JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (2008), JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (2012)

 

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

Of these two loosely interrelated movies, the first, a fairly straight remake of Verne's classic SF novel, has much of the feel of the strong juvenile adventures that Walt Disney did in its heyday, not least in the company's 1950s adaptation of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. Both JOURNEYS posit the idea of "Vernian science fiction," meaning that all the things Verne wrote about in his books were based on real phenomena in both his world and the world of the 21st century. (The second movie throws Jonathan Swift and R.L. Stevenson into the mix for good measure.)

Volcanologist Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) is at a crossroads. He's about to lose his college department funding, but his research is his legacy to Trevor's long lost brother Max, who went missing while searching for the supposedly fictional "Center of the Earth." By coincidence, his sister-in-law asked Trevor to keep his nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson) at his house while she's away doing whatever. The sulky thirteen-year-old doesn't want to be baby-sat by his uncool uncle, but by dumb luck the two of them stumble across a clue to the late Max's destination. So off they go to Iceland, to retrace both Max's steps and the course of Jules Verne's novel.

With the help of a sexy young mountain guide Hannah (Anita Braem) -- whom both the 13-year-old and probably 40-year-old ogle repeatedly-- they make their way to the supposed entry point. Though not intending to go spelunking, an accident forces them into doing so, whereupon in due time they discover that there is indeed a prehistoric world beneath the earth, including an internal sea. 

Verne kept his pocket "lost world" conservative, with only minimal sea life, and one big dino, encountered by his protagonists. Not surprisingly, the movie-writers introduce a lot more flora and fauna, not least the almost obligatory T-Rex. But I didn't mind, because the script is creative with its use of science-factoids to produce a good strong sense of wonder-- while also working them into the subplots of Sean bonding with Trevor and Trevor "bonding" (so to speak) with Hannah. A standout scene involves the three explorers on a raft, first being attacked by "jumping piranhas," and then being paralleled by plesiosaurs, who are only interested in feeding off the piranhas. The script even finds a novel way to redo the explorer's escape from the subterranean domain that takes inspiration from the novel but finds a different path to the same goal, and a justified happy ending.

JOURNEY did well at the box office, and that led to a sequel of sorts, in which Sean, played by a 17-year-old Hutcherson, has become a full-fledged Vernian, essentially inheriting the obsession of his father. His mother is now married to Hank Parsons (Dwayne Johnson), a former Navy codebreaker, but Hank has yet to bond with his stepson. So in his attempt to humor the kid, Hank agrees to translate a coded message that Sean believes was sent by his grandfather Alexander (Michael Caine), a Vernian obsessed with finding the supposedly fictional "Mysterious Island." Little does Hank realize that by helping Sean correlate a smattering of alleged clues about the Verne novel, TREASURE ISLAND and GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, Hank ensures that the two of them will soon be off island-hunting in Hawaii.

The unlikely duo engages a helicopter service to take them to the coordinates from the message, where no island is supposed to exist. The pilot is a comedy relief guy (Luiz Guzman) and his assistant is his comely teen daughter Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens), who's present to give Sean some romance (since he missed out the first time). A storm drives the copter into a crash landing, and guess what: there's the Mysterious Island, with no explanation as to why no one (except Grandpa Alexander) found the place before.

JOURNEY 2 had a complete change of director and writers. Yet even had the sequel used the same people who did CENTER, the core concept would have been undermined by the fact that Verne's MYSTERIOUS ISLAND novel doesn't involve giant creatures-- a reputation that arises only from the 1961 Ray Harryhausen movie. Nevertheless, once the four wayfarers find their way to Alexander, everyone acts as if finding giant bees and birds and dinos on the island agrees perfectly with Verne's book. A ticking-clock peril arises when the quintet realize that the island is rapidly sinking. But in this case, they are able to devise an escape using something from the actual novel: the continued presence of the Nautilus, the submarine left behind by the long-deceased Captain Nemo.

The FX are okay and most of the performances are adequate, though Johnson's "Big Tough Teddy Bear" schtick is getting pretty old. But in place of the first JOURNEY's sense of wonder, the writers provided only a lot of lame jokes for JOURNEY 2. Though I just watched the film, the only humorous bon mot I even remember is a slightly offbeat reference to "Mr. Mxyzptlk" of SUPERMAN comics.

IMPERATIVE CATEGORIES

The categories I introduce today have become more or less "imperative" because I've reviewed so many items on this blog that at times I myself lose track of some of the more obscure items I've covered. Hence, fourteen new categories will be added to new and old reviews over who-knows-how-long-a-time, so that I can easily remind myself which musty old Eurohorrors or chopsockies I've analyzed. These will be in addition to those already established, most of which involve my NUM formula or theories about the four mythoi of fiction. Most of the new subject headings should be self-explanatory, concerning various departments of popular culture or phenomena therein. Two or three new headings build on things I've written on the other blogs, but I won't trouble to delineate those since they concern my overall critical theory and will be of no use to the casual reader.

THE POSTMAN (1997)

 

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

Although I can see a lot of reasons why this Kevin Costner passion-project failed at the box office, and although I probably would have been bored watching in a theater, THE POSTMAN goes on my list of "interesting failures." This may be because I recently re-watched it on streaming, where I was free to pause this or that section as I pleased. But it's also because it was an attempt at producing a modern film in the vein of "Americana." More on that later.

Star-director Costner and two writers adapted the same-name 1985 novel by David Brin. I read the novel years ago and at the time liked it better than the film, though the main thing the POSTMAN film utilizes is the basic setup. It's 2013, and the mostly unexplained apocalypse has been recent enough that the older generation still remembers all of the events. The centralized government in the U.S. has been devastated, and as in most post-apoc films, the survivors have formed assorted small farming communities with little technology. But armed raiders have become the scourge of the countryside, levying tribute from the communities and threatening to become the de facto government. The raiders, named "The Holnists" after their deceased leader, are given a patina of sexism and racism, but their major evil is their insistence on a Spartan-like culture of military tyranny.

A wandering actor (Costner) travels from enclave to enclave, entertaining the residents with garbed Shakespeare performances. in contrast to the novel, the actor's name is never known. Then the current leader of the Holnists, General Bethlehem (Will Patton), decides to induct three men into his forces from the community the actor's visiting, and the actor is one of his victims. There's a little fencing between the actor and Bethlehem, in that both are familiar with the Bard, but for the most part, becoming an unwilling soldier is no picnic for our hero. He ultimately manages to escape the ranks of the Holnists.

On his own again, the protagonist comes across the long-deceased body of a U.S. postman. The actor appropriates the dead man's uniform and gets the idea of trying to deliver the leftover mail in order to cadge free food at communities. From then on, he becomes The Postman in much the same way that Clint Eastwood's hero from PALE RIDER becomes known as "Preacher." Why he never feels it useful to use his own real name, or to come up with a new one, goes unexplained.

As The Postman successfully mingles with one or two communities, his scam becomes his calling. His lie, that he's been empowered by a reconstituted U.S. government, becomes a dream that the scattered American tribes want to believe, and without his intent to do so, a new postal service grows into being. However, Bethlehem deems this organization a threat to his power, and he initiates reprisals. Coincidentally, he also abducts, for his own pleasure, a woman named Abby (Olivia Williams) -- though the general indirectly does the Postman an indirect favor by killing off Abby's husband, which will clear the decks for the romantic couple later on. Eventually, in marked contrast to the Brin novel, the quarrel of hero and villain is settled in a one-on-one battle.

