he referred to was a partnership-- and Thirty-Thirty makes it his business to become the marshal's partner-in-law-enforcement (but not a deputy, since after all, he also functions as the marshal's horse). 

Stampede finally decides to launch a major offensive on the townsfolk and their protectors, using both his outlaw-pawns and a herd of animated bull-skeletons. Prior to the big end-battle, Bravestarr and J.B. put aside their squabbling to engage in some prolonged tongue-wrestling, which I think is also a first (and a last) for Filmation. After all that set up, the final battle is a little underwhelming, but that may be because the movie's a prequel and must leave all the principals in the status quo that dominates the series.

One online review asserted that Stampede may not be a demon, but the last survival of an alien race, possibly related to the "broncosaurs" wiped out on the Tribe-planet. But he definitely functions as a Satan-figure, while Shaman is something of a Merlin who counsels the hero in his adventures. So Stampede, Bravestarr, Shaman and Thirty-Thirty are all the last members of their respective tribes-- which trope I relate to the Western trope of the "Vanishing American," the idea that Native Americans more or less faded away before the relentless vitality of the European immigrants. If LEGEND had done more with this trope, I would have graded the movie's mythicity higher.

Despite some good character moments between Bravestarr and his two strongest allies, the judge and the horse-cyborg, Bravestarr himself is no Superman. He varies between being a smart-ass and an "aw shucks ma'am" Westerner, and though he's a de facto Native American, he has no connections with the vanished culture of the Tribe. Thus he often feels like a White guy in "Redface," except for his gimmicky conjurations of his animal-powers and his occasional conferences with his perceptor Shaman. Had the writers thrown in a few scenes of his tutelage on the marshal's planet, this could have communicated the hero's ethical compass, in roughly the same manner as SUPERMAN comics did with stories about Young Clark Kent's Midwest upbringing. This was a fault with the TV series as well, and the problem may spring from the fact that the series allegedly started from producer Lou Scheimer's desire to develop a western-themed space opera because he took a liking to a prototype "Tex-Hex" character from his animated GHOSTBUSTERS teleseries. Bravestarr's journey to hero-dom ought to be a main concern of the movie. Instead, when this plot-thread appears at all, it feels like an afterthought.

LEGEND received a limited theatrical release, but it probably would have had to enjoyed STAR WARS popularity to have reversed Filmation's fortunes. But even with its flaws, LEGEND provides a good monument to the company's history of providing a variety of both decent and mediocre fantasy-entertainment.

BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD; SEASON THREE (2011)

 

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

As noted earlier, the final season of BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD only amounted to thirteen episodes, half the number allotted to Seasons One and Two. But since the showrunners made the perhaps tongue-in-cheek claim that their show was in danger of literally "jumping the shark," possibly there was a sincere sense that they'd said all they had to say.

Season Three doesn't dip its toes into the deeper, darker waters as did Season Two, meaning that the closest any characters come to death is when Batman becomes a Bat-vampire and almost turns the whole Justice League into the undead, until they're all miraculously returned to normal. But once again, Batman's so resolute in his desire to vanquish crime that in another episode he keeps on finding ways to battle villains while he's in a body cast.

It's notable that while the other two members of the DC "Trinity," Superman and Wonder Woman, were off limits in the first two seasons, both make a total of three appearances, though the Amazon only gets one "main story" and two teasers. In contrast, Superman is in one teaser and participates in two main stories, one of which is clearly designed to reference as many Silver Age Superman images as the writers could shoehorn in. A few new heroes debut in Season Three, the most notable being a crossover with non-DC hero Space Ghost.

The lead episode, "Joker: the Vile and the Villainous," is a novel switch on the basic concept, as both the teaser and main story depict the Joker "crusading" on behalf of Gotham's villains. He even succeeds in thwarting Batman's crime-predicting device, and comes off as slightly sympathetic, if only because such a machine would obviate the entire purpose of hero/villain struggles. Somewhat less successful is a spoof on sixties sitcoms with Aquaman and his undersea family dealing with their wacky neighbor Black Manta. One episode is given over to four shorts starring separate DC characters with only minimal Bat-involvement. The least successful episode is the predictable "Powerless," in which an arrogant Captain Atom scorns Batman for having no powers, only to learn his lesson in the end-- okay, he doesn't learn anything, leading me to think that maybe Atom was not particularly beloved by the writers. And they seem to like EVERYTHING.

