DEVILMAN STORY (1967)

 

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

DEVILMAN STORY (a title which at least distances the film from any adaptations of Go Nagai's DEVILMAN) is a very dull adventure from director Paolo Bianchini, though at least it's a little better photographed than some other efforts from the same period. 

The titular "Devilman" is a mad scientist (possibly "Ken Wood") who sets up his own installation somewhere in North Africa, manned by various Arabs. His dastardly plot involves creating an artificial "super-brain," which he hopes to insert in his own cranium in order to give him the intelligence he needs to conquer the world. To this end, he kidnaps a brain surgeon from Europe and spirits him down to his hidden HQ. However, the surgeon's daughter Christina (Luisa Barrato) begins searching for her missing father, and by chance crusading journalist Mike Harway (Guy Madison) joins forces with the young lady and accompanies her to North Africa. Devilman abducts Christina and plans to perform some experiment on her before getting her father to do the big brain-switch. Harway is succored by an Arab tribe, whose leader conveniently reveals that he's been seeking his lost daughter for years. Harway infiltrates the installation, and though he can't overthrow Devilman, he escapes and gets the good Arabs to attack the bad Arabs. Christina and her dad are rescued and Devilman is defeated, never getting his brain transfer.

A year later, Bianchini would work with Wood, Madison and Barrato on SUPERARGO AND THE FACELESS GIANTS, which, while no classic, is a huge improvement on this rote exercise. DEVILMAN is not, as some termed it, a "Eurospy" flick, seeming to be a swipe on a few tropes from the 1960s FANTOMAS movies. Those films, building off the novels of the early 20th century, followed the exploits of master criminal Fantomas as his schemes were continually foiled by an intrepid journalist. But Fantomas was a clever villain, while Bianchini (who allegedly co-wrote the DEVILMAN script) doesn't even put forth basic effort with his super-fiend. It's a minor flaw that the starring villain is never actually called Devilman in the dubbed English version (though I assume that he is in the Italian original). But a more major one is that the evildoer's master plan couldn't possibly work. It would be one thing if Devilman plotted to enhance his normal brainpower. But he seems to be talking about total brain transplant, which of course would eliminate the personality of the villain along with his original brain. Like Fantomas Devilman wears a silver mask all the time, and there's a "Doctor Doom moment" when the heroine pulls off the covering and beholds a mutilated visage (which the viewer does not see). Admittedly the sixties version of Fantomas doesn't have any more deep motives for his depredations than Devilman does, but at least Fantomas had a sense of style.