Though Costner and his collaborators invoke paeans to the American Way of Life a little too often, and the film's length was surely one of the things that worked against it, the script does put across a strong sociological myth. The lines of communication, represented by the Postal Service, are what bind a country-- any country-- together, beyond the simple level of convenience, and such family-based community is exalted over the divisive nature of military culture.

POSTMAN, coming two years after the moderate success of WATERWORLD, may have done worse, but the script of the former isn't the only thing that's better. Costner, who was utterly unable to pull off the selfish loner of WATERWORLD, fits perfectly with this "hero of few words who can quote Shakespeare in a pinch." The star has good romantic chemistry with his leading lady, and Will Patton made an atypical villain: one who didn't look scary like the average adventure-antagonist but conveyed a sense of tangible menace. The climax, which builds upon the early events of the narrative, is in my book superior to that of the David Brin novel. 

SILVER HERMIT FROM SHAOLIN (1980)

 

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

Well, if I ever wanted to say that I'd found THE kung-fu film that was most thoroughly out-of-control and incoherent, SILVER HERMIT FROM SHAOLIN, directed and adapted (from a Chinese novel) by lead actor Tien Peng, seems to win that honor.

Even a lot of the details of the film's title and character billing are erratic. Of course, a lot of HK chopsockies have many alternate titles. But while the HERMIT title is fairly accurate-- the main hero, in the dub I watched, is named "Silver Hermit"-- an alternate title, THE SILVER SPEAR, seems to combine the first part of the hero's name and the second part of the villain's name, that of "Shining Spear." As for character billing, going by a couple of different online reviews, there must be an alternate dubbed version out there, since it seems that that one cites a totally different English version of the hero's name, while changing the villain's to that of "Silver Spear." But there's still not a good reason to emphasize one of the bad guys, because he happens to be a stooge to the main evildoer.

The first 20 minutes of the film provides the overall setup and is the only comprehensible section before the movie devolves into chaos. A noblewoman named Green Jade, mistress of the Green Jade Villa in "Shaolin Valley," wants to find the greatest martial artist to marry her daughter and inherit the land. Four candidates venture to the valley and meet one another while waiting for a royal entourage to show up. Shining Spear (Tien Ho) offers water for all to drink, but only Silver Hermit (Peng) declines to drink. A strange woman comes bounding through the valley but then disappears, after which the three who drank succumb to poison in the water, though Shining Spear manges to live. When the courtiers arrive, they immediately assume that Silver Hermit poisoned everyone to dispose of his rivals. The accused man goes on the run.

Since Shining Spear survived the poison, Silver Hermit shows up at the former's house to ask for help. There Shining Spear reveals that he was totally responsible for the poison, having taken countermeasures to survive. He also frames the Hermit for the killing of Spear's wife. The royal courtiers show up and attack Hermit, who fights them off and flees. After he leaves, the mysterious bounding girl shows up, and it's revealed that she's the sister of Spear, and that both of them are servants of a master who has some sort of grudge against Green Jade. To serve his cause, the unnamed villain wants Spear to be the one to marry the young heiress.

But after that, everything goes to pot, and Peng's direction becomes aimless and frenetic. For once, it's clear that some of the incoherence stems from Peng trying to adapt sections of the novel, though his inability to be selective results in lots of incidents that go nowhere and characters who seem important but never appear again. For one quick example, a benefactor helps Hermit hide by pretending to be a merchant running a store. But he's also given a "wife," who's a woman without a memory, though she's pretty sure Hermit's not her husband. And then-- that plot vanishes into the ether.

A little interest is generated by the revelation of Spear's master: a vampiric being from Persia who goes by the name "Immortal." His grudge against the Villa is never revealed, though late in the film he has a brief fight with Green Jade, since Immortal says something like, "We meet again." I think that fight is the last time Immortal appears in the story but if he was defeated maybe the scene was omitted from my copy. 

Assorted scenes stitch the rest of the film together, but even the ones with a goofy feel just feel rather pathetic, like a scene where some guy chows down on nothing but raw eggs for some medical reason. Some kung-fu fights are filmed in darkness and hard to see, as if Director Peng was rushing through them. I assumed that "Doris Chen" (often billed as Lung Chung-erh) played the athletic sister of Spear, but HKMDB says she played "Petite Jade," which I suppose might be an alternative name for "Green Jade," since I can't remember any single actress being identified as the prospective bride. The only goofiness for which Peng's not responsible is certainly the creation of the dubbing people: when a Buddhist priest, who is apparently supposed to be speaking the sacred name "Amitabha," says something that sounds like "Amee-tofu."  

I just screened HERMIT yesterday and I've already forgotten the climax. This film makes the nutty FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON look positively linear by comparison.

DRAGON SHOWDOWN (1966)

 

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

Long ago I saw on TV the English language version of this Japanese film, entitled MAGIC SERPENT, which allegedly had ten minutes cut out. This version aired on streaming with subtitles, suggesting that it represents the original cut of the Japanese production. Thus, I'll review it using the streaming title, even though the new English title also doesn't represent the literal Japanese title. I'm also informed that SHOWDOWN is a very free adaptation of a popular Japanese story, "Jiraiya," and indeed the hero of the movie changes his original name to Jiraiya over halfway through the story, so I'll refer to him by that name throughout the review.  

Jiraiya is a small child when usurpers-- the evil Daijo and his magician-ally Orochimaru-- slay Jiraiya's father Lord Ogata and Ogata's court. Some retainers escape with the child, but Orochimaru changes himself into a giant dragon and pursues the party. However, a huge eagle descends, claws the dragon's face, and bears Little Jiraiya away.

Ten years later, Jiraiya has become a young man (Hiroki Matsukata) living in forest-seclusion with his master Hiki, who has taught the young man both magic and swordcraft. Hiki changed himself into the eagle that saved the son of Lord Ogata because he had formerly been the tutor of Orochimaru (Ryutaro Otomo) before the latter turned his skills to evil. All of his life, Jiraiya has been honing his skills to overthrow the slayers of his family, and one day, the usurpers locate him. A small band of ninjas assault Jiraiya in the forest, but he defeats them all, in part through the use of magic in which his head detaches from his body-- easily the most memorable scene in the movie.

Once the ninjas are vanquished, Jiraiya also stumbles across a cute young woman nearby. He takes her presence for granted when she tells him she just happened by. In due time this will be revealed to be a falsehood, for the woman, name of Tsunade, is actually the offspring of Orochimaru. She's never met her father, though, and to some extent she attaches herself to Jiraiya so that she can get a chance just to meet the parent she never knew, just for her own peace of mind.

Like a lot of similar revenge-dramas, the first and third acts, depicting first the reason for revenge and then its culmination, are the strongest. The filmmakers adequately fill in the second act with incidental stuff-- Orochimaru seeking out Hiki and killing him, the introduction of a young boy with his own grudge against Daijo-- but not much of it is very memorable. But SHOWDOWN delivers a slam-bang kaiju finish, with Orochimaru's giant dragon fighting a giant toad conjured up by Jiraiya-- with the extra added attraction of a giant spider whipped up by Tsunade.  

