ZONE TROOPERS (1985)

 

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

Though I rate ZONE's mythicity as poor, nevertheless it's an entertaining little romp from Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo, who would later receive plaudits for their work on Disney's ROCKETEER and the 1990 FLASH TV-show.

In 1944 Italy, an American army patrol is caught behind enemy lines by German troops. Only four men survive the onslaught: topkick Sergeant Stone (Tim Thomerson), military war correspondent Dolan (Biff Manard), older private "Mittens" Mittensky (Art LaFleur), and naive young private Joey Verona (Timothy Van Patten). It's not unreasonable to consider Verona as the filmmaker's self-insert, for he's passionate on the subject of "the sense of wonder" as incarnated by the sci-fi mags he reads.

As the troopers try to make their way back to safety, they stumble across a special project by the German occupying force: that they've captured a fallen spaceship and its alien pilot, and are seeking to learn the advanced secrets of the extraterrestials. When Stone is convinced that this could be a real threat to the Allies, he wants to dynamite the ship. Verona shows more compassion, rescuing the alien pilot despite its repulsive appearance. This proves far-sighted as well when the pilot's alien buddies come looking for him, and end up helping the grunts against their goose-stepping foes.

The dialogue is pure "scrappy dogface" stuff out of the more formulaic cinema about WWII, but if one invests in the calculated artificiality, it adds to the fun. The whole appeal of the story is to put four ordinary soldiers into a rare cosmic adventure, even though the escapism is muted when one of the four doesn't make it home.

Dolan refers to Verona as "Buck Rogers," though the proximate comparison might be "Captain America," since one of the dogfaces gets the pleasure of slugging Adolf Hitler himself in the kisser. I don't know how steeped the filmmakers were in comics-lore, but I don't think it a coincidence that the battle-weary sergeant has a surname very reminiscent of the longest-running WWII hero in comic books, the redoubtable Sergeant Rock.

CIRCUITRY MAN (1990)

 

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

CIRCUITRY MAN is one of three films written by the sibling-team of Robert and Steven Lovy and directed by the latter brother. The two apparently continued to work in low-budget cinema in other capacities, and this is a shame, because their first collaboration stands as one of the better "cyberpunk noirs" in American science fiction.

A narrative crawl informs the viewer that in post-apocalyptic 2020, most of the surface world has been devastated and the remnants of humanity live in underground cities, where the last frontier is the human mind. That means that the various underworld cliques trade in such dubious commodities as computer chips meant to stimulate the brains of customers who "plug" into them. In underground Los Angeles, Lori (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) formerly worked as a bodyguard and smuggler for one gang, headed by the corpulent Juice (Lu Leonard). Lori left Juice's employ to sell fashion designs to whatever passes for legitimate society (never seen, to keep the budget low). But Lori makes the mistake of looking for love in the wrong place, and her bed-partner betrays her to Juice's henchman Yoyo (mannishly clad Barbara Alyn Woods). Yoyo drags Lori to meet Juice, who pressures Lori to accept a special commission, to transport a cache of computer chips cross-country to New York for a big score. 

During negotiations, the cynical Lori meets Romero (like "Romeo") Danner (Jim Metzler), a "synthetic" normally employed as a "pleasure droid." Juice, being the sort of villain who boasts about previous misdeeds, tells Lori that she once manipulated Danner into being her runner on a job in order to liberate his girlfriend. The big catch: there is no girlfriend, only a programmed memory of one, downloaded into Danner's mind to make him tractable.

Lori needs a wheel-man to help her survive the underground catacombs connecting the various cities, and to avoid moving onto the surface, where humans can only survive with oxygen gear. The aggrieved young woman plays upon Danner's programmed fantasies so that he helps her, though clearly she's also intrigued with the handsome synthetic's rep as a man who can pleasure women. Unfortunately, rival crook Plughead (Vernon Wells) tries to hijack the chips, kills Juice (though she gets better later), and teams with Yoyo to knock off the two couriers.

Though the budget is low, the Lovys use a variety of clever production tricks to create the illusion of a future world. While being chased by Plughead-- so called because he has computer-jacks sprouting from his skull-- Lori and Danner start to bond as beleagured outsiders, and Lori becomes conflicted about using Danner for her own ends, just like Juice. The travelers meet a tunnel-rat, Leech (Dennis Christopher. providing wonky comedy relief), and he joins their band, being the only one who can provide oxygen tanks, with which to escape pursuit on the deadly surface.

There's also not a lot of budget for action FX. Lori, strangely nicknamed "the muscle bitch" even though she's not overly ripped, does a few basic fighting-moves against lowlife opponents, and at the conclusion Danner has a gun-duel with Plughead. But the focus is the love story, and though Lori is absent in the sequel, CIRCUITRY MAN is dramatically more satisfying than any dozen futuristic DTV flicks of the decade.

THE PREDATOR (2018)

 

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

THE PREDATOR re-united two alumni of 1987's THE MONSTER SQUAD, and in the same basic positions: Black as director and as co-writer of the script with Fred Dekker.

Surprisingly, this thrill-ride of a movie isn't a reboot, but allegedly takes place between two previous sequels in the PREDATOR franchise, as well as loosely setting events for one or more additional "in between" stories. 

Contra Martin Scorsese, I deem it no insult to call a film a "thrill-ride. That's primarily what the original PREDATOR was, not a deep and abiding insight into either an alien culture or into what I termed in my review "male-bonding culture." Indeed, PREDATOR 2.0 works in a fair amount of that culture, as I'll address shortly.

I frankly don't recall what movie introduced the notion that the Predator aliens sometimes raid Earth for human DNA samples. I thought most of the time they just wanted exotic trophies. But it's a very big part of 2.0 that the first of two Predators visits our fair planet for that purpose, so I'm assuming this is not a new trope to the franchise. 

I rather liked the opening, in that there's no attempt to dance around the physical look of the visitor. in marked contrast to the first film, which scored points for leaving the Alien's Big Reveal for last. This particular Predator fails to count coup on his human quarry, though. Army Ranger McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), in the midst of a hostage rescue, knocks out the unruly alien and then atypically mails some of the creature's armor to his home in the States. Maybe McKenna anticipates the treatment he's going to get from his superiors, for although the government sends the Predator to a research institute, the same officials treat McKenna like a madman and send him to a happy farm with five other maladjusted soldiers.

Fortunately, before McKenna and his new PSTD buddies are shipped off the grounds of the institute, the Predator breaks loose from the lab, sparing only one scientist, Bracket (Olivia Munn). McKenna manages to wrangle the crazies and Bracket into allies as he hijacks a bus and speeds back to the house of his estranged wife. McKenna has learned that the armor he sent to his own residence has been re-routed to his former location, and he correctly fears that the freed extraterrestrial may endanger McKenna's wife and son. On the way Bracket reveals that the captive critter apparently had human DNA in his genes, though she doesn't know why.

There's a subplot about McKenna's son being an autistic who possesses a savant-like ability to understand Predator-tech; Shane Black got some blowback from this concept and it could have been dumped. The film's real focus is indeed the "male bonding" that takes place even between soldiers who barely know one another, and how they end up battling not McKenna's original sparring partner, but a second Predator who kills the first and then tries to erase all traces of his people's presence.

The putative motives of the inscrutable ETs never make a lot of sense, but Black and Dekker (heh) provide lots of good action scenes, and in this case I'm glad they didn't feel constrained to work a female soldier into the mix. 2.0 made decent money so the possibility of a sequel to this sequel seems strong.

XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS: SEASON TWO (1996-97)

 

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

Nothing about the basic setup of XENA changes from Season One to Season Two, so I can get right into episode reviews, with ratings of (G) for "good," (F) for "fair," and (P) for "poor."

