MINDWARP (1991)

 

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

The script for MINDWARP-- one of three DTV films produced for the short-lived Fangoria Films label-- was executed by the same writing-team that worked on 2003's TERMINATOR 3, John Brancato and Michael Ferris. I've seen MINDWARP dismissed as nothing more than a gore-film, and I must admit it was surely structured so that FANGORIA magazine would be able to play up the grottier sights. But as with T3, the script shows the authors' strong familiarity with the tropes of sci-fi.

Young woman Judy (Marta Martin) lives in a computer-controlled biosphere beneath the surface of a future-Earth ravaged by atomic warfare. Because the small population of the biosphere can't be permitted to travel in the polluted "Death Zones," the populace is kept "plugged in" to the computer's fantasy-scenarios. Judy's mother is perfectly happy to pass her days in such dreams, but Judy rebels. She wants to know more about her missing father, but her mother won't reveal anything. However, when the computer learns of Judy's rebelliousness, it exiles her to the surface.

The inexperienced young woman is almost slain by mutated, cannibalistic humans called "Crawlers," but a lone hunter named Stover (Bruce Campbell) rescues her. He just has time to explain some of the exigencies of living in the real world, when the two of them are attacked and abducted by Crawlers.

Instead of being devoured, Judy and Stover are taken before the Seer (Angus Scrimm), a masked but non-mutated human who's managed to control the mutants with a phony religion. Unfortunately, not only does the Seer's concubine Cornelia (Elizabeth Kent) resent the presence of a potential female rival, the Seer turns out to Judy's missing father. Further, since even a lot of non-mutated humans are sterile, Judy's dad is willing to commit incest in order to propagate.

In many ways MINDWARP feels like a slightly less sleazy version of a Roger Corman space opera. As Stover, Bruce Campbell provides the fighting-scenes, but though Martin's Judy has no combat-skills, she puts a lot more moxie into her dramatic scenes than do most B-film actresses. 

To be sure, there's a "Big Reveal" at the end, in that Judy wakes up from another fantasy-scenario, back in the biosphere, so nothing that happened to her on the surface actually transpired. Nevertheless, even though the combative elements of the movie take place in the heroine's imagination, I still deem MINDWARP a combative film.

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (2024)

 

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

I also noticed that whereas the first film had some fun dealing with "female-objectification" tropes, Number Two apparently decides that it's more important to play it safe with a half-dozen "homoerotica" tropes. The first film was more even-handed, while this one seems designed to defuse politically correct criticism. -- my review of DEADPOOL 2.

Though the third DEADPOOL film pours on the homoerotic jokes like they're going out of season, I don't object to them because (a) they're tossed out quickly, without showing a concerted idea to make a straight audience uncomfortable, and (b) they're focused upon a character established as being at least bi-curious. All that said, I will comment on one odd aspect of the film's sexual politics. Officially, the reason for Wade Wilson, a.k.a. Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) to go through all the chaos of the film is to save his timeline. However, before the time-business even starts, the former killer-for-hire has sought to become a "hero" in order to please his off-again, on-again girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). Yet there's no promise of sexual rewards for the would-be crusader, just the companionship with a circle of buddies. So yeah, I tend to believe that, contrary to one of the film's jokes, cocaine-snorting wasn't the only pastime that Disney kept off the table.

D&W is also a contradiction in terms re: being a "multiverse" film. True, Wilson sneers at the whole idea of multiverses (with a false analogy to the 1939 WIZARD OF OZ). But without multiverses, D&W could not exist, so Wilson's protests come to sound a little like Br'er Rabbit protesting against being tossed in the briar patch: a hoax to get his victim to go along with his plans. Yet from the box office records being set by the movie in its opening weekend, it's a hoax with which the audience was eager to engage with-- in contrast to the more tiresome universe-crunching of "straight" movies like THE FLASH and DR STRANGE AND THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS. 

At the same time, the writers of D&W are much smarter about what they expect "normies" in the audience to know about the history of superhero films. MCU movies that depended on viewers having seen all of the company's films and streaming shows, like the MULTIVERSE film mentioned above, were clearly misguided. Instead, when Deadpool goes hunting for an alternate-universe Wolverine to save his own timeline, the script (credited in part both to Reynolds and director Shawn Levy) spotlights franchises that appeared some time back, particularly those of 20th-Century Fox, whose properties Disney acquired via purchase. A "normie" won't know a lot of the references tossed out and won't religiously check all the Easter eggs on YouTube. But when the film makes a FANTASTIC FOUR joke, he's likely to get the general sense of it as long as he knows some general stuff about pop culture.

The writers keep the plot very loose to make room for all the references, and in some ways it's just another "save the universe" story whose main purpose is to bring together an "odd couple:" wacky Wilson and taciturn Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Reynolds cuts capers throughout most of the film, and gets a little monotonous at times, but it's likely he does so to clear the decks for Jackman to be more brooding and tragic. The tragic backstory for Wolverine is just okay, but Jackman's intensity serves as an "anchor" for the whole film, much like the character is supposed to "anchor" Wilson's timeline. (Hmm, if Wilson's timeline is doomed to decay without a living Wolverine, doesn't that mean that whatever timeline loses its Wolverine goes down the toilet?)

As I was born during a period in which no hero ever slashed or gashed his opponents-- not counting sword-fighting swashbucklers and the occasional samurai-- I'm not blown away by the almost endless impalement-scenes during most of the battles. (Even three of the four "guest stars" who take place in one big battle are blade-users.) The initial villain of the movie is so weak that a secondary villain takes over his function in the last half-hour, but I must admit that said evildoer Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) made me wish she'd been the main Big Bad from the start. 

 Like the other two, this one is just "fair" on the mythicity level, though I still rate the first DEADPOOL as the funniest of them all. It would be nice if Disney/MCU learned something from Reynolds' shakeup of their icons, but it seems unlikely.

TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003)

 

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

The creators behind RISE OF THE MACHINES-- director Jonathan Mostow and three writers-- had the very unenviable task of following up the two Cameron movies. To be sure, Cameron himself considered working on a third movie, but no deal materialized, though he advised Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign up if he liked the script. 

Certainly there was nothing wrong in reworking the ending of TERMINATOR 2 to make room for a new storyline, since Cameron had rewritten the ending of the first TERMINATOR to make room for the sequel. My understanding is that after RISE, most iterations referenced only the Cameron movies as "canon." 

RISE takes place ten years after the events of T2, and arguably T2 casts a long shadow over RISE. The plot re-uses the basic idea of two Terminators squaring off, one seeking to kill John Connor, future savior of humanity, and the other seeking to protect him. In both movies the protecting cyborg is of the same model that sought to kill Sarah Connor in the first movie (all said cyborgs being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), but both protectors had been re-programmed to counter an assassin sent by the intelligent computer system Skynet. RISE copies T2's idea that the killing-droid can change its shape due to being made of liquid metal (To be sure, in the first version of RISE's story, the murder-robot had a different set of powers.) This time, instead of John teaming up with his mother Sarah and the protector-cyborg, this time John (Nick Stahl) and the Schwarze-cyborg team up with Kate Brewster (Clair Danes). John, who's remained off the grid since the events of T2, is rather surprised to learn from the cyborg that Kate, a woman he only knew from high school, is his future wife. (John does have an amusing line after seeing Kate shoot down a robot attacker, saying that she reminds him of his mother.)

