THE WITCHES ATTACK (1968)

 

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

This was the last luchador film directed by Jose Diaz Morales, and whereas THE DIABOLICAL AXE and BARON BRAKOLA were adequate entries in the low-stakes Santo series, ATTACK loses points for being an aimless remake of SANTO VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN, with witches substituted for vampires. But it gains points for once more spotlighting the charms of the recently deceased glamour-girl Lorena Velasquez.

After a confusing dream sequence, where dreamer Ofelia (Maria San Martin) envisions Santo fighting with witch-spawn, the movie reveals the plot of evil witch-queen Mayra (Velasquez): to capture Ofelia and sacrifice her to Satan. (His infernal majesty makes an appearance here, even as he did in VAMPIRE). I wasn't clear as to why Mayra thinks Ofelia is the ideal sacrifice. But in a small way this idea makes more sense than the plot in VAMPIRE, which as I noted involved the head vampire wanting to join Satan in hell and needing some innocent to take her place.

Ofelia's dream is taken seriously by her boyfriend, who calls upon the Silver Mask to investigate. In ATTACK's best scene, Mayra utilizes a fairly original gambit: sending her right-hand woman Medusa (Edaena Ruiz) to seduce Santo. But the luchador nobly refuses such base temptations. He doesn't manage to keep the witches from abducting Ofelia and spiriting her to their lair, but from somewhere the hero produces a giant cross and sets the witches on fire whenever it gets near them. This is very likely a borrowing from 1960's HORROR HOTEL, and one reviewer claimed to have seen (as I did not) a clip from that film worked into the ATTACK continuity-- which I think quite possible. 

In contrast to VAMPIRE, where Velasquez barely moved out of her vampire lair, the leading monster-lady at least ventures forth to use some hypnotic mojo on Ofelia, to make her remove a protective cross. The only other notable item about ATTACK is that the lobby card I reproduced above looks like either a borrowing from Henry Fuseli's painting THE NIGHTMARE, or from some other movie poster that uses the painter's imagery.

BATMAN AND MR. FREEZE: SUB-ZERO (1998)

 

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

Whereas MASK OF THE PHANTASM came out when the 1993-95 BATMAN teleseries was on hiatus, SUB-ZERO is set as a prequel to THE NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES, which stressed the ensemble of Batman and Robin, as well as more guest-starring appearances for Batgirl. Allegedly the DTV film could have debuted earlier than 1998, but the producers chose to distance their work from 1997's BATMAN AND ROBIN. That movie was notable, among other demerits, for bollixing the character of Mister Freeze as established by the 1993 cartoon show.

It's worth mentioning here that Mister Freeze, originally just a one-shot foe from a fifties Batman comic, got upgraded to a major foe thanks to the 1966 teleseries. That said, only the first live-action Freeze episode was better than average, and his future appearances in that series, other cartoons, and other comic books were nothing special. The 1993 series gave the villain a relatable if monomaniacal obsession: to restore the life of his cryogenically frozen wife Nora.

At the start of SUB-ZERO Freeze is hiding out in the Arctic with his frozen inamorata. He's made some effort to forge a family of sorts, having adopted (unofficially one presumes) an Inuit boy, Koonak, and making two polar bears into pets. However, an accident damages Nora's containment chamber. Freeze, desperate to try anything that will revive Nora quickly, abducts his former medical colleague Belson for his expertise. Belson says that Nora needs an organ transplant, but that the waiting list for possible donors with the right blood type is a long one. Freeze chooses not to wait, and after some research elects to capture a Gotham City resident with the needed organ. And Belson, badly in need of money, is willing to commit murder to please his new partner.

Said resident is none other than Barbara Gordon, and Freeze abducts her while she's on a date with Dick Grayson. The brief dust-up between the frigid fiend and the two mufti-clad crusaders is almost all the hero-villain action SUB-ZERO offers for its first half (aside from a separate scene with a costumed Batgirl clobbering some hoods). Batman and Robin must depend on detection to ferret out Freeze's current lair, an abandoned oil platform off Gotham Harbor. In that lair Barbara repeatedly seeks to escape, with Belson scamming her with the story that they only want a transfusion. 

The lack of superhero action in the movie's first half is in no way a debit, because the second half delivers a great slam-bang climax. Batman and Robin come to Barbara's rescue, Belson and Freeze fall out, and lots of fires burst out everywhere, imperiling the frosty malefactor's life. He does survive for one later episode, "Cold Comfort," which provided a creditable finish for the character. If I had to carp at something, I'd probably say that Belson's heel-turn from respectable doctor to medical murderer takes place a bit too conveniently for the plot. Also we don't really see the relationship between Freeze and Koonak, so when the boy tries to free Barbara, there's no emotional impact, and he doesn't end up being anything but another body to rescue. But of the four DCAU Batman films, SUB-ZERO is the cream of the crop.

BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM (1993)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

So, I'll get one thing out of the way: the mysterious crook-murdering Phantasm's identity is Bruce Wayne's lost love Andrea Beaumont. (Readers of this blog ought to be used to my disregard for guarding secrets if they get in the way of analysis.)

PHANTASM was the first, though not the last, animated Batman film to make it into theaters, attempting to profit from the sterling reputation of the 1993-95 Batman cartoon show. It's far from the best animated Batman feature, but it does have the distinction of being the first cartoon to ask the question: what if Batman suffered a "last temptation" moment, giving up his dedication to crimefighting for family life? 

Of course, every time this temptation has arisen, whether in comics (1987's SON OF THE DEMON) or in film (2008's DARK KNIGHT), some exigency must come up that pushes Bruce Wayne's nose back to the Bat-grindstone. Here, the script by two animation pros (Paul Dini, Michael Reeves) and two comics-writers (Martin Pasko, Alan Burnett) claims that early in his career, Bruce fell so hard for Andrea that he almost did give up the cowl-- but one such exigency caused Andrea to depart suddenly, and so Gotham City did not lose its "dark knight." However, in current times Andrea returns to Gotham--and at the same time, a masked figure, the Phantasm, begins killing off the criminals who harried her father, one of these being none other than Batman's favorite fiend, the Joker.

I don't mean to make too much of the non-mystery of the Phantasm's identity, since I don't believe I guessed it on my first viewing. But although PHANTASM delivers the goods as far as lots of high-octane action with the Bat taking on two costumed killers, I didn't buy the dramatic aspect. Dini and the other writers try to make Andrea Beaumont seem so witty and resourceful that the viewer believes that she's "the one" for Bruce Wayne. But the truth is, they knew Andrea/Phantasm was a one-off character, and her psychological makeup is no more detailed than an animation cell.

Still, in addition to good action, PHANTASM offers yet another venue for the assemblage of the show's talented voice cast, with the usual list of standouts: Kevin Conroy as Batman, Mark Hamill as the Joker, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr as a delightfully acerbic Alfred.

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940)

 

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

Just to get the encomium out of the way, the 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD remains the greatest magical fantasy ever committed to the cinematic medium. Not even the excellent 1924 Douglas Fairbanks original, on which the 1940 film is modeled, equals the Alexander Korda production for visual spectacle, subtlety of wit, and fine performances. From start to finish the Korda movie feels as if it were spun out of a web of Jungian archetypes, not painstakingly assembled from the prolonged efforts of the producer and his crew over the course of two years, frequently interrupted by the realities of a horrific world war.

