FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON (1982)

 

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

I confess that this sterling review of the featured 1982 South Korean "kung-fu-and-ghosts" flick does a better job of summarizing FIREFIST than I ever could. I flatter myself that I'm usually pretty good at forging my way through nonsense-narratives and gleaning whatever diamonds I can find in the rubbish-- for example, as with my 2023 review of the far superior WOLF DEVIL WOMAN.

FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON-- whose title refers to precisely nothing in the film-- is however not crazy by virtue of its creators' undisciplined energies, but by virtue of laziness. There's very little story in FIREFIST, so what the creators did was just inject lots of sleaze, violence and weird supernatural effects as possible to pad out the running time. 

The A-story is that of Master Liao (Chen Pao-liang). He's some sort of bigwig in his unnamed city, with such enormous wealth and power that he can keep hot and cold running sex-slaves and no one seems to notice. At the start of the film he's already had his minions bury four or five of his latest victims beneath the mountain snows. However, a floating heart emerges from one of the bodies and kills several minions-- and this is the beginning of Liao's many troubles.

The B-story, then, is comprised of two young heroes out to nail Liao for his crimes. Of the two, the female Kun-Kun (Poong Im) is trying to find her twin sister, who may or may not be one of the murdered women. Male hero Ten-Chi (Jae-Young Lee) doesn't really seem to have a motive for his beneficence. I imagine the English cut I saw could have left a lot of motive on the cutting-room floor. But it's just as likely that the filmmakers didn't bother to include any, particularly knowing that one of the producers was Tomas Tang, and one of the other technicians was writer-director Godfrey Ho.These two Hong Kong luminaries have rarely shown any interest in continuity, so yeah, not much reason to blame the dubbing staff.

Amidst all the time-wasting (and boring) sleaze and violence, I found two scenes that justified FIREFIST slightly. In one, the evil Liao dreams that five of his bloody-robed victims spring out of the snow and assail him. The other scene comes at the climax, when Ten-Chi and Kun-Kun have a decent, fairly bloody battle with Master Liao. But supernatural revenge overtakes Liao before the battle's done, and so the heroes are left to pick up the pieces-- assuming their viewers can figure out where all the pieces go.

SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS (1981-83)

 

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

To repeat my basic sentiments from this review, almost everything that didn't work about the 1981 SPIDER-MAN does work in SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS. Well, with one exception: '81 SPIDER-MAN doesn't needlessly inject any animals into the stories for comedy relief. Still, the yip-yapping of the Lhasa Apso known as "Ms. Lion" is still not as bad as either of the insufferable funny-animals from Hanna-Barbera's SUPER FRIENDS, on which "SPIDER-FRIENDS" was conspicuously patterned.

Indeed, one might argue that SUPER FRIENDS dumbed down much of the appeal of the DC Universe, while SPIDER-FRIENDS was pretty close to the feel of the Marvel Universe, but with all the continuing soap opera elements left out. Since the web-spinner had no team affiliations at the time AMAZING was produced, the creators apparently played off the way Spidey had often teamed up with The Human Torch of FANTASTIC FOUR, and then decided to give Cartoon Spidey a complementary ice-ally, Iceman of X-MEN. But because Marvel Comics had already leased Torch-adaptation rights to another company, the AMAZING show-runners simply made up a new fire-hero, name of Firestar. Not only did her status as a mutant jibe well with Iceman's heritage, it played up the X-MEN connection, though it would take years for animation to tap the appeal of Marvel's merry mutations. 

The injection of a female hero also had other pleasant effects. Not only did Firestar's presence keep the Spider-Friends from being a sausage-fest, her femininity added spice to the banter between the trio-- which was nearly the only characterization they got, since the stand-alone stories mitigated against ongoing plotlines. Aunt May hovered around, sometimes almost stumbling across the secret shared by Peter Parker and his two fellow collegians, but frankly, Aunt May wasn't much more of a significant presence than Ms. Lion.

I remember being very bullish, to anyone who would listen, as to how good SPIDER-FRIENDS was at getting across the appeal of the hyper-complicated Marvel Universe. One such appeal was that of having other Marvel heroes appear only in their civilian identities, as happened with both Tony Stark and Matt Murdock, thus lending a touch of verisimilitude at times. Of course, there were also standard teamups between the Spider-Friends and such big names as Captain America, the X-Men, and Thor. (In the latter episode, the Friends even visit Asgard, and Iceman almost gets "adopted" by a female Frost Giant.) Consequently the Spider-Friends also go up against the familiar enemies of the guest-heroes, such as the Red Skull, the Juggernaut, and Loki. 

Yet it's interesting that the writers also slotted in a number of, shall we say, unusual selections. In the episode "Seven Little Superheroes," the villainous Chameleon chimerically chooses to play "And Then There Were None" with the three Spider-Friends, and with four other Marvel characters who had no strong connections with one another: Captain America, Doctor Strange, the Sub-Mariner, and-- Shanna the She-Devil? Maybe someone at Marvel Productions wanted to remind people that they'd had their own jungle queen over five years before Hanna-Barbera came out with their 1978 creation, Jana of the Jungle? Almost as odd was having the Spider-Friends go Gothic, when Dracula vampirized Firestar. This forced the other two heroes to journey to Transylvania, where they contended against the vampire-lord, a werewolf, and a Frankenstein Monster.

There were of course some flop episodes, and just as had been the case with '81 SPIDER-MAN, the worst featured Doctor Doom, a character the writers just couldn't get right. Still, on the whole, the action looked good for the limited budget, and the patter between the trio was well done. In fact, some episodes also featured narration by Stan Lee himself, with all his customary gift for hyperbole. The theme song was only slightly better than that of '81 SPIDER-MAN, albeit with better visuals. I won't pretend that SPIDER-FRIENDS was anything but pleasant lightweight entertainment. But it certainly excelled a lot of other Marvel shows in that respect.

SPIDER-MAN (1981-82)

 

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

I vaguely remember seeing this solo SPIDER-MAN cartoon-- the first such cartoon since the sixties version-- but what memories I had were pale indeed compared to my more vivid recollections of the contemporaneous SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS. And this is surprising, since both shows came from Marvel Productions-- according to this essay, a re-branded version of the DePatie-Freleng Studio-- and both shared many of the same writers, artists and production people. Nevertheless, SPIDER-MAN comes off as if it was thrown together by people who barely "got" the concept of Spider-Man and hadn't even read the comics much. 

It does have the virtue of making one appreciate the Grantray-Lawrence season of Sixties Spidey. That program erred on the side of silliness sometimes, but at least it was intermittently funny. None of the writers on the show showed any ability to get Spider-Man's signature sense of humor, and even the dialogue of his foes-- this time borrowed from many other Marvel books, not just Spidey's-- is tedious in the extreme. Someone on the writing staff apparently thought featuring Doctor Doom would help boost the series, since the Latverian Lord appears in five separate episodes-- and he proves a bore in all of them. The action scenes are just as limited as those of the sixties series, but Grantray-Lawrence managed some occasional high points. 

In fact, the producers' choice of support-cast seems uncannily reminiscent of the sixties show. Aunt May appears only sporadically there, but she gets considerably more screen time in this 1981 effort, with her main schtick being that she can't abide Peter Parker's masked identity. This is a notion taken from the comics, but it soon becomes repetitive. The first year of the sixties show utilized only very simplified versions of Betty Brant and J. Jonah Jameson, and '81 SPIDER-MAN does the same, but with almost zero style and charm. Betty is the closest thing Peter gets to a romantic interest in the show, but most of the time he follows the usual Clark-and-Lois routine of pissing her off when he ducks out to play superhero. (Oddly, in the very last episode, Spider-Man enjoys a little quick canoodling with none other than the long-tressed Medusa, who's not on his list of main squeezes in any comic.) Jameson is far more frustrating, since he's meant to be comedy relief, and he's grotesquely unfunny.