I think the script delivers lots of good skull-bursting violence, and some of the scenarios are as good as Cameron's best. Like the other films RISE is primarily a chase film, but it puts together a good "third act" when the Terminator reveals that Kate's father, a military man, is involved in the implementation of Skynet. Where RISE dwindles in comparison to the Cameron films is that the character interaction is not as rich. Stahl and Danes have good chemistry, but their arc isn't as strong as the reconciliation between John and his mother (who has passed away prior to the film proper). As for the third Schwarze-cyborg, "he" of course has none of the emotional bond thst the second one, destroyed at the end of T2, sustained with John. Still, Schwarzenegger still imbues the mechanical man with touches of humanity. This Terminator even possesses a touch of existential angst. He doesn't literally care about either John or Kate, but he feels that if he fails in his protective mission, his existence will become meaningless.

The FX-artists succeed reasonably well with all the tricks they give the T-X kill-droid (Kristanna Loken), but this automated assassin never becomes as iconic as the Robert Patrick version. Loken can do all the blank-faced expressions that Patrick could do, but the script didn't give her any comparable moments of quasi-humanity. Since it sounds as if the earliest script focused upon a female assassin, I wondered if this too came about as a reaction to T2. After all, T2 emphasizes how the assassin can unleash many powers to compensate for the superior size of the Schwarze-cyborg. So why couldn't a female assassin also outclass another bulky-bodied warrior, given that Patrick proved that "size did not matter?"  

THE BATMAN VS. DRACULA (2005)

 

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

I don't remember getting much out of the 2004-2008 animated series THE BATMAN, but it would be interesting to re-watch it some day, now that it's not nearly so overshadowed by the nineties series. I recall mildly liking this DTV film, though, and I think it's more rewarding a second time around. 

One of the better aspects of VS. is the romance-subplot between Bruce Wayne and Vicky Vale. According to IMDB, the lady reporter -- a Golden Age Bat-romance given greater visibility by the 1989 live-action movie-- did not appear in any of the episodes of the regular series. In this DTV, she and Bruce seem to have been acquainted for some time and may have even dated. Rather like the Vicky of the movie, the heroine is more interested in Bruce Wayne than in his masked alter ego, and at one point, while looking at an old article on Young Bruce's bereavement, she comes just this close to figuring things out. It's a much more soulful moment than the comics character ever attained.

Of course, the dust-up between the Gotham Guardian and the Lord of Vampires is the main focus. Yet the subplot of Batman's inability to have a normal life-- something faithful Alfred comments on more than once-- serves as a counterpoint to the hero's dedication to serve as a costumed super-dad to the entire city of Gotham. I'm not wild about the visual design of either Batman or Bruce Wayne, but the script does credit to the overall mythos of the crusader.

The visual design of Dracula is-- okay. He looks like a cadaverous version of Chris Lee, but with more angular features, but like the novel-version he possesses a wider variety of powers than the Hammer Dracula. He is, like some of the movie versions, unable to move about in daytime, but he enlists two of Batman's most prominent villains as his servitors. The Joker gets literally vampirized, meaning that before the movie's over Batman must find a vampirism-cure to return the Clown Prince back to his normal fiendishness. The other servant, the Penguin, functions more as a Renfield-type pawn, and provides some needed humor amidst all the posturing of the two bat-adversaries. 

In an interesting rewrite of the Dracula legend, this version of the Count was married to Carmilla Karnstein, a female vampire in Sheridan LeFanu's CARMILLA, a novel which debuted a little over thirty years before Bram Stoker's famous work. One guess what current Gotham resident just happens to resemble the late Carmilla.

Given that Batman is physically outclassed by his supernatural foe, he's able to use an assortment of quasi-scientific weapons, as well as traditional lore, to defeat the monster. It's a strong, lively end-fight, and if I get around to re-watching the series I'll be curious how the regular episodes handle their fight choreography-- very different from BATS, but with an equal appeal.

SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE (2012)

 

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

Before coming across the DTV movie, I'd never heard of the DC hero-team called "The Elite." The characters debuted in one of the Superman comics-titles, and some of them later migrated to a title called JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE, into which I also never delved. When I saw a commentary that The Elite were meant to be DC's take on the popular Wildstorm group The Authority, I assumed that the characters by Joe Kelly-- who also scripted the DTV-- were meant to carry the same vibe of hip anomie.

Instead, to my happy surprise, SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE turned the usual "hipper than thou" narrative on its head. Said narrative has been brewing in the comics world since the so-called "British Invasion" of the eighties (which included both the writer and artist who created THE AUTHORITY), and its usual pattern was to make fun of the antiseptic ideals of Silver Age superheroes who never killed and refused to involve themselves in political conflicts. (I say "Silver Age" because the Golden Age originals weren't quite so above-it-all.) The Authority in particular was a group of raffish heroes out to remake the world as they wanted it to be.

I expected that SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE would follow that pattern, and in Kelly's DVD commentary he even talks about how much he enjoyed creating the disreputable personalities of the five Elite-members, though he admits that he toned their activities down in comparison to their comics-debut. To my surprise, ELITE turned the original pattern on its head.

Superman and his girl-reporter girlfriend-- who's in on his double ID in this iteration-- are tolerating the many disruptions characteristic of Metropolis, such as the rampage of a long-time malefactor, The Atomic Skull. On the international scene, violence is on the rise between neighboring nations Bialya and Pokolistan, and Superman intervenes when the latter country unleashes a number of huge bio-engineered monsters upon Bialyan soldiers. The Man of Steel receives aid from the four members of the Elite: Coldcast, Menagerie, The Hat, and Manchester Black, the leader. The first three characters are of minimal importance to the plot, inasmuch as the focus is upon the philosophical disagreement between Manchester Black and the spawn of Smallville.

Manchester is in many ways a typical anomie-hero: he was badly treated in his youth, and his vigilantism is motivated by a spirit of revenge. He often makes fun of Superman's supposed naivete, and when he and his fellows decide that they are going to become a supreme "authority" over the governments of Earth, it appears that Superman will simply have to slug it out with them to prove who's in the right.

Without spoiling the ending, the Man of Steel is for once allowed to use strategy in dealing with his opponents. And his strategy includes a hoax worthy of the best of Silver Age Superman's devious plots, but with much more impact. Though Manchester and his freaky friends are colorful and lively, the most memorable scenes in ELITE depict Superman apparently won over to the Elite's philosophy of "the end justifies the means."

Despite Manchester's defeat both in this DTV and in his comics-appearance, the character got a revival of sorts during the 2019-2020 season of SUPERGIRL. Given the Progressive focus of that series during the later years, it's not surprising that the writers had the stupidity to depict the vigilante as a righteous hero.

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018)

 

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

Just as the stand-alone movie ROGUE ONE came out between Parts 1 and 2 of the Sequel Trilogy, the second and last standalone appeared between Parts 2 and 3. But unlike ROGUE, SOLO flopped, becoming notorious as the first STAR WARS film to lose money.