Michael Powell, one of the credited directors of THIEF, said in his autobiography that the true author of the movie was not any writer or director, but Korda himself. I acknowledge that the producer's love of spectacle and adventure informs the film from start to finish. And we'll never know that much about the mundane origins of the movies, since, as critic Bruce Eder explained on the Criterion DVD, most of the production notes have been lost to the mists of time. All that said, I have my considered opinion as to who shaped THIEF to meet Korda's specifications. Of the two writers in the official credits, one, British comedian Miles Malleson (who also portrayed the film's dotty old Sultan), was primarily there to provide dialogue according to Eder. That suggests to me that the primary person responsible for re-forging the scenarios of the 1924 film into something pleasing to Alexander Korda was probably the other credited writer, Korda's fellow Hungarian Lajos Biro. Korda had already worked with Biro on several features, not least co-scripting THE DRUM, Korda's second movie with Indian actor Sabu. Biro, a highly regarded novelist and playwright, seems to added many levels of symbolic complexity to the already impressive script for the 1924 original.

Almost every review comparing 1924 to 1940 starts by remarking on the fact that Douglas Fairbanks is at once Ahmed, the titular Thief of Bagdad, and the romantic lead, *and* a martial hero. These functions in the Korda film are divided between Sabu's character Abu, both the titular thief and a young man in love with the idea of heroism, while the romantic lead is Ahmed, King of Bagdad (John Justin). Reviewers don't mention quite as often that in the early part of the 1924 film, Ahmed has a partner of sorts, a fellow thief who performs a few of the same narrative functions as the 1940 Abu. Since the helper-thief has no name in the 1924 film (though he does in the movie novelization), I'm going to dub him "Abu" as well, the better to bring out some of the narratological parallels between the original and the free-form adaptation.

Both Abus function to help the two Ahmeds gain access to the princess, the main bone of contention between the romantic lead and the villain in both films. 1940 Abu has clearly been built up to spotlight the burgeoning popularity of Sabu in his previous two Korda films, and he takes on the role of martial hero as well. 1924 Ahmed, to compete with the villain (and two other, almost superfluous suitors) for the princess' hand, must go on a dazzling journey into magical netherworlds to gain a prize in order to win the suitor-contest. 1940 Abu takes over the function of journeying into magical worlds, and one of his most impressive feats, scaling the Kali-like statue of the Goddess of Dawn, is borrowed not from the feats of 1924 Ahmed but from the deed of a nameless minion, commanded to climb a similar statue by one of the competing suitors. 

Other comparisons abound, such as the motivations of the respective villains. The Mongol Prince of 1924 doesn't actually care about the princess; he mainly wants to conquer Bagdad and add it to his empire. Jaffar of 1940 (Conrad Veidt) is, like the romantic lead, completely in love with the beautiful and unnamed royal (June Duprez), and Jaffar's main reason for usurping Ahmed's rulership of Bagdad is to bring the Princess under his sway. But the most important comparison is that while the 1924 THIEF is full of gorgeous spectacles meant to be looked at, the structure of the 1940 THIEF is all about the actual dynamics of what human beings see, and how they relate to what they see.

Biro, my theoretical architect, probably built on a key idea of both movies, that the romantic lead falls in love with the princess at first sight, as does she with him. But in 1940 one of the first visuals presented to the film-audience is that of an enormous eye, an oculus, painted on the front of a sailing-ship. The visual of the oculus dissolves into the face of the ship's commander Jaffar, first seen aiming his steely gaze at the audience, the lower part of his face masked. 

This intro contrasts with the introduction of romantic lead Ahmed, first seen as a blind man begging in the streets of Bagdad with his faithful dog. We later learn that Jaffar both blinded Ahmed and turned his companion Abu into a dog, and then turned them loose as an "insurance policy" against the return of the then-missing princess. (All this takes place as part of an "in media res" structure within the Korda film, which is utterly unlike the Fairbanks template.)

Despite the fact that the Sultan has gone to great lengths to prevent anyone from seeing his daughter, Jaffar is also given a "first look" of the princess to parallel that of Ahmed. In various ARABIAN NIGHTS, male protagonists may fall in love with a female from seeing no more than a portrait of the female's beauty. That's the way Ahmed encounters the Princess of Basra, seeing her from afar and being instantly stricken with fairy-tale love. Jaffar, as he later tells the Sultan, also sees the Princess from afar, but through the medium of a crystal. (Another seeing-crystal, the Eye of the Goddess, will later be instrumental in Jaffar's undoing.) But whereas Jaffar goes to the Princess' father to make a deal for her hand, Ahmed, with Abu's help, gains access to the hortus conclusus where the Princess gambols with her serving-maidens. So Ahmed penetrates her female space, in a broad sense, but he does so to give her a close-up look at HIM. Even his playful pretense of being a genie is not a real deception, since it only lasts a few seconds-- and even before Ahmed begins his imposture, the Princess is clearly discontented with her hothouse-flower confinement. When Genie-Ahmed asks why she doesn't run from a supposed supernatural being the way her maids do, her significant reply is "I want to look." 

It should be said that although 1940 Abu is just as skeptical about all this lovelorn stuff as was 1924 Abu, the former bases his opinion far more in his own personal desires. Though apparently 1940 Abu has lived his teenaged life scavenging off the solid citizens of Bagdad, his encounter with Ahmed, the dispossessed king of the city, seems to fire Abu up with the desire to become a seeker of the world's wonders. Ahmed's enthrallment with the Princess dashes Abu's dreams, but he remains loyal to his boon friend, though, truth to tell, the former King of Bagdad is sometimes a bit of a prig. The curse of blindness and canine-ness are cancelled out when the Princess falls under the control of Jaffar, The two heroes then pursue Jaffar, but their wizardly foe uses his magic to separate them, rather than leaving them together, as he did before. (Ironically, though Jaffar's insurance policy required his keeping Ahmed alive, he could have killed Abu with no consequences to his plans.)

Whereas 1924 Ahmed enters the world of wonder to win the hand of his Princess, 1940 Abu does so to be reunited with his friend. Abu chances to unbottle a Genie (Rex Ingram), who, for many viewers, is the highlight of the film, and who has no real analogues in the 1924 original. The Genie, resenting his having been confined to a bottle while others were free, announces his plan to kill his liberator. Abu's wits allow him to get the upper hand, and the Genie falls under the boy's control, at least until Abu wishes three wishes. The titanic jinn then inducts Abu into the wonder-world, to gain the only prize that can locate Ahmed: the Eye of the Goddess. But before Abu can get the Eye from the Goddess' statue, he must venture inside "the belly of the female beast." Is the spider a representation of hostile femininity? Why not? 

So Abu gets his own seeing-crystal, and uses it to find Ahmed. But they quarrel, partly because Ahmed can think only of his Princess, and Abu rashly uses his last wish to send Ahmed, alone, to Bagdad. This allows Ahmed to interrupt Jaffar's last-ditch plan to bend the Princess to his will, with the "blue rose of forgetfulness." However, though the plot is foiled, Jaffar finally decides to cut his losses, and cut off Ahmed's head.