Matsukata, who assumes a rather cheery attitude when not in battle, makes a good contrast with Otomo, whose dourness recalls that of the celebrated Toshiro Mifune. The FX are the main attraction, but I grade the mythicity as "fair" for having reproduced even the broad outlines of a famous myth, whether from folklore or literature. I was rather surprised that in one scene the soldiers of Daijo are shown bearing flintlock rifles, which presupposes contact with the Western world. This feels like a slight violation of the setting, since everything else in the movie invokes a world dominated by archaic magical beliefs. But for all I know, some literary versions of the original Jiraiya story may have crossed that line first. 

WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD (1983)

 

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

In terms of excitement, WARRIOR isn't any better or worse than a half-dozen other post-apoc movies. But writer-director David Worth gets points for taking the usual story in a slightly different direction.

To be sure, Worth was probably largely a hired gun, since the main idea for the film came from Italian producers, and the finished film was first released in Italy under the title, "Vigilante of the Lost Earth." Because a lot of scenes in WARRIOR are fairly loopy-- while all the American films I've seen with Worth as director are very straightforward-- I think it's likely that the Italian producers instructed the American director to stick in various scenes designed to stoke the audience, whether the incidents depicted made much sense or not.

The post-apoc adventure-template provided by 1979's MAD MAX comes down to "Indians vs. settlers," in that the apocalypse-world has been reduced to small enclaves of people, often farmers, whom some band of evil ravagers constantly raid until a hero appears to defend the weak and the meek. WARRIOR is another apocalypse caused by a war involving "radiation," though radiation is only mentioned in the opening crawl and only once does the viewer see "mutants" who were presumably the victims of fallout. Otherwise, this time the destruction of civilization engenders a conflict more like "good mystics vs. Big Brother."

In some desolate part of the future U.S., a tyrant named Prosser (Donald Pleasance) has organized his subjects into "Omega," a dictatorship based on total mental control, either by propaganda or by brainwashing. Not far from Omega is a mysterious realm rendered invisible by a illusory cliffside-wall, where dwell the Elders of the New Way. The head of the New Way, an older man named McWayne, is kidnapped by Prosser's forces and held in Omega, presumably for purposes of brainwashing.

Along comes the unnamed man known as "The Rider" (Robert Ginty), riding his talking motorcycle and fresh from kicking the asses of a gang of wilderness marauders. He crashes into the illusion-wall and breaks into the base of the New Way. When he wakes up, Rider is informed that the Way-ers (including an unnamed character played by Fred Williamson) think that he's "pure of heart" because he was able to pass through the wall at all. They ask this guy they've never seen before to help rescue McWayne. Rider refuses until McWayne's hot daughter Natassia (Persis Khambatta) points a pistol at his privates. Rider then agrees to the mission but asks what he gets out of the arrangement. Natassia's response comprises one of those loopy moments that may've meant more to Italian audiences: she lifts the gun and fires it straight up. Is it her promise to sex up the hero if he cooperates? Who knows?

So Rider and Natassia both don the outfits of Omega's menial laborers and travel through an underground tunnel to infiltrate Prosser's domain. After the brief aforementioned meeting with some mutant scavengers, the heroes enter Omega. In short order they watch an erotic dance by male and female performers, which is apparently a reward to workmen for their service, and then end up watching the execution of two rebels against Prosser's regime. However, when McWayne is brought out to suffer the same fate, Rider and Natassia grab a couple of machine guns and start sbooting guards. With the help of a small plane, Rider escapes with McWayne. Natassia though is captured, and Prosser subjects her to his brainwashing machine.

Here's Loopy Moment #2: McWayne somehow persuades Rider to take him to an area where a bunch of colorfully costumed warriors are fighting one another to be top dog. McWayne also talks Rider into joining the free-for-all, and when he's last man standing, he becomes the de facto leader of the raffish crew. They attack some of the outposts of Omega while Rider makes a frontal assault on Prosser's fortress with that talking motorbike (which, since I've not mentioned it, utters hipster-phrases like "tubular" and "hold on hotshot.') Prosser sends forth an invincible automated battle-truck called Megaweapon, and although the talking motorbike is destroyed, Rider manages to short circuit the big assault-vehicle. 

Somehow Rider rendezvouses with McWayne, and the two of them find their way to Prosser's office. Prosser engages the heroes in banter for a while. During this scene, the viewer may note that Prosser wears one black glove, not unlike Doctor No in the Bond film of that name-- thus providing a slight reminder of Pleasance's own status as a former Bond villain.

Then Prosser unveils his ace in the hole: the brainwashed Natassia. Prosser commands her to shoot both her father and her possible future-lover. Rider, she shoots without hesitation, though by dumb luck she does not kill him. But when faced with the possibility of killing her dear daddy, Natassia empties her gun into evil Prosser.

Omega is thus instantly overthrown and all the New Way-ers celebrate with balloons and confetti (?) But Rider, being the archetypal loner-hero, won't settle down. So he settles for sucking face with Natassia for a couple minutes, and then rides off into the sunset on his rebuilt motorbike, which isn't heard to utter any sassy chat. However, Worth also filmed a coda establishing that Natassia only killed a clone of Prosser, so that the villain is still alive to "strike back" in a sequel-- which never came about.

Kinski is sexy, Ginty displays his laid-back charm, and Pleasance utilizes his silky-smooth voice to convey absolute villainy, so all of those are pluses. The action scenes are anemic and convey no excitement, but in this case at least, I prefer the emphasis on wacky stuff.

 

THE MAGIC CARPET (1951)

 

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

I saw CARPET long ago and remembered little about it but the unusual presence of Lucille Ball in a Hollywood "Arabian knockwurst" (my term for all the low-budget Oriental fantasies that got ground out like sausages). While producer Sam Katzman was never known for excellence in any genre, I have found that a couple of his Oriental sausages were silly fun, such as THIEF OF DAMASCUS and THE SIREN OF BAGDAD. Additonally, CARPET's director was Lew Landers, who produced some favorite horror-films, such as the 1935 RAVEN and THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE. Unfortunately, this flick, which as far as I can tell was Katzman's first venture in Arabian Nights terrain, is ordinary in every way.  

At least the film starts off with action, as some Caliph (let's say it's in Baghdad) getting assassinated on the same day he proclaims the birth of his newborn son. The Caliph's court is massacred and a usurper named Ali (Gregory Gaye) takes over, along with his vizier Boreg (Raymond Burr) and Ali's capricious sister Narah (Ball). However, a servant escapes with the newborn with the aid of the titular flying carpet. The dying servant leaves the infant and the carpet with a virtuous couple, and the carpet is squirreled away while the couple raises the boy as their own over the next twenty years. The child grows into the man Ramoth (John Agar), and once he's an adult Ramoth is mighty wroth with the tyrannies of Caliph Ali. In approved Zorro fashion he fabricates a masked identity, The Scarlet Falcon (though he's not often seen masked) and organizes a resistance movement.

All the familiar swashbuckling tropes are dutifully hauled out. A beautiful young woman named Lida (Patricia Medina) joins the rebellion against the Falcon's wishes, and of course the two fall in love, though she doesn't prove to be much of a fighter. Ramoth gets a chance to infiltrate the Caliph's palace by curing Ali's long spate of hiccups (don't ask), but I'm blamed if I remember what comes about because of this action. I also forget how Lida becomes a member of Narah's harem, which leads to a minor set-to when Narah slaps Lida. (Medina claimed in an interview that Ball hit her for real.) Neither the hero nor the villains seem to do much of anything but run through the motions, until the moment that Ramoth is informed of his heritage and of the secret weapon of the flying carpet, which the hero uses to overcome the villains and be united with his lady love. Oh, and Ramoth gets to swordfight Boreg, so there's that.