The only outstanding episode is the final one, entitled "Mitefall"-- which, not by coincidence, sports the title of a very different comic book special, though the two have nothing in common but the participation of Bat-Mite. Given that this extra-dimensional enthusiast for all things Batty got one episode in each season, his re-use supports my theory that the showrunners had a particular jones for Silver Age Bat-comics of the Jack Schiff era. While the other two episodes depicted the Caped Crusader being bedeviled by the imp's maladroit magicks, this time Bat-Mite serves the purpose of the show's creators in that he's tired of the show and wants it cancelled. This remains in line with his Bat-fandom, since getting rid of tongue-in-cheek Bats will make it possible to get yet another "Dark Knight" iteration.

Bat-Mite then wreaks changes on the B&B universe, so that Batman will become so ludicrous that his fans stop watching. However, there's a bug in his ointment: Ambush Bug, who like Bat-Mite also knows that they're all fictional characters in a series of stories, and he tries to find a way to restore Batman to his original parameters. This opens up an unusual metaphysical proposition: can a fictional character become self-aware enough to refuse changes to his identity? In addition, the script includes a few jabs at the fans themselves, when Ambush Bug gets more viewers to watch by appealing to their love of slapstick violence.

The episode then concludes with a minute or two of Batman hosting a party of his most celebrated friends and a few foes, and saying farewell to his fans. And aside from a later team-up with Mystery Inc., this incarnation of the Bat-universe has remained out of circulation.

SMALLVILLE 2:17 ("ROSETTA," 2003)

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

With "Rosetta," it becomes evident that the apparently slow build of the mystery of the Kawatchie Caves was not the result of careful planning, but was just a device to tantalize viewers. Alfred Gough's script is riddled with dumb luck and fortuitous coincidences, as if he or someone above him was told to get off the stick.

So for weeks (if not months) the Key has been rattling around different places on the Kent Farm as well as falling into the clutches of Lionel Luthor for an indeterminate time. It's back on the farm at the time when Clark starts having dreams about flying, and then wakes up miles away from his home. He's lying in the road and is almost struck by a speeding car, not coincidentally driven by Lex, in a scene that's a probable callback to the first episode. Apparently the Key is responsible for jump-starting Clark's dormant flying power. I have no idea what message the computer intelligence in said Key is trying to send Clark, or if this has come about in response to the device being placed in contact with the natal ship.

So a day or so later the Key sends out an ultrasonic wave that only Clark can hear, and this prompts him to pick up the mysterious octagon and go visit the Kawatchie Caves. The Key imbeds itself in one of the cave-walls and downloads a subconscious knowledge of Kryptonese into Clark's brain. Lex and his language expert Waldman find Clark in the caves. While Waldman thinks Clark is interfering with the project of analyzing the possible alien language, Lex theorizes that Clark may somehow lead them to some revelations. However, in a later scene Waldman makes the mistake of fiddling with the Key, and he's struck by an energy wave that renders him catatonic. Lex learns that Waldman was felled by an "information overload," which may mean that the Key mistook Waldman for Clark.

Yet the Key's first download wasn't the end of its manipulations of Clark (and of Alfred Gough's script problems). While Clark is on the farm, thinking the Key disintegrated during the first download, the artifact hits him with the ultrasonic wave again. This time, this stimulation causes Clark to activate his heat vision so that he burns the Kryptonian symbol for "hope" in the Kent barn. The Key also gets extraordinarily lucky in that Chloe Sullivan happens to be on hand to snap a photo of the symbol, though not knowing Clark created it. She later conveniently prints the photo in the student newspaper, and this, as if ordained by the writer-gods, comes to the attention of the one Earth-man who can unveil the mysteries of Krypton to Clark Kent. 

