THE SPIRIT (1987)

 

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

THE SPIRIT telefilm falls into the category I call "the return of the low-budget superheroes." The unquestioned box-office success of the high-budgeted SUPERMAN films (at least the first three) encouraged a few other superhero-like films with relatively substantial money behind them, such as the early 1980s takes on FLASH GORDON and POPEYE. However, during the late 1980s most superhero projects returned to Cheapville, as had been the case with the majority of such projects from the 1930s through the 1960s. THE SPIRIT, written by the famous (and sometimes infamous) Steven E. DeSouza, was one of these, certainly better than the 1990 CAPTAIN AMERICA film (which had a limited theatrical release) but not as appealing as the more obscure DARK AVENGER telefilm.

The creator of THE SPIRIT comic book, Will Eisner, decried this TV-movie, though I don't know the specifics for his disdain. But one of the biggest problems of DeSouza's script is that he decides to follow the "new guy in town" trope for the debut of Denny Colt (Sam J. Jones), the man who becomes the titular masked hero. In the comic, Colt is a private investigator who decides to take on his crimefighting ID to protect his native burg, Central City. But in the movie, Colt is a cop from Oregon, working a case that involved the unexplained death of a good friend of his. Thus, the young hero-to-be meets in rapid succession the members of his destined support-cast-- his police contact Commissioner Dolan, Dolan's fetching daughter Ellen (Nana Visitor), and a street-smart kid named Eubie (Bumper Robinson). Colt does not initially encounter P'Gell Roxton (MacKinlay Robinson), but the viewer sees her as some sort of society-woman known to Ellen Dolan. 

Within mere hours of Colt asking some unproductive questions about a crime that hasn't even happened, Colt is shot and dumped over a wharf into the sea. However, he survives and adopts his masked identity-- apparently deciding to take up general crimefighting while still investigating the original murder. Given that there really aren't any other suspects for the secret criminal mastermind, even the average viewer probably knew that P'Gell would turn out to be the main villain, since there was no other reason for her to be in the story.

DeSouza and director Michael Schulz (CAR WASH, TARZAN IN MANHATTAN) weren't capable of pulling of the stylistic flair of Eisner's comics-feature. However, they did make an effort to duplicate some of the visual tropes seen in the Eisner books, like the way the Spirit's clothes not infrequently get ripped during his many brawls. Though there only two comely young women in the film, the Spirit is automatically as catnip to both kittens, which is the one Eisner-trope the TV-film shares with the 2008 theatrical movie. Sam J. Jones, in addition to placing his ripped physique on display, successfully captures the "aw shucks" persona of the comics-hero, but DeSouza's script isn't more than occasionally amusing. And why bother introducing "Eubie"-- DeSouza's stand-in for the comic's "Ebony White," whose caricatured depiction was verboten by 1987-- if you're not going to give the hero's assistant anything fun to do? Robinson also doesn't get much help from DeSouza in portraying one of Eisner's classic "femmes fatales," but that too reflects not on the actress's talent but on the writer's decision to make her a "stealth villain" for no good reason.

THE MUTATIONS (1974)

 

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

Someone has said that artists are like sorcerers who can be bound by their own spells. Certainly this is true of those creators who become so enraptured by certain themes that they repeat them obsessively. That said, obviously there are also creators to whom spell-casting is just a job, and they use magic after the fashion of Mickey Mouse’s junior magician in FANTASIA. -- my review of THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB

THE MUTATIONS, which I'd only watched once long ago, seemed at second glance to have some deeper mythic content-- at least, more than one finds in the majority of "mad scientist" movies that don't have the names of either "Jekyll" or "Frankenstein" in the title. But on further reconsideration I decided that I was seeing more potential in the script than its creators had managed to execute.

MUTATIONS was directed by the famed cinematographer Jack Cardiff, but the credited writers were Edward Mann and Robert D. Weinbach. I don't know how the two became associated, but the earliest IMDB credits they hold in common appear for 1966's THE HALLUCINATION GENERATION, which both men co-wrote, with Weinbach producing and Mann directing. Most of their credits, whether together or separate from one another, seem to indicate just basic journeyman proclivities-- nothing all that bad, but nothing all that good either.

MUTATIONS was circulated with the alternate title of THE FREAKMAKER, and in one respect, the latter name indicates how much the writers were invested in providing a shout-out to Tod Browning's 1932 FREAKS. Given the way their script includes a quote of the signature line, "One of us, we accept him," there's not much question that the writers made some sort of connection. Since they hadn't made a lot of horror films before this one, perhaps they hoped to appeal to the readers of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, who might be the only movie-goers who were hip to the joys of the Browning film in 1974. 

MUTATIONS's starring mad scientist is Doctor Nolder (Donald Pleasance), sort of a botanical version of Doctor Moreau. Just like most of the demented researchers from B-films of the 30s and 40s, Nolder has a noble goal in mind, which for him justifies preying on random individuals to become his test subjects. Similarly, Nolder also requires a henchman to help him with the heavy lifting-- which is where the story veers off into the terrain of the freakshow.

In most mad science movies, the experimenter's failures simply die, after which the henchman dumps the bodies. Someone then finds the bodies and figures out the nature of these heinous crimes-for-science. But MUTATIONS builds up the role of the henchman in the form of Lynch (Tom Baker). Lynch himself is a freak, a victim of extreme acromegalic deformation, and when any of Nolder's freaky mutations survive, Lynch attempts to profit by placing these anatomical horrors in a freakshow, which he more or less co-owns with his midget partner Burns (Michael Dunn). Neither Burns nor any of the "natural freaks" at the show are aware of what Lynch is doing, but they know that he treats them cruelly and with contempt. Lynch feels free to do so because Nolder has promised to cure his acromegaly and make him normal, so that he feels as if he's going to be liberated from freak-status at some future point. To be sure, there's an odd scene in which Lynch successfully buying sex from a prostitute, but this incident is most likely meant to underscore his inability to empathize with the similar sufferings of other "freak-kind." Indeed, in the scene where the freaks rather sarcastically invite him to join their ranks for a birthday party, he smashes up the celebration, showing his utter indifference to them.

Nolder, though, is the source of what could have been a strong mythic discourse. When not mutating innocents, Nolder lectures a college class on his theories of creating spontaneous mutations of fully matured organisms, which he believes can make possible the survival of humankind. But in his lectures, he admits that some mutations can be maladaptive, which lead to what the general public call "freaks." At the same time, he refers to his students as "freaks" because they're part of the evolutionary scheme. In more inventive hands, this could have been a clever meditation on the nature of evolution. But though Mann and Weinbach come up with fairly insightful lines at times, there's no cohesive vision here, and so the movie devolves into just another rampaging monster flick-- more nonsensical than many, since the final monster is sort of a "Venus fly trap man." 

Nolder talks the right talk for a misguided idealist, but his character is never convincing in the least, and Donald Pleasance underplays so much as to seem somnambulistic. Baker, given a stronger character, is able to render a better performance, but he's still not a compelling presence, any more than are the freak-performers who turn on him in the end. Both, though, are still better than the barely sketched college students on whom Nolder preys. The support-cast includes a number of well-traveled actors-- Brad Harris, Jill Haworth, Julie Ege-- but they too don't get to do anything interesting. There is a little bit of upper-body nudity here, which secured MUTATIONS an "R' rating back in the day-- but the best visuals are the ones Cardiff provides at the beginning, to illustrate one of Nolder's biology lectures.