But rashness isn't always wrong, when it comes from the heart, as it were. What transpires oddly reminds me of some versions of the European fairytale "The Princess and the Frog," wherein the Frog is transformed back into a prince not by a kiss, but by the Princess throwing the ugly amphibian against a wall. Abu flings the Goddess-Eye against a cliffside, and that unleashes a torrent of magic, catapulting the little thief into the Land of Legend. Though Abu has the chance to be a ruler in that world (even if he apparently would only be ruling a bunch of stately old men), he uses his thief-skills again, to abscond with two vital weapons, with which he overcomes Jaffar.

This long post could have been many times longer if I tried to explicate all the complex symbolism I attribute to Lajos Biro. I've also been obliged to skimp on celebrating the note-perfect performances of the main players, all of whom also mold themselves to be virtual folktale archetypes, but with all sorts of witty modern touches. No magical fantasy before the 1940 THIEF comes close to its mythic power, and only a tiny number of other fantasy-films even touch the border of its flying carpet.

MIRACLE IN TOYLAND (2000)

 

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

I confess I was made aware of this forgotten piece of kidvid-entertainment by a YouTube podcast making fun of its many shortcomings. I can't equal the video's many on-target slams of the subpar animation, so I'll focus on the story's problems.

Middle-schooler Jesse Justice apparently lives alone with his father (no clue if his mother is dead or what), and his cousin Gabrielle lives not far away in the same city. Father Daniel Justice is a colonel in the Air Force and is involved in training exercises so rigorous that he can't even take off for Christmas-- not that he shows any desire of wanting to do so, being blithely unconcerned with his boy's existence. Off goes the Colonel, leaving Jesse with Gabrielle.

At school Jesse acts out, getting rough with his schoolmates in soccer. Gabrielle guesses that he's overcompensating for his father's inattention and tries to cheer him up by taking Jesse to a big toy store, the Toyland of the title. The most interesting exchange of the mediocre flick takes place here, as Jesse disavows any interest in toys, wanting to get military training to be more like his dad. At Toyland, Jesse acts out again, and Gabrielle-- despite showing an attitude correctly called "touchy-feely" with her cuz-- leaves him behind. Jesse falls asleep in the toy store and gets locked in.

So far this isn't a bad setup for your basic "toys come to life" scenario, so in due course Jesse meets (1) a superhero named Super Duper Man, (2) a thick-eared wrestler, Bonecrusher, (3) a hip military commander, Captain Agro, (4) a peg-legged pirate, (5) an elf girl who talks like Betty Boop, and (5) a relatively mature-seeming Indian princess who sings Gospel. (Is she from something like American Girl, or what? Either way, she seems like the maternal figure missing from Jesse's life.)

 What's odd is that the story doesn't stick with helping Jesse work through his issues. After the toys make Jesse's acquaintance, Captain Agro suddenly calls up his toy soldiers to make an assault on-- someone. But out of nowhere, one of the soldiers get injured (somehow) and Agro tells Jesse to stay behind and watch over a fellow warrior. Jesse wants glory to validate himself as he thinks his father would want, so he deserts his post to go look for the enemy (which we never see) and the injured toy-- dies? Agro dresses Jesse down a little, and Jesse maybe learns a lesson-- at which point the script decides it can't handle the seriousness. So then out of nowhere, some bad pirate-toys hijack the good pirate's ship, so Jesse and his toy buddies have a very mild fight quelling this threat. Even the two girls get a little action: Boop-Elf clubs a bad pirate and Gospel Indian hits another pirate with-- a karate chop? Sure, why not. Then there's some business about getting chocolate treats for everyone. Oh, and Boop-Elf gets an upskirt shot.

Jesse somehow transitions back to the real world, finds Gabrielle and apologizes to her. But the desire for heroism has only been deferred. Jesse and his cuz learn that Colonel Justice, flying a plane alone for some reason, has been lost in the frozen mountains. Jesse appeals to the toys for help, and they enlarge themselves to life-size with some magic or other, as well as creating convenient transportation. So Jesse gets to save his dad from the frozen wastes, and Colonel Justice beholds the power of a child's imagination in the reality of the living toys-- though in truth, Jesse was originally rejecting the world of imagination for that of worldly glory. If anything, the toys more or less forced their way into Jesse's closed off existence. They're more like the manifestation of what Gabrielle knows Jesse needs with her feminine instinct. Jesse then gets a maternal hug from Gospel Indian while all the toys have a big musical finish-- I *think* after they revert to their toy-existence, but I'm not sure.

I think the real miracle is that there's even a little content worth explicating in this ramshackle script-- though even little kids would be better advised to play with actual toys, than with TOYLAND.

CYBORG COP II (1994)

 

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

All three CYBORG COP films are bad even compared to most of the merely formulaic efforts of DTV action-films. But so far as one can make a measured choice between bad, badder, and baddest, Number Two is right between Number One and Number Three. And all of them create the same dissonance with their titles, since they are not about cops who ARE cyborgs, but cops who FIGHT cyborgs.

The strongest elements of the first film were (1) John Rhys-Davies' performance as a rather impish mad scientist, and (2) maverick cop Jack Ryan's middling motivation to get the bad guys because they turned his brother into a cyborg. This time, the villain is just one of Ryan's old enemies (Morgan Hunter) converted into a cyborg, who plays his role as a colorless monomaniac, and Ryan's maverick-cop doesn't have even the tiny moral compass he did in the first film. Bradley's just as bad an actor here as in the first film, but his histrionics are more noticeable because he seems like a complete dick.

Though a lot of DTV films seem to think it's easy to make an audience sympathize with a cop who makes his own rules, it's actually a balancing act that can easily lose a given character audience-sympathy very easily. I'm sure that a lot of filmmakers would like to think that action-film lovers will just line up as long as there are plenty of explosions and fights. Director Sam Firstenberg had made one or two decent action-movies by that time, but here he's just grinding things out. Bradley, whose only assets are his skills at fake-fighting for the movies, also doesn't bother blocking the fights out competently, so that it looks like every time he fights a normal human, the other guy's practically racing to hit the floor.

In the movie's final third Ryan gets a weapons upgrade, and that allows him to take out the evil cyborg, variously called "Starkraven" and "Spartacus." Frankly, not having seen CYBORG COP III in many months, I can't absolutely swear that one's worse. But I could see some viewers getting entertainment value just by bagging on Bradley's terrible performance-- as indeed the Rifftrax comedians did, calling him something like a "wannabe RENEGADE."

 

GOLIATH AND THE SINS OF BABYLON (1963)

 

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

I'll note in passing that one online review asserts that this was a better funded peplum that most films in the subgenre. That said, I still found that the SINS here were pretty dull.

The city of Babylon has a bad habit of demanding from vassal state Nefir thirty virgin females a year to sacrifice to their gods. Princess Rezzia (Jose Greci) would like to rebel against the evil practice, but she can't assume the throne of Nefir until she's married. However, Rezzia can only marry whoever defeats her in an arena-bound chariot-race. Wandering hero Goliath (originally "Maciste" and played by Mark Forest) takes exception to the sacrificial ritual and tosses around a few Babylonian soldiers. Some local members of a Babylonian resistance induct Goliath into their ranks, and eventually the rebels set Babylon on fire and depose its corrupt ruler.