Though I imagine the use of the carpet was inspired by the climax of the 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD, the extremely paltry special FX probably didn't inspire even the most uncritical viewers in 1951. Some of the lead actors in these knockwursts have brought a little charisma to the formula stories, but John Agar is horribly dull in the role, and even Medina, who played many such exotic roles, can't do anything with her part. Of the three villains, Ball gets the best lines and is almost the only reason to see the movie, which premiered days before the launching of her successful I LOVE LUCY teleseries. Ostensibly Ball, who had never quite hit her stride on the big screen, had to complete some obligation to Columbia Pictures and accepted the role even though she knew CARPET was junk. Her breakthrough as a TV comedienne gave her a second life in cinema, though she still dominantly worked in TV. But for what little it's worth, this moldy oldie is the only time actors like Ball and Agar delved into the domain of the superhero-adjacent fantasy.  

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES (1937)

 

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

As I just finished reviewing Disney's second feature film, PINOCCHIO, that was at least one reason for me to weigh the company's first, and in some ways, most successful venture into feature-length cartoons. Of course, the news that sooner or later the current incarnation of Disney will release a highly ideological version of SNOW WHITE plays into my decision as well. Though the 1937 film is not dominated by any ideology, feminist or otherwise, there have been over the years many attempts to critique the movie on that basis, and I'll probably be influenced by some of those critiques, if only to refute them.

Feminine jealousy provides the story's genesis, though it doesn't seem to be involved with sexual jealousy, as in many real folktales. The movie never mentions the fate of Snow White's father, but the viewer will assume he's passed on from the mortal coil, allowing his wife, only as "The Queen," to dominate the kingdom. One never sees anything of the inhabitants but the Queen's huntsman, the Dwarves, various animals, and a passing prince-- whom one assumes is an outsider. The Queen dresses the rightful princess of the land in rags and forces her to do menial labor, but she can't conceal the young woman's maturing beauty. The singing-interlude between Snow and the Prince was surely designed to eliminate any objections to the heroine being rescued by a complete stranger. The Queen, a severe rather than a wholesome beauty, wants no rival in the looks department even though there's no indication that she has any interest in sex, much less love.

In replaying the scene where Snow is threatened by the huntsman, I noticed that the Queen apparently allows her stepdaughter the luxury of donning an outfit befitting a princess before she dies. To be sure, this decision probably wasn't thought out in terms of internal consistence. Walt Disney could not have foreseen how his company would come to revolve around a "cult of princesses," but he and his animators may have had an instinct that the audience would want a Snow White in royal raiment.

I'll skip over the sections in which Snow charms the animals of the forest, which gave the animators the chance to utilize a lot of their cartoon-short humor in order to offset the heavier drama of the opening. Additionally, whereas I found a lot of the incidental jokes in PINOCCHIO to be superficial and distracting, even the weaker slapstick bits work pretty well-- though of course the ones with the Dwarves are much better than the ones with the cutesy woodland creatures. But then PINOCCHIO had a rather "hit-you-over-the-head" moral message, while SNOW WHITE's morality is implied more subtly.

Many feminists didn't like seeing Snow White defined only in terms of her housekeeping duties for the Dwarves. But of course, what most audiences from 1937 on have liked about Snow was her cheerful perseverance in the face of adversity, and her willingness to work for her daily bread-- in other words, not to act as one would expect a princess to act. No one knows how the Dwarves kept their larders full, though one assumes their work in their diamond mines keeps them covered. But Snow explicitly conceives of the idea of working for her upkeep, and she uses the skills she has to recompense her benefactors. 

At the same time, Snow may be soft-spoken, but female audiences could surely identify when she's faced with the slovenliness of the Dwarves. She gently persuades them to take up the customs of "gentlemen," and by so doing recapitulates woman's civilizing influence upon the male of the species. It's not surprising that Grumpy suspects of her 

It's interesting that once the Queen learns from her Magic Mirror that Snow is still alive, she doesn't just pull magical implements out of nowhere, as the cognate stepmother does in Grimm's Tales. She has a subterranean chamber filled with magical items and a book of spells, not to mention having a cell in which the skeletal remains of a prisoner testify as to the Queen's gratuitous cruelty. Maybe this is what happens when women stop wishing for their true loves? She never actually says that she can transform back to her old self after becoming the Witch, though one assumes that she wouldn't boast about reclaiming her status as "fairest in the land" if she could not. Incidentally, when the Dwarves try to kill her in a tempestuous attack, she comes close to destroying them instead. I don't think it's inconceivable that she's so evil, Heaven decides to execute her with a well-placed bolt of lightning.

Prince Charming is probably the one weak point amid all the film's strengths; for me his light-opera singing fell flat and his conventionalized handsomeness comes off badly in comparison to the much later Prince Philip of the 1959 SLEEPING BEAUTY. So my conclusion is that, for all the ideological attacks, SNOW WHITE is still "the fairest feature film of the first half of the 20th century." 

   

THE LODGERS (2017)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Despite the presence of genuine ghostly phenomena in this moody Gothic movie by director Brian O'Malley and writer David Turpin, THE LODGERS is, like Del Toro's CRIMSON PEAK, more "horror-adjacent" than generic horror.

Like many other Gothics, LODGERS plays up the trope of the doomed family, particularly as a consequence of inbreeding. Though it's late in the film when one learns what brought about the dire situation of twin siblings Rachel (Charlotte Vega) and Edward (Bill Milner), the specter of incest is immediately suggested by their circumstances. Brother and sister live together in a crumbling Irish mansion, and up until the film's beginning have subsisted on a trust fund bequeathed by their late parents. There are no corporeal ghosts except in hallucinatory sequences, but strange, watery effusions seep up from beneath the floorboards, and there's a nearby lake on the property where the twins' parents simultaneously took their lives. Despite the fact that in life the twins' parents made it possible for the siblings to live without working, in death something wants to eventually consume them-- but only after they've committed themselves to a transgressive legacy.

Edward has become a near-total recluse, all but voicing the expectation that the two of them will eventually embrace that legacy. Rachel, though, keeps her brother at arm's length, and does leave their estate to go into the neighboring town for goods. However, the lady in charge of the store won't extend the family any more credit, and hints that she once served the family's menial needs and knows something about its history. 

While in town Rachel is seen by another unpopular individual: Sean, a soldier who fought with the British in WWI and so is considered a traitor to his country by the more irascible locals. Sean follows Rachel to her estate, but though she won't admit him to her house due to a set of draconian family rules, she does arrange to meet him later.

Rachel and Edward have more pressing money problems than their local account in town. Their family lawyer visits their dwelling, claiming that if they don't sell the house, creditors will eventually take it by law. He also suggests Rachel ought to make some advantageous marriage, with the scant suggestion that it might be to him. Suffice to say that, even though LODGERS is highly critical of the stultifying effects of aristocracy, the lawyer represents the money-grubbing tendency of what could be loosely termed "the bourgeoise." He does not come to a good end. And to be sure, Rachel's dalliance with Sean does not have a happy conclusion either.

As with the heroine of CRIMSON PEAK, Rachel's arc necessitates that she must escape the tyranny of the past, though writer Turpin indicates that she's at least tempted to remain in the safety of their old life, so LODGERS is a touch less politically correct than PEAK. Mood dominates over action, but there are outbursts of both mundane and mystic violence until the climax. The backstory goes so far as to claim that the family has consisted of intermarrying twins for several generations, which is the source of the townfolk's contempt for the family, as well as the source of the unquiet spirits.