Only two episodes rated as passable entertainment. One is a crossover in which Spidey's foe Kraven steals the saber-tooted tiger Zabu, thus honking off Zabu's partner-in-peril, the Tarzan-esque Ka-Zar. The other story involves the hero seeking to thwart the larcenous activities of The Black Cat. The animators seemed to exert themselves a little more to delineate the appeal of the curvaceous cat-burglar, and the writers even threw in a cute joke where Spidey tries to access a phone booth, but has to cool his heels until its occupant, a guy in glasses and a blue suit, takes his leave. "That guy looks familiar," thinks the wall-crawler. But other crossovers, whether of heroes like Captain America and The Sub-Mariner or villains like Magneto, are usually dull. The show also boasts what may be the most forgettable theme music of any Spidey teleseries, though I've no plans to make a full comparison in the near future.

THE NIGHT OF THE SCORPION (1972)

 

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

There are no scorpions in this film, even in a figurative sense. But since all of the alternative titles suggest the recrudescence of dead people-- when in fact the story never seriously suggests that possibility-- then one might as well go with the giallo-friendly cognomen.

SCORPION is also barely a giallo, even of the Spanish variety, though it manages to cram a fair amount of similar perverse sexuality into what's basically an "old dark house with mystery killer" flick. So far as I can tell director Alfonso Balcazar didn't helm any other horror-movies, confining his talents mostly to spy-stories and westerns. But it may help to know that one of the three credited script-writers was Jose Larraz, who would soon make his mark with a handful of sexually transgressive spook-shows.

Though the "star" of the movie is the mystery killer, Oliver Bromfield (Jose Antonio Amor) is the nexus around which the trouble coalesces. He's first seen about to depart the mansion where he's lived his whole life, because he had the misfortune to accidentally kill his wife Helen (Gioia Desideri). Apparently the local authorities cleared Oliver of wrongdoing, but he still feels bad and wants to get away from the scene of the tragedy. The audience later learns that only three other people occupy the mansion, but at the outset sees only Oliver's widowed stepmother Sara (Nuria Torray). Sara tries to persuade Oliver to stick around and become her lover. The English dialogue is not clear as to whether the two of them may have already done the deed, before or after the death of Oliver's father, but it doesn't matter, since the late father is never an issue. Oliver resists Sara's temptations and departs.

Some time back Oliver comes back, but with a second wife, and the audience encounters the real viewpoint character, Ruth (Daniela Giordano), the "second wife who has to get used to her husband's weird home and relations." Ruth meets Sara, who can barely conceal her feelings for her stepson, and then sort-of meets Oliver's intense sister Jenny (Teresa Gimpera). The other occupant is apparently the mansion's only servant, the maid Clara.

It doesn't take Ruth long to learn that there's a lot of controversy surrounding Helen. Both Sara and Jenny make odd comments about her, and Oliver has bad dreams about the incident of Helen's death. It seems she took a header off a high staircase, while Oliver was drunkenly berating her. The audience also gets a flashback in Oliver's memory, one to which Ruth is not privy. It seems that Helen cheated on Oliver several times, though the audience only sees one transgression: sleeping with Oliver's weird sister Jenny. But even in the flashback, Oliver doesn't remember exactly what caused Helen to take her fatal plunge.

When the killings eventually start, Oliver's never really a serious candidate for "resident psycho," any more than it's ever likely that Helen has come back from the dead. But this is probably because the film knows its audience and spends most of its time showing its three gorgeous female stars in all sorts of stunning outfits. (Only Desideri's Helen gets a sizable amount of nudity.) Ruth accidentally jump-starts the psycho when she brings in a private investigator, initially having him pretend to be her uncle. The P.I. is the first to die, and then a couple more follow-- drastically reducing the pool of suspects. 

SCORPION doesn't really have any value as a mystery, but few "old dark house" flicks do anyway. Other reviews found the movie too tame, and indeed the killings are very vanilla. But the sexploitation aspects held my attention well enough, though I'll admit that all of the characters are nothing more than simple psychological constructs.

THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE (2001)

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

The tag-line for this SORCERER'S APPRENTICE claims it's "one great adventure." But not only is the movie not "great," it doesn't fit the category of adventure at all, but that of the drama. The script plays down all the Arthurian elements of the story-- young contemporary 14-year-old Ben Clark (Byron Taylor) gets drawn into a conflict between the incredibly long-lived Merlin (Robert Davi) and his equally blessed opponent Morgana Le Fay (Kelly Le Brock). In place of high adventure, writer Brett Morris-- until recently, his only such credit-- dilates upon various routines about Ben's relations to his family and his peers at school.

Ben's proximate difficulty is that his father gets a better job that forces the family to move from South Africa (where most of the film was shot by an English crew) to England. Ben resents this heartily, as would any 14-year-old, but he also complains of a lack of attention from his father, who's perhaps a little too buried in his job as a museum curator. 

Accordingly, while trying to adjust to his new school-- where he almost immediately picks up both a possible girlfriend and a bully-- Ben goes looking for another father figure. He approaches a neighbor named Milner (spell it sideways), demonstrating a trick of stage magic, but the older man rejects the young one's attention. Then later, Milner seems to want to make friends after all, and gradually Ben learns that Milner knows real magic, and so Ben wants to become this sorcerer's apprentice.

Apparently synchronicity is responsible for Milner living in the same city to which Ben transfers, because this sub rosa sorcerer is busy protecting both "the staff of Fingal" and some sort of magic crystal from his enemies. Morgana is of course after both items, but she doesn't have much in the way of resources: just two thugs who are actually a transformed cat and rat. (The writer fails to generate any comedy from these two traditionally-inimical animal types.)

So the film trundles along, focusing mostly on Ben's challenges at school and his attempts to learn magic from Milner. The motivations of Milner/Merlin are always vague. Does he believe that Ben is a danger to his protection of the magical doohickies, or does Ben represent some way to defeat Morgana? If the two magi were struggling over gaining the youth's help because Ben inherited some ability to wield the staff from some distant English ancestor, the story would have made a little more sense. But the stakes in the conflict between the two sorcerers are never clear.

The climax more or less attempts to bring these elements together. Ben seeks out his real father and tries to reach out to him, though he's not able to enunciate his problem. Then the father gets time-frozen while Merlin confronts Morgana. The two posture a little, and Merlin defeats Morgana with one quick spell. Does the ease of her defeat have something to do with Ben's decision to side with Merlin? Who knows? Afterward, the so-called apprentice loses all interest in real magic and settles down to his high-school universe.

Most "Arthurian adventures in modern times" have been underwhelming in terms of Matters Arthurian, and APPRENTICE is no exception. But the dramatic arc, the script's main focus, is even weaker than all the magical conflicts. The most positive thing I can say for the film is that director David Lister keeps the simplistic story rolling along without becoming visually tedious. One of Lister's last credited films, the 2010 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, showed that he could do even better with a script that didn't vacillate about its main point.