There's so much emphasis on ordinary sword-battles (including one at sea) that there's barely any room for the usual muscleman feats of strength. There's an insidious death-trap, in which Goliath is chained to a table while numerous spears drop from the ceiling, either to hit him or torment him with near misses, but there's no big payoff to this. The best action-scene is that when Goliath goes to Nefir for whatever reason, he ends up racing Rezzia in the arena, and of course he wins. But it lacks dramatic impact because Rezzia's in love with another man, so Goliath bows out and-- I guess everyone's just okay with her marrying the guy who didn't win? There's some novelty to seeing a female character race a chariot, and I wondered if the script took a little inspiration from the Atalanta myth, in which an athletic woman races men trying to claim her hand in marriage. But if there's no real consequence to the chariot-race, so what?

The best thing in the movie might be Fabrizio, playing a comic relief midget. For a true rarity, the little hero even gets a bride his own size at movie's end.

GUARDS OF SHAOLIN (1984)

 

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

Just as this streaming flick was coming to an end, and I was thinking the film's alternate title NINJA VS. SHAOLIN GUARD was thoroughly unjustified, the four Shaolin monk heroes get attacked by a bunch of black-masked, black-clad fighters who throw shurikens and some sort of fiery powder. Still, the emphasis of the story (such as it is) is clearly upon the four stalwarts, not their enemies, so I'll go with the streaming title,

The GUARDS-- billed as First Brother (Alexander Lo Rei), Second Brother, Third Brother, and Fourth Brother-- are charged by the dying abbot of their temple to take a "Golden Sutra" to another temple. The abbot was killed by another monk at the temple, addressed as "Uncle" (though probably none of these characters are related to one another). The method of his death is one of the few things that stand out about this Taiwanese-South Korean chopsocky: Uncle's minions attack the abbot, and one of them, a woman in drag (Jin Nu-Ri), bares her tattooed breast, distracting the monk and causing his death.

The four monks head out on their journey, but with the exception of Fourth Brother, the comedy relief, they're all but identical. Ah Mei, Fourth Brother's girl-cousin from his former village, happens across them and invites them to her father's estate. However, Uncle's minions, who theoretically ought to be pursuing the four guardians, somehow decide to run ahead of the heroes and attack Ah Mei's home, killing her dad and all his retainers. This makes the young woman embittered against the Brothers, which is a pain for Fourth Brother, who harbors a desire to marry her. However, the girl has nowhere else to go and continues with the heroes on their trek.

The rest of the film is just one attack after another, including a pointless encounter with some very solid ghosts (or maybe zombies) who pop out of their coffins and menace the stalwarts. Up until the final confrontation between First Brother and Uncle, only one battle stands out: when one of the bros has a nice fight with a female opponent, possibly the same one who did the "boob-fu" earlier. This fight may have confused the streaming reviewer, since he wrote that the monks were joined by a "female fighter"-- and Uncle's minion is the only kung-fu honey, since Ah Mei can't fight. One reviewer said that Ah Mei falls for First Brother, but the film didn't bother developing the romance-angle after bringing it up in the first place. GUARDS is not the worst of the worst, but it's pretty unremarkable.

XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS: SEASON SIX (2000-2001)

 

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

The final season of XENA, while keeping up a decent level of quality, becomes rather rootless in its more up-for-grabs mythology. I'd have to say that, if the main point of Seasons Five and Six was to give Xena's daughter her own quasi-Christian place in the Xenaverse, the show-runners flopped in that endeavor, and it didn't help things that the time-jump mitigated against using any of the mortal personages from the defunct HERCULES show. Like Nietzsche, who gets some play once again, they killed the gods and had nothing to put in their place.

COMING HOME (F)-- The writers don't bother to explain how Xena, Gabrielle, Ares and Eve get back to Earth from Olympus; fan-commentary attributes their transition to help from surviving god Aphrodite. Wherever they end up, some time evidently passes, for the three females are on their own with no comment about the disposition of Ares, who sacrificed his godhood to save the women, due to his investment in Xena. Then the heroines are summoned to Amazon territory to help the tribe repel an invading force. The big catch is that the invaders are under the command of mortal Ares, pretending that he's still a war-god. He's also being manipulated by the Furies, who desire both to become the new gods of the world and to avenge the slaughter of the old. A further complication is that one of the Amazons recognizes Eve as the former Livia, who slaughtered many of the warrior-women for Rome. In addition to keeping Eve safe, Xena must find a way to stop Ares without killing him. Her method of doing this, and of slaying the Furies with her god-killing power, is pretty far-fetched even for the Xenaverse. But Xena's bare-knuckle brawl with Ares is fun, as are her conflicted feelings about the former war-god.

THE HAUNTING OF AMPHIPOLIS (P)-- For the first time since being time-jumped, Xena and Gabrielle, accompanied by Eve once again, seek out Xena's home town, to see what's become of the locals and of Xena's mother Cyrene. The city's become a ghost town, and a surviving local claims that everything in Amphipolis became cursed by evil magic. For some reason the townsfolk accused Cyrene and executed her, but with no result. In the clouds above Michael and Raphael, two of the angels encountered by the heroines in FALLEN ANGEL, survey all that happens but vouchsafe no advice. After many encounters of the spooky kind, Xena learns that the source of the evil magic is Mephistopheles, whom none of the heroines have known about except indirectly, through his influence upon Callisto in IDES OF MARCH. He's apparently chosen to victimize Amphipolis not only to revenge himself on Xena but also to create some sort of beachhead for a war on Heaven. The demon, not content with also possessing Gabrielle, tells Xena she can't kill him without taking his place in Hell. Xena kills him anyway, but in the next episode she finds a way around her dilemma. Cyrene stays dead.

HEART OF DARKNESS (F)-- For a pagan Greek who barely knows anything more than the basics about the Jude0-Christian mythos, Xena seems to have some advanced research in order to figure out how to con a prideful angel-- that is, Lucifer himself-- into taking her place as the ruler of hell. Superficial though the myth-making is, it is fun to see Xena pulling one of her "long cons," seducing Lucifer into committing the seven deadly sins so that he'll be consigned to the throne of Hell. Eve registers a meager protest against using evil to escape evil, and Virgil, absent in the previous two episodes, is worked into the story to no great purpose.

WHO'S GURKHAN? (F)-- As if to make up for Season Four's horrendous TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE, this episode successfully interbreeds Xena's peplum adventure with a detective story. Xena, Gabrielle, Eve and Virgil visit Gabrielle's home town. They meet Gabrielle's sister Lillah and learn that eight years previous, Gabrielle's niece Sarah (whom of course Gabrielle's never met) was carried off by the slave-traders of a mysterious, rarely-seen warlord, Gurkhan. The slavers also slew Gabrielle's mother and father, so the usually peaceful heroine wants vengeance, and Xena guarantees to give her the opportunity. Eve is sidelined while Xena and Virgil arrange for Xena to be sold as a "harem wife" to Gurkhan. Gabrielle horns in against Xena's advice, and the two heroines must discern the identities of both Gurkhan and Sarah while figuring out a way to liberate the female slaves. Gabrielle can't take the warlord's life in cold blood but Xena arranges for his death through a trick. Sarah and Lillah are presumably re-united but not seen again.

LEGACY (F)-- Maybe Eve and Virgil escort Sarah back to Greece, because X and G are still hanging around North Africa for no particular reason. They rescue a band of nomads from a raider-attack, and the leader of the nomads, the chieftainess Karina, doesn't believe the heroines when they give their names. X and G learn that in the past 25 years they've become legendary figures thanks to the good press of Gabrielle's scrolls. Once the nomads are convinced, they welcome the heroines into their camp, and also reveal that the various quasi-Arab tribes are being menaced by invading Romans. Just as the episode seems to be shaping up to one more "Beat the Romans" routine, Gabrielle accidentally slays the innocent son of a nomad chieftain, and all of the nomads want her head. Naturally, Xena manages to channel all that anger against the Roman incursion. While neither LEGACY or the previous North African episode are outstanding as stories, the costume department excels in capturing the exoticism of the Middle East.