LODGERS won't win any awards for major shock-sequences, but it's a good meditation on the attractiveness of familial transgression.

VALENTINE THE DARK AVENGER (2017)

 

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

If anyone doubted the influence of the Batman franchise upon cultures outside the sphere called "The West," VALENTINE THE DARK AVENGER would refute that skepticism. Not only in this Indonesian film does a character tell the titular heroine to jump from one moving vehicle to another "like Batman," one of the villain's henchwomen inexplicably wears a Bat-emblem on her shirt.

Of course, imitating Batman doesn't mean that the producers get anything right about the formula. VALENTINE is supposedly based on a character published by "Skylar Comics," which I assume is also Indonesian. The film's introduction of its hero takes place in an Indonesian metropolis named Batavia City (Bat-avia?) and in the same timeframe as the film's genesis, since there's a reference to an event taking place in 2010.

Sri (Estelle Linden) lives with her widowed mother and grown brother. She holds down a job as a waitress while attempting to win roles as an actress (though she's never seen attending casting-calls or the like), and she practices the Indonesian martial art of silat, taught her by her late father. When she defends another waitress from some rough customers, she's spotted by a man named Bano. Bano claims to be a film director, though Sri never sees him with any other personnel but a hair-stylist who doubles as a camcorder-operator.

Bano has a weird proposition for Sri: he wants to make a superhero film, with Sri playing a masked vigilante named "Valentine." However, as publicity for the film before it's even shot, he wants Sri to run around Batavia City in a mask and costume, thwarting minor crimes with her silat-skills. One would think that any sane person would reject such a crazy proposal. But Sri has to agree in order for the script to work, so she does, without even a hint of psychological motivation. Had Sri been shown to be a "danger junkie," that would have provided a very weak justification for her decision, though it wouldn't make her decision any more believable.

Sure enough, the vigilante Valentine spends the next few weeks cleaning up crime in Batavia City, always facing down just two or three thugs at a time and never crossing the path of police. It takes a really long time for Sri to figure out that the two goofballs have an ulterior motive and that they don't plan to make a film at all. Bano, who lost his sister Valentine in a car crash with escaping robbers, wanted to create a real-life superhero in his sister's memory. Sri is understandably honked off by this revelation and quits.

Now, some superhero films have a villain crop up in reaction to a hero's appearance. However, long before Sri dons the costume of Valentine, a villain in black armor, name of Shadow, begins a campaign of terror. Accompanied only by three martially trained henchwomen, he slaughters the occupants of a sex club. Later, Shadow and his lady-thugs take a bank hostage and strap bombs to three of the citizens just to draw the cops out. The innocents don't get blown up, but unbelievably, the high armed city cops invade the bank, and the four evildoers beat them all with their kung fu. 

VALENTINE depicts a world where guns don't count for much, like one of the old modern-day Hong Kong chopsockies. Inevitably Sri puts her concerns over safety aside and dons the Valentine costume again. We also get a subplot about why Shadow's got a hate on for Batavia City, but the villain's motivations are even dumber than Valentine's-- as is the revelation of his true identity.

There's nothing worth seeing about this film but some decently staged fights. If anyone tries to give this VALENTINE to a loved one, the recipient is likely to deem it a poison-pen letter.

Note: though there are no marvelous phenomena here, a coda suggests a sequel with some sort of superhuman character, but I doubt any such film was made. There's also a weird assertion that there's been a catastrophe in VALENTINE's world where many countries have suffered drought and the glaciers have melted, but this may just be one character's wishful thinking, since there's no evidence of such calamities.

NINJA DEATH I, II, and III (1987)

 

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

There's surprisingly little written online about this movie series, which looks as if it was filmed as one long movie and then chopped into three parts. I don't know much about the popularity of Alexander Rei Lo as a kung-fu star in the West, but he's got a fair number of credits to his name, and NINJA DEATH was produced by Joseph Kuo, who has some reputation thanks to his "Shaolin Bronzemen" series. Yet I didn't see references to anything that resembled this three-parter on the Hong Kong Movie Database. 

It's my considered opinion that Chinese movie-audiences tend to display a liking for labyrinthine plots. Often, in kung-fu films of about ninety minutes, this leads to a lot of narrative crowding, and so one might think that three 90-minute films would allow for better plotting. Instead, the DEATH series remains just as confusing as a shorter movie.

The dominant trope is here is the "prince of high estate raised as a poor orphan," though for once the apparently Chinese protagonist Tiger (Rei Lo) is half-Japanese. From what I can piece together, before Tiger's birth a Chinese kung-fu master, Yi Chin Yi (I think) migrates to Japan and marries Mariko. It's implied that she's some sort of Japanese royalty and is served by a cadre of ninjas, dominated by plum-colored outfits. 

Yi-- usually seen strutting around in a gold lame outfit and occasionally wielding twin hammers-- decides to become the Grand Master of kung fu. For some reason he apparently decides to off his own son, possibly because he has some special destiny. (He does have a plum-shaped birthmark, for what that's worth, which may have something to do with the attire of his mother's ninjas.) Some of Mariko's retainers try to escape with Infant Tiger, but the Grand Master's ninjas overtake the defenders. One of the defenders must be Mariko's brother, since he later claims to be Tiger's uncle, but he gets his eyes gouged out, which doesn't keep him from being able to do kung-fu fighting. Someone-- I'm not bothering to check who-- does escape with the infant and get him to China, so the Grand Master's plan is temporarily foiled.

When next seen, Tiger is the owner of a Chinese brothel (which allows for a hefty amount of female nudity in Part I, but not in the other two sections). The broad implication is that Tiger didn't actually get raised by any kindly benefactor but lived some hardscrabble existence until adulthood, where he somehow acquired his whorehouse. But he also has a kung-fu teacher, usually called in the dub "Tai Master," and the teacher seems to know just who Tiger really is. So maybe he came around later? In the film proper, Mariko's forces infiltrate Tiger's city and start some sort of operation designed to suss out the half-Japanese princeling. At least I think that's what's going on when two of Mariko's agents, a brother-and-sister team named Fujiko and Sakura, actually start a Japanese-themed cathouse in Tiger's neighborhood-- to get his attention, I guess.

(Sidenote, to the best of my knowledge, Fujiko is usually a girl's name. This may have been some obscure joke, since there's some comic business where Fujiko fights Tiger and the latter thinks the former is making a sexual come-on.) One thing leads to another, and while Sakura tries to convince Tiger to sample her "Japanese style" of sex, he gets drunk and has his way with her. (In Part II, just to prove he's not biased in terms of nationality, he also has "accidental sex" with a poor Chinese girl, but she doesn't become a major character.)

The DEATH films all feel like the writers were making things up as they went along, which is odd given that they're theoretically depicting some big dynastic struggle, but with ninjas. Some scenes show Fujiko and Sakura reporting to The Grand Master, so are they double agents or what? Sakura at least seems to be genuinely in love with Tiger, so the double-agent explanation makes the most sense. In Part III Sakura sleeps with Tiger to "charge him up" for his impending battle with the villain. People come and go really quickly: the Tai Master dies after revealing Tiger's heritage to him. Blind Master says he'll take over, but there's an unusual absence of further training sequences. Mariko shows up in Parts II and III and challenges her son to a kung-fu battle without telling him who she is; later Tiger has a big dramatic scene about how he grew up without a mother. There's some guy in a devil-mask who runs around like a maniac. Once Tiger commits to fighting his evil father, he apparently lets the whorehouse run itself, since he never goes back to check on things there. The ending is really confusing, since the dub definitely says the Grand Master is Tiger's dad, but then as Devil Mask dies Mariko mourns him as if he's her husband.