CROSS (2011), CROSS WARS (2017)

 

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

The only point of interest about these two hack productions is how much they look like they were shot back-to-back on the same miniscule budget. But IMDB testifies that six years elapsed before the second one was released in whatever its original venue, be it the fading video stories or on the streaming platforms that had begun to coalesce following the 2007 ascension of Netflix. Still, I hadn't noticed either of these two films (or their reputed sequels) in all the years I've been watching various services. So I suspect these cinematic turds were bundled into some sort of package bought by one such service, and that they haven't really been in circulation until recently.

The format of the CROSS series is a little like G.I. JOE crossed with SUPERNATURAL. In contrast to many other low-budget action-movies, there's no attempt to make the proceedings look like they're taking place in populated cities. A gang of good vigilantes contends with various magical threats on city-sets occupied by no other passers-by, and with nothing to disguise the fact that everything's happening on sets.

The series is named for a cross-like talisman worn by the main hero Callen (Brian Austin Green, whom I suspect no one ever thought of an action star). The talisman gives Callen some vague super-powers, though the rest of his merry band all depend on mundane ordnance. (I think in the second one there's a girl who has an amulet who can stop time.) All of the vigilantes have goofy code-names (that's the G.I. JOE part) like Riot, Backfire and Shark, except for the female fighter "Lucia." Most of the group's enemies also sport names like Saw and Slag, though the two of the main antagonists have more or less regular names like Gunnar (Vinnie Jones) and Erlik (Michael Clarke Duncan) and the third Big Bad is called Muerte (Danny Trejo). The actors spend most of their time trading insults and making bad jokes and executing very limited action-scenes with one another.

I suppose one small piece of evidence that the two turds weren't shot together is that the first Backfire is played by Jake Busey, while the second is a Black actor, which somehow precipitates a name-change to "Blackfire." CROSS WARS also introduces a second group of good vigilantes, an all-female one, but they're even less interesting than the first one. Of all the bad jokes reeled out to pad out the running time, there was one slightly funny one, but I can't recommend anyone sit through these time-wasters just for that one small gem. Oh, and there a lot of comics-based visual tropes thrown in, like having characters utter dialogue in balloons, but that element is just as witless as everything else. 

SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-A-RAMA 2 (2022)

 

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

The best I could say of this movie's thirty-years-ago predecessor in my review was that it was "lively with a few decent jokes." SLIMEBALL #2 offers almost all the same elements, and doesn't stint on the most important one: that of pretty young women in various states of undress-- though there's not much nudity this time around.

The original movie was probably the best of the schlock-vehicles for the scream queen troika of Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer, and Brinke Stevens, and indeed, the trio worked so well together that they almost immediately teamed up again to produce the vastly inferior NIGHTMARE SISTERS. The script for #2 is credited on-screen to one Kent Roudebush, but IMDB asserts that the original writer for #1 collaborated. Moreover, #2 was directed by Brinke Stevens herself, and she showed considerably facility with the schlock-stuff, as well including assorted shout-outs to the original fan-favorite.

So it's thirty years after the events of SLIMEBALL #1, and the same sorority house, Pi Delta, is still in operation. Everyone there seems to know about the events of the first flick, even though only two of the invaders of the Bowl-a-Rama survived their encounter with Uncle Impie, a murderous wish-granting imp, and neither of those intruders belonged to the sorority. Apparently the original script was going to feature one of those survivors, the gang-girl Spider, as the sorority's house mother. But when Linnea Quigley chose not to take the role, House Mother Spider was rewritten to be Snake, the sister of the absent Spider, and was played by Kelli (NIGHT OF THE COMET) Maroney. I won't complain on that score, though, because IMO Maroney aged a lot better than Quigley did.

Of course the young girls are the focus, and they break down almost to the same divisions as in #1: two mean girls who oversee new pledges to Pi Delta, and three aspirants, Ginger. Devin and Bitsy (Audrey Neal, Hannah Tullett, and Glory Rodriguez). The script fairly well broadcasts that Bitsy (as in "itsy bitsy spider") is an analogue for the first film's tough girl Spider, and the original idea was that Bitsy would turn out to be the long lost daughter of Quigley's character Spider. But in the finished film, she becomes the long lost daughter of house mother Snake, thus nullifying all the relevant Spider-references. Anyway, the two mean girls decide that they and the three pledges will break into the Bowl-a-Rama as did the Pi Deltas of generations past. For good measure, the girls catch three dorks peeping on them and shanghai them along for the ride.

House Mother Snake would seem to be the only person who could have related the legend of the Bowl-a-Rama break-in, but apparently she didn't bother mentioning the imp-demon who killed most of the other intruders. The teens horse around in the alley for a while until one of them breaks a bowling-trophy, and out comes the imp, who seals the building and tricks the youths into making wishes that lead to their violent demises. For good measure, the ghosts of two of the girls killed in the first movie, Lisa and Taffy (Michelle Bauer and Brinke Stevens) emerge from the trophy as well. I'm sure this development got shoehorned in just so that Bauer and Stevens could reprise their roles, though their presence makes it possible to save a few potential victims from the demonic deceiver.

As in SLIMEBALL #1, the imp is the star of this comedy-horror show, but strangely, it's not the same imp who got sealed back into the trophy at the end of that flick, but Uncle Impie's son "Harold." With what impish mother was Harold conceived, while he was locked up in the trophy, with only the ghosts of two human females for company? That's a small demerit, but the script also blows the potential to make Bitsy as kick-ass as her mother, for Bitsy is mostly talk, not action. She like Spider gets a minor romance-arc, but it's not as well set up as in the first film. So the sequel remains merely competent, pleasant to watch once but unlikely to generate any cult-film appreciation.

VENGEANCE OF A SNOW GIRL (1971)

 

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

I've only seen a handful of the films Lo Wei wrote and/or directed since the 1950s, so the info that this was the last film he directed and co-wrote for Shaw Brothers doesn't mean much to me. What I found meaningful was that VENGEANCE OF A SNOW GIRL was a better than average take on the consequences of revenge.

As much as Western cinema, HK films, whether they're chopsockies or otherwise, often depend on vengeance to drive their plots. Only a small number of such movies show that revenge is a dish that can poison the avenger, and even a lot of those which expose the downside of the avenger's quest still manage to kill off all the villains anyway, a tradition as old as HAMLET.

As a child Shen Bing Hong (Li Ching) witnesses her parents, the custodians of the formidable sword Jade Dragon, slain by a quartet of martial artists who don't think Bing's daddy (played by the director) is strong enough to keep the weapon safe. Actually, Little Bing only thinks all four kill her parents; one among them, Lord Kao, abstains from the murderous action. Little Bing hides from the killers by partly submerging herself in a freezing lake, and when she comes out, her legs have become severely weakened. (Hence the sobriquet "Snow Girl.") Somehow, in the next fifteen or so years, she gets martial arts training (though sword-fighting is her only martial skill). Thus, even though she can only walk with the help of crutches, Bing can somehow bound as high as the top of an eight-foot wall, with what I assume is some sort of wuxia magic-- which alone places SNOW GIRL within the marvelous domain.

Bing's opening gambit is to steal the Jade Dragon from Ge Hung, one of the murderers. Then she disguises herself as a man and pretends to set up selling a weapons shop near Ge's house. Tien Ying (Yuen Hua), one of Lord Kao's grown sons, notices the Jade Dragon and invites Bing to Ge's estate, because Kao and the other two murderers all live in the same town and keep up contact. In fact, Ying is engaged to marry Ming Zhu (Lisa Chiao Chiao), the daughter of another of the four middle-aged martial artists. Ying is utterly clueless as to Bing's true nature, but she apparently takes to Ying, despite knowing he's the son of a man she plans to kill.