ORPHAN OF WAR (F)-- The season opener provides a big reveal about Xena's past. Years ago, before her decision to seek redemption, she birthed a child, Solan, by her fellow warlord Borias, who perished by an assassin's blade. Xena gave the baby to the king of the Centaurs to raise, and something like ten years later, she and Gabrielle return to Centaur-Land to prevent an incursion for a new warlord, Dagnine. This new villain wants a talisman, "The Ixion Stone," which stores all the potential evil of the Centaur race, and can in theory make a man into an immortal being. In addition to thwarting this over-reacher, Xena must come to terms with young Solan, who thinks Xena guilty of killing his father. There's a particularly good line in which Xena describes a mother's connection to her child long after birth.

REMEMBER NOTHING (G)-- This episode easily could have degenerated into just another riff on "It's a Wonderful Life," but the writers imbue the rewriting of Xena's reality with a strong sense of existential ambiguity. When Xena becomes mournful over his lost brother Lyceus and wishes he were still alive, the Fates change history for her. The heroine finds herself in a world where her brother never died and consequently Xena never became a warlord, though of course she keeps all her memories and skills from her other life. "Reborn Xena" soon learns that not fighting evil in one situation just propagates new types of evil, one of which is that in the adjusted world Gabrielle is now a beaten-down slave. The Fates also give Xena a "reset button," and significantly, she only uses it when she sees Alt-Gabrielle loses her blood innocence. 

THE GIANT KILLER (F)-- In another episode alluding to but not naming the Israelites of the Bible, Xena and Gabrielle must defend the people of King Saul-- including his son Jonathan and the singer David-- against the incursions of the Philistines, led by King Dagon. Xena's championing of Saul's people is complicated in that she has an old friendship with Dagon's champion, the literal giant Goliath. The script tangentially addresses the basis of the cultural quarrel but only in very simplistic terms, and the main focus is on finding a way for Xena to lend David some behind-the-scenes aid.

GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN (P)-- The mythology of the god Bacchus gets turned into a Greek version of Dracula, fanging girls so that they become "Bacchae," who are basically vampires. I suppose the association may've been that some of the archaic god's followers were violent "wild women." Joxer makes his first return appearance, bearing with him the head of Bacchus' enemy Orpheus. The script throws together those two figures and a very peculiar depiction of "dryads," but the faux vampire mythology is half-baked. Gabrielle does get turned into a vamp and bites Xena. Possibly this was the beginning of the infamous "lesbian subtext," though there's no further comment on the fanging when both heroes revert to normal.

RETURN OF CALLISTO (G)-- Xena comes to regret having spared Callisto (Hudson Leick), for the vengeful vixen wins free and seeks to destroy both the warrior princess and her best friend. By chance, Gabrielle's old boyfriend Perdicas shows up and signals his status as a redshirt by proposing to Gabrielle. Sure enough, Callisto murders him, and Gabrielle is gripped by a lust for blood. Yet to Callisto's immense puzzlement, Gabrielle can't follow through on the ethic of revenge. Joxer further astonishes the villainess by challenging her, but of course Xena's the only real opponent here. And this time, Xena doesn't save Callisto from death-- though that doesn't put an end to Callisto's status as a recurring enemy.

WARRIOR-- PRINCESS-- TRAMP (F)-- If two Xenas are good, three must be better-- and this time, it's perfectly true. Xena's lookalike Princess Diana summons her to help protect her new baby, but a plotter finds a second dead ringer, name of Meg (Lawless of course). I didn't really follow the plot, but with three Xenas running around-- one of whom has the hots for Joxer-- who cares? Oh, and there's another round of baby-juggling.

INTIMATE STRANGER (G)-- This direct sequel to RETURN OF CALLISTO has the heroine haunted by her non-action in allowing Callisto to perish. But that guilt leaves Xena open to dreams sent from Tartarus by the show's first "super-villain team-up." Ares and Callisto then work a body-switching magic on Xena's spirit. Now Xena occupies the form of Callisto in the world of the dead, while Callisto is in Xena's living body. And since Callisto's whole reason for being is to destroy anything Xena loves, the villain's first project is to try corrupting Gabrielle into committing evil. Real Xena gets back to Earth, and with some timely if comical assistance for Joxer, manages to overcome Callisto. However, in the real real world, Lucy Lawless suffered an injury and couldn't resume her Xena duties in the next filmed episode. So instead of both spirits going back to their bodies, Xena stays in Callisto's body on Earth while Callisto still has Xena's form in Tartarus. NOTE: Ares's dialogue indicates that he's probably had sex with Xena's body while it was occupied by Callisto-- and Real Xena's reaction to the news supports the thesis that prior to the heroine's reformation she had voluntary carnal relations with the war-god.

TEN LITTLE WARLORDS (F)-- This one's almost as funny as "Warrior-- Princess-- Tramp," and its setup has great mythic potential. Someone steals Ares's sword, consigning him to mortal status. While no one occupies the throne of the war-god, ordinary, non-aggressive people like Gabrielle become hyperviolent. A better script might have dealt with the interdependence between "war" and "peace" in the mortal realm. Unfortunately, the rest of the script is a labored play upon the "Ten Little Indians" conceit, which is part of some incomprehensible plan by sword-stealing trickster Sisyphus, last seen in "Death in Chains." Kevin Smith has a lot of fun with portraying Ares as a god brought low, but Hudson Leick plays Xena with a sort of glum dutifulness. By episode's end, Sisyphus is foiled, Ares returns to godhood, and Xena is once more Lucy Lawless at the close.

A SOLSTICE CAROL (F)-- TV is even more rife with riffs on "A Christmas Carol" than with those on "It's a Wonderful Life." And at first, the story of the two heroines trying to reform nasty King Silvus sounds VERY familiar, right down to substituting an alleged Greek custom of "Solstice" for Christmas. But I give the writers credit for ringing in a couple of Xmas-tropes not present in Dickens. The first is Gabrielle's friendship with an elderly toymaker named Senticles (by any other name, Jolly St. Nick), and the second is a very indirect allusion to the Journey to Bethlehem. Lightweight fun.

THE XENA SCROLLS (F)-- As if to make up for Season One's terrible clip show, this one only works a very few clips from earlier episodes into a 20th-century adventure riffing on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Lawless and O'Connor get to reverse roles for the most part, with the former playing mild-mannered Melinda, an archaeologist, while the latter plays Janice, a female Indiana Jones (complete with whip). Together, with the dubious help of French agent Jacques S'Er (Ted Raimi), they seek to uncover the secret of certain scrolls that both relate old Xena-stories and lead them to a strange visitor from another era. The action-choreography does not 

HERE SHE COMES, MISS AMPHIPOLIS (F)-- Good old Salmoneus summons Xena and Gabrielle to a city under constant threat of an attack from its neighbors. The only thing that can preserve the peace is a beauty contest, "Miss Known World," so Xena reluctantly assumes the role of contestant "Miss Amphipolis" and seeks to find out who's planning to foment a new war. It's intentionally goofy, but the biggest saving grace is a messed-up dance routine a la Busby Berkeley. One of the beauties in the contest is a transvestite guy, and perhaps it's politically inevitable that he wins the contest-- but at least it's only after three genuinely female contestants drop out.

DESTINY (G)-- Xena and Gabrielle visit the land of Sura, where Xena's army wiped all the denizens, except for survivor Callisto. There Xena is injured by a deadfall, and Gabrielle takes her dying body to a healer. Meanwhile, Xena's mind flashes back ten years, to a time when she and her soldiers took a valuable prisoner-- Julius Csesar, improbably rising to power in Rome at the same time as Xena's inchoate era. Xena places her faith in Caesar, and he repays her by stringing her up on a cross and having her legs broken. The Christ-parallel is reinforced by the fact that Xena has a protector, the warrior M'Lila, who somehow knows that Xena has a special destiny, one involved with individual acts of salvation. However, in the real world, Xena's body apparently dies.

