2000 MANIACS (1964), 2001 MANIACS (2005)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I've seen the most famous works of writer-director Herschel Gordon Lewis, and 2000 MANIACS is the only one I like. 

Like other Lewis movies, MANIACS is mainly about placing helpless victims into the hands of deranged madmen, who proceed to maim or murder said victims. But most of them are mean-spirited even for gore horror films, and don't provide much feeling for any of the characters. MANIACS is at least partly helped by having been filmed in a real Florida town, standing in for the fictional Pleasant Valley, Georgia. Though most of the performers were amateurs, Lewis came up with much better visual setups even for the non-gore scenes. Further, the use of jocular country music increased the sense of the absurd, which is the main reason I view MANIACS as a covert comedy, showing much in common with the more playful EC horror comics.

Six tourists, all from Northern states, are driving in Georgia, mostly on sightseeing tours. The inhabitants of Pleasant Valley use road detours to draw the visitors into their town and persuade the "Yankees" to join their centennial celebration. However, all of the inhabitants, despite their appearance of mundane solidity, are the ghosts of Southerners massacred a hundred years ago by renegade Yankee soldiers. Now, it's their turn for a massacre, as the ghosts utilize various torture devices to execute the innocent Northerners-- my favorite being "the barrel roll." 

Only two victims escape the chaos, who by an odd coincidence are the only two "names" in the cast. One is the oft-seen William Kerwin, though here he acted under another name. The other is Connie Mason, made infamous for the "tongue scene" in BLOOD FEAST, but though her character gets to live this time, Mason never scored any major roles in mainstream entertainment. The best performance, though, is that of the Foghorn Leghorn-like town mayor, billed as Jeffrey Allen, who appeared in three other Lewis films. When the escapees bring the law to examine the area, the town and its denizens have all vanished. But there's a funny coda in which two of the hicks, about to go "to sleep," wonder what will happen in the next centennial, when everyone has "rocket ships."

However, as if to keep up Lewis' rep for mean-spirited movies, a 2005 production, headed by director/co-writer Tim Sullivan, apparently strove to emulate the worst qualities of both Lewis films and of teen-slashers.

I suppose 2001 could have been worse. Instead of just a small handful of Southerner jokes with a heavy dose of righteous anti-racism, the whole film could have been dominated by that sort of material. But what Sullivan and his crew produced is just one predictable sequence of gore, grotesque sex scenes, and driveling dialogue, as eight victims are lured into modern-day Pleasant Valley. I mean, I like some over-the-top gory horror, but next to Sullivan Rob Zombie is a model of subtlety.

All of the actors are depressingly one-note, even taking into account the boring dialogue. Only top-billed Robert Englund, playing the fulsome mayor of Pleasant Valley, acquits himself reasonably well, but the cartoony nature of the role is underlined by the fact that the mayor wears an eyepatch with the image of the Stars and Bars on it. This time the ghosts are cannibals as well as killers, and they come out of Ghostville every ten years instead of every century, but none of Sullivan's additions have any impact. He even dilutes the "South vs. North" idea further by having one of the idiot youths be a Georgia native.

I'd judge 2001 to be a sloppy horror-comedy just as 2000 is a reasonably restrained one.  

THE VENGEANCE OF SHE (1968)

 

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

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

Hammer's loose adaptation of Rider Haggard's 1887 book SHE-- which, incidentally, I consider one of the great novels of its period-- was successful. Even in 1965 the studio considered making a quick follow-up, possibly with Andress repeating her role in some way, even though the movie ended with the character of Queen Ayesha dissolving into dust and her preserved-since-ancient-times city of Kor being destroyed by a revolt. But filming did not commence until roughly two years later. Andress was then no longer available to Hammer, and the producers may have wondered how thoroughly the viewing audience would remember the events of the 1965 movie.

The solution they came up with, in collaboration with screenwriter Peter (MODESTY BLAISE) O'Donnell, was to build off a few plot-points from the 1965 film while not actually maintaining continuity with the events of that narrative. Although the ancient queen died at the end of the first film, her modern-day lover Vincey, the reincarnation of Ayesha's Roman-era lover Kallikrates, remained both alive and made immortal by the mysterious Flame of Life. Actor John Richardson played Vincey, and in VENGEANCE he plays a man called Kallikrates, with no allusion to his having been a modern man named Vincey. O'Donnell is vague about how long Kallikrates has been alive, but the loose implication is that he's been alive for centuries in North Africa, ruling over a city, Kuma, made up of Bedouins and what look like Roman soldiers. At some distant time Kallikrates lost the love of his life, Ayesha, under unspecified circumstances. A flashback shows the Ayesha of ancient times executing a rebel, so it may be that even in those days, this other-Ayesha was the true ruler of Kuma, with Kallikrates being more like a consort. 

Another element borrowed from 1965: in that film, an emissary from Kor seeks out the protagonists, Vincey and his companions, in order to get them questing for Kor more expeditiously. This time, the protagonists are again summoned to the lost city, though O'Donnell uses more mystic means. As it happens, the SHE novels have a lot of elements of magic and mysticism not usually present in any of the movie adaptations. In VENGEANCE O'Donnell's lost city also plays host to a sect of magicians, The Magi, who (I'm guessing) left their home in Chaldea (a part of ancient Mesopotamia) along with the Romans to make their home in North Africa.

One particular Magus, name of Men-Hari (Derek Godfrey), has reasons to play up to Kallikrates and the immortal's belief that someday the deceased Ayesha will reincarnate in a contemporary body, much the way the book's Kallikrates reincarnated in Vincey. So Men-Hari finds a modern-day woman, Carol (Olinka Berova) with a resemblance to Ayesha, and uses his psychic powers to draw her from Europe to North Africa. Men-Hari is also apparently capable of monitoring his pawn from afar, for in Carol's first scene, she's attacked by a trucker, and some mysterious force causes the rapist to be killed by his own truck.

I suppose I'm "spoiling" things by revealing that Carol isn't a reincarnation of Ayesha, but the script doesn't really advance this as a serious possibility. To her good fortune, the young woman-- whose backstory we never learn-- stumbles across a small group of Brits, one of whom is Philip, a psychologist (Edward Judd). Carol remains in Philip's presence long enough for him to fall in love with her, and then she's once more impelled to quest for Kuma. Philip follows, has adventures, and finally joins her in arriving at the lost city.

By this time, Men-Hari's deeper motives have also come forth. The Flame of Life, which can only bestow immortality at certain pre-determined times, is due to become active once more, and if Men-Hari can please Kuma's ruler by bringing back the love of his life, Kallikrates will allow Men-Hari to become immortal. Another Magus, Za-Tor, wants to prevent this at any cost, fearing that an immortal Men-Hari will use his magic to rule the world-- a goal that the Ayesha of Haggard also planned to achieve.  Also, a slave girl with whom Kallikrates possibly dallied is in love with him, though she doesn't end up having much effect on the plot.

The big problem with VENGEANCE is that from the beginning, O'Donnell and the producers don't have any interest in the story of immortal union. The script seems closer to 1932's THE MUMMY, in which a monstrous sorcerer from the past seeks to unite with a modern woman who's the reincarnation of the sorcerer's lost love-- except that in VENGEANCE, there's no real reincarnation. Kallikrates and Men-Hari seem like disparate parts of Imhotep the Mummy, thwarted lover and ruthless magician. 

O'Donnell naturally duplicates the moment of truth, when Kallikrates comes close to making a brainwashed Carol into an immortal like himself. O'Donnell then finds ways to eliminate Men-Hari, Kallikrates and the city of Kuma in short order, and to let Philip and Carol escape so that they can have a happy life together. One problem with that: nothing in the script made the pairing of Philip and Carol even half as interesting as that of Frank and Helen in THE MUMMY.