THE ABYSS (G)-- Like THE PRICE, this episode is something of a "defense of the ways of war." Xena and Gabrielle are back in Greece and have somehow hooked up once more with Virgil. They get waylaid by the Djindar, a made-up tribe of white cannibals, and like the Horde in the original PRICE episode this tribe seems utterly devoid of humanity. Both Virgil and Gabrielle are captured to become entrees, and Gabrielle is explicitly undone because she second-guesses her moves after killing an innocent in LEGACY. Xena manages to wipe out most or all of the whole tribe, which is rather refreshing in light of the reformation of the Horde's rapacity. Virgil survives but gets written out of the mythos.

THE RHEINGOLD/THE RING/ THE RETURN OF THE VALKYRIE (P)-- Apparently the extirpation of the Greek gods moved the writers to go poaching on Nordic preserves, but with dire results. This three-parter cudgels together aspects of two unrelated epics, BEOWULF and THE NIBELUNGENLIED, and on top of that it's also another, "Current Xena must undo the acts of Bad Past Xena." Modern Xena tries to leave Gabrielle out of Beowulf's summons to the Far North, where Bad Past Xena created a monster called Grendel from the spirit of a good Valkyrie. Apparently after Bad Xena's adventures in Chin, but before she united again with Borias and conceived Solan, the evil warrior princess rode into the Northern lands and met Odin, hanging himself on a tree due to his Schopenhaurean despair. Xena gives the King of the Norse Gods a kind of "Spake Zarathustra" rap and he recruits her for his valkyries. Covetous Xena steals the Rheingold and forges it into a ring, able to grant great power, but only to those who renounce love. Past-Xena is forced to leave the Ring on the finger of the monster Grendel, and then Present-Xena is summoned to keep the ring's power from falling into the hands of Odin, now turned into a corrupt Nietzschean. Oh, and when Gabrielle follows Xena, the young heroine befriends a Norsewoman named Brunnhilda, but Brunnhilda wants to be more than just friends. Gabrielle is put into the position of the Brunhild of the NIBELUNGENLIED, where she's surrounded by protective flames-- but it's not no scuzzy MALE champion who releases Gabby from durance vile. Messy though the scenario is, Xena does undo her past evil and doesn't bring about any "twilight of the gods" with the Norse deity best known for the story.

OLD ARES HAD A FARM (F)-- Stop me if you've heard this one, but Xena and Gabrielle walk into a bar, and-- beat up on everyone there. Of course, all the occupants are cutthroats in the service of warlord Gasgar, all united to collect a bounty on the head of now-mortal Ares. X and G take him to an abandoned farmhouse where Xena's family once lived, near a town called Ipeiros, nowhere near Amphipolis. The ladies help Ares fix up the run-down place, which allows the three performers to put aside sword-and-sorcery for something akin to a Li'l Abner routine. The menace of the warlords is resolved with barely any violence at all, and Ares remains on the farm in the end, though he appears in other, more martial episodes later. A fair amount of the comedy is repetitive but I rate the "bed scene" as one of the ten best comic scenes on the show.

DANGEROUS PREY (F)-- Former Amazon Marga is slain by soldiers in the service of warlord Morloch, who's something of a "Most Dangerous Game" fan who likes to hunt human prey Xena and Gabrielle seek to organize the Amazons against their enemy, but Xena literally has to put the contentious Varia on a short leash. Xena and Varia end up being hunted by Morloch, who captures Varia and places her in a death-trap broadly similar to the one in CALLISTO. Morloch's one of the few male foes able to go toe-to-toe with Xena, so the way she defeats him is a slight surprise. Gabrielle hardly has anything to do here.

THE GOD YOU KNOW (F)-- X and G journey to Rome, informed that Xena's daughter Eve has been defying the current Roman emperor, the lubricious Caligula. But the heroines have been preceded by Ares. He reveals that his sister Aphrodite, unbalanced by the end of the cosmic force of "war," has fallen under Caligula's thrall, and that he may for some reason be able to siphon the godhood out of her. Xena is encouraged by the angel Michael to use her god-killing power to slay Caligula, but she must also figure out some way to liberate Aphrodite. However, Xena doesn't move fast enough to suit Michael, who moves to slay Aphrodite so that she won't make Caligula a full god and thus interfere with the spread of the Eli religion. Xena stops Michael and almost kills him, but the power of Eli removes Xena's god-killing power and Michael disappears. Still, Eli's mission is imperiled because Caligula completes his godhood-sapping, so that he becomes a god and Aphrodite becomes mortal (though she regains her memory). Xena, this time with no help from Heaven, must find a way to slay Caligula, less for the Eli-cult and more to preserve Eve's life. It's a lively episode but undermined by confused plotting.

YOU ARE THERE (F)-- Though this is mostly a comedy episode-- as well as the one that most overtly broaches the subtext question-- it's not nearly as silly as most funny XENA episodes. TV reporter Nigel and his unseen cameraman appear, with no fear whatever of anachronism, in Xena's world, and some scenes even depict Nigel's guests in a TV studio being interviewed. Nigel has heard rumors that Xena is planning to attack Odin to obtain the Golden Apples of Immortality, and the reporter seeks to find out why, theorizing that she hopes to return Ares to Olympus and to reign at his side. Xena won't reveal her plans, and Nigel pursues other interviewees with his aggressive style, with some amusing results, as when peace-minded Eve ends up punching him out. Since it's germane to the general evolution of the storylines, I'll give the game away: Xena does get an immortality-apple and re-god Ares-- but she does the same for Aphrodite, because the forces of love and war must have cosmic incarnations in order to spread their influence to mortals. 

PATH OF VENGEANCE (F)-- No good deed goes unpunished. Though the season started with mortal Ares making war on the Amazons, his first move upon regaining his godhood is to beguile the women warriors into becoming his new pawns, launching an offensive against Rome. But the new emperor (not named, though implicitly Claudius) has liberalized his treatment of the Eli-cult, which may signal a shift in the Xenaverse in the real world's transformation of pagan Rome into a Christian nation. On the emperor's order a Roman detachment escorts Eve to make peace with the Amazons. However, new queen Varia not only refuses peace thanks to the blandishments of Ares, she decides to try Eve for the murder of many Amazons, including Varia's sister. Gabrielle tries to challenge Varia's queendom in a big fight, but she loses, and that leaves it to Xena to sway Varia's vengeful heart and to foil Ares' plans. Eve ends her dubious career on the show by deciding to drop whatever progress she's made in Rome and begin proselytizing in Chin.

TO HELICON AND BACK (F)-- Call this one "the evil that gods do lives after them." Of the many gods Xena slew to protect Eve, one was Artemis, and now her half-mortal son Bellerophon (apparently not related to the guy who mastered Pegasus) is out for blood. His desire to kill Xena and Gabrielle is logical enough, but his main gambit is using a small army of masked men and fire-blasting catapults to attack the Amazons commanded by Varia. The script claims that Bellerophon got cheesed off because the warrior women deserted the worship of Artemis and so made it easier for Xena to kill the goddess-- which may be the flimsiest excuse the show ever devised. Since the enemy soldiers capture Varia, Gabrielle takes charge of a force to attack Bellerophon's fortress, but the Amazons are outgunned, and the resulting carnage provides the show's most harrowing images of war since the first season's IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE? There's a subplot about Varia being used as Bellerophon's catspaw, but it's insubstantial. Inevitably Xena faces off against Bellerophon, albeit reluctantly.