Getting access to Ge's estate gives Bing the chance to kill Ge. Ying intercepts the disguised Bing in flight, and is flummoxed that this apparent cripple can fend off Ying's best sallies. Bing escapes, but listens in on a conversation in which Ming Zhu busts Ying's balls for letting the killer escape. For no explicit reason, Bing disposes of her male guise, shows her true feminine self to the quarreling couple, and announces her intention to kill the other three older men, Ming Zhu seems much less concerned with the threat to her father than to some possible competition from another young woman, and in this her suspicions are justified, though the clueless Ying doesn't yet realize that he has become smitten.

Bing escapes again, and Ying relates her story to his father Kao and his brother Ting Wei. Bing attacks Kao at the latter's house, but Kao is more than a match for her. Ying intervenes, pleading mercy for a crippled woman, and wonders if his father's vast knowledge of medicine might cure Bing's malady. Bing resists the idea, claiming that even she got a cure she'll still seek the lives of all her parents' killers. But she does want to be cured, and she's becoming more and more attracted to Ying.

Kao then informs Bing that her cure depends on undertaking a sort of fantasy-quest. First, she must journey to a foreign kingdom and request the loan of "fire resistant suits." Second, she must use this protection to descent into a certain volcano and retrieve a magical pearl. Third, she can use the pearl to enter a snowbound realm where it's so cold that it can freeze a human being to ice-- unless one can offset the cold with the heat of the pearl. Oddly, at the center of the snow-zone is a boiling-hot spring, and if Bing can submerge her legs in the spring for an hour, she'll be cured.

Ying talks his diffident brother Wei into coming along, but Wei's only in the story to act as a messenger at a particular point in the narrative. The real story is of course Bing falling in love with the selfless Ying, and he with her. I won't detail all of the quest-adventures, but the first one is the most revealing. Upon entering the foreign kingdom the locals capture Ying and Wei. The king threatens to kill the intruders, but Bing appears and offers her own life in exchange. Fortunately, she's able to impress the monarch with her sword-skill, so that all three depart with the fire-suits (which look a lot like modern plastic). Wei then finds some reason to go back home, to let his father know what's happened. However, Ming Zhu, her father and some soldiers (possibly the other murderer too, I forget) get on the trail of Ying and Bing, and cause them trouble during their progress. Kao duly follows to see how things sort out.

The climax takes place in the snowfield. Only one of the two heroes can venture into the small cold-zone at a time, since the pearl can only protect one person. I can't swear that Lo Wei was using the conjoined cold and heat as metaphors for Bing's cold heart being warmed by her passion for her courageous companion, but I think it's a decent justification for these fantasy-elements. Unfortunately, when Ming Zhu's forces show up, this places Ying's life in danger, and the heroine sacrifices her own life to save him-- though, as noted above, all the original murderers are killed, while Ming Zhu's only punishments are losing her father and her lover.

SNOW GIRL's no neglected classic. But Li Ching gives a fine performance amid all the swordplay, and I'm prepared to give a look to any other works by Lo Wei I may encounter.

SMALLVILLE 2:21: "ACCELERATE" (2003)

 

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

"Accelerate" is a great example of "increasing returns," the opposite of "diminishing returns." The episode's title references the super-speed capacity of the new threat of this mostly done-in-one story (though it gets a sequel in Season Three). But metaphorically, it's as if the writers of the program suddenly got tired of all the low-level messing around that dominated the latter half of Season 2, and sought to "accelerate" the deeper meanings of the SMALLVILLE mythos.

In its more routine moments, SMALLVILLE was like many soap operas, concerned only with the barriers its characters built up between one another, thus generating secrets that cause conflict. But in the show's better moments, the show was able to show the vulnerabilities that generated the barriers in the first place. The first episode, "Pilot," establishes the dark secret of Clark Kent's non-human status, and the universe seems to respond to his interest in Earth-human Lana Lang by leading her to wear a kryptonite necklace, as if to say, "hands off; you have no business with this Earth-girl, not least because your advent to this planet caused the death of her parents." The kryptonite touch-me-not goes away in due course, but Clark and Kent still can't seem to connect, though Clark's relentless penchant for "saving" her incites the jealousy of Chloe, the other Earth-girl in Clark's life. But not that much in that scenario speaks to Lana's own secrets.

"Accelerate" starts off with Lana showing a b&w horror movie in some part of her bistro, the Talon, to a bunch of similarly-aged patrons. This allows for yet another almost-romantic moment between Clark and Lana, which of course goes nowhere. Later, she's alone cleaning up the theater-area, when the film projector suddenly activates, and plays a home-movie showing two little girls at play. Lana instantly recognizes that one of the girls is herself as a child, while the other is her childhood friend Emily Dinsmore, who tragically perished roughly ten years ago. Even freakier, a little girl who looks just like ten-year-old Emily shows up and asks Lana to be her friend. Then she disappears.

While Lana is busy freaking out, Lex is busy making wedding plans, though Doctor Helen is mysteriously absent. But Lionel is still mooching around, and Lex wonders if his dear old dad has some other business in Smallville than his stated aims. At least one iron in Lionel's fire is to follow up on a project he's had going on with one of his former Luthorcorp employees, Pete Dinsmore (Neil Flynn of SCRUBS and THE MIDDLE fame).

Clark being Clark, he instantly has total faith in Lana's testimony of seeing a ghost, and he investigates the story of Emily's demise. It seems that the two little girls had a habit of playing near a perilous river (while singing that Golden Black Plague Oldie, "Ashes, ashes, we all fall down"), and Lana fell into the river. Emily selflessly followed her, and managed to encourage Lana to swim to safety, but lost her own life. Clark then suggests that if some apparition has been popping up, they should talk to Emily's father in the neighboring town of Granville. (Perhaps it's "grand" rather than "small" because Lionel's got such grand plans working sub rosa.)

Pete isn't especially welcoming to Clark or to Lana ("Look at you; all grown up"). He denies the existence of a ghost-girl, but a few scenes later, we see him in another location-- the run-down home where Pete lived formerly with his daughter and his never-seen-or-named wife. He confers with Little Emily, who doesn't understand why things have changed so much, and complains about being kept in some confinement. When Pete tries to capture Emily, she apparently impales him with the shaft of a rotary fan. 

Someone finds Pete and gets him to the hospital. I'm not sure why Lex happens to be at this place of healing when Pete's admitted-- after all, Doctor Helen is still absent-- but he encounters his dad trying to visit the unconscious Luthorcorp employee. Lex wanders into Pete's room but unlike Lionel, Lex gets a visitation from Emily, who wouldn't let Lionel see her because "he's a bad man." Emily promptly disappears. 

Clark sees Emily too, and for what may be the first time in all cinema, gets to view a speedster in "frozen time." Clark talks Lana into accompanying him as they break into Pete Dinsmore's Granville home. They don't find Emily, but they find her precursors in a secret lab, and realize that Emily is the age-accelerated clone of the dead child, whom Dinsmore fostered as a substitute for his loss. Clark also has a bad moment when he's fleetingly exposed to liquified "meteor rocks," which are presumably how Dinsmore was able to give the clone super-powers. Thus we finally get some payoff as to why Lionel has been amassing supplies of kryptonite in episodes like "Insurgence" and "Witness." Clark and Lana report their findings to the police, but Sheriff Adams attests that by the time her people made the scene, persons unknown (but certainly employed by Lionel) scrubbed the house clean of all its mad science. The sheriff uncharacteristically gives the teens a pass on breaking and entering. Many later episodes will depict further experiments in creating superhumans-- a calculated substitute for the old "freak of the week" formula-- so in this sense "Accelerate" is a pivotal story in the mythos.