The above movie poster shows an Ayesha who's a whip-wielding tyrant, but we only get that in the one flashback to ancient times. Olinka Berova is thus stuck with the unenviable task of playing a woman who's not much more than a sleepwalker most of the time, so I tend to think VENGEANCE is not a good measure of her acting talents. Since Kallikrates is the real focal interest, the script might have been stronger if he had been the sorcerer as well as the lovelorn swain, reaching out, drawing Carol to him in approved demon-lover fashion, even if he later learned she was not the woman of his dreams. But the whole project was undermined by Hammer's desire to build on the appeal of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, without having a character in the actual movie that even approached the majesty of the Ursula Andress character, much less the creation of Rider Haggard. 

MERCURY MAN (2006)

 

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

In contrast to the ten-years-later misfire VALENTINE THE DARK AVENGER, MERCURY MAN is a decent formula superhero movie from a modern-day Asian nation. There's no grand vision here-- though there are a few metaphysical elements that could have been expanded upon-- but at least it moves quickly and has a few good jokes.

According to various sources of exposition, there are various amulets that have fallen to Earth over the years; amulets charged with either "sun power" or "moon power" according to what climate the objects first encounter. Not surprisingly, the only two with which the movie is concerned, "Solar Mercury" and "Lunar Mercury," happen to be in Thailand. The amulets' secret is known by a foreign terrorist, Usama Bin Ali, and he wants them so that he can score a major blow against the United States. Usama himself is a captive in a Thai jail, but he has a small army of fellow terrorists, led by his kung-fu henchwoman Areema (Metinee Kingpayome), and they make their way into the country to liberate their leader. On the way they manage to steal the Solar Mercury from a Buddhist temple, which gets a kung-fu Buddhist emissary, Purima, on the terrorists' trail.

Meanwhile in Bangkok, a young firefighter named Chan (Wasan Khantaau) saves a baby from a blazing inferno with a daredevil feat-- but is he congratulated for his bravery and resourcefulness? No, because the whole farrago is a training session, the baby's just a doll, and Chan gets chewed out by his superior for disobeying orders to withdraw from the inferno. In fact, the commander even quotes Stan Lee's Spider-Man, "with great power comes great responsibility," in support of the idea that subordinates should stay in their lanes-- which was not quite the moral Stan Lee had in mind. This opposition between authority and impulsive heroism might have been expanded upon, but the script doesn't follow up on this potential.

Chan's relatives are quickly introduced, his mother and his bro-ster Grace (another reviewer called her that because her character is a transexual, which may be the case with the performer as well). Then Chan happens to be on the scene at Usama's prison break for some reason. An unthinking henchman stabs Chan with the Solar Mercury talisman, and all the terrorists flee, not bothering to pull the amulet out of Chan's body (because the script needs them to try to get the object back later). In truth, the writers could've had the villains take the amulet with them, only to find that it bestowed its powers upon the unwitting fireman.

Purima, who has an "amulet-detector" on her person, contacts Chan, who's surprised to find that he now has weird heat-powers as a result of the Solar talisman. Purima suggests that this bestowment was the will of the amulet, which doesn't make much sense unless they incarnate alien intelligences, though the script doesn't seem to want to go there. Purima chooses an unusual means to demonstrate the way Chan's heat increases when he's excited: she gives him a copy of Penthouse, and he burns his clothes off. Despite this bit of jocularity, Purima is dead serious about getting Chan to use his powers to battle Usama, who in short order gets hold of the Lunar Mercury. By a wild coincidence, Chan's bro-ster Grace happens to be a designer of superhero costumes, and she puts together the attire for the new Mercury Man, who looks a little like Spider-Man covered in rubber.

There's some cursory attention to Chan gaining psychic control of his powers, setting him up for a big showdown with Areema when she assimilates the power of the Lunar Mercury (which makes her look like an ice-woman). And there are also a lot of good fights here. But the one sociological aspect of MERCURY that I liked was its unapologetic renunciation of Islamic terrorism. True, Usama does get a chance to rage against foreigners who invaded his country-- which I don't believe is specified-- but he and his buddies are all basically okay with wholesale slaughter to promote their own cause, and it's rather refreshing to see such an ideology condemned without any mealy-mouthed relativism. Also, though the hero's side includes a trans character, at least (a) it's a former guy who really looks like a woman thanks to surgical alteration, and (b) she's a little funny at times.

One detail that I'm sure is mere coincidence: at times Mercury Man propels himself from place to place by using magnetism to pull him to stationary objects, a means of locomotion first demonstrated by the Golden Age comics-hero "Magno."

POWER RANGERS (2017)

 

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

I appreciated, more than liked, the multitudinous POWER RANGERS serials. They took the bizarre weapons, wacky monsters and wild fight-scenes from the Japanese SUPER SENTAI shows and spliced in American footage. Each American show used a diverse group of "clean teens" from one era or another as the true identities of the armor-clad heroes. It was a good if repetitive juvenile action-series, but I often found the squeaky-clean heroes less than impressive. One could hardly tell that any of them had gone through so much as a single adolescent mood-swing.

I know nothing about the genesis of the POWER RANGERS reboot, though I've noticed that four writers contributed to the script and a fifth wrote the screenplay, while director Dean Israelite had never before worked on a movie with such a large budget. Undoubtedly, given the big money behind the reboot, I'm sure Israelite got plenty of support from more experienced hands, though that experience didn't keep RANGERS from bombing at the box office.

I frankly cannot see why RANGERS wasn't at least as popular as the so-so TRANSFORMERS movies. It's possible, as Israelite suggested in one interview, that the PG-13 rating kept some kids from buying tickets. But the basic rationale of the reboot was to court a wider audience than kids, in that the script gives more psychological heft to superheroes who were originally very one-dimensional, roughly the way Tim Burton upgraded the image of Batman for many viewing-ages. 

The five teens-- Zack, Jason, Billy, Kimberly and Trini-- are only loosely based upon the protagonists of the initial MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS teleseries. Instead of being a bunch of brightly smiling kids constantly concerned with recycling, these adolescents are good-hearted but confused by their burgeoning emotions. All five are either loners or on the outs with their peer groups, and they're capable of taking rash, ill-considered actions just because they don't realize they can die. The writers bring the five of them together in reasonably inventive ways, with a standout touch being the reworking of original MORPHIN character Billy, a routine nerd-type, into a high-functioning autistic who's both amusing and sympathetic.

After the five young people have taken one another's measure, without quite becoming friends, they're caught up in the long-range schemes of former Power Ranger Zordon (Bryan Cranston) and his robotic servant Alpha-5 (Jon Hader). While exploring a cave, beneath which Zordon's disembodied consciousness dwells in an underground facility, the teens find five Power Coins and take them home. In an impressive variation on the original serial's origin-tale, the youths flee the authorities in a van and get hit by a train, only to find their lives preserved and their abilities enhanced by the coins. 

Inevitably, the quintet returns to the cave, encounters Zordon and Alpha, and get drafted to fight in a cosmic war against Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks). This alien fiend seeks to acquire a mystic crystal on Earth, after which she will destroy the planet. Quite logically, the teens refuse to be drafted-- at first. But other incidents persuade them that the threat of Rita is real, and they agree to let the alien Ranger and his robot train them against artificial opponents (the "Putties" of the original show). The kids aren't able to master the skill of morphing-- that is, each one manifesting his or her own color-coded armor-- except when Billy does it once, by accident. In addition, Jason discovers that their tutor has an ulterior motive: if they can all morph at the same time, they can open the Grid and make it possible for Zordon to form a new physical body. This gives the former Ranger a little extra self-interest, and the concept pays off later with respect to using the Grid for a more altruistic purpose.