THE QUEST/A NECESSARY EVIL (F)-- A mournful Gabrielle attempts to take Xena's corpse back to Amphipolis for burial. She's interrupted by the Amazon tribe that made the young heroine their princess, and they want Gabrielle to take the place of the deceased queen. Complications ensue. Xena's spirit seeks to re-enter her body, and she can only do so if she gets hold of godly ambrosia. To that end, she takes possession of the body of super-thief Autolycus. Once Gabrielle is convinced that Xena's spirit is in the burglar's bod, they acquire enough ambrosia to bring Xena back to life. However, ambitious Amazon Velasca gets hold of enough ambrosia to change herself into a virtual god. Xena and Gabrielle can only battle Velasca by releasing Callisto-- who also got a deity-upgrade in a preceding episode of HERCULES. Good action, and some nice character scenes between Callisto and the two heroines. Velasca never makes another appearance, but Callisto's career of villainy is not yet done.

A DAY IN THE LIFE (P)-- This is predominantly a comedy episode exploring the day-to-day interactions of the two heroines in between saving people. Many character interactions, but nothing especially mythic. One of the episode's foes is a giant named Gareth, mentioned (but not seen) as an enemy of Goliath in "The Giant Killer."

FOR HIM THE BELL TOLLS (F)-- Another comedy episode, but it scores higher on the myth-meter thanks to dealing with the trope of manipulative Greek gods. In this case, Cupid has promoted the wedding of a prince and princess of neighboring lands. But the love-goddess Aphrodite opposes the marriage because it'll cause her worship to be eclipsed. She enchants goofy Joxer into becoming a hero able to charm the princess out of her senses-- at least, when he hears a mystic bell ring. Xena has a mission elsewhere and Gabrielle gets to play "straight woman" to Joxer instead of being the comedy relief herself.

THE EXECUTION (P)-- Before becoming Xena's sidekick, Gabrielle had a hero-worship for a famous warrior, Meleager (Tim Thomerson). But when the two heroines stop by the hero's town for a visit, they find him accused of the crime of murder. Gabrielle believes in Meleager and helps him escape justice, so Xena must capture him to protect her friend. Fortunately for all concerned, the real murderer is a corrupt member of the establishment. This one could almost be an episode of any TV show. Thomerson's performance is one of the few assets.

BLIND FAITH (P)-- This time it's the old "enemies forced to work together" chestnut. Palaemon, a young warrior gunning to be known as the man who beat Xena, arranges for Gabrielle to be sold into a strange sort of slavery: destined to marry a local king. Xena, whose eyesight is compromised, forces Palaemon to guide her to the rescue of her friend. This proves a good move, since Gabrielle's ultimate fate is to be a dead queen. 

ULYSSES (P)-- Time for a brand new Xena love story. She and Gabrielle encounter Ulysses just a year or so after they participated in the Fall of Troy, so I guess the Greek adventurer didn't remain cursed by Poseidon nearly as long as he did in the Homeric epic. The heroines help the hero battle pirates to lay claim to his ship and then journey back to Ithaca. However, this Ulysses has been led to believe that his wife Penelope is dead, so it becomes easy for him to fall for Xena and she for him. But even before the characters reach Ithaca and learn the real state of affairs, viewers will guess that the great love has no future, particularly after Ulysses offers to join Xena and Gabrielle on their all-girl peregrinations.

THE PRICE (F)-- Xena and Gabrielle take refuge in an undermanned Athenian fort from a vicious tribe of marauders, the Horde. Xena's seen these merciless warriors before, and she becomes totally focused on using any means necessary to save lives from the raiders. Bleeding-heart Gabrielle is deeply offended by Xena's ruthlessness, though everything Xena does is entirely logical against a near-unstoppable threat. The script's pretty clever about finding a way for Gabrielle to provide a crucial insight into the Horde, allowing Xena to save the day.

THE LOST MARINER (F)-- Xena and Gabby meet the Flying Dutchman. Well, this time the cursed ship with an immortal captain is tied to a major Greek myth. In the myth, Athena and Poseidon each sought to become the principle deity of Athens, and depended on Athens' king Cecrops to decide the matter. In the myth, Poseidon lost and took godly vengeance. In the Xenaverse, the sea-god made Cecrops into an immortal captain with a ship no one could board without becoming part of the crew. Xena and Gabrielle get stuck on board the lost mariner's ship, so Xena has to figure out the escape clause in Poseidon's curse. Nothing special as myth, but that CGI Poseidon is very cool.

 A COMEDY OF EROS (F)-- The season ends with another goofy comedy. Cupid's son Bliss-- the avatar of Cupid-as-cherub-- gets his hands on his dad's love-arrows and flies down to Earth. Xena, Gabrielle and Joxer seek to protect a village from warlord Draco, but the arrows cause a Midsummer's Nightmare, with Xena falling for Draco, Gabrielle for Joxer, and Draco for Gabrielle. The wacky comedy works, but there are a few "serious" moments that clash with the whole.

ATTACK FORCE (2006)

 

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

Few of Steven Seagal's action-movies have any metaphenomenal content, and I think only this one and a post-apoc flick called AGAINST THE DARKNESS qualify for inclusion in "the superhero opera." I have not yet screened the second film, but a couple of reviews say that Seagal himself is only in that one for about half an hour, and that the rest of the time, his character is extensively doubled. So if I want to list Seagal at all for his contributions, however small, to the world of "superhero-adjacent" projects, I guess ATTACK FORCE has to make the cut, because at least there's a lot of Seagal action here.

Now, I'm not a Seagal fan, particularly of his later films, where he became increasingly lazy in his martial arts moves and his line-readings. I like a couple of his earliest works, particularly 1990's MARKED FOR DEATH. But those days were long gone by the time Seagal not only acted in, but also co-wrote, ATTACK FORCE.

For once, though, the misfire of a Seagal movie was not primarily his doing. The Seagal-script had his character, army commander Marshall Lawson, and the men under his command investigate a covert alien invasion. These aliens were capable of morphing into humans, but they possessed super-strength, though no advanced weapons, being limited to edged weapons. They came to Earth to harvest human DNA for evil purposes. 

However, after Seagal and most of the actors finished the initial shoot, the producers didn't like the results. They did new shoots and re-dubs so that Lawson and his fellow soldiers were now fighting a bunch of Earth-criminals who used a super-drug to boost their strength to inhuman levels. The drug-designers and their allies seem to have no particular aim in mind; they just go around killing people at random and must be stopped-- though at no time do local authorities get called in. A couple of times, the reworked version includes lines emphasizing that the fate of the world is at stake, and these are certainly legacies of the original script.

There's no knowing if the original version was any better than the ATTACK we have, but at least the basic premise would have made a little more sense. The dialogue and acting is almost uniformly wretched, but that's because almost every scene is a lead-in to some scene of extreme violence or inquisitorial torture.

I don't know that all Seagal-fans follow his productions just to enjoy indiscriminate carnage, but I suspect some do. For what it may be worth, ATTACK offers lots of hitting and knifing, and that might be preferable to watching the main actor give any long speeches like he did in 1994's ON DEADLY GROUND.

SPY TODAY, DIE TOMORROW (1967)

 

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

This minor Italian-Spanish-German flick, while not actually good, is at least diverting at times in comparison to the most routine programmers in the Eurospy subgenre. 

For a start, it boasts three weird titles. The original German title, seen above, translates to "Mister Dynamite--Tomorrow Death Kisses You" and was meant to highlight the movie's connection to a popular series of German spy novels, whose hero sports the nickname "Mister Dynamite." (In the novels his real name is "Karl Urban," the same as the modern New Zealand actor, but SPY changes the character's first name to "Bob.") For the UK the title became "Die Slowly, You'll Enjoy It More," which really sounds like something the Italians would have come up with. (Some dubber liked the title so much, they had three separate characters in the film repeat the sentence as a catchphrase.) Apparently SPY is the title for continental Europe.