SEND IN THE CLONES (P)-- It's another one of those stupid clip-shows that no viewer anywhere misses. In 2001, three TV-watching nerds work with scientist Alexis (Clair Stansfield) to create and revive clones of both Xena and Gabrielle. They succeed, resulting in lots of nerd-jokes and "fish out of water" humor. The nerds want modern versions of Xena and Gabrielle to battle modern forms of evil, but Alexis, who is a new incarnation of Alti, just wants Xena to serve her in a 21st-century reign of evil. Only a lively hand-to-hand beween Xena and Alti-- usually seen battling with shaman-fu-- saves the episode from being as bad as ATHENS CITY ACADEMY.

LAST OF THE CENTAURS (F)-- Frankly, I hadn't seen the centaurs and Amazons together in a story for so long, I didn't remember how things were between the two tribes, nor what role Xena's old lover Borias played in the rapprochement with the two groups (though the viewer gets a belated summation late in the episode). But the ghost of deceased Amazon Ephiny beseeches the help of X and G to help her son, the Centaur Xenan, against the warlord Belach. Belach, it seems, is the now-grown son of Borias, and he hates centaurs partly because his father revered them. Bad Xena was partly responsible for Belach's negative opinion of Borias, since the warrior princess stole Belach's father from his mother. This is a nice little melodrama with a little less action than the average episode.

WHEN FATES COLLIDE (P)-- Though the Fates were perfectly willing to rewrite all of reality to benefit Xena in REMEMBER NOTHING, they don't like it so much when the shade of Julius Caesar escapes Tartarus (thanks in part to Xena having killed Hades) and redoes the loom of Fate for his own purposes. This time, the evil emperor doesn't betray Xena as he did in DESTINY, but he makes her his consort in Rome. Yet, apparently to hedge his bets, Caesar also makes common cause with Alti. But of course this playwright named Gabrielle comes mooching around. It's a pretty confused plot and of course everything goes back to the original cosmos, with no new insights into character or history. There's a small reward in that Ted Raimi gets to play a non-Joxer support character.

MANY HAPPY RETURNS (F)-- While X and G are on their way to Thebes to drop off the Helmet of Hermes-- no reference as to who gave the object to them or who they're giving it to-- Gabrielle wonders what kind of birthday gift she'll get from her warrior-BFF. The heroines interrupt a sacrificial ritual, in which "zealots" try to execute a young woman named Genia (possibly named for Classical sacrifice-victim Iphigenia). However, once liberated, Genia claims that no matter what the heroines do, she plans to sacrifice herself to her god. In order to dispel the young woman's foolish devotion, X and G take Genia to Aphrodite's temple, so she can see how superficial gods are. All four of them end up going to Thebes, and there the warlord Ferragus seeks to steal the Helmet, since it confers on its wearer the power to fly. The high points of this comedy episode are the jousting between X and G, though there's a "serious" meaning in terms of getting Genia to choose her own path.

SOUL POSSESSION (P)-- Since it's all about the modern-day Xena-cultists finding a lost Gabrielle-scroll, shouldn't they have called it "scroll possession?" Anyway, the new scroll purports to tell an interstitial story following Season 4's SIN TRADE, Xena is convinced by a vision that Gabrielle is still alive, and she tries to convince the mourning Joxer of this fact. But Xena doesn't know where to start looking, and Ares offers to find the supposedly living Gabrielle-- if Xena will marry him. Xena goes along with the charade, says the scroll, only to find out what Ares already knows about what happened to Gabrielle and Hope (who was carrying Ares' child). However, to gain that intel, Xena negotiates a deal where Ares must leave the two heroines in peace in the ancient world, but the scroll binds her to the war-god in a future life. Thus, back in the 21st century, Ares, still hanging around since being released in XENA SCROLLS, claims the binding scroll, but has to fight the current incarnation of Xena in the body of Harry. Ares switches the soul of Xena into the body of Alice, and that of course leads to his final defeat. It's the last of the silly-pants episodes, but is bearable for giving Ted Raimi one more outing.

A FRIEND IN NEED PTS 1-2 (F)-- I guess the show-runners must have felt they'd wrapped up all the extant plot-threads in the Xenaverse, because for the show's finale, they decided to remake THE DEBT. The remake substitutes some Japanese people who were done dirty by "Bad Xena," in between her part of the DEBT II narrative and her segment of ADVENTURES IN THE SIN TRADE, which begins with Bad Xena leaving the Far East for the Siberian North. Perhaps this "Bad Xena" has been softened by the influence of Lao Ma, even though the former has reunited with Borias to continue their depredations. Bad Xena attempts to ransom Akemi, a young Japanese noblewoman, but despite her mercenary motives, the would-be evildoer becomes enthralled by Akemi's graceful spirit. Akemi guides Xena into fighting a duel to acquire a magical katana which will later become important to the story.

"Current Xena" and her battling bard buddy are summoned to Japan by a monk trading on the name of the long deceased Akemi. Together the heroines save a burning city from the onslaught of a Japanese warlord. But Xena's saving of the city now doesn't erase her past actions.

Back to Bad Xena: on the way to the house of Akemi's father to collect a ransom, the persuasive young woman also talks Xena into teaching her the nerve pinch. When Akemi confronts her father Yodoshi, she kills him with the pinch in vengeance for various unspecified crimes. Then Akemi commits hari kari, forcing the reluctant warrior princess to finish Akemi off to end her suffering. However, the killing of Yodoshi makes his evil spirit into an angry ghost, and after Bad Xena accidentally sets the city on fire, the Yodoshi-ghost collects all the slain spirits and prevents them from going on to the afterlife.  

Good Xena's only way of battling Yodoshi is to let herself be slain, though with the plan of her mortal being revived in the nick of time. Xena's spirit meets that of Akemi on some astral plane controlled by the Yodoshi-ghost, and soon Xena also meets, and is humbled by, Yodoshi, though she only feigns to give in for good. Gabrielle and a ghost-hunter, Harukata, join Xena on the spirit plane but neither they nor Xena can slay Yodoshi. Before Harukata expires, he tells the heroes to prevent Yodoshi from accessing "the Fountain of Power." The good guys are not able to prevent the ghost-warrior from upping his power-level, and Yodoshi consumes the spirit-form of his rebellious daughter. But Gabrielle is able to get some of the fountain-water to Xena, so that she can fight and defeat Yodoshi on his level. The downside is that even though Xena frees the slain spirits from Yodoshi's gullet, she can't allow Gabrielle to resuscitate her body or the spirits won't be able to enter "a state of grace." So Xena sacrifices herself for this belatedly mentioned atrocity and Gabrielle vows to pursue the life of a warrior woman alone, with Xena still united to her in a spiritual sense.

The final XENA episode is colorful and action-packed, and the performances are typically soulful. But despite fair potential, Akemi and her evil father lack the symbolic resonance of their rough analogues from THE DEBT, Lao Ma and Ming Tien. And the make-work feel of the Japanese atrocity undermines the hypothetical sacrificial culmination of Xena's life.