Rita finds out about the new Rangers and tracks down Trini, taking her prisoner with touches of horror-themed violence not present in any of the TV shows. Soon the villainess masters all five heroes, and uses Billy to locate the Mystic Crystal. While she's occupied bringing to life a gigantic kaiju, based upon the villain "Goldar" from the old show, the New Rangers finally master their power to morph and take control of their dinosaur-vehicles, the Zords. This leads to the expected Big Battle, in which the heroes do their Voltron-thing and merge their Zords into a humanoid robot capable of defeating Goldar and his evil mistress.

The first half of RANGERS is stronger than the second, given its emphasis on character building, though I must admit that Elizabeth Banks brings an insidious, focused malice to her evildoer that I rarely find in most nasty female overlords. All five of the young performers RJ Cyler, Becky G, Ludi Lin, Dacre Montgomery, and Naomi Scott-- acquit themselves well, and surprisingly, the script even gives a few good moments to the parents who can't remember their own confused juvenile years. ("Pee in this cup" provides the standout funny line.) The only minor failing I found is that the fight-scenes aren't as lively as those of the TV-serials, but then, the TV-shows really didn't offer much of anything else. And there's enough verbal humor to compensate for not having monsters who look like giant toads or chickens or water-faucets. 

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (2004)

 

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

The Riddick franchise was birthed by the 2000 film PITCH BLACK, one year after THE MATRIX brought forth a somewhat similar about a science-fictional hero in a far future. The Wachowskis' hero was a basically sympathetic good guy, negotiating his way through alternate realities, though as the franchise developed, the hero's universe seemed more and more arbitrary. Director/co-scripter David Twohy also began his franchise with a strong opener, but he confined his trope-metaphors to a small selection (altruism vs. self-interest, animality vs. humanity). Yet CHRONICLES, the second live-action film to feature Vin Diesel essaying the murderer destined to save his universe, also fails to build on a strong first film. 

PITCH BLACK had a simple but strong plotline: a seemingly ruthless criminal becomes the sole hope of a small band of crash-survivors, and by becoming their hero he's at least partly changed. An interstitial animated film, DARK FURY, merely accounts for what immediately happened to Riddick and the last two persons to escape the Pitch-Black Planet; it doesn't extend any of the three protagonists but merely sets up the events of CHRONICLES. 

CHRONICLES makes a clumsy effort to build its story from Riddick's emotional ties to his fellow survivors. To keep from endangering them, he distances himself from the Muslim holy man Iman (Keith David) and the young woman who supposedly thinks of him as a "big brother," Jack-renamed-as-Kyra (Alexa Davalos, replacing the performer from PITCH BLACK). This possibly selfless act has one bad consequence: Kyra goes looking for Riddick and is confined to a "slam" (future-world jail). 

Riddick does not know this until he finds himself pursued by a gang of bounty hunters, led by a malefactor named Tombs. Tombs reveals that the bounty was set by the Imam, so Riddick, feeling not a little betrayed, seeks out the alleged holy man. It's soon revealed that Imam's bounty was designed to bring Riddick close enough for the revelation that, as the "Last Furyan" (a particular planetary people), the hard-ass fugitive is the only "evil" that can defeat a greater evil.

When I wonder why I didn't like CHRONICLES better-- despite lots of good costumes, decent FX and splashy action-sequences-- the reason comes down to the uninteresting threat of the Necromongers. This race of humanoid aliens, whom I assume are unrelated to Earth-people, worship the concept of bringing widespread death to the universe. Their theory is that the extinguishing of all life will allow them to access a mystical dimension, the UnderVerse-- all of which sounds like a rejected concept for a JUDGE DREDD story. Because the Necromongers as a movement are boring and one-dimensional, there's nothing compelling about their leader, "The Lord Marshal," or any of his subordinates, such as Lord Varro and his scheming wife Lady Varro. Riddick faces some other raffish opponents as well, and they're also forgettable, though the hero does give one thug the humiliating demise of "death by teacup."

The subplot about Riddick having survived a "death of innocents" oriented on eliminating him as a future opponent is no more impressive. Riddick's confrontation with the alienated Kyra offers a few dramatic beats, but on the whole Twohy, who was solely credited for a Riddick script for the first time, muffs this potential too. The ending tries for tragedy and ends up with mere portentousness. Despite the fact that CHRONICLES underperformed, the franchise got another iteration in 2013's RIDDICK, which I will probably review in the near future.

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: DARK FURY (2004)

 

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

DARK FURY is a cartoon featurette of slightly more than half an hour, prepared as a DVD extra for the live-action CHRONICLES theatrical feature. PITCH BLACK's director David Twohy provided the basic story.

The narrative takes place almost immediately after the wanted murderer Riddick (Vin Diesel) escapes the desert planet with two other survivors, the female adolescent Jack (Rihanna Griffith) and the Imam (Keith David). They're seeking to be picked up by the authorities, though Jack and the Imam have agreed to conceal Riddick's identity in repayment for his having saved their lives. Instead, a strange ship full of battle-ready mercs brings the refugee vessel aboard with a tractor-beam. Riddick kills several of the mercs until one henchman forces him to surrender by threatening Jack's life.

On the surface the ship appears to be simply capturing wanted men, storing them in cryostasis with the intention of collecting bounties on the criminals. But when Riddick and his companions encounter the master of the ship, Antonia Chillingsworth, they learn that she has a weird artistic fixation regarding death. She's freezing the wanted men into icy sculptures, with no intention of turning them in. Somehow, Antonia knows who Riddick really is, and she gives him the chance to fight some creatures in an arena, to show off his deadly skills before she makes him into a permanent artwork.

FURY is by-the-numbers action, with no real characterization of either old or new characters. Famed animation director Peter Chung works in some of his customary visual tropes, but none of the designs stand out. The cartoon's sole appeal lies in Diesel's sober readings of his standard tough-guy lines.

PITCH BLACK (2000)

 

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

Twenty-four years after its debut, PITCH BLACK is still a very serviceable "survival-drama," and that's to the credit of director/co-writer David Twohy and co-writers Ken and Jim Wheat. The latter two are credited with the original story, but they don't seem to have been directly involved in later continuations of the "Riddick franchise." Many of their earlier screenwriting credits were sequels to earlier concepts, so it's ironic, though not unexpected, that they apparenty weren't to keep control of their own idea. But then, the movie PITCH BLACK wasn't as significant for launching the fairly minor space-hero Riddick than for propelling thirty-something actor Vin Diesel into "name above the title" status.

In a spacefaring future, a transport ship is struck by meteoroids and disabled. Its pilots are forced to make a crash landing on a desolate planetoid, where they're able to breathe the atmosphere. That's about the survivors' only piece of good fortune, for the planet is a desert seemingly devoid of other life, kept in perpetual daylight by three suns. One organic life-form hides beneath the ground, a swarm of manta-like monsters that pick off survivors when they get the chance. The survivors make their way to an abandoned geological station, whose scientists were apparently slain by the creatures. The survivors have a chance to escape by fixing up the geologists' ship, but they also learn of a ticking clock: that when the suns eclipse, the multitudinous mantas will come forth and devour them all if they can't get away first.