I'd very much like to believe the prevalent fan-theory that Rian Johnson's equally bad LAST JEDI damaged the SW brand so badly that audiences turned away from SOLO. But that notion wouldn't accord with the fact that RISE OF SKYWALKER, just a year later, made almost three times its budget-- though that was an underperformance compared to JEDI, which made four times its budget before negative reaction set in. 

I'm sure the Kathleen Kennedy regime did nothing to improve Han Solo's status by killing off the character in FORCE AWAKENS. The bean-counters were perhaps impatient to eject a character who could only be played by the high-ticket Harrison Ford, but it's certainly possible that doing so diminished the heroic dimensions of said character. That said, SOLO also had other problems.

The original script was commissioned, like the script for ROGUE ONE, by George Lucas before he sold the franchise to Disney-- though there wasn't a lot of time between the SOLO commission and the franchise-sale. Lawrence Kashdan, celebrated for his earlier contributions to the SW saga, started the script but then turned it over to his son John-- though I surmise that the basic ideas were all assembled by the time of the torch-passing.

The real fault of SOLO-- and I felt this in my theatrical viewing as well as my recent re-watch-- is that it gave audiences a "space western" with too little emphasis on the "space" part. Possibly the Kashdans thought that, because Han Solo was supposed to be a charming rogue, they ought to follow the example of the "spaghetti westerns" from the sixties and seventies. The heroes of those European oaters were almost entirely mercenary, doing good only incidentally if at all. 

Of course, Han Solo wasn't meant to be quite that dark. All the minutiae about his earlier career gleaned from the original trilogy-- his meetings with Chewbacca and Lando, his acquisition of the Millennium Falcon, and even the Kessel Run-- are on display here, and all the details are meant to prefigure Han's later conversion to the forces of altruism. But though the script constructs a lot of action set-pieces, they prove even more hollow than those of LAST JEDI.

As played by Alden Ehrenreich, Han is a rogue without demonstrable charm. On his homeworld he and girlfriend Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) break away from a gang, but only Han escapes Correlia while Qi'ra is captured by the occupying Stormtroopers. In quick order, Han joins the military, leaves the military, joins a criminal gang, fails to steal a supply of valuable coaxium, and finally undertakes a larger heist to compensate gang-leader Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). Oh, and Dryden's lieutenant is none other than the long missing Qi'ra, so now there's suspense about whether she'll remain loyal to Vos or switch back to her former boyfriend.

I imagine that viewers in the right mood may have been okay with all these pedestrian twists and turns. But I also think it likely that the movie was so ordinary that it never generated any good word-of-mouth. More oddly, SOLO is the least colorful STAR WARS film. Somehow, director Ron Howard and his team managed to make SOLO look much like Zach Snyder's MAN OF STEEL. It's not that bright colors don't exist, but that they're all muted by lots of black and brown hues. And with the exception of Woody Harrelson as Han's sort-of mentor, none of the performers manage to put across anything but very basic acting. The best thing about SOLO is that its failure may have spared audiences more botched "solo" efforts from the regime of Kathleen Kennedy.

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF BATMAN (1977)

 

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

It's tough to find much to say about these 16 mediocre Filmation cartoons, in marked contrast to my review of the 17 stories the same company did in 1968, also starring Batman, Robin, and Batgirl and featuring many of the well-known Bat-villains. I'm sure Filmation re-used various drawings from the 1968 series in this one, but I wouldn't have minded that, had the second cartoon emulated some of the clever writing as well. Further, I mentioned that I liked a lot of the 1968 voicework. But the 1977 show showed its poverty of imagination by having the same fellow, one Lennie Weinrib, execute almost all of the villain-voices. True, Adam West and Burt Ward were hired to re-enact Batman and Robin for the first time since the live-action show ended in 1968. But their participation added little, because the scripts were so incredibly pedestrian. Even the zany third season of the live-action show gave the Dynamic Duo more good lines to utter.

The show is notable, or notorious, for reviving the DC character Bat-Mite, an extra-dimensional imp. He wore a Bat-costume and strove to be a hero like his idol but proved generally incompetent. He'd been gone from the comics for ten years, since Bat-Mite's sort of humor was perceived as childish by long-time fans of Batman comics. But Filmation, who were going after little kid-viewers, never met a goofy mascot the company didn't like. And though the comics-version isn't very good either, his main appeal was creating chaos with his magical abilities. This Bat-Mite can barely do anything but very minor feats, and worse, for five or six episodes he actually uses a terrible catchphrase: "I was only trying to help!" I'm tempted to think that the deliberately bad catchphrase used by child-actress Baby Doll in an episode of BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES-- "I didn't mean to!"--might have been inspired by this real mediocrity.

The classic villains are poorly executed, and the new villains are all worthless, with one slight exception. Keeping current with the media fascination with "moon rocks" brought to Earth by 1970s space ventures, an astronaut (the show's only significant Black character) becomes physically and mentally altered by radiation. He begins transforming into the crazed Moonman and seeks to avenge the plundering of the lunar orb by causing the moon to crash into Earth. In the last three episodes of the series, the original Bat-Mite concept  -- that of an imp with near-illimitable magic powers-- gets funneled into Zarbor, a native of Bat-Mite's dimension who can perform all sorts of miracles. He enlists the help of four Bat-villains-- Catwoman, Clayface, Joker and Penguin-- for some dastardly plan in the show's only two-part story-- and then he gets his own episode as the series wraps up.

I suppose the sociological significance of the teleseries is that it was produced at the height of the "anti-violence" crusade in children's cartoons. In my review of the 1968 cartoon I noted that Batman and Robin made free with their fists while Batgirl didn't get much fight-action. But all three heroes are "neutered" of their violent aspects in the 1977 show, and the very minimal fighting here is all done with gimmicks. But one might say that Batgirl still gets the short end of the stick, since Bat-Mite constantly crushes on Batgirl in between his assorted screwups. 

SUPERMAN UNBOUND (2013)

 

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

I'd seen this DTV film once before, but before giving UNBOUND a re-watch, I read Geoff Jones' five-issue arc of ACTION COMICS on which the movie was based. My primary observation is that UNBOUND is one of the closest adaptations I've seen in a DTV film, with the only major discrepancy being that in the DTV, Superman briefly gets stuck in Kandor by his nemesis Brainiac.

The story is a decent if unexceptional take on the classic Brainiac mythos, with the exception that in the continuity of the 2010s, Supergirl experienced the android's rampage on Krypton some time before she was sent to Earth to seek out her super-cousin. The script also plays up the fact that this Brainiac is a computer intelligence not limited to any particular android body. In the reality of this stand-alone DTV, Superman has encountered the human computer before, but this tale is designed to give a definitive take on Brainiac's symbolic nature. In brief, rather than simply being a passionless collector of scientific knowledge who makes whole worlds his specimens, this Brainiac is said-- twice-- to be a "coward," unable to deal with the chaos of real life. Whether this is meant to be a jab at the reductive version of science is not made clear.

Though Superman is the star, Lois Lane and Supergirl both get hefty supporting roles, while of the other Daily Planet staff, obnoxious jock Steve Lombard enjoys considerable attention. A comic-book subplot involving Clark Kent's adoptive parents is reduced to just a few scenes. The Superman-Lois relationship is milked for acceptable melodrama, though the Superman-Supergirl one is underwhelming.