Though as I've shown there's a fair amount of "crazy-fu" here, there's not as much as I would have expected for a film totaling roughly four and a half hours. There aren't even a lot of marvelous phenomena, though there are just enough bizarre ninja-powers and weapons to tilt the movie in that direction. Lo Rei and his paternal opponent get some decent fights but the actresses playing Sakura and Mariko contribute a fair share of femme-fighting.

If I had to evaluate the film based on how many wacky scenes it contains, I'd probably recommend most enthusiasts check out more of the standard hour-and-a-half movies to get those sort of jollies.

ABSOLUTE FORCE (1997)

 

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

Measuring the level of quality between this film and the previous entry by the same writer-director, TOTAL FORCE, is a little like an entomologist demonstrating whether a fly or a bee has a longer prong. But, being that I'm an amateur student of buggy movies, I'll attempt it.

Once more, Steven Kaman assembles a "total force" of a whole four operatives to take out a world-imperiling threat. Total Force consists of Timothy Bottoms, David Carradine's daughter Callista, and a couple others I've already forgotten, not counting one or two who kick the bucket. This time, instead of a mad scientist seeking to conquer the world with with a zombie-creating "neurolater" beam, we have a terrorist organization, The Alliance, seeking to create a "neurotron" bomb. What the bomb does is not mentioned, but I guess it counts as a marvelous device that just remains offstage for the whole movie, much like a lot of those cheapie Eurospy flicks of the sixties. If it weren't for the bomb, ABSOLUTE would just be a purely naturalistic shoot-'em-up.

Kaman improves things slightly in that this time there's no third party involved in all the fighting and shooting. If you can keep track of who the bland heroes are, then everyone else is a member of the villains' group, with the slight exception of some cops who get duped into thinking main hero Drake (Bottoms) is a fugitive murderer.

The only parts in TOTAL FORCE that were even slightly memorable were a few short "femme-fu" fight-scenes by Carradine and three other martial maidens. ABSOLUTE only offers Carradine in the fighting-female department, but she has one middling fight toward the end and an earlier scene where she shoots up some office full of computer nerds, presumably allied to the Alliance. Carradine, semi-stylishly attired in black leather, breaks in just moments after one of the nerds demands sexual favors from a vulnerable-looking young secretary. Most of the nerds flee Carradine's gunfire, but one guy comes up behind her with his own pistol. The secretary grabs Carradine's gun and shoots the toxic male in defense of the strange woman who just shot up the office. The sheer absurdity of this "girl power moment" makes it far preferable to any of the ones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Oh, and there's a little more skin this time out. Also, some chanteuse in a strip club sings some lyrics that were totally forgettable except for one line, where the singer asserts, "You ain't too tough to be my baby." 

PINOCCHIO (1940)

 

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

I've now watched the Disney PINOCCHIO twice since reading the Carlo Collodi book for the first time and reviewing it here.

Naturally I liked the Disney movie since I first saw it in theaters, though I don't recall re-watching it often once it became available on home video. I have to say that Walt Disney's decision to purge the puppet-boy of all of his undesirable characteristics was a mistake. I'd admit that Collodi's protagonist, as written, would have been much too alienating for adult audiences, who were generally the ones paying for the kids to see the movie. But I find myself troubled by the idea that Pinocchio starts out "life" being told by the Blue Fairy to avoid temptation-- and then he's not really "tempted" in the true sense. Rather, he's deceived twice by the sharpers Honest John and Gideon, who first convince him that he ought to be an actor, and then, that he's suffering from a disease and needs a rest on Pleasure Island. This is not quite the same as doing forbidden things because it feels good-- though after the puppet-boy has been on Pleasure Island for a little while, he FINALLY does take pleasure in boyish crimes like picking fights and smashing windows.

I also disliked all of the "comedy bits" that the Disney animators threw in to keep the audience chortling when the plot got a little slow. I realize that this was just Disney's second feature-length cartoon film, and the animators were in some ways recycling a lot of the routines they used in the shorts. But the injection of tedious slapstick didn't seem so overbearing in SNOW WHITE, while one year later, DUMBO would excel both films in using humor to offset dramatic heaviness.

So even if I'm in a minority as to PINOCCHIO's status among the greatest animated movies, I don't necessarily dispute its status as a myth-movie. In my review I mentioned that Collodi's book doesn't even mention the possibility of the little puppet becoming human until two-thirds of the way through the narrative. But the Disney script defines Pinocchio's central conflict much better than did the book, by holding out the "carrot" of humanity from the very first. The script also makes Pinocchio's existence as a living puppet a unique occurrence, rather than allowing other puppets to be quasi-living creatures as well. And since Disney built much of its image on the idea of fulfilling dreams, the idea of tying Pinocchio's quasi-life to Gepetto "wishing on a star" transports the rustic feel of Collodi's story into something verging on the celestial.

Though Disney's con artists are no better or worse than Collodi's, I'd argue that changing the marionette-master into a pitiless slavedriver is integral to giving Pinocchio a taste of the "real world" outside his little sphere of loving father and faithful "conscience." Having had this negative experience, and getting helped out of it "just this once" by the Blue Fairy's magic, the protagonist's falling for the sharpers' second gambit emphasizes the consequences of his choice to begin emulating Lampwick. The Disney script also builds up the Satanic personality of the Coachman-- who in some ways shares the dominant coloring of Santa Claus-- while the cognate figure in Collodi isn't that memorable. In addition, Collodi's puppet gets out of the donkey curse by dumb luck, while the Disney script ties Pinocchio's emancipation from the curse-- as well as his "death and resurrection"-- to his selfless act in rescuing Gepetto.

The escape from Monstro remains the visual high point of the movie, and the giant whale is many times more impressive than the Giant Shark of the book. I didn't precisely follow what injury Pinocchio suffered that caused his temporary death-- it's certainly not drowning, since he's seen walking around the ocean-floor without ill effect. Further, the image of being swallowed by a whale, rather than a shark, was a resonant trope for anyone who'd been exposed to the story of Jonah. Indeed, the 1940 Pinocchio might even be something of a confluence of influences from both Jonah and Jesus, given that Pinocchio is brought to life in an immaculate conception.

So PINOCCHIO-- only the second full film-adaptation of Collodi-- registers with me as a masterpiece with many flaws, though they evidently don't bother others as they have bothered me.       

THE BLACK SWAN (1942)

 

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

I can just barely justify assigning this naturalistic film a trope in my system, based only on the fact that in THE BLACK SWAN, pirates are made into the means of overcoming piracy, and thus are factors in bringing about the very civilization that moviegoers fled to theaters to escape.

SWAN-- which according to my sources is barely based upon the Rafael Sabatini novel-- starts off by abjuring any of the politics that informed both Sabatini's most famous novel CAPTAIN BLOOD and the 1935 film adaptation that became the granddaddy of all sound pirate films.

This is a story of the Spanish Main - - when Villainy wore a Sash, and the only political creed in the world was - - - Love, Gold, and Adventure.