The outward menace of the planet and its monsters, though, didn't make the movie a sleeper hit. Though most of the survivors are either pilot-personnel like Carolyn (Radha Mitchell) or ordinary passengers, two of the survivors are opposed to one another: an alleged cop, Johns (Cole Hauser) and his prisoner, a murderer named Riddick (Diesel). This dangerous individual gets loose during the crash landing, but Carolyn begins to wonder if Riddick or his captor are the greater danger. The writers somewhat tip their hand as to Riddick's potential heroism when they have one passenger, a girl-masquerading-as-a-boy named Jack (Rhianna Griffith), express admiration for the strange, powerful fugitive. Once the script suggests that "the crook" Riddick may be the more appealing figure, there are no surprises when he assumes a quasi-leadership figure and kills the corrupt Johns (actually a bounty hunter, not a cop).

Though Griffith and Keith David (playing a practical-minded Muslim holy man) add spice to the drama, BLACK's main sociological myth is that of "altruism vs. self-interest." Riddick initially seems to be the incarnation of the latter, while Carolyn-- a junior officer thrust into the default position of ship's captain-- represents the former. However, Carolyn's position of altruism evolves from guilt over an act of self-preservation. As for Riddick-- is he truly outside the sphere of human influence as he seems to be?

The original film has a strong emotional dynamic, but the "pick-off-survivors" trope requires the sacrifice of some of the characters necessary to the dynamic. A major script-weakness is also the contrived nature of the predators. If they're carnivorous-- and even able to assimiliate alien humanoid flesh-- what do they live on, when human beings don't happen to land on their isolated world? 

I don't think the next two iterations of the Riddick saga manage to compensate for losing at least one of the major characters who does not escape the desert planet. But Diesel's charisma makes even the future failures bearable.  

THE APOCALYPSE (1997)

 

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

You know, I can live with a low-budget film that has characters behave like idiots, as long as it's diverting to look at. But when the look of the film is repulsive, that's another thing entirely.

Curiously, the writer credited with THE APOCALPYSE co-wrote, in the previous year, a serviceable space-adventurer in TIMELOCK, which even shares some similarities to the later film in featuring what I called a "tough girl/weak guy teamup." But TIMELOCK also had a different director, which may be the reason the look of that film didn't bug me. It's one thing to stage the whole film in a series of grey-metal corridors that are supposed to be the insides of space vessels. But does every actor in the film have to be wearing brown, black and white garments?

The setup: The Agamemnon, a ship carrying a cargo of unstable materials, is taken over by an insane computer hacker named Goad (Laura San Giacomo). After causing the deaths of the crew, she sets the ship on a collision course with Earth and records, for a non-existent posterity, a series of password requests for anyone who might want to override the ship's course, all of which messages are quotes from Shakespeare. Then I guess she offs herself, since she's never seen except as a computer-representation.

On Future-Earth, cargo pilot J.T. Wayne (Sandra Bernhard) is drinking at a bar, wanting to be left alone for some unspecified reason. Bartender Lennon (Cameron Dye) makes some overtures about wanting a berth on her next run, and she shoots him down. Another barfly spills a drink near Wayne and she slugs him, obliging the bartender to shoot her down, with an entirely modern-looking stun-gun. 

An associate named Noel bails Wayne out of jail and talks her into captaining a salvage mission to reclaim the supposedly dead vessel Agamemnon. For some reason Noel wants Bartender Lennon to go along; I never figured out why, unless it's because it was in the script. Not only does Wayne have to tolerate this exigency, Noel informs her that the only other crewmen he can get are associated with Wayne's former boyfriend Vendler (Frank Zagarino). Wayne accepts this condition even though, as she'll later reveal to Lennon, she knows Vendler's a rotter and his crewpeople are likely to be rotters too.

Sure enough, once the salvage ship nears the Agamemnon-- everyone still unaware of the ship's pre-set course-- Vendler and his buddies take over the ship and kill everyone not on their side. Wayne and Lennon manage to avoid the assault and keep clear for a while, and in the meantime Vendler's crew boards the death-ship. Vendler's computer-tech interacts with the ship's computer and starts trying to work his way through the password-challenges, which depend on the programmer's knowledge of Shakespeare. (These sequences provide the film's only moderate entertainment.)

Eventually, the programmer finds out that he can't crack the computer's override protection and tells Vendler that they have to leave the ship before it collides with Earth. And here's the film's really stupid part: the obsessed villain won't let his own crew save their lives, and most of the other henchpeople follow his lead. In fact, Vendler beats up a blonde henchwoman-- his new girlfriend-- when she defies him, and then lets one of the other henchwomen kill her. At least in TIMELOCK, the villains, a bunch of prison escapees, were seeking freedom at any cost.

Lennon, to his credit, does prove useful to Captain Wayne a few times, so he's not a complete weakling. But the funniest scene in the movie takes place after Vendler captures the duo and locks them in what looks more like a lion's cage than a brig. Knowing that Vendler will get ticked off by seeing Wayne have sex, the two heroes pretend to be humping-- though neither of them takes any clothes off, particularly where it would be absolutely necessary to do so.

The funny scenes are too few and far between to dispel the boredom though. Dye and Zagarino are competent in their roles, but Bernhard is one of those performers who's totally unable to play roles not set in her own timeframe. Arguably she's even harder to watch in this role than the ugly attire and scenery, even though she tries to put a certain gusto into her part. I assume the film went straight to home video, because I can't imagine anyone trying to make patrons pay for this mediocrity. 

LUPIN III: THE COLUMBUS FILES (1999)

 

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

Since the original LUPIN III manga was unquestionably more "comedy" than "adventure," unlike many of the anime adaptations, it's fairly appropriate that the last Lupin III adaptation for the 20th century was totally in the comedic mode of creator Monkey Punch. It was also the last of three Lupin screenplays by writer Shinzo Fujita, and the best.

First, let me dispose of the film's obligatory MacGuffin over which the factions battle. The Columbus Files comprise a treasure map that can lead one to the Columbus Egg, which in turn contains some ancient civilization's techniques for controlling the world's weather, and even creating things like giant water-geysers. But the connection to the explorer Columbus is entirely meretricious: the script might as well have used the subtitle "Plato Files" and claimed that Plato preserved a techno-egg from ancient Atlantis.

What isn't meretricious is how Fujita not only recaptures the raucous, licentious spirit of the manga, but uses it to ask a new question: given all the constant conflict between Lupin and his adversarial amour Fujiko, would he still want her if she lost all of her contentiousness?

So Fujiko summons Lupin to a meeting, and while he tries earnestly to get in her pants, she explains that she has a map that will lead her, and any partners, to the Columbus Egg. A gunship appears and attacks them. Lupin and Fujiko escape the strafing, but the map is destroyed, so that the coordinates are preserved only in Fujiko's memory. Then before Lupin can catch her, she goes over a cliff into the sea below.

Lupin and his gang don't find Fujiko, but a young female treasure-hunter named Rosaria does-- and this Fujiko has no memory of anything. However, the guy in the airship, one Nazalhoff, somehow tracks Fujiko to Rosaria's lair, and abducts Fujiko, whose personality has vanished along with her memory, so that she's an entirely helpless damsel in distress. For reasons that are not clear-- though the script implies some lesbian desire on Rosaria's part-- Rosaria is willing to risk her life to rescue the distressed damsel.

The young treasure-hunter hooks with the three males of the Lupin Gang and joins forces with them-- though at times she shows a Fujiko-like tendency to betray Lupin. The master thief makes a few passes at Rosaria, but for the most part he's intensely confused at Fujiko's change in personality. In one scene, he rips off his clothes and makes as if he intends to ravish her, just as he constantly did whenever she was in her "normal" persona. It's not clear whether Lupin really means to follow through, or if he's applying "shock therapy." But trembling Fujiko gives him permission to take her, in the hope that she'll regain her normal memory. Lupin declines and treats her like a gentleman from then on, suggesting that he really doesn't want only Fujiko's body; he wants her to be with him, body and soul.