Though my mythicity-ratings of the XENA episodes matter only to me, my argument that most seasons had on average four-five stories with strong myth-discourse demonstrates that the producers and writers had largely exhausted their creativity by Season Six. I may expound on a separate ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE as to the overall significance of this fan-favorite (but critically overlooked) TV series.

BILLION DOLLAR THREAT (1979)

 

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

This may well be the most generic superspy movie anyone ever made.

I mean, when I reviewed ONCE UPON A SPY, which THREAT's writer Jimmy Sangster finished about a year after this similar TV-pilot, I could find a few fillips, however minor, that distinguished that superspy flick from all the others. But Sangster seems to have been trying to emulate every shopworn trope he could think of.

Superspy arrives at spy HG. Takes orders from stuffy supervisors. Gets spy-tech from a gaffer (admittedly played by a comely female). Investigates rumors of UFOs that may be connected to illegal activity. Meets the obvious villain, his tough enforcer, and his private army. Gets captured but is kept alive to serve as an emissary, which never happens. Manages to escape a death trap and destroy the villain's installation. Congratulates himself afterward with convenient babes.

The only routine trope not used here is that villain Horatio Black (Patrick MacNee) doesn't have any bad girls in his employ. The only tiny point of originality is that the urbane evildoers has two female guests, identical twins Holly and Ivy (Beth and Karen Specht), who are also the source of the only bearable humor in the flick. Dale Robinette, a good-looking but un-dynamic leading man, plays the agent, Robert Sands, whose name sounds like that of the protagonist for the slightly earlier BLACK SAMURAI. He spends most of the movie trading barbs with the villain and only has one climactic fight with enforcer Robert Tessier, who, whoop-de-do, has a metal hand. Oddly, actor Harold Sakata, who played one of the world's favorite enforcer-types as "Oddjob" in GOLDFINGER, has a small role as "Oriental Man" in THREAT.

Like Sangster, director Barry Shear had seen better days, including episodes of both MAN FROM UNCLE and GIRL FROM UNCLE. This one is for spy-completists only.

RETURN TO FROGTOWN (1993)

 

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

This isn't a "return" to the same cosmos seen in 1987's HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN, but a reboot. There's still the same overriding conflict-- mutated frog-men vying with humans for control of a post-apocalyptic world-- but the characters of hero Sam Hell and his assistant Spangle-- so winningly played by Roddy Piper and Sandahl Bergman-- start over from scratch, essayed by Robert (MANIAC COP) Z'dar and Denice Duff. The characters are shown encountering one another for the first time, so this is clearly not a sequel, as some sources erroneously report.

In my review of HELL, I referenced director Donald G Jackson's final interview, which for my purposes contained two relevant items. One is that Jackson said he didn't favor as much sex in his stories as did his co-writer Randall Frakes-- and that explains why RETURN lacks any of the pleasing concupiscence found in HELL. The other item of interest was Jackson's interest in old serials, which explains why this version of Frogtown includes "Rocket Rangers" who are a pretty clear callback to the three "Rocketman" chapterplays of the classic era. 

There's nothing wrong with a creator who recognizes that he has more facility with fictional violence than with fictional sex. The problem is, Jackson showed no facility with either one. The stunt-work is appallingly bad, and not only from Z'dar and Duff, but also from costar Lou Ferrigno, who certainly had more than a little experience staging fight-scenes on the INCREDIBLE HULK series. Until re-viewing this nearly forgotten cheeseball production, I might've said that the worst movie to reference old serials was Fred Olen Ray's THE PHANTOM EMPIRE. But even that junkpile had one decent (if short) fight-scene in it. RETURN may've spent most of its budget on the faux-Rocketman suits briefly worn by Z'dar and Ferrigno, and some brief animated flying sequences, but there are no thrills present in either. Even the shabby costumes of the frog-men, amusing in the first film, are just pitiable here.

Despite having a jawline that Dick Tracy might envy, Z'dar was entirely out of his depth playing a stalwart hero, and clearly Jackson didn't know what to do with any of the seasoned pros in his employ, including Charles Napier, Don Stroud, Rhonda Shear and Brion James. As bad as Jackson's ROLLER BLADE films are, I think the Frogtown reboot is many times worse. There's a third film in the series which I'm not sure I've seen before, but I'm not sure I can survive another of these.

GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (2024)

 

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

When I reviewed GODZILLA VS. KONG, I remarked that I wouldn't have minded if the series ended there. To my surprise, EMPIRE is actually better, even though the conflict no longer focuses upon a "Clash of Franchise-Titans."

Two broad improvements: fewer inconsequential humans and more development of the Monsterverse. The 2021 film was all about establishing the boundaries of the Titans with regard to each other and to the human population. EMPIRE is about the formation of new societies out of the legacies of old ones. One will find no similar tropes in either the 1954 GODZILLA or the 1933 KONG. The first is about an apocalyptic beast  who almost devastates ordered society thanks to having assimilated the power of humanity's most apocalyptic weapon. The second is about the last vestiges of a primeval world surviving on the periphery of the civilized one, with the one doomed to die upon encountering the other. 

The medium for continuing an ancient legacy is EMPIRE's crossbreeding of GODZILLA '54's concept of a monster-filled under-earth with an even older sci-fi idea of the "primeval super-science culture." The 2021 movie fairly broadcast the likelihood that Kong would not truly be the last of his kind, so the revelation of a tribe of semi-intelligent giant apes in the Hollow Earth comes as no surprise. But the EMPIRE script-- which shares only one of the writers from 2021-- doubles down on the Big Reveals, for the under-earth also plays host to a tribe of telepaths with some sort of crystal-technology. 

Given their links to the moth-Titan Mothra, this vaguely Polynesian-looking tribe shares some literary genetics with the primitives of Infant Island in the Tohoverse. But the Hollow-Earth natives turn out to be distant relatives of the Iwe, the human occupants of Skull Island. The 2021 KONG wiped out the Iwe, except for sole survivor Jia (Kaylee Hottle), who was adopted by Titan-exert Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall). Jia's only significance is that she shares a psychic rapport with Kong in that they're both the only intelligent survivors of Skull Island. EMPIRE's script is far from subtle in showing the loneliness of both Kong and Jia, deprived of a society of common heritage. But at least Jia becomes a bit more sympathetic this time out, though of course the audience's main concern is for Kong. 

The natives initiate the action, sending forth a distress signal. This draws a exploratory team of humans to investigate, consisting of Ilene, Jia, comic-relief blogger Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry), and a new character, "monster-doctor" Trapper (Dan Stevens)-- oh, and a redshirt who gets killed early on. Godzilla also seems to sense something in the offing, since he devours a French nuclear plant to empower himself. Upon meeting with the proto-Iwe, the explorers learn that eons ago Godzilla confined the ancestors of the ape-tribe to Hollow-Earth, much as Kong self-exiled to that world to avoid trespassing on Godzilla's territory. Now the scurrilous simians, led by the malignant Skar King, have found a new access to the surface world, which they plan to conquer once more-- in part thanks to their having enslaved a dragon-like Titan that can breathe freezing gas. The only thing that can stop the rebellion of those damn, dirty apes is an alliance between Kong and Godzilla, and that's only possible if Jia can mind-meld with Mothra to broker a peace between the rival monsters.