But in fact, SWAN uses basically the same political backdrop as CAPTAIN BLOOD, with England seeking to make inroads against Spain's colonial holdings in the New World, the aforesaid Spanish Main. The broad implication to most English-speaking audiences was that England was going to become a better master than Spain.

Only through scraps of dialogue do the characters make clear that the male principals in the story-- the historical Henry Morgan (Laird Cregar) and the fictional Jamie Waring (Tyrone Power) and Billy Leech (George Sanders) -- start out as English privateers, who are free to pillage the ships and colonies of the Spanish. Yet the film starts out with what seems an outright act of violent piracy, as Waring, Leech and their forces attack the Argentinian town of Corrientes. However, the raiders then suffer a counterattack, and Jamie is taken prisoner and stretched upon a rack by the Spanish governor. This state of affairs only lasts long enough for Waring to exchange some barbs about past hostilities, and then Waring is rescued by a force led by his bosom chum Tommy Blue (Thomas Mitchell).

The governor changes places with Waring on the rack, but the interlude's real purpose is to introduce two other characters. One is the minor figure of Lord Denby (George Zucco), England's governor of Jamaica, whose presence in a Spanish-held city is never explained. Waring implies that Denby's been giving aid and comfort to the enemy, hanging Englishmen, presumably other privateers. The dialogue has also established by this time that Waring thinks that Morgan, something of a father-figure to Waring, has been hanged in England.

Though Denby claims that England and Spain have made peace, Waring tells his buddies to stick Denby in a cell. Then the much more important character of Denby's daughter Margaret (Maureen O'Hara) shows up. Waring immediately begins courting her in his preferred manner, trying to force a kiss upon her. She bites his lip, he knocks her out, and then throws her over his shoulder, implicitly planning to continue the courtship elsewhere. Then he forgets about Margaret-- rather unceremoniously dropping her to the floor-- as the last major character in the story pops up. It's none other than Henry Morgan, who, instead of getting hanged, has been appointed to take Denby's place as governor of Jamaica. The broad implication is that the former privateer is supposed to be better than Denby at ridding the Caribbean of pirates.

Waring and Blue are only reluctantly converted to serve Morgan's cause, while Leech makes clear that he plans to continue as a full-time pirate. In Jamaica, Denby cedes his position to Morgan and then disappears from the story, but his continued presence in Jamaica makes it convenient for Margaret to go on living there-- and thus for Waring to court her by more "civilized" methods. But in contrast to many similar swashbucklers, including CAPTAIN BLOOD, the female lead shows no overt sign of interest in the male lead, for all that Waring recites the usual "your lips say no but ..." schtick. Despite Waring's forcefulness and charisma, Margaret cleaves to her current fiancee, a weak sister named Ingram.

However, if Denby is only a suspected traitor, Ingram is the real thing. He sells intel on incoming treasure-ships to Leech and his gang, and even warns them when the ships under Morgan's command go on the hunt. To Margaret's credit, she does notice one of Ingram's suspicious transactions, but she still makes plans to marry him. This enrages Waring, so that he kidnaps her and takes her away on his ship. This leads into Leech's forces overtaking Waring's one ship, and lots of romantic tensions as Waring runs a long con to convince the pirate that he and Margaret deserted decent society to elope. 

SWAN is the closest thing we have to a perfect pirate movie, with note-perfect performances by Power, O'Hara, Cregar, Sanders and Mitchell, and an inimitable score by Alfred Newman. Yet the script by Ben Hecht and Seton I. Miller excels in establishing how much fun robbery and rapine are when they're performed in the name of civilization. Whether by accident or design, Margaret never overtly responds to any of Waring's roguish sallies until he proves to her that he's actually joined the side of the angels. Thus, when the two engage in a final liplock at the movie's close, Morgan laments that "it's the end of the Spanish Main"-- dolefully returning the viewer to the real world, where love, gold and adventure only survive in stories.

2025 ARMAGEDDON (2022)

 

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

Ding, ding, ding, we have a new winner for worst film-- or, maybe just "worst SF film," since the previous award-holder, KOMODO VS COBRA, belonged to that category-- and KOMODO at least offered nice Hawaiian location shots.

Most films from The Asylum are at least forthright about what ideas they're swiping. But for 2025, the writers ripped off 2015's PIXELS, which was about some really dumb aliens mistaking video-game broadcasts for an interstellar attack. This time, the dumb aliens somehow get tuned into only one category of streaming broadcasts, those from The Asylum backlist. The 2025 aliens react the same way as those of PIXELS, by making duplicates of the "weapons" and unleashing them on Earth. However, just to show that the 2025 writers couldn't even steal well, toward the movie's end they throw in some cockamamie claim about the ETs wanting to breed with humans once they overthrow the planet.

Other Asylum films also sometimes toss in three or four familiar-face performers for spice, but 2025 contents itself with Michael Pare as President of our beleaguered world. He's not the star, though: that position is shared by two adult sisters who end up figuring out what the aliens are doing based on their (ha ha) enduring love for Asylum movies.

Once again, it's hard to judge if the two young leads have any acting ability, because both the script and direction work against them constantly. Lindsey Wilson is a scientist and Jhey Castles is a Navy lieutenant, and we're constantly told that at some point the two women became estranged-- but the genius writers couldn't even be bothered to specify what their quarrel was.

So when the viewer isn't being bored with pedestrian dramatics, he has to look sharp to catch sight of the various doppelgangers of Asylum critters like Megashark, Crocosaurus and the Transmorphers, because most of them are barely on screen for two minutes. As with PIXELS, all of these mock-ups of mockbuster monsters don't count as crossovers, because they're not even close to being the real thing. The film just barely edges into the combative mode in that the Castles character commandeers a giant robot and fights some sort of amalgam-monster toward the end.

Since PIXELS wasn't any sort of brilliant notion, there's no reason the Asylum hacks couldn't have had some fun with the absurd concept. But the writers' idea of humor comes down to name-checking such Asylum obscurities as BACHELOR PARTY (not the one with Tom Hanks) and AQUARIUM OF THE DEAD. 

THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS (1982)

 

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

Several online reviews call Sergio Martino's SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS a "giallo," as if it were homologous with most of the sex-and-violence thrillers in that mold-- not least Martino's similarly titled 1971 opus, THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL But the only thing the two movies have in common is that the scorpions in each title are eccentric pieces of jewelry. Thus, the ornaments in both movie function only as theoretical gateways to those who crafted them.

Originally the 1982 SCORPION, scripted by Ernesto Gastaldi and three other contributors, was intended to appear on Italian television as a mini-series. This is certainly the reason that too many subplots with little pay-off appear in this film of just a little over ninety minutes. But whatever final form the planned mini-series would have taken, the film that resulted is less a giallo than an occult mystery. Some giallos depend on a main character regaining some buried trauma. But SCORPION is structured like a Greek amamnesis, in that the heroine discovers that she shares a kinship with archaic Etruscan deities.

Joan Barnard (Elvire Audray) remains in America while her husband Arthur works an archeological dig in the land of the long-vanished Etruscans. Joan has two confidantes in her life, though both are somewhat opposed to her marriage with Arthur: her wealthy father (Van Johnson), who believes Arthur married Joan for her inheritance, and Mike, who never actually makes a pass but plainly has a thing for Joan. But Arthur's fortunes initially seem to be looking up, for he uncovers evidence of a buried tomb. He phones Joan to arrange getting more money to complete the dig.