It turns out that Nazalhoff-- who shares Lupin's tendency to mack on both Fujiko and Rosaria-- is one of a small army of henchmen serving a mad scientist named Barton. Barton's the one who wants the hidden technology of the Columbus Egg, in order to create a weather-weapon whereby to rule the world. And as a cherry on top of all that James Bond goodness, Rosaria is his daughter, who becomes involved in stopping him even before she knows he's involved. Rosaria's got a bad history with her papa, who killed her mother in his scientific experiments, and seems willing to use his daughter as a test subject too. 

Lupin and his associates delve into a mysterious pre-Columbian temple, where they face a sampling of Indiana Jones perils, and even quote RAIDERS overtly. I forget how Barton gets the Egg from them, but soon he's creating waterspouts to show off his power (though I could swear he creates one early in the movie, before he has the full technology). One waterspout even works to Lupin's advantage, separating him from Zenigata just as the obsessed cop catches up with the thief. And just to demonstrate that anime writers share the American tendency to use technology to achieve any magic-like effect desired, toward the end Barton even uses the Columbus Tech to transform himself into a super-strong, nearly invulnerable monster. This frustrates Rosaria's chances to avenge her mother directly, but without revealing too much, the young woman's potential "lover" does it for her.

As for Jigen and Goemon, they're largely relegated to support roles. Goemon gets the best scenes: he uses his katana to slice a waterspout in two (!) and uses artificial respiration to revive a waterlogged Jigen, much to the gunman's disgust. Lupin is more in line with Monkey Punch's image of the character as "the trickster who tricks himself," taking many comical pratfalls not seen in the more serious iterations. And like the comics version, the master thief is able to assume instant disguises and use assorted gimmicks concealed on his person to thwart his foes. And of course, Fujiko must regain her normal personality: vain, unscrupulous, and venal-- though of course there's always the implication that she enjoys her bouts with Lupin. Though not everything in the script makes perfect sense, the writer's take on the "war between male thief and female thief" elevates FILES to the top of the Lupin heap. 

LUPIN III: ISLAND OF ASSASSINS (1997)

 

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

Though the Lupin Gang often provokes battles with gangsters and megalomaniacs by ripping them off, this time a major player declares open hostilities on Lupin for reasons not revealed until the final half-hour of this telefilm.

Though there's a little bit of comedy fanservice in ISLAND, the script is darker and more violent than the majority of Lupin projects. The first scene opens like many other capers: Zenigata shows up at a ritzy party, having received Lupin's announcement of his intent to rob the place. However, when cop meets robber, Lupin reveals that he didn't send the message but got one himself. Then the mysterious dispenser of the messages appears and shoots Zenigata, showing none of the playful restraint of the gentleman thief. And while Lupin doesn't get a good luck at the shooter, he identifies the gun as a Walther P-38 that Lupin owned years ago and lost under involved circumstances. Zenigata survives by dumb luck but gets sidelined into the hospital. 

The gun is a callback to previous Lupin continuity and was of enough significance to fans that the filmmakers' Japanese name for the movie was MEMORY OF THE WALTHER P-38. In my opinion, the mystery of the missing pistol pales beside the script's emphasis on the island-domicile of the mystery-man. Somehow, even though the island is guarded by satellite-lasers, Lupin manages to send Fujiko undercover, joining a cabal of assassins, The Tarantulas, who serve a variety of political masters. Later Lupin himself also infiltrates the island without much trouble and meets Gordeau, the apparent leader of the Tarantulas.

Gordeau has a unique means of keeping his subordinates: he has each of them imprinted with an indelible tattoo impregnated with poison, and each assassin who leaves the island on a mission must return to breathe the curative gases of the island. The villain applies these poison-tattoos to both Lupin and Fujiko to control them. Fujiko doesn't have much to do after this, while Jigen and Goemon largely function as rescuers at the climax. To be sure, all of the thieves aren't purely motivated by vengeance, for the Tarantulas are supposed to have amassed an immense treasure from all of their contract killings. Just for some side-titillation, Lupin also become interested in one assassin, an embittered young woman named Ellen, though he seems almost avuncular toward her, even when she tries to outfight him.

Eventually, the mystery of the Walther comes back into play, and the viewer learns that Lupin lost the gun to his first criminal partner, whose name is never revealed. This individual has been hiding on the island under another name, though the big reveal doesn't carry much impact. Ellen doesn't get a happy ending, and Goemon has one of his more eyebrow-raising scenes when he uses his katana to slice and dice a bank of computers. 

Technically Lupin and Fujiko don't get cured of their poison tats after sinking the Island of Assassins, but I doubt anyone cared about that particular continuity-point. Zenigata provides most of the comedy with his attempts to escape the hospital and return to trailing Lupin.

DOCTOR JUSTICE (1975)

 

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

I stumbled across DOCTOR JUSTICE while looking for a Eurospy title. But though the evildoers in the film are comparable to high-level conspirators, the hero, whose name is literally "Justice," is not an operative. The doctor (John Philip Law) is an athletic, karate-chopping WHO physician who accidentally witnesses a murder of a gangster by the criminal's superior. This draws the good doctor into a wild, larger-than-life adventure against a criminal plotter named Max (Gert Frobe) -- unless Max is really a lookalike named Orwall (also Frobe), who seems to be an eminent scientist testifying at a WHO conference. To compensate slightly for Max and his gang, Justice gains a resourceful romantic interest in Karine (Nathalie Delon) who joins him in his forays throughout most of the narrative.

To get the phenomenality out of the way, the story begins with a formidable "bizarre crime," in which an oil tanker arrives at its port and finds that all its stores of oil have vanished, replaced by seawater. The explanation for this clever crime isn't unveiled until the last half-hour, and it involves some diabolical drugs, but the mastermind behind the crime has a even deeper and more ambitious scheme, to which the oil-theft is a means to an end.

The director/co-writer is Christian-Jaque, known for other flamboyant entertainments of the period, my favorite being the raucous comedy LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING. The movie seems to have had a better budget than the majority of Eurospy films, given a fair number of splashy, swashbuckling scenes. John Philip Law had done other action-roles, but I think this is the only one where he had to emulate martial arts, and he does well there. His general upbeat attitude, so different from the various gloomy Bond imitations, has been compared to Doc Savage, albeit one with a French "je ne sais quoi." Delon has to support Law in many scenes, in contrast to the usual subordinate role of the lead female actor, and Frobe seems to have fun with his two disparate parts. Paul Naschy and Eduardo Fajardo appear in small roles, but I didn't spot them. It's not a great film but is worth a look.

As it happens, DOCTOR JUSTICE began as a French comic book, and an early bit of dialogue acknowledges this when the doctor jokes to Karine that he's "a comic book hero."  

UPPERSEVEN (1966)

 

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

I don't know if Red China was really making colonial moves on the nations of Africa in the 1960s, as UPPERSEVEN claims in its fictional tale. But by the 21st century, the CCP really did invest heavily in "the Dark Continent," thus giving this slightly upscale Eurospy movie a bit more sociological heft.