Even allowing for the fact that SMALLVILLE is a soap opera, "Rosetta" sets a new record for bizarre distortions of logic. Yet despite all these transparent narrative manipulations, the story still carries a fair myth-resonance because of the relationship crafted between the Clark character and that of reclusive, wheelchair-bound scientist Virgil Swann, played by paraplegic performer Christopher Reeve. In Reeve's SUPERMAN films, he had to learn his alien history from a hologram of his late father. Though SMALLVILLE could have taken that course as well-- and indeed, such a hologram does appear in Season 3-- the showrunners scored points with fans by having a former Superman actor perform this paternal duty to the younger performer Tom Welling. This also sets up a conflict original to the TV show: the intimation that this Jor-El may wish his offspring to become a draconian ruler of the lesser mortals of Earth. 

All of these revelations cause Clark grief at realizing that he's the Last Son of Krypton, and that his biological father may be a turd, and of course neither concern wraps up at this point. Clark is so busy that the two young woman competing for his affections have to play off one another. Their tension does not prove very compelling, though Chloe does reveal to Lana that she confessed to Clark during his illness, and that, though he doesn't recall hearing her, Chloe heard him call Lana's name. 

So, while "Rosetta" has long-term consequences for SMALLVILLE's ongoing narrative, it's a pretty shallow piece of work that needed a second, maybe even a third draft to make it more cohesive.

SHAOLIN WARRIOR (2013)

 

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

I started watching this 2013 film because the streaming service on which the movie appeared mislabeled it as a 1980s Gordon Liu flick with a similar title. From what I can tell, the main character is played by one Ye Jianwei, and WARRIOR appears to be shot on video on just a few sets, and subtitled to boot.

Feng (Jianwei) is a young man who seeks to avenge his murdered sister, so he takes refuge in a Shaolin Temple, hoping to master enough skills to kill the murderer. Trouble is, the villain is a highly placed general, and he sends his soldiers to the temple to capture Feng. What results is a lot of fights punctuated by Feng getting captured or freed, the latter accomplished by a young monk his own age. The fights are competent but nothing special.

The one potential metaphenomenal element of WARRIOR is that the general is a nut with a cannibal fetish, and he not only killed Feng's sister, he cooked her and ate part of her, while feeding other parts of her roasted body to some of his officers for a prank. But the movie doesn't evoke any dread in the villain's fetish, so the bizarre crime of WARRIOR is merely naturalistic. 

SCOOBY DOO! HAPPY HOLIDAYS (2012)

 

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

HAPPY HOLIDAYS was the second of six half-hour DTV specials, and the first of the six I've watched. I'm sorry I didn't see this one sooner, because it suggests how good the original SCOOBY DOO WHERE ARE YOU might have been, given the more advanced computer animation techniques later available.

I wasn't a huge fan of Original Scooby. I thought it had well designed monsters and locales, but the limited animation undermined all the alleged hilarity of the slapstick sequences with the talking Great Dane and his human buddies. With HOLIDAYS, I didn't laugh out loud, but I found myself watching the action sequences far more attentively than I usually watch any Scooby Doos from any period. Long-time animation director Victor Cook deserves the lion's share of credit here, though to be sure, I've seen other works directed by Cook that weren't so interesting.

Given that HOLIDAYS is a Christmas episode, it's noteworthy that the director and writer manage to work in some creepy moments even when the story's rampaging monster, the Sinister Snowman, isn't on screen. Mister Menkle appeals to Mystery Inc to exorcise the snow-demon menacing his already failing toy superstore, and Menkle's nephew Fabian spins a fairly eerie story about an old Scrooge-type, Vladimir Harstokor, who hated the store and human feeling generally. Fabian puts forth the possibility that when Vladimir went missing, he actually became the Sinister Snowman, able to morph into a variety of shapes (including that of a snow-spider) and to issue blasts of freezing vapor from his mouth. But there are also moments of subtle tension while Mystery Inc prowls around the empty toy store, topped with a clock tower with a frozen glockenspiel.

Is there a jot of originality about how the mystery winds up? No, but I still liked that all the Scoobies were the "classic" type, without any phony hang-ups or fatuous character conflicts. I also liked that the script avoids the most obvious Christmas-story tropes. There's no Scrooge to be saved here. But when a mysterious jolly old elf brings the glockenspiel back to life, there's a sense that the town of Wherever This Is gets a small redemption from past travails.