So, in shameless imitation of THUNDERBALL, a secret oiganization, headed by one Bardo Baretti (Amedeo Nazzari), apparently steals an atomic bomb and wants a payoff not to detonate it in some U.S. city. So far, so ordinary. Yet when we first see Bardo, he's certainly not acting like a normative spy-chief. He gets angry at his current girlfriend for leaving their house without his permission, kicks her out permanently, and then-- lies down on the floor and wraps a rug around his body, as if retreating to the womb. I confess I found this one scene a real hoot, even though the script never elaborates upon it. Bardo also plays with model trains in his office, suggesting that he's a few bricks short of a load.

The U.S. military doesn't seem much better off. Several uniformed men sit around a table, discussing how their computer systems have claimed that one of their bombs is missing. No one thinks to ask if the employees of the unnamed nuclear installation have verified the absence of a bomb; they just take the computer's word for the matter. This will have consequences later for the plot, such as it is, later.

Bob Urban (former Tarzan Lex Barker) is sent out to turn over various stones and ferret out the blackmailers. Like every other sixties spy, he first has to meet with some goofy version of Bond's "Q," who tries to fob off weird weapons on the agent-- none of which he uses. The tech guy describes two weapons but doesn't show them in operation. He also described a pill that produces a big smokescreen, then for some reason starts to swallow it, spits it out and creates a big smoke-cloud in his lab. The director plays this scene for obvious laughs and therefore it's not as funny as the intro of Bardo.

Like every other Eurospy, Urban begins wandering around various cities, getting into fights until eventually Bardo sends henchmen to pick him up. Prior to this, a mysterious girl named Lu (Maria Perschy) ingratiates herself with Bardo and almost immediately becomes one of the henchpersons, for she also helps Bardo's men capture Urban by coming on to the heroic operative. But since she's the only major female character in the story-- with just two other minor ones tossed in for quick effect-- Lu starts out a bad girl and is later revealed to be a good one in disguise.

It's soon apparent that director/co-writer Franz Josef Gottlieb is really only interested in the comic scenes, for all the fights and gun-battles are tossed out with an air of, "this is the stuff the punters came for, so here it is." There are various pointless scenes in which Urban teams up with a CIA agent played by Euro-favorite Brad Harris, and these seem designed just to burn time. Urban's not much better with the sexual conquest scenes, either. At one point, in the middle of his assignment, he takes a blonde girl to the beach for some sun and fun, and then gets called back to the job. Somehow one suspects the hero's conviction for his noble purpose is lacking.

There are two elements of the denouement which are, like the Bardo intro, not really good but are a little unexpected. First, Urban figures out that the threat of nuclear blackmail has been a huge bluff; that Bardo had an inside agent falsify the computer's findings-- making it even stupider that the military guys never checked their missile silos. Second, though Urban has a final shootout with the inside agent, Bardo does what no other evil mastermind has ever done in a Eurospy flick-- he escapes. He's last seen having donned military garb, which allows him to commandeer a car from some soldiers and simply drive off. Two explanations occur to me. One: the version I saw is missing a big climactic scene. Two-- because the producers hoped to launch a series of "Mister Dynamite" films-- they may have thought they'd have Bardo appear in one of the next movies, movies which never got made. Since I know nothing of the book series, it's even possible that Bardo might be a recurring villain therein, and that Gottlieb simply adapted the character's weird behavior patterns from a book source.

Most of Gottlieb's other directorial efforts didn't receive English dubbing or subbing, and so it looks like this was his only Eurospy film. However, he did direct three earlier "Krimis," and in my review of SECRET OF THE BLACK WIDOW, I noted that the performers were allowed to "camp things up." So maybe Gottlieb was like the American serial director James Horne, who frequently injected baggy-pants comedy into theoretically serious adventures.

One last phenomenality matter: while THUNDERBALL sustains the trope of the "bizarre crime" by having its villains steal a real nuclear bomb, faking that crime does not satisfy that trope. But a pretense to performing a bizarre crime does rate as-- a "phantasmal figuration."

SEX OF THE WITCH (1973)

 

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

Contrary to the poster above, the mystery murderer does not wear the signature black gloves of the giallo, though I don't imagine that would have helped this almost incoherent "murder mansion" tale.

I looked into SEX OF THE WITCH simply because I wondered if writer-director Angelo Pannaccio had been more at home with sleaze-mystery than he was with possession-horror in the dismal RETURN OF THE EXORCIST. But my verdict proved exactly the opposite case. RETURN doesn't have as many lusty Italian beauties to ogle (though almost all of the actors are unknown to me). But at least I could follow what was going on in the possession-drama.

So elderly Uncle Thomas Hilton starts off the film by dying and leaving a huge inheritance to a collection of good looking male and female heirs, all in their twenties or thirties. The will even makes the usual specification that if any heir dies, the rest get his or her share. Trouble is, even though I watched  a subtitled Italian version, Pannaccio couldn't be bothered to establish who was who, or to outline the most basic relationships. The only thing one can be sure of is that Thomas disinherits his sister Evelyn, who has some vague associations with witchcraft. A little later it's said that one heir, Ingrid, has some ambiguous relationship with Evelyn, but even when their relation to the mystery murders is revealed, I still felt one doesn't know why things turned out that way. 

The killings themselves are ordinary and show only minimal gore. There's a lot of blather about how the Hiltons are a scurrilous family, and Pannaccio shoehorns an awkward piece of dialogue about how one ancestor perfected some scientific process of mutating cells. This, rather than witchcraft, is the only marvelous element of WITCH, and it bears on who the killer is and how Evelyn manipulates that individual-- sort of.

Almost the only pleasure to be had from WITCH are the good looking actors, including one American, Camille Keaton of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE fame, but she's very underused. The sex scenes are nothing special, but the actors are attractive and well photographed as they walk around spouting nonsense dialogue. There's one humorous moment reminiscent of Poe's famous "Purloined Letter" short story. A determined police officer declares his intention to find the weapon used in the first murder, when in truth it's sitting right out in the open, and he never twigs to its presence.

THE RETURN OF THE EXORCIST (1975)

 

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

I've been a little surprised that, following the international success of 1973's THE EXORCIST, the predominantly Catholic country of Italy didn't step up and produce an exorcism-drama fit to challenge the American product. But most of the Italian works designed to riff on the demon-possession theme remained very derivative, ranging only from interesting curiosities to slavish imitations. Angelo Panaccio's RETURN falls into the latter category, and it earns no credit for being the last film of American actor Richard Conte, since he only appears as the titular exorcist in the last half hour.

The script, co-written by Panaccio, is so ordinary that I won't recount its plot points. I'll just recount the setup and the few high points:

The demon this time is a succubus locked into a cursed ring by an archaic witch-cult. In modern times the ring falls into the hands of an innocent young man, Piero. The succubus begins possessing him, not only performing evil acts but actually morphing his body into her own (usually naked) form. 

As for notable moments, there are three.

At one point the demon tries to force Piero to have carnal relations with his own mother. She's spared that horror only by falling down a staircase and breaking her neck.

In another scene, Piero somehow grapples with the female demon, briefly separate from him, and tries to cut her throat. Instead, miles away from Piero, his girlfriend's throat starts bleeding, and she too perishes.

Finally, Piero's nun-sister does a Father Karras, taking the demon into herself to free Piero and then committing suicide by jumping off a cliff. This scene, while derivative, does draw comparisons to New Testament scripture, comparing the nun's sacrifice to the deaths of the Gadarene swine, into whose porcine bodies Jesus compelled the demon(s) known as Legion. However, the sister's sacrifice comes to naught, since she's also wearing the cursed ring when she falls, and the talisman simply ends up in other hands, so that the cycle can begin again. 