The film's greatest asset is its strong action-scenes as directed by James Tucker. Still, there really doesn't seem to be anything monumental enough to justify calling it "unbound" a la the archaic play by Aeschylus.

THE KILLER IS ONE OF 13 (1973)

 

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

Paul Naschy must have got some satisfaction from his two previous collaborations with director Javier Aguirre, because he consented to appear in this Spanish film in what amounts to a glorified cameo; a butler on the estate where a bunch of killings take place-- eventually.

The star here, as in most such stories, is the mystery killer, to whom Aguirre gives one minimal "giallo" characteristic, that of wearing black gloves. But KILLER is not structured like any of the famous giallos, nor like the contributing influence of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None." 

Rich widow Lisa Mandel (Patty Shepard) invites twelve acquaintances of her late husband to a party at her estate. Her purpose in so doing is to reveal that she suspects all of them of having covertly arranged for the death of Lisa's husband. However, once she reveals this purpose to her confused guests, none of them decide to leave. In many comparable "house of death" movies, there's some reason for all the potential victims to stay on the premises. But since co-scripter Aguirre couldn't come up with any such motives, he simply holds off on killing anyone for the first hour of the film.

So the first hour is mostly talking heads dialogue, with a few brief sex-scenes or scenes of husbands accusing their hot wives of wanting to get sexed up at this party. One might think Aguirre would use all the conversational scenes to establish clues that will help the audience identify the mystery murderer. Instead, what the director puts out there is a lot of soap opera emotion that doesn't contribute to either plot or characterization. Only two characters establish a little tension as to what they might do next: Lisa's aunt Bertha (Trini Alonso), who mentally dominates her grown son Francis (Eusebio Poncela). Bertha's dialogue states that she thinks Francis constantly chases after "low" women, and this oppressive dynamic could have Oedipal psychological connotations-- except that Bertha does want Francis to romance his cousin Lisa, because Lisa has money.

When the killings begin-- with minimal gore and no imaginative setups-- the guests still don't simply flee the mansion, as they're fully able to do. The resolution of the "mystery" is nothing special, though it does involve a perilous psycho wearing the aforementioned black gloves. The effect is so underwhelming that I barely give KILLER any credit for assembling a quantity of gorgeous women, including Shepard, Dianik Zurakowska, and Carmen Maura.

TOTAL FORCE (1996)

 

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

It's a terrible injustice that IMDB reviewers compared Steven Kaman, the writer-director of TOTAL FORCE, with Ed Wood-- an injustice, that is, to Ed Wood.

Wood had a long list of failings, without a doubt. But one thing I like about Wood is that in most (though not all) of his cinematic efforts, I can keep track of his major characters. I may not care that much about them, but watching PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, I'm never in doubt as to which character is the pilot who witnesses a UFO, and which one is the balmy cop who scratches his own head with his service revolver.

TOTAL FORCE presents the viewer with an extremely standard adventure-scenario: a mad scientist (Richard Lynch) invents a laser beam that can turn enemy soldiers into rampaging zombies that, in theory, will attack their own allies. When the scientist turns his weapon to the purpose of blackmail, it's logical enough that the government unleashes some special-forces group to take out the threat. And all that a moderately competent filmmaker has to do is to introduce the roster of heroes with whom the audience is supposed to identify.

But who are the good guys in the paramilitary group "Total Force?" Well, I THINK the characters played by Timothy Bottoms and Calista (daughter of David) Carradine are in the main group. But for some obscure reason, Kanam also introduces some other "terrorist" group headed by Frank Stallone, with whom Total Force has to collaborate. There's some vague past relationship between the Bottoms and Stallone characters, but Kanam shows zero ability to make this background even halfway interesting. Predictably, Carradine is there to provide some of the kung-fu action for which her dad became famous. But there are also three other kung-fu girls running around, billed on IMDB as "fighting hostesses" 1.2, and 3. Who do they work for, the mad scientist? Or for the Stallone character? Kanam can't be bothered to spell things out, for he's too busy setting up a lot of boring battle-scenes in some static warehouse locale.

One or two fight scenes are all that keep FORCE from being totally worthless.

ROGUE ONE (2016)

 

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

I'm glad I didn't review ROGUE ONE when I saw it in the theaters. At that time, when the stand-alone film came out in between the first and second parts of the "Rei Trilogy," I was rather underwhelmed. None of the characters really grabbed me, and I didn't see the point of making a film about the events that led up to A NEW HOPE. Yet now, thanks to Walt Disney having mismanaged the STAR WARS franchise so badly, I can make an argument that ROGUE ONE is the last real STAR WARS film.

Though I mildly enjoyed FORCE AWAKENS, in my review I noted that J.J. Abrams did not "possess the talent evinced by the Lucas of 1977 for synthesizing great action-scenes from Classic Hollywood: the western’s saloon-confrontation, the pirate film’s yardarm-flights, the war film’s airborne strafing-runs." At the time I reviewed LAST JEDI  and RISE OF SKYWALKER in the same month, I believed that JEDI's badness might have been partly the result of poor scheduling, while RISE had some positive aspects that made it the strongest of the trilogy. Unfortunately, though I've had little experience of the various SW shows on streaming services, it sounds like JEDI became the new model for the franchise's sociopolitical engagement. 

The idea behind ROGUE, however, began in 2003, pitched by one of the Lucasfilm visual FX guys. Whatever changes the idea went through as it was scripted by other raconteurs roughly from 2014 to 2016, it seems to have hewed to the approach of George Lucas. That means that although some sociopolitical content was present, the story emphasized dazzling action and a sense of wonder at the mysteries of the universe-- including those of the human mind, as exemplified by the powers of the Jedi.

In keeping with A NEW HOPE, the Jedi are in total eclipse at the time of ROGUE, and the Empire has most of the galaxy locked down, aside from the scattered forces of the Rebel Alliance. The major heroes and villains of HOPE play only marginal roles here, for ROGUE is about the sacrifice of rebels who made the later triumphs possible.

Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is a child when the Empire, in the person of the villainous Krennic, abducts her father Galen to work on the Death Star after killing Jyn's mother. For fifteen years Jyn has to grow up in hiding with the help of raffish rebel Saw (Forest Whitaker), but he, functioning as a surrogate father, willfully separates himself from her to avoid exposing her identity as Galen's daughter. Jyn is eventually picked up by the Empire even though the Stormtroopers don't know her identity. However, two agents of the Alliance, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and the droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) learn Jyn's identity and liberate her. Because Jyn can help the Alliance's plan to free the imprisoned Galen, she's more or less drafted into the rebel movement.

During the assorted battles and spycraft-endeavors that make up the action of ROGUE, the main psychological arc is the contrast between Cassian, who has been fighting as a rebel since childhood, and Jyn, who has sought to steer clear of political involvement because it cost her so much. This master trope of ROGUE is not quite elaborate enough to bestow good mythicity upon the movie as a hole, but it does keep the events of the film from being nothing more than a recitation of plot-points. Humorous counterpoint is provided by Chirrut (Donnie Yen), who is a skilled blind swordsman who believes in the Force though he possesses no literal mind-powers. The three of them are not resonant enough to come anywhere close to the mythic status of Luke, Leia and Han, but they comport themselves well enough.