SANTA AND THE FAIRY SNOW QUEEN (1951)

 

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

While I'm not arguing that SANTA AND THE FAIRY SNOW QUEEN is any neglected Christmas gem, it is much better than your average children's short. Directed by one Sid Davis, this short, less than half an hour, recycles music from Tchaikovsky's NUTCRACKER and SLEEEPING BEAUTY, with the result that the writer put (forgettable) lyrics to the same melody that Disney used in its 1959 SLEEPING BEAUTY for "Once Upon a Dream."

One question inspired by FAIRY: why do children play with toys, whether made in Santa's workshop or by some Eastern conglomerate? One major reason is to exercise the imagination, and this is seen with "proxy-toys," in which kids use dolls, action figures and the like as proxies to enact scenarios of real or hypothetical experience seen through the lens of game-playing. This is the only kind of toy seen in FAIRY. 

On the night before Santa's supposed to load up his sleigh for his Christmas run, he falls asleep in his workshop, surrounded by a half dozen dolls about the size of mice. Since Santa's in dreamland, a helpful female brownie named Snoop (because she snoops around to find which kids are naughty or nice) provides exposition. Santa made a previous appointment to meet with the Fairy Snow Queen to share a sugar cookie. The Queen, just as diminutive as the dolls, finds Santa asleep and decides to make a little mischief, enchanting all the dolls to come alive. The dolls don't really do much of anything-- the Musical Doll dances, the Soldier Doll marches, and the jack-in-the-box repeats everything he says three times.

Conflict raises its head when Santa wakes up. He's okay with the Queen's little joke, but he asks her to de-animate the dolls because he needs this half-dozen toys or he'll have to disappoint a half-dozen children. However, the Queen can't reverse her spell because the toys all want to remain alive. And who can blame them?

For a fellow who spends his whole year crafting toys to give them away, Santa proves remarkably practical-minded. He tells the dolls that although they may enjoy dancing and marching around, such itty-bitty creatures can't prosper in the big mean world. He also mentions an island for lost toys over a decade before the 1964 RUDOLF special conceived of its "island of misfit toys." Snoop brokers a compromise: if the toys will go back to being inanimate and letting kids play with them, the dolls will be allowed to come alive for an hour or so at midnight every night. (Yes, Sid Davis got there before TOY STORY too.) The dolls accept their fate, even though it means that the Toy Soldier and the Musical Doll won't be able to stay together, having fallen in love within a couple of minutes of being animated.

In addition, the toys will have an additional function: if their owners don't take good care of them, the dolls can nark on the bad kids and get them placed on the naughty list. I like to think that most kids would have twigged to the lecture in this slight tale. Yet as lectures go, this one at least speaks to the primary appeal of toys, as opposed to just wanting "stuff," which is a much more frequent "moral" in a lot of Christmas stories.

BLEEDING STEEL (2017)

 

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

I don't know what led to Leo Zhang to direct and co-write a cyberpunk thriller starring Jackie Chan. But I like to fantasize that he had just watched John Carpenter's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and complained, "there was too much exposition."

For whatever reason, almost all the exposition in STEEL is shoved into the last half hour of this hyperkinetic sci-fi flick. I got the impression that it took place in the near future, given that "special forces agent" Lin Dong (Chan) doesn't even bat an eye when he's told there's an out-of-control "bioroid" on the loose. And this leads to a big fight with Andre the Cyborg and his soldiers that takes place thirteen years BEFORE the main action of the story.

The prologue is there mostly to establish that Lin lost his daughter to leukemia, though he doesn't know that that a mad scientist, the creator of Andre, somehow got hold of the body of Lin's dead daughter and resurrected it as a young woman with no memory of her past, Nancy (Ouyang Nana). While on stakeout Lin observes Nancy and sees the resemblance (the same actress played both original daughter and reborn daughter). He plays helicopter parent, trying to learn more about Nancy in between investigating the mysterious killing of an author whose bestseller book displayed inside knowledge of the deceased mad scientist's projects. By the usual set of coincidences, a young fellow named Li is not only mixed up in the author's murder, he's paying court to Lin Dong's reborn offspring, which brings out the Angry Dad in the generally peaceful Lin. Possibly because of the author's revelations, Andre the Cyborg and his pocket army find out that Nancy has "enhanced blood" that Andre needs to continue his own existence.