I suppose those minor moments make RETURN slightly better than 1974's BEYOND THE DOOR. That one resorted to a peasoup-spitting possession-victim unquestionably modeled on Linda Blair's character, but played by former "Nanny and the Professor" alum Juliet Mills. 

ZORRO (1975)

 

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

The Walt Disney ZORRO teleseries sparked a fair number of copycat Zorro-productions in Europe throughout the decade of the 1960s and for the first half of the seventies. Of those I've seen, the 1975 ZORRO is the best, though oddly it diverges not only from Disney but from the original 1919 Johnston McCulley text.

In the first Zorro story, Diego is a Spanish noble whose father has a governmental position in Nueva Aragon, a colony in Spanish California in the early 1800s. Having heard from his father of the rampant corruption in the region by the military, Diego goes to the States to help-- but with an advance plan to pose as a fop while working against the military in a colorful disguise. Diego's motives, when stated at all, involve "noblesse oblige," the obligation of the ruling class to dispense justice to their subjects. In the course of stamping out evil, Diego meets a comely young lass, Lolita Pulido, who has contempt for Diego's mincing persona but falls in love with his swashbuckling identity. 

Unlike the book, ZORRO starts at the beginning, but gives Diego a rather proletarian makeover not unlike the one seen in THE MASK OF ZORRO. Diego (Alain Delon), who knows swordsmanship but whose familial connections are not mentioned, is first seen visiting in Spain, paying a visit to his close friend Miguel de la Serna. In common to Diego, whose clothes are those of a working man, Miguel is richly dressed, and has a fine house, a wife and a young son. Miguel announces that he plans to succeed his late father as governor of Nueva Aragon, after the latter perished of malaria. Worldly-wise Diego informs Miguel that there's no malaria in Spanish California, and cautions Miguel to be wary. However, that very night assassins strike, taking Miguel's life before Diego can kill them. 

Thus, whatever Diego's life was before, he devotes his existence to vengeance for his idealistic friend. He goes to California, posing as Miguel, and assumes the role of governor, though he plays the part with a foppish air. The head of the corrupt military, Colonel Huerta (Stanley Baker), is disappointed that his assassins failed and can find no way to prevent the newcomer from taking charge. 

Diego doesn't have the idea of a double identity in mind until a young boy tells him about some local legend of a crusading bandit whose name is Spanish for "fox." In the mansion of the late governor (i.e., Miguel's father), Diego meets Joaquin, a deaf-mute who served the governor, and the governor's widow, who never encountered Miguel earlier and has zero interest in her supposed nephew. (The aunt plays a minor comic role but is not important to the story.) Diego even gets help from the late governor's dog, Assassin by name, who shows Diego and pseudo-Bernardo the entrance to a secret chamber. Possibly this discovery helps the two decide to become allies in the Zorro project, though the movie never shows this resolution.

Though Diego spends a little time masquerading as a common laborer to suss things out, soon he dons cape and mask and begins his career of battling the tyrannical soldiers. He also meets his romantic interest, Hortensia Pulido (Ottavio Piccolo). She is also becomes a little more proletarian than her book-model, for evil Huerta caused Hortensia's family to be dispossessed of their riches. Huerta also puts the moves on Hortensia, but Zorro's on hand to thwart him there as well. Oh, and in the only real shout-out to the Disney series, one of Huerta's men is heavyset Sergeant Garcia (comedian Moustache), whom Zorro also humiliates.

Huerta sets a trap for the Fox. using Hortesia as bait, but Zorro easily rescues the lissome lady and eludes capture. However, in a subsequent chase, Zorro appears to perish. Huerta celebrates by setting up a wedding for himself and Hortensia. But Zorro re-appears, sparking the downtrodden people to rebel and overcome the soldiers. (One noblewoman even gets into the act, judo chopping a soldier into unconsciousness.) Then there follows a protracted swordfight between Zorro and Huerta, which by its length may have been seeking to equal the run-time of the eight-minute duel in the 1952 SCARAMOUCHE. (To be sure, Huerta loses his sword for a bit and makes up by using both a spear and an axe in its stead, though the antagonists finish up with the traditional rapiers.) I think ZORRO's battle is two minutes longer, but I suppose it depends what scene you start with.

Delon throws a lot of charisma into the heroic role and has a little fun with the fop persona, though the script doesn't do much with that aspect. Baker, in his last role, makes a good villain, and the stuntwork is generally good. Though Zorro rides a horse, there's no nod toward giving the steed a name, as in the Disney show. In fact, the dog Assassin gets more screen time. The movie's only fault is a really corny theme song, which unfortunately is played both at the beginning and end of the film. From a quick Wiki-check it looks like this and a couple of other flicks were the last European Zorros of the decade-- and a few years later, the big franchises to imitate became STAR WARS and MAD MAX, effectively ending Europe's original love affair with the foxy bandit.

THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

"I believe anything that doesn't kill you makes you stranger."-- The Joker, THE DARK KNIGHT.

It's quite appropriate that Christopher Nolan, who had his version of Ra's Al Ghul make vaguely Nietzschean statements in BATMAN BEGINS, should deliberately misquote Nietzsche's famous line. The Joker doesn't care about becoming stronger, though in some ways he's stronger than the often vacillating Bruce Wayne. The Maniac of  Mirth wants to be estranged from the needs of common humanity, to be the guy who values money so little he can set fire to a veritable fortune and think nothing about it. (It does raise questions as to what the evildoer does for operating expenses, though, since there's no evidence he, unlike his foe, is independently wealthy.)

But despite all the daylight scenes and the action-thriller tropes with which Nolan lumbers his second journey into the Bat-mythos, this time the esteemed writer-director does come closer to achieving a myth of sorts, though not one that any other creator could profit from. Nolan may have derived his Bat-myth in part from a work he claims to have influenced him: 1996's THE LONG HALLOWEEN, which as I argued shows Batman's costumed rogues as being far less of a threat to Gotham than its quotidian career crooks. But when HALLOWEEN's three crusaders-- Batman, Commissioner Gordon and D.A. Harvey Dent-- attempt to bring down Gotham's crime lords, they aren't seen chasing after the mob's money all the time, as do the analogues of those characters in KNIGHT.

In BATMAN BEGINS Nolan shows a Marxist revulsion to the accumulation of money under any circumstances, even those with philanthropic ends. In KNIGHT, it's implied that Batman (Christian Bale) has made significant inroads against the mob, but not so much from preventing specific crimes as from hitting the bosses in their pocketbooks. Gordon (Gary Oldman) and his cops pursue an even more direct assault upon criminal coffers, almost managing to seize the mob's holdings from a crooked bank. But an equally crooked Chinese accountant spirits the filthy lucre away, and for a time the accountant plays a minor role in getting the goods on the bosses. But the money is what matters, except to Heath Ledger's Joker.

Now, in HALLOWEEN, organized criminals are the ever-present menace. But in the lockup, Joker tells Batman, "Those mob fools want you gone so they can get back to the way things were"-- in other words, crime as a regular, money-making business. Joker considers both Batman and himself to be above the common breed of "civilized men," telling him, "Don't talk like you're one of them. You're not, even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak." I guess I'm fortunate Nolan didn't work in any mentions of Ubermenschen, possibly counting on audiences to interpolate the (false) idea that Nietzsche's supermen were simply strong men who ignored society's rules. 

As Batman, Bruce Wayne ignores a lot of rules, except for his rule against killing-- a stricture that's at least partly the legacy of his time with Ra's Al Ghul, who tried and failed to get Wayne to become an unquestioning assassin. Joker, as much as Ra's, wants Wayne to be Batman, but not as a servant, but as a divine opponent. Yet Wayne seethes with guilt about his every transgression, feeling that he has "blood on his hands" for the acts of others. And in KNIGHT the Hairshirt Crusader acquires a new chink in his armor; romantic competition for Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who's apparently the great love of Bruce Wayne's life, even if we have no evidence that they've even slept together.