The hero Upperseven ("Superseven" in the German version of this Italian-West German production) also gets a few points for featuring a spy-hero with a knack for putting on flawless latex masks in order to masquerade as anyone-- or at least, anyone who shares his general height and build. I assume the nickname is just one more variation on "Double-O Seven." Yet the hero has become famous enough for his disguise-tricks that his enemies not only use the nickname for him, he's also famous for his primary weapon, a gimmicked-up "ebony cane." Whereas a lot of Eurospy flicks introduce the menace first and then show the hero getting his spy-gimmicks from a weapons-designer, UPPERSEVEN jumps feet first into action, with the hero and his fancy cane interfering with a gold-smugging operation. Violence erupts, and the mastermind of the operation, a notorious felon named Kobras, gets away.

When the hero's not wearing assorted disguises, he reports to his superior as Paul Finney (Paul Hubschmid). Strangely, though there's much concern about an impending shipment of money to South Africa to foil the plots of the Chinese, Finney's boss insists that the legendary operative take a vacation. But apparently Kobras ferrets out some intel about Finney, even if he doesn't know him to be Upperseven, and decides to do away with him. A comely lass (Rosalba Neri) tries to lure Finney into an assassin's trap. Finney responds with "The Cisco Kid Trick," in which the hero rather unheroically dresses a traitorous woman in male garb and shoves her into the path of gunfire intended for the hero.

Finney's then assigned a CIA helper named Helen (Karin Dor of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE fame), and he shows her his etch-- I mean, his collection of latex masks-- before they inevitably make out. The film then sends Finney and Helen to various places to burn up time, though none of these incidents, even when they have some good fight-scenes, have any impact on the plot.

Kobras succeeds in ripping off the money-shipment, which will help him fund a missile-base in Africa-- though in truth the base has been completely constructed by the time of the heist. Further Kobras and his sexy henchwoman (Vivi Bach) manage to mousetrap both Helen and Finney, while also revealing Finney's Upperseven identity.

It's not clear why Kobras doesn't just kill the duo, but instead transports them to the missile base. Naturally, that gives Upperseven the chance to pull out one of his hidden disguises, so that he masquerades as Kobras himself, and for good measure ends up making love to the mastermind's girlfriend. Once he gets Helen free, she gets one fight-scene. In the big conclusion the hero manages to turn an array of automated machine-gun pillboxes against Kobras' henchmen, beat Kobras in pitched battle, and blow up the missile base. 

Hubschmid brings a cheery, hail-fellow-well-met charm to his disguise-master hero, even if the scene where he sends the lady spy to her death compromises that attitude somewhat. Neri, Dor and Bach are winningly sexy, and Nando Gazzolo as Kobras furnishes a rare Eurospy-villain with something like a personality. There are one or two gimmicks that border on the marvelous-- the aforementioned pillboxes and a magnetized wall that can pull a man's gun out of his jacket-- but I decided both skew more toward the uncanny. A final scene faces the hero and his girl with the mundane menace of a traffic citation. The writer-director was Alberto de Martino, who would later earn a measure of fame for assorted Eurohorror films.

THE FISH WITH EYES OF GOLD (1974)

 

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

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

I've not seen any other cinematic works by either the director or the writer of GOLD-- Pedro L. Ramirez and Juan Gallardo Munoz, respectively-- and they don't seem to have done anything else in the subgenre of "the giallo." But so far this is the best Spanish giallo I've encountered-- which is saying something, given the many restrictions on Spanish filmmakers in the 1970s. This may be a reason why GOLD boasts no excessive sex or gore, though the creators found some equally fun ways to explore their material.

I considered not revealing the killer(s) in my analysis, but there seems no way to explicate the symbolic discourse of the movie without ripping the cover off the mystery-- which isn't perfect but shows better attention to detail than a lot of Italian productions.

Teaser scene on a beach, close to a beach town in Spain where all the action takes place: a bikini-clad woman on a beach-towel spies a scuba-diver emerge from the surf. She greets him as if she knows him, but her welcome turns to horror when he stabs her to death. (Right away, the script gets points for introducing a novel way to keep the mystery killer masked.) Close to shore is a witness in a small boat. He rows to shore and the scuba killer runs away. As the witness looks at the dead girl lying on a beach towel, for some reason he focuses on the towel's image of a fish. No golden eyes on this fish, but from the title one can guess this simple decoration going to be tied in somehow to a Big Symbolic Fish.

On a road leading to the beach-town, a good-looking Englishman named Derek (Wal Davis) is hitchhiking. He passes a house and witnesses a woman, Monica, quarreling with a man, Marco. Monica gets in her car, drives past Derek, and then beckons for him to join her. The two chat a bit, and then listen to a radio bulletin about a serial killer having claimed a new victim. Derek notices that Monica wears a pendant ending in a metal fish with golden eyes. She stops at a hotel, takes a room and invites Derek to have sex. 

Sometime later, Derek wakes up in bed with Monica--but a Monica who's been stabbed to death. After struggling with his drunkenness and his nausea at beholding a murdered corpse, Derek sneaks out of the hotel. He seeks sanctuary with another ex-pat Englishman, Zachary Kendall (Ricardo Vazquez) and his wife Virginia (Norma Kastel), both of whom seem to be professional artists who work with both painting and sculpture. It's never stated outright, but since Derek mentions being a minor artist later, presumably they met through art-circles. Zachary, incidentally, is the same fellow who witnessed the bikini-girl's murder, and he accompanies Derek to the local police to tell his story. The Inspector is duly suspicious but only requires Derek not to leave town.

At Zachary's house Derek also meets a young woman with the not-coincidental name of Marina (Ada Tauler) and learns that she knew the late Monica. Since the Englishman is afraid of getting framed for the murders of Monica and other victims, he launches his own amateur investigation. He seeks out Marina at a local aquarium-- which, despite the beach setting, is the only time the audience sees any real fish. Marina informs Derek that Monica's ex-boyfriend was a money-grubbing gigolo who slept with many women for cash. But before Derek learns anything more, Marina's protective father Pablo shows up and tells Derek to leave. It's uncertain as to whether he's more suspicious of Derek being a serial killer or simply a "foreigner."

Derek somehow finds out where Marco lives and searches his room for clues. Marco shows up and they fight, though strangely Marco doesn't call the cops on the intruder. Derek doesn't find any clues, but he does find out that Marco's sleeping with Zachary's wife Virginia.

Virginia won't explain her affair to Derek, but in her studio Derek sees a metal sculpture that looks just like Monica's fish-pendant. She tells him she got the design from a local goldsmith, and the goldsmith says that he hasn't yet distributed any of his pendants-- except one, which he gave to a young man named Marco. He gives Derek the artist's sketch he used for the pendant's design but doesn't remember who did the sketch. 

Derek goes for a drive in Zachary's car to acquaint his buddy with developments. However, the brakes fail and the car crashes. Derek is thrown clear and then manages to pull Zachary from the burning vehicle. Zachary's hands are both burned, the same hands which, moments ago, Virginia complained that he only used for his precious artworks.

Despite this bad automotive experience, Derek then goes on a drive with Marina. He believes Marco guilty but can't explain why a gigolo would cut off his own source of income. They both express their dislike of fish and implicitly make out a little. At the hospital Zachary stops mourning his precious hands long enough to canoodle a little with a young nurse he knew from a previous encounter. Virginia covertly witnesses their interaction.

Derek seeks out Marco again, but a mystery killer gets there first and knifes him dead. The killer, his face guarded by dark glasses (even though it's night), clouts Derek from behind and flees in a car. Derek tries to follow by stealing a citizen's car, but the cops pull him over and the killer gets away.