Once Lana understands that Clone-Emily is not a spirit, she wants to reach out to the confused child-- though she doesn't know that this Emily has a murderous streak. She meets Emily at the river, and reveals that she Lana has suffered "survivor's guilt" for years because Emily died and Lana didn't. Emily then tries to correct that oversight by pushing Lana into the river. but her guardian angel is there to save her once more.

Before the final dramatic payoff, Lionel reveals that he has a more pressing reason for returning to Smallville than conferring with Dinsmore. He's managed to finagle control of the Kawatchie Caves out of Lex's hands and into his own, and so the threat to Clark's secret is placed in yet greater peril. 

Lana confesses that she not only suffers survivors' guilt from Emily's death (to say nothing of having lost her parents later on), she feels utterly unworthy of being saved. Clark reassures her and the two have yet another heartfelt moment that still doesn't lead to a romantic clinch. Two more scenes wrap up the episode. Lionel tells Dinsmore that he'll no longer have access to the cloning-project, and then he tries to win over Emily, once more confined in some unknown location, by giving her a bunny rabbit. Emily has only one more appearance in the series, but she "accelerates" in age so as to lose all semblance to Lana's original playmate.

SON OF BATMAN (2014)

 

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

SON OF BATMAN was the first of four Batman animated projects launched for the production entity known as the "DC Animated Movie Universe," and it adapted the opening story-arc from Grant Morrison's seven-year tenure on several DC Bat-books. The 2006 arc "Batman and Son" is uneven, to be sure. But SON OF BATMAN manages to leech all the fun out of the original story.

There are grim moments in the original story. The narrative hinges upon Batman learning that, as the result of his having been drug-raped ten years ago by his friendly enemy Talia Al Ghul, he now has a ten-year-old son, Damian Wayne, raised in secret by Talia, her father Ra's Al Ghul, and the League of Assassins. Moreover, because Young Damian has been raised to be an assassin, he's already taken human life. Despite agreeing to be placed in the charge of his crusading father, Damian starts out believing that mercy is for weaklings. His slow metamorphosis to a more nuanced humanity is the main point of "Batman and Son."

Understandably, SON could not chart such a gradual change. Yet the solution of the credited writers, James Robinson and Joe R. Lansdale, is to bring in a villain from another series, Deathstroke, who attempts to usurp the League from Ra's and Talia. This forces Talia to place Damian in Batman's hands to keep their son safe, whereas in the comic, Talia has devious ends of her own, which involve her getting access to the "Man-Bat" serum and creating a League of "Ninja Man-Bats," as Morrison terms them. 

The use of Deathstroke as the principal villain served to simplify the dramatic arc, but it also distracted from the nature of the League's evil under Damian's mother and grandfather. While in Bruce's custody Damian is as hot to avenge his apparently-slain grand-pere as any chopsocky protagonist out to get the villains who slew his master. That's all Deathstroke is here, a cardboard villain who takes over Talia's role in the original comics. I'm not one of Deathstroke's many fans, but his normal character is at least a little more interesting than anything in this movie.

Robinson and Lansdale borrow a number of story-elements from the original, but there's no heart to any of their transmutations. The script seems as obsessed with constant action as any 1990s DIE HARD imitation, but there's no real sense of humans being in danger when the villain unleashes his horde of bat-monsters. And the whole thing is depressingly devoid of humor. The script works in one Morrison joke, wherein Damian bugs his sire to let him drive the Batmobile. But one joke's not enough to allay the overall sense of nihilism.

I grade SON with "fair" mythicity only because the story of the Bruce-and-Damian relationship is important to the Bat-mythos of the comic book, and because the routine script does get across a little of that significance. The end-fight between Deathstroke and Damian, garbed as "The Fourth Robin" (not counting those of alternate worlds), is reasonably entertaining. This was one of the first projects in which Jason O'Mara voiced Batman, and I wasn't very impressed, though he may have gotten better later on. 

PUPPET MASTER (1989)

 

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

With trepidation I consider the possibility of delving into Full Moon Pictures' incredible durable PUPPET MASTER series, with at least fifteen DTV films thus far (only one of which I've reviewed previously). I've seen most of them over the years and they all follow a very limited formula. About the only creative question I can address is to wonder why the franchise became successful in the home video market.

Though producer Charles Band had touched on the "tiny horror" motif with 1987's DOLLS, PUPPET MASTER seems to have also tapped into a sort of carnivalesque mood by focusing on the sheer variety of its killer puppet-monsters. A prologue in the first film establishes that the seven puppets of Film #1 are created by an aged puppeteer named Toulon (William Hickey), who kills himself to keep his secrets from the hands of Nazi agents. The Nazi subplot later becomes increasingly important to the series, but in the original film Toulon and his secrets are a side-issue. 

Before Toulon dies, he hides his manikins in his house, where they will remain concealed until a bunch of psychics descend on the domicile. The exact reasons they have for coming are not memorable, nor the reason as to why one of their number activates the puppets to kill his colleagues. The human characters are largely victims to be knocked off as in the average slasher flick, though Paul LeMat and Irene Miracle probably do the best job of enlivening their nothing characters. 

One small asset of the first film that I don't think persists in the overall series are a few touches of perverse sexuality. But the variety of the puppets-- apparently animated by some vague "Egyptian magic"-- is surely the selling point. Instead of having one slasher who has to change his murder-method with each killing to keep from being boring, each puppet has a specialized function. One carries the archetypal slasher-knife. Another has a drill-head. The only female one vomits up leeches that can choke victims (are the leeches magical creations or what?) At the climax all of the manikins turn on their evil puppeteer, using their abilities in tandem like a tiny superhero team.

Producer Band experimented with many other tiny terrors, but none of them took off the way PUPPET MASTER did. I give the original flick a "fair mythicity" rating just for being able to meld the appeal of the slasher with that of the "tiny terror," abetted by the use of the eerie carnival-music score.

THE INDIAN TOMB PART 1 (1921)

 

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

Some time back I saw Fritz Lang's 1959 remake of this classic German silent, which remake I've not yet reviewed. I wanted to see both parts of the silent before I did so, and I thought I'd found copies of both on YouTube. Surprise! I finished Part 1 and found that there was no Part 2. So here I'll confine myself to the silents' version of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and get around to the RETURN OF THE JEDI conclusion later.

Lang had a couple of reasons for being invested in remaking the silent work. He worked as a scenarist on the 1921 film and campaigned to be selected as director, though that job went to the more experienced Joe May. In addition, it was on this film that Lang met his future wife Thea Von Harbou. She was also on the writing staff, helping to adapt her 1918 novel, and supposedly she and Lang shared an interest in Things Indian. Thus the 1921 TOMB stands as a harbinger to the couple's collaboration on METROPOLIS, which Von Harbou wrote in 1925 and Lang adapted in 1927. 

The "tomb" of the title might be deemed a 20th-century fictional imitation of the Taj Mahal, which a Mughal emperor had built in 1631 to house the remains of his wife. Apparently Von Harbou wondered what it would be like if a modern-day Hindu ruler decided to create such a tomb, but for a wife who was not dead yet. 