I wasn't precisely bored with BLEEDING STEEL, but not being able to follow the action without a Wiki-page didn't help much. Chan plays his usual amiable tough cop, but the element of paternal concern doesn't add much to the mix. The actors playing Li and Nancy aren't particularly beguiling, though I'll admit I've seen worse, and Andre the Cyborg is a one-dimensional villain. Only his female enforcer The Woman in Black (Aussie actress Tess Haubrich) projects a good evil vibe, and her kung-fu stunts are solid, particularly since she doesn't seem to have been a real-life practitioner of martial arts. Chan has certainly made worse films, even discounting the femme fatale appeal of Haubrich, but I'm not sure he made any that were more confusing.

MOONLIGHT SWORD AND JADE LION (1977)

 

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

Here's another of many HK films in which the FX team couldn't resist injecting some modern-day technology into the medieval goings-on, even though almost all the other metaphenomenal content is uncanny.

There is a "jade lion" in the story, and a criminal type wants it to "control the kung-fu world" or something like that. But heroine Chiu Siu Len (Angela Mao) doesn't use a sword, but a spear, and most of the time she utilizes that weapon more to bludgeon than to stab. Chiu, orphaned long ago, is asked by her teacher to go looking for her teacher's lost brother. Somehow finding this individual may help Chiu find the slayers of her parents.

This Taiwanese chopsocky doesn't attempt to meld martial arts with mystery-solving, Chiu just runs around stirring up trouble, and various criminal types seek to kill her. One of her enemies (Wen Chiang-Long) is slipped poison in order to make him fight Chiu, but the heroine's dominant opponent is Su Yen (Lung Chung-erh). Her personal fights with the hero are compromised by the weapon Su wields-- some sort of odd stick with a whisk attached. She fares better using other menaces. One is a group of women wielding what look like artificial flowers mounted on staffs, with the flowers able to sprout needles or to explode like grenades. Later Su traps Chiu in a hall of automated menaces. Most of the mechanisms are uncanny, like a metal tube that shoots acid. But then the FX people threw in a flying razor-edged top, which means that this part of medieval China excelled in gyroscopic science. 

Mao receives a fighting-assist from an ally played by Don Wong, but he doesn't alleviate the incoherence. MOONLIGHT's only virtue is that Mao does a better than average amount of fighting, even if there are no big standout scenes. That puts MOONLIGHT in the middle range of the actress's films, better than the ones in which she only has one or two battles. (One exception: RETURN OF THE TIGER, a Bruce Li flick in which Mao has one standout scene, beating up a gym full of opponents.)

THE STORY OF KARATE, FISTS, AND BEANS (1973)

 

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

BEANS (so titled because one of the two heroes likes all food, but especially beans) is one of a seemingly endless supply of Italian knockabout comedies. This one stars a duo of protagonists right out of THEY CALL ME TRINITY, a handsome cad and a big dumb brute having slapstick adventures in the Old West.

It's also one of various Italian flicks that worked in some chopsocky action thanks to the martial arts-movie craze of the seventies. All the "karate" in BEANS stems from a Japanese cook (Iwao Yoshioka) who aligns himself with the dopey duo. This character is also the source of all the film' metaphenomenal content, all pretty much in one scene. The cook is seen using his prowess to (a) chop down a small tree with his hand, (b) strike sparks from flint with his hand to make a fire, and (c) yell a "kiai" so loud that it strips the feathers off a dead bird so he can roast it. Were it not for the other two "skills," I'd probably consider that one a cartoony departure from reality.

The only halfway interesting part of BEANS is that the duo join other reprobates in seeking to liberate a banker's daughter from a gang of Mexican bandits. The reprobates think she's a little girl, and she turns out to be a very big girl, played by six-foot-tall Francesca Romana Coluzzi. She doesn't fight so much as deck guys with single power-punches, and one of her punchouts includes accidentally knocking out the "Bud Spenser" guy among her rescuers. 

BEANS must have made money, because the director, Coluzzi and other performers in this film returned three years later for an even loonier film where a martial arts guy shows up in medieval England for ROBIN HOOD: ARROWS, BEANS AND KARATE. There's no metaphenomenal content here, and  Yoshioka and Coluzzi play roughly the same type of characters as in BEANS. But Yoshioka only appeared in five movies, while Coluzzi had a good long career in Italian character parts, in addition to playing the role of the mother of the 1985 RED SONJA.