Moments before Arthur's call reaches Joan, she falls asleep and experiences a peculiar dream. She beholds Arthur entering a cavern, where underground vapors rise from an abyss and a veiled woman stands near an altar. Arthur confronts the woman, but from behind him two feminine-looking arms entrap him from behind and twist his neck all the way around. Joan's awakened by the phone and speaks with Arthur for a few minutes. However, Arthur is then killed by an intruder who murders him the same way he was slain in the dream, except that the two arms twisting his head around look like those of a man.

Naturally, Joan wants answers as to the manner of Arthur's death, so with Mike in tow, she travels to Italy. She meets with various natives, particularly Contessa Volumna (Marilu Tolo), and a female colleague of Arthur's, Heather (Wandisa Guida), but none of them can throw any light upon the murder. Then she seeks out the dig-site, and meets two strangers, an old man and a young gypsy-girl, both of whom address Joan with a goddess-like monicker, "the granter of gifts." Joan has a waking vision in which she sees maggots pour out of a statue, and moments later, someone finds a dead body: that of Heather's driver, with his neck twisted around like Arthur's.

So like regular giallos, there is a mystery killer, but the script is far more concerned with portraying Joan's strange connection with the Etruscan tomb, despite her never having been in Italy before. She meets the strange old man again, and among other things he makes a recondite remark about how hard it is to know the designs of the ancient gods. The script then devotes considerable time to a crate of artifacts that Arthur was supposed to ship to America, and in time Joan learns that the crate was meant for her father, because there was heroin concealed therein. The father shows up in Italy, wanting to find the missing merchandise for his displeased customers, and it comes out that both Heather and Volumnia are mixed up in the drug-smuggling.  

The main problem with all these mundane crime-subplots is that, even though they also feel like elements of a giallo with detective elements, the smugglers and their plans are a side-issue, as is shown when competing drug-dealers attack an expedition descending into the tomb, killing Arthur's two female colleagues and Joan's father. Then Joan, who has continued to have weird visions throughout, seemingly beseeches the gods to slay the tomb's profaners-- and sure enough, the walls fall in, killing the gangsters but not Joan.

In the last thirty minutes, Joan learns that she's a dead ringer for a portrait of Kaere, an Etruscan high priestess who lived thousands of years ago. In the end, Joan is essentially taken over by the spirit of Kaere, and one of her unwitting male companions tries to help her stay grounded. But he too has profane intentions, and divine justice has the last word.

In the end, if SCORPION is judged a failure-- and indeed, Martino himself did not speak well of the project-- it's not because it has too little transgressive sex and violence, like a standard giallo. It's because Joan is a superficial character and her contact with ancient spirits doesn't represent either personal growth or devolution. While the icon of a scorpion with two tails doesn't really symbolize anything important in the story proper, SCORPION does suffer for having "two tales," one giallo and one occult mystery, that get in one another's way and keep the whole "animal" from prospering.

MEGABOA (2021)

 

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

Though in most respects MEGABOA is just the Asylum's very belated take on 1997's ANACONDA, the script throws in just enough biological factoids to justify a fair mythicity-rating. And in comparison with most "colossal critter" flicks, director Mario N Bonassin keeps up a fair amount of physical tension, even though none of the characters are any better than the "monster meat" in a dozen other giant snake movies.

Doctor Larson (Eric Roberts) takes a handful of college students into a South American rainforest to study cave paintings, though they expect to be picked up the next day by a helicopter. The expedition gets an unexpected visitor, a hunter named Joaquin (Joe Herrera), who joins them for shelter, though he acts a little suspiciously at times. Through no one's fault, Larson is bitten by a poisonous spider, and he needs to be evacuated to civilization. But a storm has arisen, making it impossible for rescue forces to visit the area. 

Joaquin comes up with a way to anneal the poison in Larson's system, by leading most of the students in a quest to find a particular rare orchid with antihistamine properties. But it just so happens that the orchid is located in a part of the jungle inhabited by numerous boa constrictors, one of which is big enough to swallow a rhinoceros. If you've seen ANACONDA, you will suspect that Joaquin is the "Jon Voight character" seen in that film, someone who's got an agenda.

Well, he does, and his agenda does cost many of the disposable students' lives. But he's not a fiend like the villain from ANACONDA, just a guy with an Ahab obsession about killing the giant snake. He does try to protect the young people when he can, and he doesn't lie about the necessity of the orchid to save Larson's life.

Speaking of Larson, his wound keeps lead actor Eric Roberts from doing very much, aside from giving the giant snake the name of "Megaboa." He does participate in the final face-down with Megaboa, and a handful of the original expedition are allowed to escape after slaying the gigantic serpent. 

The younger actors acquit themselves reasonably well with their one-dimensional characters, and that alone is doing pretty well for an Asylum movie. It's nothing special, but it was at least watchable, which is more than I was able to say for Jim Wynorski's utterly wretched KOMODO films. 

THE SIGN OF THE COYOTE (1963)

 

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

Even without knowing much about the history of California's annexation by the United States, I knew that such a transition of power was not going to be as hunky-dory as depicted in 2005's LEGEND OF ZORRO. For that reason, I immediately liked that SIGN was set in 1847 and that it showed that there was quite a bit of conflict between the new regime of the Americans, dominantly of English extraction, and of the native Californians, dominantly of Spanish descent.

SIGN, a Spanish-Italian co-production, is also interesting in providing info on how Europeans related to the public domain character of Zorro. Jose Mallorqui, a Spanish writer, invented "El Coyote," a patent Zorro imitation, in 1943, and produced almost 200 works in this series. Two Mexican-Spanish movies adapted the character in 1954, three years before Walt Disney initiated its ZORRO series, and SIGN was one of two sixties films adapting the Mallorqui character again, albeit with totally different casts and directors. 

For the first thirty minutes, director/co-writer Mario (EYE IN THE LABYRINTH) Caiano creates considerable empathy for the fate of the Californians under the rule of Governor Parker, who's just the norteamericano version of every Spanish tyrant Zorro ever faced. A particular standout is a courtroom scene, in which an American gunfighter is let off the hook for killing an innocent woman while trying to shoot a Californian.

On the minus side, the hero is introduced with very little fanfare, as if he's already been around for a while. He's Cesar (Fernando Casanova), whose name just happens to be that of Zorro's offspring in the movie DON Q, SON OF ZORRO, and his elderly father's name, at least in the translated version I watched, is Diego. However, the father of this Cesar has never been a masked vigilante and plays little part in the narrative. Cesar doesn't exactly duplicate the fey qualities of the original Diego, but he refuses to take direct action in the face of tyranny, which is enough to arouse the contempt of his leading lady Leonora. Naturally, he uses the alter ego of El Coyote-- essentially a charro outfit with a domino mask-- to battle the evil Americans. Usually El Coyote works alone, but he's able to call upon a small collection of Californians who don masks to help him. There's one odd moment when the hero is aided by one of his family's female servants in a version of his masked attire, but her masquerade is not explained.

So in the end SIGN soon settles into just another Zorro-type flick, with the usual swordfights and romantic interludes between the cute noblewoman and the masked swashbuckler. Most disappointingly, the menace of the crude Americans is largely brushed off once Parker is killed. Aside from Caiano, the only other Italian name I spotted in the credits was that of Piero Lulli, a veteran of several peplum adventures.