Surprisingly, the Inspector confides in Derek that he had a psychoanalyst examine the sketch, and the verdict was that it was made by someone with a severe psychotic disorder. And so we finally get a payoff on an earlier scene in which Zachary witnessed his mad father kill his mother (in the presence of a goldfish tank, no less). Zachary wasn't the original serial killer-- that was Marco, though his motive is never clear-- but Zachary's own buried psychosis was triggered by seeing the slain woman, and he killed Monica and all victims after that. Fittingly, the final face-down takes place at the aquarium.

Dario Argento's shadow looms large over GOLD. The more important trope borrowed from Argento is the idea that psychotic evil can spread from villain to victim like a disease. But I also like that, while a lot of giallos use animals in their titles just because Argento did it, Ramirez and Munoz seem to be using their fish-motif as a symbol of the unconscious life, the place that gives birth to sex and transgressive obsessions-- even though, as I said, no fish are directly involved in the narrative.

PRINCE OF SPACE (1959)

 

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

It's a personal preference that on this blog I never review "compilation films," that is, feature-length films made by cannibalizing either the chapters of a longer serial or episodes of a television series. I will probably make an exception if I encounter a situation where, say, an original chapterplay has been lost and the compilation is all that's left of it. And someday I may choose to review the four films made from a Japanese TV-show, SUPERGIANT, because it's extremely unlikely that I will ever have access to dubbed or subbed episodes of the series.

PRINCE OF SPACE is a slightly different animal. There was a TV show running in Japan's late 1950s, though the actual title was more like "Prince Planet." However, the makers of the teleseries also released two separate short movies, both reputedly an hour in length, to Japanese cinema in 1959. I have heard it said that the Japanese producers sold both short films to the U.S. and that someone over here spliced both movies into a dubbed version, also running just under an hour. This English-language version is apparently the version that MST3K utilized when they spoofed the movie. But before writing this review, I came across a Japanese version of PRINCE on Tubi, but with English-language subtitles-- which is what I'll review here.

Like the slightly later INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN, the most interesting part of PRINCE is the dreamlike way in which the superhero of the title comes into being, sans anything like an origin. And like NEPTUNE, the film's opening foregrounds a little bit of "launch envy" on the part of the Japanese culture of that period.

So three adults and three kids sit around the dinner table. I think one of the kids belongs to a youngish couple there, but the only people necessary to remember are the other adult, an older man named Doctor Maki, and the other two kids, a boy named Ichiro and his sister Kimiko. After some incidental conversation, another adult shows up, name of Waku (Tatsuo Unemiya). Confab establishes that Waku is an unmarried shoeshine man who for some reason has been granted custody of Ichiro and Kimiko, even though they are not related to Waku. The talk quickly shifts topics as the young woman remarks that, thanks to Doctor Maki's great new rocket fuel, "the world's first ever rocket is going to be launched from here." In other words, in the film's world Japan has stolen a march on both Russian and U.S. space programs, though Maki generously credits a U.S. scientist with providing "materials."

Then, as the kids try to watch TV, their reception-- and that of everyone in Japan, if not all Earth-- has to listen to a rant from "Ambassador Phantom of Planet Silver." Phantom asserts that he and his crew will land near Tokyo shortly, and that he will brook no interference from the locals. Naturally, a (very small) crowd of reporters and military men show up at a landing site. However, as soon as the alien ship lands, so does a smaller saucer-craft. Out of the latter ship steps the mask-wearing Prince of Space, who warns the aliens away. Inside his ship Phantom orders his ship to fire on the Prince, who easily nullifies the weapon. The Planet Silver ship flees and eludes pursuit by the Prince's ship.

After that initial exchange of hostilities, the film settles into a series of similar short conflicts between the Prince and the Silverites. It comes out that despite the Silverites's spacefaring technology, they want to steal Doctor Maki's rocket fuel formula. The closest anyone comes to dealing with this discrepancy is that someone suggests that the invaders just don't have enough fuel, but if they had Maki's formula, they could fuel a whole flotilla of ships instead of just one.

I've left out one visual aspect of the aliens (whose planet is named "Krankor" in the English dub): they're all humanoids with long beaked noses. Some, particularly Phantom, wear ruff-like collars, and this appearance led the MST3K jesters to make lots of chicken jokes. Without this wacky touch of alien physiognomy, probably PRINCE would never have been as rife for spoofing. Compared to the uninhibited wackiness of the slightly later kaiju films, or later superhero shows, PRINCE is pretty dull, with very brief fight-scenes and lots of talking heads. I assume most Japanese kids would have guessed that mild-mannered shoeshine man Waku is in reality the world-protecting Prince of Space, particularly when the Prince gives "his" kids a signal-device with which to contact him. But in the two versions I've seen, the Prince never decisively unveils his true identity, and there's no clue as to where he gets his technology.

The most remarkable thing is that, though one would expect the subtitled version to run longer than the MST3K entry, they're about the same. Also, whatever extra scenes the subbed version may contain-- and I didn't attempt a side-by-side comparison-- the sub does NOT contain the climax on Planet Silver, wherein the hero rescues captive scientists from Phantom and defeats a giant humanoid. The subbed version just sort of peters out after an inconclusive battle between hero and villain. I can only assume that the subbed version on Tubi was prepared by the Japanese for some other market, but that they didn't have access to that climactic footage for some reason. And that's a very small pity, since the confrontation on Silver/Krankor is the best part of the original film.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to making inquiries on the Classic Horror Film Board, I've learned that the version on Tubi streaming is most probably the first of the two "Prince Planet" movies, subbed for the fan-market. This explains why the Tubi item contains no scenes from the second film. That short movie, technically titled "Prince Planet: the Terrifying Spaceship," has not as yet been subbed for the fan-market, so that as of this writing, one can only see second-film footage in the recut American version from the 1960s. Therefore, my review really applies to the short film "Prince Planet," while the title "Prince of Space" should really apply only to the American recut. But I probably won't change the title of this review unless "Spaceship" comes into my purview. 

LUPIN III: FUJIKO'S LIE (2020)

 

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

Technically, the final entry in Takashi Koike's trio of LUPIN III projects continues the plotline in which Lupin and his gang find themselves targeted by assassins-- though not in the usual fashion, since no assassins chase the thieves this time. Instead, by a far-fetched coincidence, one of Fujiko's many moneymaking gambits coincidentally leads the gang to a middleman responsible for abetting, and in some cases, creating specialized assassins. Fair warning: though the Lupin gang naturally comes out on top in dealing with the middleman, his henchmen and his assassin, the mastermind is not disclosed, apart from the vague allusion seen at the end of JIGEN'S GRAVESTONE. Given that allusion, it's possible that Koike never had any intention of executing a final story with said mastermind. Koike may have meant to imply that the brains behind the assassins meets his fate at the end of this film, which *may* take place chronologically after these three short films, as well as Koike's teleseries A WOMAN NAMED FUJIKO MINE At any event, in the four years there has been no news of more Lupin III projects by Koike, so FUJIKO'S LIE-- which was completed slightly after the death of Lupin-creator Monkey Punch-- may be Koike's last word on the franchise.

In any case, LIE is also one of the best Lupin iterations thus far.

Fujiko's caper this time is like many others she's pursued separately from Lupin, Jigen and Goemon. (Indeed, Goemon is entirely absent, and no one speaks of him, though logically the only possible outcome of the samurai's confrontation with Zenigata at the end of BLOOD SPRAY would have consisted of Goemon stunning the cop and escaping.) For a period that must be over the course of months, Fujiko works as a maid to Randy, an accountant who works for the firm of rich CEO Codfrey. Fujiko apparently learned somehow that Randy was embezzling huge sums of money from his employer, which the accountant then funneled into a Swiss bank account. In many previous incidents Fujiko ingratiates herself with a mark in order to seduce him and take his riches. But that's not possible this time, because Randy's motive for embezzling is to pay for a heart operation to save the life of his ten-year-old son Gene. Therefore, Fujiko successfully wins the trust of both Randy and Gene (who never knew his deceased birth mother) -- so much so that when Randy learns that Codfrey's henchmen are coming to get their money back, he charges Fujiko with protecting Gene. 