Whereas the 17th-century emperor culled his builders from the Islamic world, in the 20th century the British still held dominion in India. Thus Ayan III (Conrad Veidt), maharajah of Bengal, decides that he wants to hire as tomb-designer the 20th century's most renowned architect, Englishman Herbert Rowland (Olaf Foriss). But Ayan's too impatient to send an emissary by plane to England. The rajah descends into a massive catacombs (one of the movie's many astounding sets) and awakens a holy man deep in suspended animation. Ayan commands this holy man, name of Ramigani (Bernhard Goetzke), to teleport himself all the way to England to obtain Rowland's services. And sure enough, in an era when cinematic miracles were not that common, that's just what Ramigani does. 

At that moment Rowland, in conversation with his fiancee Irene (Mia May, wife of Director Joe), happens to express his envy of the Taj Mahal as a great architectural milestone, one he wishes he might emulate. Irene assures him that he could beat that old Indian tomb all hollow, and then she's called away by a phone call from her dad. Viewers never learn why Irene's dad called her, so clearly the writers just wanted the actress to speak her lines and then get out of the way. 

In Irene's absence, Ramigani just manifests in Rowland's sitting room. Rowland walks in and is stunned to see an unfamiliar turbaned man in his house, particularly one offering him a fantastic job in India. The architect orders the equally perplexed butler to show the swami the door. However, Ramigami's there long enough to plant the seed of temptation in Rowland's mind, and the architect calls the envoy back and agrees to the contract. He's so besotted by his dream that he leaves immediately, informing Irene of his plans only with a note. Irene, for her part, has some intuition of danger and tries to find her fiancee with a phone call. The all-knowing Ramigani blocks this action by using telekinesis to disable Rowland's phone.

Nevertheless, Irene ferrets out Rowland's destination and hops a plane to Bengal. Rowland, arriving at the palace of the rajah, takes in all the exotic sights for a while. But eventually he finds out the awful truth. Ayan's wife Savitri cuckolded him, not just with a young British officer (Paul Richter, who would later essay the role of Siegfried for Lang's NIBELUNGEN), but one whom Ayan considered "a friend." The movie rather lightly passes over the morality of this affair, leaving the audience to assume that Savitri and the young Brit represent the forces of true love. Rowland is disturbed to learn that his new project is designed to be a method for murdering a willful wife, but he can't try to leave without provoking the rajah's wrath.

Irene reaches the rajah's palace but Ayan won't let her see Rowland, using the excuse that he doesn't want the architect's labors interrupted. There's a suggestion that Ayan might be thinking about taking Irene to wife once Savitri is out of the picture, but no major romantic advances take place. Indeed, as the film reaches the two-hour mark, May sets up the cliffhangers for Part Two: British Lothario about to be captured by Ayan's soldiers while Rowland realizes he's contracted leprosy. Another miracle-stunt is provided by Ramigani, who rescues Irene when she wanders into a tiger-pit, apparently by making her unseen by the big cats.

I can't make a final determination of the artistic worth of Joe May's INDIAN TOMB until I've seen the whole thing. The first half is slow going for modern tastes, though I can appreciate that May sought to capture the wonders of Exotic India with the sort of "painterly" approach at which Silent Cinema excelled. That said, the only sequence I found visually evocative was the swami's rescue of Irene from the tiger-pit. No one will ever know if Lang might have made the 1921 TOMB better, but in his later German works like METROPOLIS and the aforementioned NIBELUNGEN, Lang showed himself better at artful mise-en-scene than anything in TOMB. Of course, given that I've seen none of May's other German works, that comparison doesn't prove Lang to be the better director in all respects. Though TOMB was not a financial success, it was almost certainly green-lighted because May had scored with MISTRESS OF THE WORLD, a serial with EIGHT feature-length parts. (And modern audiences think the MCU invented interconnected movies...) As it happened, both Lang and May emigrated from Europe to America in the 1930s, though Lang transitioned into A-level films while May, who didn't bother to learn English, spent the remainder of his career in B-flicks.

Without seeing Part 2, I can't be sure of TOMB's combative status, but since I remember the general outline of Lang's remake, I think the whole movie can best be termed a subcombative adventure.

THE LADY CONSTABLES (1978)

 

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

Here's a true rarity: a 1970s kung-fu comedy that doesn't pile on silly grossout humor. Mind you, it's only mildly funny. But it also doesn't confuse the viewer with lots of cxtraneous characters, making its lightweight story easy to follow. CONSTABLES is both directed and written by Chang Hsin-yi, and it's impressive that, though he'd scripted over twenty HK/Taiwanese flicks by 1978, this film, a teamup of two popular kung fu divas. was only his second director credit. Chang only directed ten films, but continued to script into the 1990s, including such oddball fare as KUNG FU WONDER CHILD, which evinces the very faults avoided by CONSTABLES.

Set in some vague medieval era, the title refers to police officials given broad governmental power to go wherever they pleased to seek out criminals, which is the main reason I label the film's function "sociological." The titular lady cops are Tang Ling (Chia Ling) and Tien Ying Hung (Angela Mao), and as the film commences they're both devoted to chasing down a gang of jewel thieves who ripped off "the Five Shining Pearls." Tien wants to bring in the gangsters because they committed the crime in her town, while Tang has a more personal reason: the crooks killed a relative of hers. One might think that the one with the personal involvement would be the more emotional, but no. Chia's character is the cool logician, while Mao's is the one who's a little more excitable. 

The ladies challenge each other's right to the "collar" and so they often follow separate trails. (One online review claimed that in real life the actresses weren't entirely pleased at their team-up, each considering that she was the reigning Lady of Kung Fu in Asian cinema.) Their gamboling pursuit of the gang-members is further complicated by a third party, Hung Yi (Wang Kuan-Hsiung). This character's presence contributes the most reiterated comedy routine, in that for most of the story he remains silent, communicating only through written documents. A playful little tune sounds every time he whips out one of these visual aids, which are even sillier given that he claims that he's not a mute; he just doesn't like to talk. The two constables peg him as a famous bodyguard to some unnamed prince, and so they tolerate his presence as he follows them around. Similarly, the ladies rack enough of a body count fighting the low-ranking crooks that they're also followed around by a coffin-maker, because he thinks he can drum up more business in their presence.

The fights from all three principals are plentiful, though none of them stand out. Both women use uncanny weapons. Tang's is a small baton with a retractable blade, while Tien can somehow project unfolding cloth sashes from her sleeves to bind and confuse opponents. When they finally confront the gang's chief Star Tiger (Chang Yi), the villain utilizes both a bladed umbrella and spiked deadfalls that, rather than being swung on a rope, are somehow launched like missiles at the heroes. Possibly the funniest scene is one in which the two policewomen take turns torturing (in a funny way, of course) the same criminal for information.

This is another middle-level film for Angela Mao, with a fair number of fights but only so-so choreography. And though Chia never became as internationally known as Mao, CONSTABLES is not one of her best fight-wise either. Curiously, Chia dresses down so that a couple of shady customers mistake her for a man, and Chia scandalizes a female by claiming "he" wants to sleep with the woman. Possibly Director Chang wrote this into the script so that the two actresses wouldn't be competing over their costumes, with the result that Mao is indubitably the sexier of the duo.

JUNGLE HELL (1955)

 

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

I won't say that I burned with desire to see JUNGLE HELL. From everything I read, it was just a cheapjack "potted-plant jungle" flick from the mid-1950s, set in India but with a few moments of a flying saucer edited in to grab a potential SF-audience. But I kept  a weather-eye out for a free showing of the movie on streaming or on Youtube. Imagine my completist's outrage when I viewed a copy on Youtube, and it left out the lousy flying saucer!