In BEGINS Wayne is trammeled by father-images, but in KNIGHT, his greatest challenge is that of a same-age romantic competitor, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). Dent might not be Wayne's brother from another mother and father, but they share an identical obsession with cleaning up Gotham (though we never really know why Dent is so passionate on the subject). But Wayne envies Dent for being "one of them," the regular civilians, and in his identity as Batman he tells Dent that "Gotham needs a hero with a face." At the same time, like a lot of Wayne's actions, this sentiment too may be underpinned not by recognition of a fellow crusader, but by a desire to compete for the woman he and Dent both love. 

Wayne, ever moved by the exigencies of negative compensation, pins his hope on a statement by Rachel -- who knows of his Batman-identity-- to the effect that they could be together if he could hang up his cowl for good, But not only does Rachel die at Joker's hands, she leaves behind a psychologically emasculating note with the words, "I'm sure the day won't come when you no longer need Batman," though she also hedges her bet by stating that if he does, he can take joy in occupying the "friend zone." In essence, Rachel believes in Harvey Dent, but not in Bruce Wayne, who will always need to be Batman, and this enables Rachel to justify devoting all her love to Harvey Dent. The fact that faithful Alfred spares Wayne from reading the note does nothing to change the status of the hero as a sacrifice to a writer's concept of normality.

Ironically, though, when Dent is tested in the crucible of trauma, he doesn't manage to acquit himself as well as Wayne. Joker is also responsible for Dent being maimed over half of his body, which is the prelude to his becoming the criminal Two-Face. However, Dent also dies in this movie, becoming a "noble lie" instead of a recurring Bat-rogue. Joker, who often excels in the role of the tempter, even comes to Dent's bedside to celebrate his creation, and later gloats to Batman that he succeeded in corrupting Dent even if he didn't sway the hero from his investment in the world of freakishness.

Similarly, Joker conducts various experiments on the citizens of Gotham to see if he can make them "eat" one another. The fact that he doesn't succeed in some cases doesn't really invalidate his main point, that sometimes one can drive people to become animals. He tells Dent that his whole purpose is to make people with "plans" realize how pathetic their desire for control is, but this is not Nietzschean. It is, however, Nolanesque, the self-insertion of a writer who's overturning the safe world of superheroes with his supposedly sophisticated message of anarchy. I suspect that Nolan's Joker had a tangential effect upon the majority of the MCU movies, with their passionate championing of mass murderers like Thanos and Killmonger.

Of course, like Joker Nolan doesn't know when to get off the stage, so the last half hour drags with yet another Joker experiment in mass psychology. On top of that, Batman's finally able to track down Joker, but only by using a spy-device to tap into cell phones, which Wayne's allegedly principled tech-guy calls "unethical." 

I would be remiss that there are a lot of well-choreographed action-scenes in KNIGHT, though no particular sequences stand out for me. Of the three Nolan Bat-flicks, this one is the only one to sustain a myth, albeit very intellectualized, with respect to human dependence on controlling the world, and how the endless battle of Batman and Joker somehow transcends all that jazz.

THE CANTERBURY TALES (1972)

 

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

It may have been as long as fifty years since I saw all three movies in Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Trilogy of Lust." Frankly, I only remember liking one sequence from his first effort, 1971's THE DECAMERON. Nothing else stuck with me, least of all the middle entry, CANTERBURY TALES, which was VERY loosely based on the famous Chaucer anthology.

Pasolini's trilogy is well regarded by many critics, possibly because the writer-director glossed his adaptations of famous short stories with a patina of Marxist critique of authority. I'm sure I wasn't aware of the creator's pseudo-intellectualism back in The Day. I like to think that I can give any creative work a fair hearing in terms of mythicity and other concerns irrespective of the author's stated politics. But in this case, I don't think Pasolini had anything on his mind but putting a lot of sex and violence on display and then trying to shame audiences for being seduced by those physical attractions. 

There are only brief moments of metaphenomenal content here to justify my review of TALES here, none of which merit detailed commentary. Two Greek gods interfere very slightly when a sweet young thing seeks to meet her young lover despite the presence of her old blind husband. An old woman curses an official to Hell and the Devil just happens to be on hand to fulfill the curse. There's a sort of demonic bacchanale at the end, but since all of these phenomena take place in narrated stories, all qualify as "fallacious figments."

Though Pasolini shot most of TALES in England with well known English actors (as well as Pasolini's Italian regulars), he shot without sound so that he could loop in both English and Italian dialogue later. Thus, even the English actors don't appear to be speaking their own language.

I confess I'm mostly indifferent to Chaucer. I acknowledge his significance in the history of literature, but I'm not passionate about his oeuvre. That said, I can at least find some humor in his stories. From Pasolini I only get a small-minded meanness of spirit. But he put in enough sex to grab audiences at a time when cinema was experimenting with more adult content, so I suppose the director also has his place in the history of film. But compared to his much better 1967 EDIPO RE, this is just an indulgent mess made more unpleasant-- and unfunny-- by his pretensions to satirical intent.

BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME THREE (1993-94)

 

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

The episodes designated in the official DVD collection as "Season Three" are much more Robin-centric than previous ones, and many if not all episodes use the title, "The Adventures of Batman and Robin." As noted in this review, the episodes designated as "Season Four" introduced a new, younger Robin and show Dick Grayson taking on the separate identity of Nightwing. As in that review, I grade the mythicity of each episode as "G" for good, "F" for fair, or "P" for poor.

"The Shadow of the Bat" (P)-- This two-parter establishes Batgirl as a regular guest-star in this Bat-series, though she doesn't appear often enough to be deemed an integral part of the Batman-and-Robin ensemble, in contrast to the 1960s ADVENTURES OF BATMAN. The heroine's new origin involves her donning a Bat-costume to defend her father, Commissioner Gordon, against charges of corruption. Two-Face is involved, just as he would be in the fourth season origin of the show's "second Robin." As Batgirl-origins go, this one is forgettable.

"Blind as a Bat" (F)-- Batman is temporarily blinded by an explosion when the Penguin steals a high-tech helicopter. The hero relies on a visor that enhances his vision, but he's still at a disadvantage in battling his avian adversary. Though the series is still loosely basing its version of the villain on the Tim Burton iteration, this Penguin is much more of a canny brawler.

"The Demon's Quest" (F)-- This two-parter faithfully adapts two of the earliest comics-tales to introduce the quintessential 1970s Bat-villain, Ra's Al Ghul, as well as his somewhat more sympathetic daughter Talia. Just like the original stories, these have a strong pulpish flavor that distinguishes them from the average Batman tale.

"His Silicon Soul" (F)-- This episode follows "Hearts of Steel," which pitted the Caped Crusader against a super-computer, out to replace human beings with robot doubles. "Soul" posits that a replacement-robot for Batman survived the computer's defeat, and though the automaton briefly believes that it is the human hero, it soon course-corrects to its original, deadly programming.

"Fire from Olympus" (G)-- Maxie Zeus, a very minor Bat-foe in the comics, gets a major makeover for his one cartoon appearance. Now he's a crooked shipping magnate who's deluded himself into thinking himself the Greek god Zeus, while his high-rise HQ he believes to be Olympus. Similarly, he thinks Batman is the death-god Hades, and that a special electric cannon in his possession can stand in for the thunder-god's traditional lightning-bolts. After the hero stops Maxie from decimating Gotham, he ends up in Arkham for one of the best closing sequences of the series. Parenthetically, though one would assume that the "fire from Olympus" is the technological lightning, the phrase is most frequently used not for Zeus' bolts but for the fire stolen from Olympus by the Titan Prometheus. The Titan gives fire to human beings, creating a situation where mortals may someday challenge the gods themselves, but in the BATMAN episode, mortals have already won the battle.