Director Gareth Edwards, purportedly a STAR WARS fan, shows all the wonder-working ability that Abrams lacked. I was particularly taken with several outer-space spectacles, both with and without battling starships, that would be foreign to more plebeian directors. Edwards also structures the fast-paced narrative much in the style of Original Lucas, but without neglecting some ethical reflections. 

Unfortunately, two years later Disney came out with a second stand-alone SW movie, Ron Howard's SOLO, which helped put an end to George Lucas's filmmaking legacy.

 

DOOM PATROL (SEASON 1, 2019)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

Of the various jejune devices this show's first season uses to ironically "deconstruct" its superhero subject matter, one of the most tedious is the fact that all 15 episodes have titles that stick some word or words in front of the word "patrol." Thus all the episodes have titles like "Jane Patrol," "Ezekiel Patrol," and even "Doom Patrol Patrol."

I have a title that I think would have applied equally well to all the episodes of the first season (and probably the other seasons as well):

"Snark Patrol."

History: DC Comics' original superhero title from the 1960s, THE DOOM PATROL, was a straight superhero-adventure title with large doses of comedy relief and with heroes who were all damaged in some way-- a cyborg with a human brain, a radioactive man swathed in bandages, and so on. In the late 1980s, British writer Grant Morrison, ostensibly a fan of the original series, produced a wild absurdist take on some of the original teammates, as well new additions. The Morrison tenure had ironic aspects to it, but its focus emphasized dazzling flights of the imagination.

Not so the four seasons of the DOOM PATROL teleseries. The writers incorporate various ideas from Morrison in the course of the first season, but shoehorned into a clunky plotline in which the four members of the current Patrol-- analogues of the comics-characters Robotman, Crazy Jane, Elasti-Girl and Negative Man-- are forced by supercriminal Mister Nobody to seek the missing scientist who brought them all together, Niles Caulder, a.k.a. The Chief. But at no point do the scripts incorporate any sense of wonder at all the bizarre entities the Patrol encounters. Instead, the writers substitute a repetitive "what the fuck now" attitude about everything, including the protagonists' own revelations about their own inner demons. 

The most I can say for the series is that once or twice a given episode improved on something I found weak in Morrison's original run. For instance, in keeping with the "gloom and doom" mood of eighties comics, Morrison changed the beneficent figure of Niles Caulder into a manipulative monster who changed the heroes from ordinary humans into freaks so that he The Chief could play God. In the interests of making the Chief viable for an ongoing series, the writers kept that trope but gave the Chief a somewhat altruistic reason for his actions. Still, the occasional improvement does not make up for all of the heavy-handed snarkiness.

More interesting for me than the series proper are speculations about why PATROL turned out so badly. The show was one of the last projects for the streaming service DC Universe, which perhaps inevitably ran out of money and was absorbed into HBO Max during PATROL's run. Prior to PATROL, two of the big-name producers attached to it-- Greg Berlanti and Geoff Johns-- had worked on a four-season series, TITANS. But since that was based on a more typical superhero title, its showrunner Greg Walker played things straight.

I won't put the whole burden of badness on the PATROL showrunner Jeremy Carver, since he was probably told by his superiors to incorporate more absurdist humor into this adaptation. But in the final analysis, he's probably mostly responsible for the repetitive tone and the lack of imagination. But then, DOOM PATROL is hardly the only superhero project of the 21st century to suffer from indifference to the sense of wonder.

Wrapping up, I may not like most of the characters, but all of the actors comported themselves well, particularly Diane Guerrero as Jane. There are some "woke" touches to the first season, such as blather about toxic masculinity (some of which is also found in Morrison) and in making the Jane character Hispanic for no particular reason. But those nods to political correctness didn't damage the storylines as they have many MCU streaming shows, and if I had to choose the lesser of two evils, I suppose I'd have to choose boring snark over tedious lectures.

THE HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE (1973)

 

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

Igors of the world, unite! Finally, thanks to Paul Naschy, you have a Frankenstein-film in which the hunchback, not the mad scientist, is the focus of the story.

Surprisingly, while MORGUE is like most Naschy films full of assorted sex-and-violence scenes, the script-- credited to the actor, one other writer and director Javier Aguirre-- unfolds with some degree of logic.

Wolfgang Gotho (Naschy) is a simpleton hunchback who lives in some European town (possibly German to judge from character-names) and does odd jobs for the city morgue. He's been casually mistreated for years by the local yahoos, including nasty kids, but he has one childhood friend, Ilse, who isn't disgusted by his looks. However, Ilse has become sick, which contributes to Wolfgang's torments. 

At the same time the mad scientist of the tale, Doctor Orla (Alberto Dalbes) has begun trying to put together his do-it-yourself monster. Two new doctors, Frederick (Victor Barrera) and Maria (Maria Perschy) come to work at Orla's clinic, and slowly Orla talks Frederick into joining in his project.

Wolfgang is attacked by kids throwing stones, but a kindly lady doctor from the same clinic, Elke (Rosanna Yanni), treats the hunchback's injuries. This minor kindness, though, does not eradicate the basic cruelty of the townspeople. On Ilse's last day of life, Wolfgang plans to take her some flowers, but some asshole medical students get in his face. He fights with them until some older doctors interrupt the battle, and when Wolfgang reaches Ilse, she's past any final goodbyes. Later Ilse is taken to the morgue. Wolfgang sees two attendants attempt to steal jewelry from the corpse, so he slaughters them. On the run from the police, he secretes Ilse's body in some adjoining catacombs, which proves problematic since there are a lot of rats down there.

Orla comes across Wolfgang and realizes that the demented hunchback can help him pilfer body parts from the cemetery for his great creation, so the doctor claims that he can restore Ilse to life. Strangely, at one point the cops almost locate the body-thief, but Doctor Elke not only gives him shelter, she strongly implies that she wants to make love to the misshapen fellow. (Hey, it's a Naschy movie; he's got to enthrall at least two women each time out!) 

Frederick breaks ranks with Orla when he learns of the scientist's criminal activities, and this gets him imprisoned. When Maria comes looking for her boyfriend, the same happens to her. But in the end Wolfgang figures out that Orla's been lying to him, and their partnership ends. Orla tries to unleash his monster on his enemies, but things go badly for both scientist and hunchback.

Aside from the gore and the light sexual touches, there are some clever touches here. For me the best delves into Lovecraftian territory, in that he claims that his creation-- which looks like a big guy covered in tar-- is some sort of reborn demon. But Naschy's brooding blend of affection and hostility sells the film, making it one of his best efforts. About a year later, Naschy and Aguirre worked together on the moderately entertaining COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE.

BLOODSHOT (2020)

 

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

I may have read one or two of the 1990s BLOODSHOT comics from the Valiant stable, but if so nothing stuck with me. I saw this 2020 film months ago and had little to say about it. Then, a little after reviewing KICK ASS 2, I looked over the credits of that film's writer-director Jeff Wadlow and noticed that Wadlow co-wrote this film-- and that gave me the impetus to see if I detected any interesting Wadlow-isms.

My conclusion is that in a proportional sense BLOODSHOT the movie is probably better than the comic, just as the KICK ASS 2 movie is better than the comic. However, BLOODSHOT-- which I keep wanting to call "Bloodspot" due to the circular red bullseye on the hero's chest-- is still pretty ordinary.