Nevertheless, I'm counting HELL as a marvelous film even if I didn't see the marvelous content, because there are numerous online testimonies from others who saw the full inanity, such as this review of a DVD pairing of this film and an unrelated Sabu flick. Apparently HELL started out as a pilot for a "Sabu the Jungle Boy" series (which would have been in production during the last years of the "Bomba the Jungle Boy" film series), but no producers bit. I  don't know if credited director Norman Cerf was involved with the original project, but I find it interesting that this was his only directorial credit, and that almost everything else he did was related to editing. The first movie-version of the TV-footage definitely called for tons and tons of editing, for Cerf loaded at least twenty minutes of stock footage of various scenes from India, particularly of elephants doing stuff (including one lady elephant discreetly giving birth). Later, other hands apparently took Cerf's work, shortened it, and edited in the flying saucer stuff, with some voice-overs to explain what effect the saucer-people were having on the jungle, given that no aliens meet any of the characters, or even animals.

Far odder than the inserts is the fact that if you strip away the inserts and the stock footage, the "story" that was allegedly a TV pilot is an absolute mess. In both films and TV shows of the fifties, jungle-tales followed a very simple template, in which the heroes and villains are quickly established, as are the stakes over which the opponents are fighting. Impoverished though almost all the JUNGLE JIM movies and TV shows may be, at least they make sense as they trundle along from Plot Point A to Plot Points B and C. Maybe the incoherence proves that Cerf, credited also as the writer, WAS involved in the original project.

The basic conflict, such as it is, is the opposition between the superstitious ignorance of primitive Indian natives and the enlightened knowledge of White Bwanas, which was a common trope in many other jungle-genre works. Interposed between the two worlds is diaper-clad Sabu the Jungle Boy, who lives with his primitive people (though we never see a village as such) but standing foursquare with the Bwanas. The sole representative of Good White culture is Doctor Morrison (David Bruce of MAD GHOUL fame), though he's later joined by lady doctor Pamela (K.T. Stevens from MISSILE TO THE MOON). 

The exposure of a local kid to radioactive uranium sets up the conflict. Tribal wise man Shan-Kar (essentially an Indian version of an African witch doctor) merely fakes trying to cure the boy with mystic jargon (which I think is at least real Hindi). Sabu, a sort of local culture-hero, takes the boy to Morrison, who immediately cures the child of radiation poisoning, no muss, no fuss. But Morrison has a guest, a Russian named Trosk (for "Trotsky," no doubt). Unlike most Communist provocateurs in fifties flicks, Trosk is totally without any thug-backup, but somehow he wants to get his hands on the uranium and ship it back to his people. One would think that Trosk would eventually contend with either Sabu or his White Friends, but he never does. He lurks around, suggests an alliance between him and nasty know-nothing Shan-Kar, but nothing comes of that. Eventually, when Trosk is out in the jungle trying to steal the uranium, he's attacked by stock footage of a tiger (and a stuffed tiger) and he dies.

Actually, the only combative scenes in HELL take place between Sabu and fellow native youth, Kumar (Robert Cabal, later "Hey Soos" from RAWHIDE, who was seven years older than thirty-something Sabu). An odd bit of dialogue suggests that Sabu's title of "Jungle Boy" is some honorary title that isn't exclusive to him, since the hero tells Kumar something like, "When you're Jungle Boy, you can make the decisions!" At no time does the shaky script suggest that Sabu lives apart from other humans as Bomba did. There's one scene in which he summons an elephant, but there's no suggestion of any communion with animals. It would be easy to believe that Sabu the fictional character was simply a mahout, an elephant-handler, as indeed Sabu the actor had been-- though that wouldn't explain the elevated title.

The sloppy script doesn't really even bring home the lecture on the importance of converting ignorant natives to Western ways, and a romantic subplot between Morrison and Pamela may also be the worst romance ever seen in a jungle flick. Sabu is the movie's only asset, but thanks to the tons of stock footage, even the actor's fans will find this HELL particularly tortuous.

On a side note I also watched the feature that joined HELL on the DVD, a 1951 production from Lippert Pictures called SAVAGE DRUMS. This item had no metaphenomenal content, aside from showing how the Asian "fire-walking" trick might be done. But this formula film, directed by a fellow who also helmed a handful of JUNGLE JIM entries, at least had the sort of A-B-C storytelling of which Norman Cerf could only dream.

AMAZON WARRIOR (1998)

 

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

If AMAZON WARRIOR isn't the worst post-apocalypse film, or even the worst just from the nineties, it'll do until a worse one comes along.

While there can be some virtue in low budget films that come up with clever ways to skirt their production values, WARRIOR suggest a bunch of wannabes who carelessly threw this project together on a dare or a bet. 

Having seen many post-apoc flicks, it's not objectionable that the script barely establishes any ground rules for the cataclysm that reduces all humanity to small primitive, quasi-medieval enclaves. That's almost a given of the genre. But even a dopey film like AMERICA 3000 came up with a rationale for the rise of an Amazon society. WARRIOR just tosses in the notion that an Amazon society arose for some reason, though we know nothing about its history even in a general sense. We only know that when protagonist Tara (J.J. Rodgers) is a child, her Amazon tribe is wiped out by a vague band of male "marauders," who are also nearly a given in this genre. Like a really crummy retread of Lady Snowblood, this last Amazon then devotes her life to exterminating marauders, to the point that they deem her "the Angel of Death."

To her good fortune, Tara meets a hunky guy, Clint (Jimmy Jerman), who also has a plot to take down the marauders, though Clint has a more long-range goal, to keep a general named Steiner (played by one of the producers) from uniting all the marauder tribes. Tara doesn't team up with Clint immediately. She takes a commission to guide a group of whiny girls, the daughters of a rich man in one of those enclaves, from one place to another. This plot-line falls apart when the writer gets tired of it, having the girls betray Tara to her marauder enemies. The traitors are then executed by the nasty villains, and this sets up Tara's teamup with Clint to take down Steiner. 

What makes this no-budget dreck egregious is not the predictable plot-- which does have a couple of adequate fight-scenes-- is the fact that the writer constantly has all the character use modern idioms of speech, This might have even been funny under the right circumstances, but the overall impression is that the author couldn't be bothered to write anything else. I hope this is the worst film in its genre, because I couldn't take anything worse.

KRAA THE SEA MONSTER (1998)

 

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

KRAA is a silly but spirited salute to both giant monster films and the micro-budgeted space operas of 1950s TV. If one goes into the film expecting it to boast even middle-range FX, one will be disappointed. But without overrating what KRAA offers, I thought the actors were relatively engaged with their broadly played roles. It's not broad enough to be truly "tongue-in-cheek," much less outright comedy, but it manages to be fitfully amusing.

Most giant monster films are primarily about the giant monsters, even when they're sent by some vague prime movers. But the monster in the film's title is just a mindless tool of his creator, an alien overlord named Lord Doom (Michael Guerin), sort of a mashup of Skeletor and Marvel's Doctor Doom. He begins the film discussing his project of unleashing the giant sea monster on Earth, for conquest as far as I recall. He's aware that there's a cadre of space-patrol agents, the Planet Patrol, buzzing around the Earth, but is confident they can do nothing. 

However, the patrol agents have an agent whom they send to Earth to somehow counter Kraa's rampage. However, for some reason I forget, the agent is a tiny fellow named Mogyar, who has some "universal translator" problems that result in his speaking English in an Italian accent. Mogyar makes contact with two random humans, Bobby and Alma, and the three of them try to figure out to defeat Kraa while also dodging government agents. It's all moderately watchable but forgettable. The film then has the Planet Patrol zoom all the way to Lord Doom's world, where Doom has a short battle with the patrol-commander before being defeated. However, a coda establishes that Doom may escape once again to menace the cosmos.