"Read My Lips" (F)-- This episode provides the animated debut for the durable 1980s Bat-foes, Scarface and the Ventriloquist-- the former an inanimate dummy patterned after a 1930s gangster-type, while the latter is the unwitting "brains" behind the commands the dummy gives to his henchmen. This story has less marvelous content than most series-episodes, and the denouement gives Batman a clever trick to use against a villain with a split personality.

"The Worry Men" (F)-- This is one of the "crime-detection" episodes, in which a villain, rather than merely seeking vengeance on Batman, comes up with some novel method of criminal profit. In this case, the hero becomes aware of a fad among the wealthy for "worry men," little South American dolls that assuage one's fears. The dolls turn out to be The Mad Hatter's latest scheme to use mind games to fleece the rich.

"Sideshow" (F)-- This is based on a superior O'Neil/Adams BATMAN comics-story, but the inclusion of the ruthless Killer Croc doesn't constitute an improvement. There are a few decent dramatic moments but the story fails to make clear what about Croc's nature makes him turn on "fellow freaks" who give him succor.

"A Bullet for Bullock" (P) -- Harvey Bullock, never the biggest fan of costumed vigilantes, is obliged to accept Batman's help to find who's put a contract on Bullock. The big reveal proves underwhelming.

"Trial" (G)-- This tale addresses the often-stated (in comics) question, "Does Batman's vigilante presence call forth his extravagant gallery of rogues?" D.A. Janet Van Dorn's answer is yes. But when she and Batman are taken prisoner during an Arkham prison riot, she's obliged to argue the contrary position to defend the hero against a kangaroo trial by eight of his maddest enemies. Van Dorn ends up making a case for personal responsibility as against the theory of pernicious influences from outside. And of course Batman breaks loose and kicks ass, too.

"Avatar" (P)-- I don't mind the usually grounded Cowled Crusader having the occasional foray into magical domains. But this time Ra's Al Ghul wants to revive an ancient Egyptian sorceress, and the effect is tedious rather than stimulating. Talia has another "good girl" role here.

"House and Garden" (F)-- Poison Ivy is not only paroled from Arkham, she marries her psychiatrist and moves into suburbia. But inevitably she likes plants more than meetings of the rotary club, and Batman must find out her newest devious scheme. This is one of the few times the cartoon Ivy uses plants to counterfeit human beings.

"The Terrible Trio" (F)-- This time the show reworks a team of three villains from DC's Silver Age, who committed crimes according to the medium in which their animal-persona operated-- "land" for The Fox, "sea" for The Shark, and "air" for The Vulture. The gimmick of physical media is mostly jettisoned to emphasize that the New Terrible Trio are all wealthy wastrels who take to crime out of boredom. The coda, in which one of the villains gets "scared straight" a bit too late, is unusually grim for a kids' cartoon.

"Harlequinade" (G)-- I believe this episode, airing in May 1994, may have been preceded by the comic book one-shot "Mad Love," in which Paul Dini re-defined his creation Harley Quinn. So possibly Dini was slowly working his way toward translating that attitude into Harley's character, since the comics-story would see adaptation in Season Four. Here Batman and Robin must locate The Joker before he triggers an atomic bomb to destroy all Gotham, and their only recourse is to enlist the terminally wacky Harley as their aide. At the very least Dini's script for the episode suggests that the "amour fou" between Joker and Harley can't last.

"Time Out of Joint" (P)-- The show's attempt to revise The Clock King from the 1966 Bat-show into a recurring enemy for the animated Bat never seemed on target. "Time" is even less interesting than Clock King's previous appearance, as the villain's evil plans center upon a time-distortion device, leaving Batman and Robin somewhat out of their customary depths.

"Catwalk" (F)-- Selina Kyle's antipathy for the quiet, safe life of an honest woman, and her eventual return to her felonious persona, are more compelling than the dull main story of her being set up to take the fall for a Ventriloquist crime.

"Bane" (P)-- Whatever appeal Bane had in the comics, his animated debut does not capture it. Decent slugfest though.

"Baby Doll" (P)-- What made Paul Dini think that he had some crucial insight upon the problems of a "little person" whose body never aged, so that even in maturity she looked like a child? His idea of making such a character into a villainess, "Baby Doll," is as unrewarding as his unoriginal "satire" of TV sitcoms.

"The Lion and the Unicorn" (F) -- Red Claw returns, but she takes a back seat to espionage skullduggery, in which Alfred the Butler is reactivated to serve as a spy for Jolly Old England. The British setting adds some punch but the script might have done more with it.

"Showdown" (F)-- In an odd story-within-a-story, Batman and Robin seek to oppose Ra's Al Ghul's latest plot by listening to a tape he recorded about an earlier bout the villain experienced in the late 1880s, contending with the bounty hunter Jonah Hex.

"Riddler's Reform" (F)-- This episode plays to the strengths of the Prince of Puzzles: since he's (usually) not insane, can he cast off his riddle-mania and become a productive member of society? The script emphasizes the battle of wits, and Riddler comes pretty close to nailing the Bat's wings to the wall.

"Second Chance" (P)-- Two-Face seems to lend himself to two-bit adventures. This time, his buddy Bruce Wayne has set up a major surgery that will eliminate Harvey Dent's psychosis by fixing his mutilated face. But someone, possibly an old enemy, abducts the "Double Your Displeasure" fiend from the hospital room, and the Dynamic Duo must question such malcontents as Rupert Thorne and The Penguin (the latter providing one of the episode's few bright spots). If one has read THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS one can probably figure out the mystery culprit-- and also, if one has not.

"Harley's Holiday" (F) -- Like Poison Ivy before her, Harley gets a clean bill of mental health and returns to regular life-- or as regular as it gets, when she takes her twin laughing hyenas on a walk down a main concourse. She has a "bad day" and contemplates a full-on return to the criminal life, but in contrast to "Catwalk," the conclusion holds out some hope for the nutty broad's reformation.

"Lock-Up" (F)-- Just to make sure everyone knows that Batman doesn't belong to the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" crowd, we're introduced to hulking security guard Lyle Bolton, who has terrorized the weaker inmates of Arkham. Exposed and terminated from that position, Bolton takes on the identity of Lock-Up and seeks to imprison the authorities he finds too lenient.

"Make 'Em Laugh" (F)-- Quirky comedians, modeled on celebrities like Roseanne Barr et al, start committing crimes. Whoever could be a series of crimes involving manic funnymen? Who, who, who? Batman and Robin lose points for not even guessing who's at work. Not the best Joker episode, but far from the worst.

"Deep Freeze" (G)-- This wins extra points for its indirect reference to an urban myth about the late Walt Disney, whom some thought had committed his ailing body to a cryogenic experiment. Cryonics expert Mister Freeze is abducted from prison by a robot-- almost certainly designed to look like one of the "Mechanical Monsters" from a classic Fleischer SUPERMAN short. The robot takes Freeze to an underwater city ruled by manic amusement-park owner Grant Walker (whose name only SLIGHTLY resembles that of you-know-who.) Walker's plan is twofold: he wants to become a slow-aging cold-monster just like Freeze, and he wants to put his whole city of avid worshipers on ice to preserve them for a better future. Freeze, stymied because Walker holds in reserve the body of Nora Fries, capitulates, which means that the Dynamic Duo must seek to free the Frigid Felon and stop Walker's mad plans.

"Batgirl Returns" (F)-- But she's not under the scrutiny of her Bat-mentor this time, since Batman's out of town. Batgirl ends up sharing her sophomore adventure, against gangster Roland Daggett, in the company of both Robin and Catwoman. Refreshingly, Catwoman maintains her more capricious personality here. It's hinted that Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson, both in college, may have dated, in line with the events of "Old Wounds" in Season Four. Yet, in her dreams Barbara dreams of romance with the rather older Bat-dude. Holy Oedipus!