While Golden Age comics are replete with soldiers. living or dead, who are given super-powers, the nineties UNIVERSAL SOLDIER series is probably the proximate influence on subsequent stories about bringing dead military men back to life with enhanced abilities. As the film opens, we seem to see the evolution of one such soldier, U.S. Marine Ray Garrison (Vin Diesel) into the experimental entity Bloodshot. After demonstrating his skill in the field by defusing a terrorist threat, he goes on leave with his wife Gina. A mercenary gang captures both of them, and after failing to get vital information from Ray, kills them both. 

Ray is brought back to life by a military facility, RST, and is told that he's one of their few successes in total resuscitation of a dead man. Project director Harting (Guy Pearce) introduces Ray to other "wounded warriors" at the facility, particularly therapist KT (Eiza Gonzalez), and they begin examining the various powers Ray has gained via his transformation: primarily super-strength and the ability to regenerate his organs. Then Bloodshot (not sure he's ever called that in the script) gains intel on the man who killed him and his wife, so he's off on the vengeance trail.

However, it's all a shadow-show. Bloodshot has experienced numerous "deaths" before this, always in order to motivate him to use his skills in killing off various targets, whom Harting wants dead. Only this time, KT helps Bloodshot break his customary programming, and then the hero is loaded for bear against his real enemy.

There are one or two humorous moments that reminded me of KICK ASS 2, and a few lines in which Harting argues that Ray ought to accept his authority because that's what good soldiers do. But all of the characters are too thin to sustain any meaningful sociological dialogue about the dynamic between generals and grunts, so most of the character interactions are forgettable. The action-scenes are well done, and Vin Diesel gives a solid performance. However, it's hard to know if this first live-action outing of a Valiant Comics character would have succeeded at the box office on its modest merits, since it debuted during the first year of the pandemic.

To date there have been no announcements of further Valiant live-action projects.

ANGELS' WILD WOMEN (1972)

 

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

Many of the films helmed by Al Adamson have a jigsaw quality to them, because Adamson and his crew frequently tinkered with them to add new exploitation-elements. ANGELS' WILD WOMEN is no exception to that tendency. According to Sam Sherman, Adamson's co-producer on the film, WILD had been completed as a biker-gang movie, SCREAMING EAGLES, but that iteration failed to find a distributor because biker-movies had fallen out of favor by 1972. Adamson and his colleagues added a new plotline which seems to have shoved out whatever the original idea was-- which may be the reason WILD doesn't seem like an assemblage of puzzle-pieces.

Some reviewers have found WILD incoherent, which makes me wonder if any of them had ever seen a biker picture. The genre was either started or at least boosted by Roger Corman's 1966 WILD ANGELS, and in my experience most if not all entries in the category are loosely plotted, full of random sex and violence. And biker-films are technically a subset of the counterculture cinema that evolved in the same period, and most of those follow the same patterns. 

Possibly the original plot just focused on Speed (headliner Ross Hagen) going around having fights with other bikers, since there are at least two such guy-on-guy battles that aren't strictly germane to the new plot. Said plot plays up the half-dozen "motorcycle mamas" who accompany Speed's gang, and they're first seen kicking the crap out of a couple of attempted rapists, led by Margo (Regina Carroll, wife of Adamson). Later, the male members of Speed's gang (never called "Angels" as far as I recall) decide they want to go off boozing with other male bikers, and they don't want their "mamas" going along because the guys always get into major fights over the women. 

So Margo and the other ladies-- including Speed's girl Donna (Jill Woefel)-- decide to hang out at a local commune for the weekend. Three of them, Margo and two others, even waylay a hunky hick. While they don't precisely "rape" the guy, they are the dominant ones in the "orgy" while the hick is the one uttering various weak non-consensual protests. (As a minor bit of trivia, the only female in the trio who actively humps the hick is played by Vicki Volante, who had been Adamson's go-to female lead until Carroll entered the picture.)

Unfortunately, the commune's run by a cult-leader named King (William Bonner), and although the ranch is owned by an old guy named Parker (1940s actor Kent "GANGBUSTERS" Taylor), King and his goons have been dealing drugs on the premises, as well as doping up some airhead females. Not a lot happens in the middle of the movie, and indeed Margo gets her own little romantic arc with a drifter named Turk, seen earlier getting his ass kicked by Speed for coming on to Donna. 

Then for some vague reason King, who never shows any real belief in whatever faith he professes as cult-leader, decides that he needs to sacrifice a woman to his god, and so he kills Donna. The "wild women" don't take much action, aside from one woman hitting a guy with a plank. However, somehow Speed's gang shows up in the nick of time and beats up the cultists. King tries to escape in a car, but Speed follows and manages to run the villain off the road to a fiery doom.

Hagen is just okay in his role as the quasi-heroic biker, though there's a nice moment when, after decking Turk, Speed lights a cigarette after striking a match on the fallen man's boot. Margo gets the most to do-- wielding a whip to throttle a rapist, gang-seducing the hunky hick, and having a heart-to-heart with Turk about her childhood-- and for that reason I'd say she and Speed are the focal icons of the story. (Margo, unlike Speed, even gets to complete her romantic arc.) I was a little surprised that Donna was so summarily killed off. But it's no great loss, because Jill Woefel was terrible here. I could see her staring toward the camera, trying for something like a Peggy Lipton soulfulness, and failing utterly. Oh, and the Spahn movie ranch plays the commune. A few years earlier, Adamson's crew worked on another project at the ranch, when a fellow named Manson was one of the occupants. A little later, Manson's followers committed the famous Tate-LaBianca murders, and it's likely that Adamson conceived King in reaction to the real-life cult-leader.

Some viewers didn't like all the fish-eye lensing and soft-focus in the cinematography, but to me that's the way a period counterculture movie should look. There's not much skin bared and only the opening scene, the trouncing of the rapists, is memorable in terms of action. But even if WILD isn't all that wild, I found it an OK time-killer.  

GEN 13 (1998)

 

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

I suppose if I were trying to impress new viewers with an animated adaptation of a concept I had created-- particularly about a group of intertwined characters-- I would have favored the old "who they are and how they came to be" approach. Yet it's not a certainty, since I would have to make that decision knowing that two live-action movies adapting comics' FANTASTIC FOUR-- one of my all-time favorite franchises, BTW-- had taken that approach and had utterly failed to capture the appeal of the series. As a reader, I didn't follow GEN 13 from its beginnings in 1993, and only started picking up issues a few years later. While the series was never even close to the excellence of Classic FANTASTIC FOUR, it was a better than average formula superhero feature, so maybe an "in media res" strategy would have worked better.

The one-shot animated film GEN 13, though, goes the full origin route-- though it cuts down the membership of the team from five adolescent heroes to three. These teens belong to a group of "lab rats" who agree to let "Gen 13," an isolated scientific facility, research their reactions to a series of tests and training, without knowing that the administrators plan to instill super-powers in these subjects. The only three who get "Gen-Active" powers-- better known as "automatic X-Men mutations"-- are Caitlin, Roxy, and the comically nicknamed "Grunge." Caitlin, a skinny bookworm-girl, is the first to undergo transformation into a super-strong muscle-babe, and as soon as she does, all three of these tentative friends find themselves fighting for their lives against the evil manipulations of the Gen 13 bosses.