Fujiko and Gene escape Randy's house just before it blows up, and Gene realizes he's just become an orphan. Fujiko then finds out that Codfrey has a unique assassin in his employ: Bincam, a gangly, gray-skinned individual who can't be harmed by bullets and can hurl what looks like clouds of dust from his hands; clouds that can stun or even mesmerize those that breathe in their contents. Fujiko has a brief fight with Bincam and is defeated. However, Lupin and Jigen, who have been investigating Codfrey for their own reasons, show up and help Fujiko escape with Gene-- who, incidentally, is the only one who can access the Swiss bank account now that his father is gone.

Fujiko temporarily holes up with Lupin and Jigen, and Gene, still tormented by the loss of his father, offers to give Lupin the entire fortune if Lupin avenges the death of Randy. Lupin respects the child's attempt to honor his parent, and when Fujiko protests, Lupin wonders if her only reason for helping the child is to make sure she gets her hands on the money.

Lupin, suspecting that Bincam is similar to the assassins sent after his gang (which will be indirectly confirmed), tries to lure Codfrey into a trap, but the affair goes south. Fujiko takes Gene to a cheap motel to hide out. 

The script skillfully plays Fujiko down the middle. At times she seems genuinely concerned with Gene's fate, both because of his bereavement and his medical issues. At other times, she seems totally focused on wheedling the account information out of him. Some reviewers didn't like a scene in which Fujiko bathes with the young boy in a tub. But as far as I can tell, the idea of a mother bathing a child in this way would be entirely appropriate in Japan, even if Fujiko is seeking to play on Gene's need for maternal care. Gene finally does disclose the account number. Fujiko then leaves, claiming that she plans to come back. Gene is left alone in the room, wondering if he made a big mistake.

Fujiko does come back, for reasons not entirely clear until the story's end. However, Japanese police discovered Gene alone, took him away, and (very improbably) remanded him to the custody of Randy's former boss Codfrey. Fujiko infiltrates the CEO's HQ and is captured by Bincam, though she does have the chance to use her sexual attractiveness to confuse the zombie-like specter. Lupin and Jigen show up, battle Codfrey's henchmen, and liberate Fujiko and Gene. But Bincam is still on the loose-- and what happens to the money?

I won't give away all the beats of the ending. Yet any experienced Lupin-watcher should know that all four of the tricky thieves have at times been capable of acting altruistically, though rarely without losing sight of their own monetary bottom-line, so the conclusion won't be a total surprise. Nevertheless, as Lupin himself points out, Fujiko undertakes a mission-- totally unrelated to her scam-- to research Bincam's strange power and to take him down, for no reason but to keep him from ever getting back on Gene's trail. In other words, her act of playing "mother" may have awakened a "mama bear" instinct in her that runs counter to her acquisitive nature. Bincam's supernatural-seeming power is explained as something akin to the old Persian story of "poison maidens" whose bodies get saturated with poisons so as to make them lethal to normal humans. But Fujiko only relates this observation during her solo fight with Bincam-- which is fairly long in comparison to most of the lady thief's blink-and-miss-them combat-scenes. She does triumph mostly through her feminine wiles, but that seems entirely in line with her normal proclivities.

Since I've already referenced THE MYSTERY OF MAMO above, I should add that one of the technical accomplishments of the villain there was cloning, and it's strongly implied that Bincam was a clone, who from childhood has been altered by some technology into a "poison man" killer.

LUPIN III: GOEMON'S BLOOD SPRAY (2019)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

Animation director Takeshi Koike followed up on his 2012 teleseries A WOMAN NAMED FUJIKO MINE with a 2014 OAV, JIGEN'S GRAVESTONE. Both of these iterations of the Lupin III franchise were considerably more serious in tone than the original comics of Lupin's creator Monkey Punch. After roughly five years, Koike got the chance to follow up on his follow-up with two more OAVs focused on selected Lupin characters: GOEMON'S BLOOD SPRAY in 2019 and FUJIKO'S LIE in 2020. 

Structurally BLOOD SPRAY has a strong plot-similarity to GRAVESTONE. In both, the spotlighted character is hired to perform a job unrelated to any of his criminal outings with Lupin. But a formidable opponent appears, using special skills to offset those of the protector. Each character is shamed by his failure but gets a second chance to duel his adversary to the death, this time with Lupin's crew in attendance.

The BLOOD SPRAY script changes up some details. Goemon is hired to protect a yakuza boss from possible assassination while the boss and his gang are aboard a steam ship. Hawk, a red-haired giant of a man wielding twin axes, boards the ship and destroys its engines. However, Hawk isn't after any of the yakuza, but after Lupin and Jigen, who are, apparently without Goemon's knowledge, aboard the ship to rip off the gangster's loot. (Fujiko is aboard ship as well, but her role here is as minor as it was in GRAVESTONE.) The yakuza boss perishes when the ship catches on fire, and the other gangsters blame Goemon for failing in his mission. Goemon accepts the blame and swears to slay Hawk.

Zenigata, who was barely in GRAVESTONE, learns of Hawk's mission and plans to arrest him as well as the Lupin gang, though for some unstated reason the cop's superiors want him to leave Hawk alone. (Since Hawk was an American soldier at one point, he may have become involved in black-ops, so that someone in the American spy-networks ordered "hands off.") Hawk tracks Lupin, Jigen and Fujiko to their hideout. They flee into a nearby forest, but just when the man-mountain has them cornered, Goemon appears and challenges Hawk. To the samurai's shock, Hawk's unique axe-weapons counter Goemon's katana, so that the samurai is both wounded and defeated. By dumb luck, Zenigata appears and gets the drop on Hawk, and the giant refuses to fight a lawman, allowing himself to be taken prisoner. Lupin and his friends escape with the wounded Goemon in tow.

Goemon is doubly shamed and subjects himself to a special cleansing ritual, and though his allies feel for him, they can't empathize with his warrior-ethos and end up leaving him behind while they try to figure who hired Hawk to kill them. In their absence, yakuza gangsters make the mistake of messing with Goemon. Ironically, their interference sparks in him the "sixth sense" he seeks to bring forth in order to combat Hawk. The gangsters die bloodily, except for one Goemon spares, to reaffirm the samurai's intention to continue his honor-bound mission. Hawk breaks out of jail and pursues the Lupin Gang, with Zenigata on his heels. But Goemon gets his second chance at vengeance, and no one needs guess who wins. 

There are no concessions to goony humor here as there was, very briefly, in GRAVESTONE, and Zenigata is played utterly straight, rather than as the comic fall-guy. And even though Goemon is the gang-member being spotlighted here, he remains a fairly standard stoic samurai, used largely to contrast his honorable conduct to the ruthlessness of the yakuza. The "sixth sense" is less a marvelous psychic ability than a temporary boosting of Goemon's already-superlative senses. And the best character-moment stems not from Goemon but from his partners, as they watch him undergoing his mystic ordeal. Clearly, despite their patina of tough indifference, Lupin, Jigen and Fujiko are worried about their comrade, even if Fujiko disengages by refusing to recognize male standards of shame, claiming, "Men are stupid." Lupin and Jigen agree with her but remain to watch the samurai for some time longer, being no less implicated in the masculine codes of honor.