To be sure, the main virtue of EMPIRE is that  returning director Adam Wingard and his FX team sell the audience on an endless series of battles between quarrelsome colossi (including a mini-Kong who has an occasional nasty edge, so that he's not repugnantly cute). But I like the fact that the script gives us a Hollow-Earth reflecting the two main phrases of the "lost world" trope: one where the lost world is inhabited by degenerate brutes, the other, by shining, though still fallible, angels in human form. 

Jia and Ilene are still flat characters, but this time the script gives them one interesting bit of business: Ilene fearing that her adoptive daughter will immediately run off to join her eons-old kindred. But Bernie and Trapper get all the clever lines because they're not confined to performing simple plot-functions. If there's a third film in the series, maybe the writers will manage to jettison all of the dullards.

THE REBEL BOXER (1972)

 

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

This chopsocky is currently streaming with the title SA MU CHEN, which is the name of the heroine essayed by star Nancy Yen. Since that title isn't very catchy I'm substituting one of the English alternative titles, even though the "boxer" here is more a revenger than a rebel.

BOXER is a shot-back-to-back sequel to another film, FURIOUS SLAUGHTER, about a fellow named Yung, a folk-hero who opposes an evil band of criminals, the Axe Gang. (One guess as to the miscreants' favorite weapon.) At the end of SLAUGHTER, Yung is blinded by lye and killed. BOXER claims that he didn't get killed but went into hiding, though he still has to recover from the blinding. Miss Ma, Yung's sister, hears about Yung's supposed death and investigates, though her main profession is that of a doctor and her proficiency in martial arts is not explained (though possibly her brother taught her). The Axe Gang not only traps Ma, they lure forth her brother (played here by Jimmy Wang Yu). After lots of fighting, Ma devastates the Axe Gang, though her brother dies anyway.

This is one of the most straightforward chopsockies I've ever seen, with no side-characters and only one bit of comic byplay, wherein a nasty gangster tries to get lady doctor Ma to examine his nether regions. From what I can tell BOXER was one of Nancy Yen's first starring roles, though I know the actress only for support-cast performances. She handles the close-up, non-doubled fight-scenes quite well, and does nicely with one or two scenes in which she has to emote about her missing brother. Still, if the producers hoped to mold Yen into another kung-fu diva, BOXER was probably too mild a concoction to impress the HK audiences.

The Axe Gang enlists two outsiders to help fight Ma, one a swordsman and the other a monk with a peculiar but non-uncanny weapon: a short staff he uses as a club, with a human skull mounted on the end. The only uncanny weapons here are the chosen weapons of the Gang. There would be nothing weird if the villains simply carried around ordinary axes, as seen in depictions of Tong wars. But most of the gang use axes that are attached to the end of long chains, which they even use to "net" Ma in the scene shown above. I find it unlikely that any professional gang ever made use of axes on chains, which seem only a little less impractical than flying guillotines.

CAMELOT THE LEGEND (1998)

 

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

Since I haven't reviewed any animated Arthurian stories except 1998's QUEST FOR CAMELOT, I decided to check out LEGEND, a low-budget quickie ground out the same year, allegedly to coast on QUEST's non-existent success. I don't doubt that this was the main motive for the movie's raison d'etre, but I will note that, even though LEGEND is a stupid story, it doesn't swipe anything from QUEST.

Quick setup: Arthur's son Modred has grown to manhood (and knighthood), and he plots against his kingly father, recently married to Queen Guinevere. Merlin can't do anything about Modred, since Arthur wants to believe his son loyal, but the wizard does imprison Modred's hoggish mother Morgan by magically sealing her in a cave for the past 20 years. The French knight Lancelot saves Arthur and Guinevere from a kidnap attempt masterminded by Modred, and though Lancelot doesn't say anything about wanting to serve Arthur, Arthur asks the Frenchman to join his retinue. But Lancelot's presence gives the evildoers a new angle to ruin Arthur's reign.

Despite the seriousness of the "Fall of Camelot" theme, this is a comedy, with dopey jokes, pratfalls (bo-oing!) and a couple of bad songs. The only halfway memorable "joke" is the image of Porky Morgan sitting around her cave watching the outside world via "sword-vision"-- that is, a magic sword that can broadcast images of current happenings on the wall of the cave. Morgan tries to expose both Lancelot and Guinevere to a love potion, but she messes up the scheme. By dumb luck Modred gets another chance to abduct the queen and brings her to Morgan's redoubt. Lancelot and Merlin dope things out and rescue Guinevere with a scheme that involves Merlin dressing up like a woman.

There are various low-energy "fights" that are clearly meant not to excite toddler-audiences. Lancelot duels a couple of ruffians in bloodless fashion, preferring to use his fists, and he even teaches Guinevere some elementary sword-tricks. Merlin and Morgan have a short "changing forms" fight a la THE SWORD IN THE STONE. Though Guinevere is liberated, Arthur gets the wrong idea seeing her in Lancelot's company. Modred tries to rouse other knights to deem Guinevere guilty of treason, as per the standard "Fall of Camelot" schema. But somehow Arthur and Guinevere "sing it out," and Camelot never falls at all.

I know that there are many worse cartoons than this one, but this one will do until a lousier one comes along.

DRAGONBALL Z: RESURRECTION "F" (2015)

 

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

RESURRECTION "F" is the direct sequel to BATTLE OF GODS, which launched a new series of animated DRAGONBALL feature films in the 2010s. However, whereas BATTLE premiered the new characters of the destroyer-god Lord Beerus and his majordomo Whis, RESURRECTION is a stale retread in which once more Goku and his fellow Saiyan Vegeta contend with an old enemy. But since this was another script by the franchise's creator Akira Toriyama, I suppose he had the right to coast if anyone did.

The evil alien overlord Frieza has been dead for some time, tormented in a Japanese hell where he has to listen to fuzzy bunnies singing happy songs. However, some of Frieza's former army, headed by Commander Sorbet, desire to revive their old boss. They collect all seven dragonballs and summon the wish-dragon Shenron, who revives Frieza even though he's been cut into pieces. We don't see a bunch of animated body parts flopping about, though, because Sorbet has a handy-dandy organic integrator lying around, Soon Frieza is strutting around, killing off subordinates whenever he feels like it and nurturing a grudge against Goku and all the allies who vanquished the evildoer in past.

As is often the case, Goku and Vegeta, competitive with one another as always, have journeyed to Beerus' world to train with majordomo Whis. He makes some observations about the mental failings of both Saiyans, and Beerus, waking up cranky, reminds the heroes that the only reason he spared Earth was because he enjoyed the food there. 

One good thing about the Saiyans' absence: when Freiza's troops attack Earth, many of the heroic support-cast get to kick butt, which often does not occur in the animated films. But none of the support characters can handle ultra-powered Frieza himself, so Bulma is able to summon Goku and Vegeta to save the day,

And so, the heroes take turns fighting Frieza, while their friends watch anxiously and the two deity-types chow down on Earth food. As usual, the villain of the show has some secret technique to up his game, and the heroes have to up their game in turn. After Goku wins, his reluctance to take his ruthless enemy's life allows Frieza to destroy Earth. Fortunately, Whis just happens to have mentioned he has the power to reset time about three minutes back, and so Goku gets a do-over.

Aside from giving the support cast more props, there's a little bit of diffident camraderie sustained between the two Saiyans, but none of it is germane to the simplistic plot.