This plotline means almost the whole story is either action, or scenes leading up to action. The animators handle the kinetics well enough, though I can't say anything stood out for me. I appreciated that the script allowed for a few "adult" touches-- Roxy sneaking smokes, a few seconds showing Caitlin's boobs when she grows out of her clothes-- but for the most part the story is standard tame superheroics. The climactic fight allows the trio to get clear of Gen 13 with the help of a potential mentor-figure, which conclusion could have set up either a sequel or an ongoing series.

The least interesting aspect of GEN 13 is a character named Threshold, who works for Gen 13 and has super-powers himself, though he has a rather obvious secret familial relationship with one of the heroes. He's a dull character either as an outright enemy or as one of the facility's victims. Threshold may have appeared in some of the GEN 13 comics I didn't read, but he didn't deserve even this much exposure. Curiously, two regular members of the original team make token appearances in the video, with Bobby Lane getting only a visual cameo while Sarah Rainmaker gets a cameo with a couple of lines.

RETURN OF THE KUNG FU DRAGON (1976)

 

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

I've invented a new term for the type of chopsockies that mix in plenty of wild magical phenomena with all the hand-to-hand battles-- "the chopwackies." In 2023 I designated KUNG FU WONDER CHILD as a contender for one of the craziest, but this Polly Shang Kuan vehicle may rival it.

The core of RETURN is not the return of a single "dragon," but of four kung-fu champions out for vengeance on behalf of their slain parents. Golden City, the capital of a paradisical island, has its rightful rule usurped by an evil tyrant, General Tsen-kun, and his evil but unnamed wizard. Their forces slay the rulers and their most faithful kung-fu bodyguards, but a female heir and two children of two bodyguards are sent away. The girl-child of the third bodyguard is raised by Tsen-kun as if she were his own seed. Given the name Ma Chen Chen, the young woman (Shang Kuan) becomes a child of privilege, for all that she's a kung-fu prodigy.

Far off on some mountain, the real princess (Sze-Ma Yu-Chiao) has been training in the martial arts until reaching the age of nineteen, at which point she leaves and sets out to gather together the offspring of her parents' former officers. Frankly, though Ma and the princess get more scenes than the two male descendants, the princess doesn't really have much to do once Ma finds out about her true heritage. The director and writer seemingly have no interest in the drama of Ma's situation-- there are no scenes in which the heroine upbraids her false father, though she does kick him once at the conclusion-- and Ma is instantly on board with the revenge project, helping the exiled royal find the other two fighters.

I think the logic of the story, such as it is, is that because both the general and the wizard have all sorts of metamorphic powers, only these four warriors can match the villains in this regard. There's not really a plot as such; just one wild flight of fancy after another. At one point the wizard creates a gigantic projection of his own hand, but when Ma burns the giant hand, the phantasm dissolves and the sorcerer cries out in pain. Later Nameless Wizard creates a kaiju-sized beast to tear through the city, but one of the male warriors "giganticizes" himself and battles the creature briefly. There are some wild scenes wherein huge wheels and horses' hooves fly through the air, and most of the time it's impossible to tell who's doing what. The only scene that stands out for me, even though I just finished watching the streaming version an hour ago, shows the general trying to manifest some sort of magical force-screen to protect himself from a big metal wheel.

One asset distinguishes this chopwacky from KUNG FU WONDER CHILD or even Shang Kuan's ZODIAC FIGHTERS a couple years later: this time the lead actress has a strong heroic persona that makes RETURN dopey fun to watch. It would be fair to say that even though Ma Chen Chen has no depth, she does have a certain swashbuckling style that makes her fight-scenes enjoyable. For that reason, I consider that Shang Kuan is the only real star of this show, while her allies are supporting characters.

Curiously, the streaming version I watched had its English dubbing drop off in the last ten minutes. But RETURN, for all its weird sights, doesn't boast any memorably goofy dialogue to match the magical phenomena.

WRESTLING WOMEN VS. THE KILLER ROBOT (1969)

 

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

Depending on one's viewpoint, WRESTLING WOMEN VS THE KILLER ROBOT is either the last, or next to the last, of the "lady wrestler" films of the 1960s, all helmed by "Mexploitation" director Rene Cardona. I have not re-screened NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES, also from 1969, for some time, but I recall that it seemed far more focused upon its anthropoid monster (just one rather than several) more than the luchadora of the story. But ROBOT is certainly the last lady-wrestler movie from Cardona that featured two luchadoras for the price of one.

Sadly, ROBOT may not be the worst of the five teamup films, but it's still a very paltry finale. One of the five, SHE WOLVES OF THE RING, I have not reviewed here because it's a purely naturalistic drama about lady wrestlers, but the only one that stands out is the first one, DOCTOR OF DOOM. In fact, the script for ROBOT reworks a handful of scenes from DOCTOR to pad out the 1969 movie, which is mostly an uncredited remake of "The Cybernauts," an episode of the 1960s teleseries THE AVENGERS.

The evil Doctor Orlak (Carlos Agosti) and his assistants seek to invent the perfect robot servant. I'm not sure why he chose to change a regular human into a brutish ape-man, which wouldn't seem to have much to do with cybernetics. He decides he can improve his inventions if he kidnaps a bunch of scientists to help him, so he sends out his single "killer robot" to track down such unwilling aides. This robot looks almost exactly like the one from the AVENGERS episode, a tall man in a trenchcoat but with silver-metal facial skin. 

Trouble is, one of the kidnappees is the uncle of a tough lady wrestler, Gaby (Regine Torne), so she and her cop boyfriend join forces to find the victims and rescue them. Gaby's roommate and fellow wrestler Gemma (Malu Reyes) joins the crusade, as does the cop's comical partner. This might sound promising, However, because the killer robot is almost indestructible, the ladies' wrestling moves aren't any more effective than gunfire. Gaby and Gemma finally penetrate Orlak's laboratory, where Orlak reveals that he's also stolen a device from a second AVENGERS episode, "Return of the Cybernauts:" said device being a bracelet that can make a normal human act like a robot. However, the cops and the lady wrestlers devastate the lab and rescue the abducted scientists.

Orlak then escapes to a second lab, where he somehow transfers the power of his ape-man (strangely named "Carfax") into the body of a female slave, whom he decks out in metal garb so that she too will be a "killer robot." This robot, name of "Electra," challenges Gaby in the ring, but Gemma realizes that Electra is an automaton and comes to Gaby's rescue. Happily, Orlak is ringside, controlling Electra with a transmitter, so that the cops manage to shoot him down and end his menace. 

All of this recycling might be bearable, except that the action scenes are subpar, even those in the ring. I can't escape the feeling that Cardona was completely played out on the topic of female fighters and simply didn't try all that hard. 

 

MOSAIC (2007)

 

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

One source says that MOSAIC was the first of two animated films from Stan Lee's POW Entertainment, while IMDB says it debuted the year after THE CONDOR. I suppose the order of appearance does not matter, given that both projects proved underwhelming, though for opposite reasons. CONDOR, as my review should show, suffered from having too many plot-irons in the fire. MOSAIC, scripted by comics-pro Scott Lobdell from a Stan Lee concept, feels like it's so pleased by its one idea that it keeps repeating it over and over.