DRAGONBALL Z: BATTLE OF GODS (2013)

 

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

Japan's long running series of DRAGONBALL Z anime films featuring grown-up Goku and his populous cast ended for a time in 1996, but a new series was launched with BATTLE OF GODS in 2013. Ostensibly this was the first film in which manga-creator Akira Toriyama-- who coincidentally passed away this month-- supervised the production. Apparently the animated film BATTLE served as a sort of "pilot" for a new series of manga-arcs commencing under the rubric DRAGON BALL SUPER in 2015, which was quickly followed by various adaptations for an anime teleseries.

BATTLE introduces the Goku Group to an elder god, Beerus the Lord of Destruction, and his above-it-all assistant Whis. Beerus, who resembles a purple cat-humanoid, tells his majordomo that he had a dream of being defeated by a "Super Saiyan God" who looks exactly like Goku. Accordingly, the two super-beings journey to Goku's corner of the universe. After Beerus has short bout with Goku on the afterlife-world, in which the Saiyan warrior is easily defeated, Beerus and Whis journey to Earth to suss things out, and end up attending Bulma's birthday party.

The script piles on the comedy for roughly half an hour. Not only are Beerus and Whis distracted by the great tastes of the party's Japanese foods, three comic villains from the original DRAGONBALL-- Emperor Pilaf and his two stooges-- are dumped into the mix. The humor isn't Toriyama at his best, though the jokes do serve the purpose of keeping the threat at bay for a bit. Then Beerus eventually takes offense at something, and threatens to obliterate the world unless someone can show him the Super Saiyan God. The solution to this quandary is at least an inventive one, and this leads to yet another epic fight-fest in the approved DRAGONBALL Z manner. Perhaps needless to say, once all the complications are sorted out, Earth is saved. 

Beerus then became an intermittent player in the aforementioned DRAGONBALL SUPER storylines. I've the impression that few if any anime feature-films incorporated developments from the SUPER manga-series, but I suppose time will tell.

LUCKY LUKE (1991)

 

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

The only consistent marvelous element of this live-action adaptation of the venerable Belgian comics-feature is that the hero's horse talks (with no lip-movements) to him, and Lucky Luke talks back. I think maybe one or two other characters hear the horse talk, as well. There are one or two examples of "fallacious figments" that have little to no impact on the story, like Luke being able to outdraw his own shadow. There are a couple of scenes that hint that the hero has some unusual property of good luck, but these are rather nugatory as well.

As I said above, LUCKY LUKE the franchise, first published in Belgium, proved extremely popular with European audiences with its antic take on the exploits of a laid-back gunfighter in the American West. The original hero, however, was IMO something of a goofy take on the visual persona of Gary Cooper, This resulted in the image below:

Now, by the time actor Terence Hill essayed his version of Luke, he had become internationally famous for his character of Trinity, a western rogue featured in assorted knockabout comedies. Hill almost certainly used his star-power to secure the job of directing the 1991 LUKE, given that he had only directed one earlier movie in 1984. He's probably the one who decided to eschew the usual look of the comics-character for a dominantly white outfit. Did the color symbolize the hero's purity of heart? The world may never know.

LUKE adapts "Daisy Town," one of the albums produced by the character's creator. I have not read that story, but I' m reasonably well acquainted with the parameters of the series, including the fact that the aforesaid town is the gunfighter's main base of operations.The first time Movie-Luke visits Daisy Town, it's clear he's been there before from the familiar way he greets the lovely saloon-singer Lotta Legs (Nancy Morgan). However, when rowdies make trouble for Lotta, Luke easily defeats them with his mad gunfighting skills. She then talks Luke into becoming the town's sheriff.

The script then puts forth an idea that had strong sociological possibilities, for Luke does his job so well that Daisy Town gets very dull. Lotta, laid off from her saloon job because no one's patronizing the establishment, asks Luke if he might let up on enforcing the law quite so efficiently. Pure-of-heart Luke rejects that possibility, though he doesn't seem offended, or even moved in any respect, given that Hill's Luke never shows any expression but absolute coolness.

To interrupt this tedium, Luke's most persistent foes, the Dalton Brothers (no relation to the historical figures), arrive in Daisy Town, having been released due to jail overcrowding. Knowing from their past defeats that Luke can master them all, the outlaws scheme to inflame the neighboring Ute Indians against the town. This includes selling the braves on a vision of the banality of the 20th-century world, with traffic jams and a nuclear explosion. However, after all of this setup, the war between cowboys and Indians dwindles down to a big nothing. The movie terminates in a duel wherein Luke easily bests the nasty Brothers and puts them back in the calaboose, at which point he rides off into the sunset-- perhaps ensuring that Daisy Town will return to a state of relative lawlessness.

Though LUKE was initiated by an Italian production company, the movie was shot in the States and most of the major players, aside from Hill, are Americans, like Morgan, Ron Carey and singer Roger Miller (voicing the talking horse). Possibly one of the other adaptations of the franchise might capture the original's appeal better, for this incarnation, ostensibly a pilot for a LUKE TV show starring Hill, is so laid-back that it made me want to lay down and go to sleep.

THE INVISIBLE MAN APPEARS (1949)

 

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

One online review touts THE INVISIBLE MAN APPEARS as Japan's first science fiction film. It could well be the first such movie produced in post-war Japan, and Daiei Studios definitely crafted it to compete, at least in Asian markets, with similar movies from the US, not least the Universal "Invisible Man" series. Though the director and most of the performers didn't go on to great fame, APPEARS features effects-work from Eiji Tsuburaya, and later he would become justly famed for his labors on Toho's Studios' GODZILLA films and other SF-flicks. Sadly, whatever the "first" status of APPEARS, it's also a generally dull outing, more so than any of the Universal entries-- and only one of those was truly outstanding. 

The initial dramatic conflict is set up in the laboratory of older scientist Professor Nakazato, who's working on a method of creating an "invisibility paint." Both of his younger assistants, Shinji and Kyosuke, have the hots for Nakazato's cute daughter Machiko. The professor hints that whoever comes up with a breakthrough in the project might get his support in swaying the daughter's decision, since Machiko herself hasn't been able to choose between the two swains. 

Then the conflict is exacerbated by a crimeboss, Kawabe, who learns about the project and thinks that an "invisible man" would be the perfect tool with which to steal a fabulous, well-guarded diamond necklace. The film plays coy as to which of the assistants cooperates with Kawabe and becomes the New Invisible Man, though, given that the two guys are nearly indistinguishable as characters, I don't think the revelation of the unseen felon's identity counts for much.

The script's biggest problem is that instead of letting the Invisible Man swipe the necklace and then go on to bigger and more ambitious crimes-- possibly going mad a la the Wells original-- the writers were content to keep harping on various plots to steal the necklace. There's also some duplicity from the cops about whether or not there's a cure for the invisibility formula, but this too doesn't add up to anything. Neither Machiko nor her father are any better characters than the assistants, and Kawabe is a bush-league villain. There's a club performer, Ryoko (Takiko Mizunoe), who's eventually revealed to be the sister of the Invisible Crook, and she gets a big dramatic scene at the end. I suspect the actress may have been some local celebrity who got shoehorned into the narrative to hype the movie. As it happens, Mizunoe is one of the few performers to boast an American film credit, having appeared in THE BAD NEWS BEARS GO TO JAPAN.

APPEARS is said to have done good box office, but Daiei didn't take a chance on another unseeable fiend until eight years later, with 1957's sequel-in-concept-only INVISIBLE MAN VS THE HUMAN FLY-- and as I point out in my review, the bottom-billed "Human Fly" is really more important than that particular spawn of H.G. Wells.