A lot of similar stories might have focused upon the heroic figures who defeat Doom and his monster. However, neither the Earth-humans nor the space-patrol officers stand out. So in my view KRAA is the only giant monster-film in which the villain is the star, though the sixties film TERROR BENEATH THE SEA is similar in its structure.

SIGN OF THE GLADIATOR (1959)

 

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

If one's not too demanding, the movie sometimes advertised as NEL SIGNE DI ROMA (translated as "Under the Sign of Rome") is probably an OK time-killer. But for a variety of reasons I found that it was more notable for all the odd things that went wrong with it-- though none of them are sufficient to make this a "so bad it's good" film.

The U.S. marketing is the first odd thing, for apparently it played here under two separate titles. The better known one is SIGN OF THE GLADIATOR, in which some marketing guy decided to stick in a random reference to someone being a gladiator (even though there are no actual games or combatants in the story). A second retitling is SHEBA AND THE GLADIATOR, which is more amusing. I hypothesize that some marketer noticed that the cast list included a character named "Bathsheba," and thought he could put more butts in seats if the title implied that the movie was about the Biblical Queen of Sheba.

There is a queen, though a lot of 1959 Americans might not have heard of Zenobia (Anita Ekberg), who ruled the land of Palmyra (modern-day Syria) in the third century. Naturally, SIGN does not seek to reproduce exact history, but it seems that the real Zenobia did rebel against the dominion of Rome-- and this is also the main conflict of the movie.

SIGN is not primarily an adventure-movie like various other "gladiator films" of the era, but a romantic drama. After Zenobia defeats a Roman legion, Rome sends more soldiers to quell the revolt. However, before Roman forces engage with the Palmyran army, Roman consul Marcus (French actor George Marchal) seeks to treat with Zenobia, though his real purpose is espionage. Zenobia doesn't deign to meet with this envoy and sends him to work in the mines, where he's punished by being hung upon (not nailed to) a cross. Then Zenobia changes her mind and invites Marcus to her court. With ridiculous ease Marcus manages to convince the queen that he's willing to turn his coat to her cause, and she promotes Marcus over native Palmyran officers.

All of this would satisfy the usual romantic formula if one could believe for an instant that Zenobia had fallen for Marcus in the early scenes. There are some more sustained romantic moments halfway through the movie, but Ekberg and Marchal have zero chemistry. Possibly stories of a chaotic shoot contributed to this basic problem.

Two other subplots are lumped in. One concerns a Palmyran plotter named Semantio (Folco Lulli), a heavyset chap who intends to take advantage of the rebellion to usurp Zenobia and bring in Rome's rivals the Persians to take over the realm. Semantio is aided by a comely dancer played by Cuban beauty Chelo Alonso, who'd soon become a celebrated peplum actress, and who bears the unusual Scandinavian name of "Erica." Erica is there just to trade lines with Semantio and do one sexy dance, after which she disappears.

The other plotline is more confusing. The aforementioned Bathsheba is a virgin dedicated to the temple of Vesta, whose worship apparently infiltrated Palmyra due to Roman influence. Bathsheba falls in love with a guy and flees her temple, so the religious authorities seek to find Bathsheba and execute her. The writers make a lame attempt to sync up Bathsheba's story with that of Semantio, as the usurper is killed by Marcus when Semantio attempts to sacrifice Bathsheba. There's not a lot of time devoted to describing the religion of Roman Vesta or its social functions-- though one online source claims that the Vestal hierarchy was somehow related to confirming Roman emperors-- but the sacerdotal references qualify in my book as a naturalistic version of the "weird societies" trope.

Though Marcus frets about betraying his newfound love, he follows through on his true mission and undermines the Palmyran forces in the field, bringing about the triumph of the Roman legions. In the movie's one memorable scene, Zenobia-- portrayed as commanding her troops in the field, though not actually fighting-- takes issue with Marcus' betrayal and impales him with a handy spear. There's a  funny line in which a doctor says such a thrust would have slain anyone less manly than Marcus, or something like that. Palmyra becomes a vassal of Rome once more. Yet Zenobia seems okay with it once she knows of the Persian threat, so she and Marcus end up in a concluding romantic clinch.

Despite Ekberg's impressive assets, her lack of chemistry with Marchal-- who isn't that great either-- isn't her sole problem. Ekberg had her positive aspects as an actress, but she couldn't put across the sense of being regal, in contrast to a few dozen actresses who labored in the vineyards of heroic adventure flicks. Yet it's hard to grade Ekberg harshly given the data that main director Guido Brignone was sidelined by illness, forcing some replacement direction from none other than Michelangelo Antonioni. I didn't see any signs of New Wave artiness in this thoroughly ordinary period flick, though. Long time Italian journeyman Riccardo Freda handled the battle scenes.

For me the film's main interest lies in its giving Ekberg her only starring "femme formidable" role. For those viewers not already devoted to period-films of the period, I don't imagine that SIGN will show any "signs" of earning a better reputation.

THE THREE SWORDS OF ZORRO (1963)

 

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

This "Paella western," filmed mostly in Spain but purporting to take place in 1830s Mexico, has been seen under the dull title  "Sword of Zorro." But a number of 1963 lobby cards play up the image of three sword-wielding cavaliers, one of them female, and this is certainly the most noteworthy aspect of this obscure movie-- even though the viewer doesn't see the trio until the film's end.

That gimmick aside, SWORDS is a better take on the Zorro mythos than director Ricardo Blasco's second and last take on the myth, 1965's BEHIND THE MASK OF ZORRO. The 1998 MASK OF ZORRO labored to make its "Zorro 2.0" into a citizen of Mexico rather than of Spain, but SWORDS got there first. Young Diego is not a noble cavalier, but a Mexican child whose parents are killed by a local tyrant. Diego is then raised by another Mexican family, alongside that family's blood daughter Maria (Mikaela Wood). When Diego is about six or so, he witnesses a cadre of the tyrant's guards chase a fugitive into his adopted family's house. Is the older man some previous Zorro? He's never called that, but while fighting with the tyrant's soldiers, the man carves a "Z" in the forehead of one opponent. The soldiers accidentally kill Diego's adoptive mother, which incites in the young boy a desire to fight evil.

In his manhood Diego (Guy Stockwell) assumes the identity of the black-masked Zorro and begins preying upon the nasty aristocrats, terrorizing the bumbling soldiers with his heroic mastery of sword and whip. For good measure, a young female named Virginia (Gloria Milland) travels to Zorro's city to marry the governor, who's expressly said to be old enough to be her father. Virginia is charmed by both Diego and Zorro but the script doesn't bother doing much with the old "girl hates the hero's phony coward-persona."

SWORD is pretty much Stockwell's film all the way, since no other performers get any standout moments. But Stockwell is good for all that he never again played a role similar to this one. Stuntwork and dialogue are decent. The end-gimmick, in which Real Zorro is joined by two Assistant Zorros, smacks of the original novel, in which the hero had a small band of revolutionaries in his service. Here, the Extra Two Zorros are introduced so suddenly that I didn't even follow who the Second Male Zorro was. The very last shot lingers on the face of Female Zorro Maria, who seems to be a little sad that her non-brother Diego has won the heart of Virginia. Given Diego's adoptive status I wondered if this Zorro might have a fling with a non-blood sibling, but that final shot is the only scene that suggests any of the filmmakers considered the notion.