Maggie Nelson (voiced by Anna "Rogue" Paquin) is an aspiring actress in New York City, living with her widowed father and doted on by a poor young guy stuck in Maggie's "friend zone." The senior Nelson is an Interpol agent, and he's called in to investigate when a person or persons unknown try to steal a rare artifact from a museum. With comic-book logic, Nelson takes the artifact to his home, and somehow it ends up in Maggie's room. While the slightly scatterbrained young woman is talking to her pet chameleon about the similarity of chameleons and actors, lightning strikes her room. The room is undamaged but the strange powers of the artifact infuse Maggie. In a thrice she learns that she has gained a wealth of super-powers, including the ability to shapeshift into other forms. She can also adhere to walls, turn invisible, and has limited super-strength (enough, say, to life a grown man and tote him about). 

A strange man gains entrance to the Nelson house, seeking the artifact. Maggie captures him, only to learn that his name is Mosaic and he has chameleon-powers just like hers, but he inherited them naturally. Mosaic belongs to a hidden race called the "Chameliels," who developed as a parallel species to homo sapiens. Maggie suspects that Mosaic was involved in the museum burglary, but the handsome-looking guy claims he's something like a "cop" for his people, pursuing the real culprit, whose name is Manikin. Clearly, in addition to riffing on Spider-Man and his notorious foe The Chameleon, Lee and Lobdell also took a page from the Lee-Kirby creation THE INHUMANS, in which the members of a parallel species all have superhero-sounding names like Triton, Medusa and Black Bolt.

So far, the Chameliels are no better or worse than dozens of other such super-endowed races. However, Lee and Lobdell drag out the additional trope of Magical Talismans That Can Do Basically Anything. The museum artifact is one of these, and Manikin has been seeking to gather other scattered Chameliel artifacts. His purpose is to restore the life of his long-dead wife "Facade" (yes, another weird name) so that she can help him conquer the world of the regular humans. Further, Manikin also kidnaps Nelson Senior, planning to use this random human cop as a sacrifice in his ritual. 

So Maggie and Mosaic team up to track down Manikin, which involves using their chameleon powers to steal intel from Interpol. They butt heads with Agent Newell, a high-ranking official who might have become some sort of foil for Maggie had MOSAIC engendered either a sequel or a TV series. Eventually the two heroes are able to find Manikin's altar, interrupt the ritual, fight the villain, and rescue Nelson Senior. At a crucial moment Mosaic reveals that he is the son of Manikin, seeking to prevent his bad dad from doing bad things-- and then the two of them go over a cliff. As Maggie escapes with her father, she assumes that her partner is dead and she plans to honor his memory by using his real name as her superhero name-- though it's hard to see where a next installment would go from there.

Lobdell's script bends over backwards to make Maggie vivacious, charming, gutsy and intelligent. However, since the threat she and Mosaic must face seems very derivative, and far from compelling, a lot of the script comes off as pointlessly talky. There are a few OK fight-scenes, but nothing very memorable. The idea of a superhero who's also an aspiring actress has a slight novelty value, but Maggie's devotion to the thespian tradition never comes alive. The one thing I like about MOSAIC is a thing extrinsic to the script proper, and it relates to the history of Stan Lee's elaboration of the Marvel Universe. I've sometimes speculated that the reason Lee was so good at giving each major Marvel character his or her own "voice" was because as a young man he "trod the boards." Of course, over twenty years passed between Stan the Amateur Actor and Stan the Co-Creator of Marvel Comics. But I find it pleasant to think that the minor character of Maggie Nelson provides a window to some of the creative processes behind Stan Lee's achievement.

THE CONDOR (2006)

 

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

CONDOR was the second of two DTV films issued by Stan Lee's production company, POW Entertainment. CONDOR appeared just roughly a year before the MCU made its major breakthrough in live-action superhero films with the 2008 IRON MAN. There's a bit of irony in the fact that in conceiving Condor, Lee was cadging some of the ideas he had used in the 1960s stories of the Armored Avenger.

 Though the first iteration of Tony Stark wasn't full of himself, he was a scientific genius who seemed to have the world at his feet, just before a wartime injury forced the magnate to depend on technology to make his way in life-- as well as helping Stark devote his inventive powers to becoming a superhero. Lee's concept for CONDOR, scripted by Marv Wolfman, also borrows a little from Spider-Man in that protagonist Tony Valdez (Wilmer Valderama) is a young dude concerned only with doing his own thing, which in this case happens to be skateboarding. 

Tony's parents are both well-to-do research scientists and want him to devote his attention to more serious pursuits, though they concede that he's still a young fellow finding his own path. He's rather neglectful of Sammi, the techie-girl who helps him with his keeping his skateboard in good condition. (I didn't think skateboards needed even a one-person pit crew.) After Tony wins an event against his main rival Z-Man, he's approached by his own "Veronica Lodge," a sexy babe named Valeria, which naturally makes his "Betty Cooper" jealous. Tony has no thought of doing anything but skateboarding for fun and maybe profit, though he does accept from his mother a "condor amulet." Though the superhero reader may assume the amulet has confer some special powers, the object is only brought in to give the hero some reason for choosing a condor-motif later.

Evil is afoot, however. An armored madman named Taipan (no explanation for the cognomen-- a James Clavell fan, maybe?) is using technology to create zombie slaves for the city's gangs. (This scheme might be more impressive if the zombies weren't also skateboarders.) The tech is apparently stolen from the research of Tony's parents by their partner Nigel (given one of the *oiliest* voices in cartoon history by one Michael Dobson). Worried about exposure, Taipan and Nigel arrange for the Valdezes to perish in a car accident. Almost simultaneously, a skateboard accident cripples Tony, though it's later revealed that his accident was brought about by a separate conspirator.

Tony suffers a one-two punch from losing both his parents and his ability to walk, much less skateboard. Fortunately for him, Sammi is a Stark-level genius, and she adapts the nanotechnology of Tony's parents to create metal boots with which he can walk again. Despite Tony being often distracted by party-girl Valeria, Sammi and a jolly Hawaiian dude named "Dogg" help the youth get through his therapy. In due time, when Tony learns that his parents were killed by a criminal conspiracy, he gets Sammi to engineer a superhero suit for him, complete with wings that are for decoration only, since The Condor travels about the city on-- yes, you see it coming-- a sooped-up skateboard. 

Many online reviews found CONDOR full of cliches, and it's hard to dispute that opinion. The juxtaposition of a birdlike costume with a skateboard never works, and Tony's fierce desire to fight crime in general-- as opposed to just finding his parents' killers-- seems to come out of nowhere. The Latino culture bits are superficial, though that's less objectionable than drowning viewers in virtue signaling. Taipan's goals are never convincing, especially after "he" is revealed to be none other than Valeria. In her true self she mentions to the scandalized Tony that she hoped to combine "business with pleasure" by dating him, but I don't think it's ever clear what the "business" was. But one good thing arises from this revelation: Valeria and Tony have a very well-staged hand-to-hand fight-scene that ends with both of them falling into the nearby ocean. This one above-average fight-scene is the best reason to scrutinize CONDOR, though I also give it fair mythicity for trying to capture an aspect of modern youth-culture, even though skateboarding was not the ideal choice. 

Stan Lee voices a minor character for about a minute's screen time.