THE HOUSE OF USHER (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

In my review of this film, I noted that it was one of three 1989 collaborations between producer Harry Alan Towers and director Alan Birkenshaw, and that two of those three were fake adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories. So I decided to look at HOUSE OF USHER, which slightly preceded Birkenshaw's MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.

My re-watch confirmed that the 1989 USHER was as bad as I remembered, as well as a much worse take on Poe than MASQUE. Whereas Birkenshaw's direction on the later film is at least competent, the visuals for USHER are ugly and dispiriting, and the plot-action is just one lumbering grossout scene after the other.

The plot, such as it is, starts with an engaged couple, Ryan and Molly (Rufus Swart, Romy Windsor). They're driving through the English countryside, trying to find the castle of Ryan's uncle Roderick Usher (the same name as the protagonist of the titular Poe story). Two weird children appear in the road, and the driver has to crash the car to avoid hitting the kids-- who are not seen again until the film's end. Molly is largely unhurt, but Ryan suffers injuries. As it happens, though, the butler who works for Roderick happens to be in the area.

Molly passes out, and when she wakes up, she's at the Usher Castle. She meets Roderick (Oliver Reed), who tells her that Ryan was taken to an English hospital, but that Molly can't go visit him until he's better. Having no means of transportation, Molly accepts the situation, though the elder Usher and his servants all seem eccentric. Roughly like the Poe character, Roderick has unusually sharp senses, though the film mostly forgets about this element when it's convenient.

It takes this plodding movie forever to get to the heart of the matter: Roderick's got Ryan squirreled away in the castle, to use him as a threat against Molly. Because the Ushers suffer from a "blood taint," Roderick wants Molly to wed him so that he can produce a line of healthy children. I can't resist mentioning that this part resembles the plot of the original Gothic novel, THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO, though I doubt either the writer or director were aware of that book. I can only guess that the writer picked up on the arguable incest-elements of the original story, in which Roderick has his sister buried alive for some transgressive reason, and he reworked that into a "bad father" drama. So most of the film is about Molly trying to win free of Roderick's tyranny, like a lot of mainstream Gothics.

For good measure, halfway through the movie the audience learns that Roderick has a brother named Walter (Donald Pleasance), who's lived for years in the castle as a virtual prisoner. But Walter, who wears a drill-bit glove on one hand, may be crazier than Roderick. After a lot of blundering attempts at shock, there's a big fight between Ryan and the psycho brothers, and the house catches on fire as Roderick chases Molly--

And suddenly, with no explanation, or even a dream-transition, Molly and Ryan are back in their car, on the English highway, looking for Roderick's castle. But this time, Molly, guided by "women's intuition," suggests they drive back the way they came. As they do so, the same two kids from the opening are seen walking along the highway, but they merely watch as the car implicitly drives away from its encounter with the Gothic patriarch.

This ending is probably the most interesting thing about this dismal movie. Possibly Birkenshaw thought this "arty" touch would grab the horror-audience. I've discussed the idea of the "movie as premonitory dream" in my review of INVADERS FROM MARS. But that film plays fair in showing the viewpoint character having dreams that may or may not come true, and USHER utterly fails to understand how the dream-trope works when well done. Next to this massive misfire, MASQUE is refreshingly ordinary.

THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR 2 (1993)

 

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

Although BRIDE 2 came out the same year as BRIDE 1, it still met the fate of many other sequels: not quite managing, even with the best efforts, to duplicate the first film's chemistry.

Now, BRIDE 1 was all about how clan-conflicts doomed the great love of two members of said clans: young swordsman Yihang of the WuDang Clan, and "wolf girl" Lien from WuShuang. Feelings of betrayal cause Lien to transform into a blood-hungry "white-haired witch" who can, among other things, strangle or stab people with her extensible hair-follicles. Most of the clans are decimated by their conflict as well, although WuShuang seems totally gone while WuDang has apparently reconstituted itself, to judge by the number of young people still amid its ranks. However, witchy Lien has built a new clan made up largely of other women betrayed by their male lovers, and with the aid of these women warriors she's continued to prey on all local clans. Apparently all this has remained the state of affairs for ten years since the first film, because Yihang waits ten years for the blooming of a magical flower that can cure Lien's madness.

However, the Lien-Yihang conflict can no longer drive the narrative, so the writers-- one of whom was BRIDE 1's director Ronny Yu-- focus upon a new couple. This time both romantic leads come from the WuDang Clan: Yu Qin (Joey Meng) and Feng (Sunny Chan). Feng is the nephew of Yihang, who to the best of everyone's knowledge is still brooding atop some snowy mountain, waiting for the blooming of the magic flower. The fact that Feng's uncle brought about much of WuDang's suffering doesn't seem to bother anyone, and everyone seems quite happy that Feng will become the new head of the clan once he's married. (To be sure, there's one female, Yu Hee, who has a thing for Feng, just as there was a side-character in BRIDE 1 who wanted to win Yihang's love-- but Yu Hee ends up supporting Feng's romance despite her own feelings.)

Lien, who's still pissed at WuDang, abducts Yu Qin but leaves Feng alive. Feng thus marshals six other stalwarts, including Yu Hee, to liberate the bride who doesn't have white hair. While they prepare for battle, the audience sees that again Lien has fallen prey to bad advice. Chen, one of the members belonging to Lien's clan of disaffected females, has conceived a lesbian passion for Lien and is jealous of Yihang when Lien remains distant. Chen persuades Lien to brainwash Yu Qin to believe herself betrayed by Feng. Thus, when the knights of WuDang attack, Yu Qin joins the other Amazons in routing her former friends. But on the good side, the magic flower has bloomed, and Yihang is at least ready to make amends for his past deeds.

The various dramatic arcs involving Feng and Yu Qin, or Lien and Chen, are not very involving, and the production values are a little less impressive this time out. I don't think new director David Wu is at fault, though, and all the actors certainly do their best. The doomed reunion of Lien and Yihang has all the expected sturm und drang one might desire of a splashy romance, and BRIDE 2 gets that across in a satisfactory fashion, though the script doesn't evince the more imaginative concepts seen in the first part.

HAUNTING FEAR (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Leading lady Brinke Stevens has stated that she felt that her role in HAUNTING FEAR was her best performance. And she does well in the central role of a woman consumed by the Poesque fear of being buried alive-- though her sentiments might be skewed by the fact that another actress, Delia Sheppard, was relegated to perform the sex scenes for this steamy DTV production.

FEAR does look a little better than the average flick directed by Fred Olen Ray-- though since he's also the writer, no one should expect much from the script. Despite allusions to Poe's "Premature Burial," the overall structure has greater resemblance to "Fall of the House of Usher," where a woman's buried alive due to masculine interference.

Rich lady Victoria (Stevens), married to "kept husband" Terry (Jay Richardson), has had a deathly fear of premature burial since the untimely death of her father. She nurtures the unproven belief that her father's physician Carlton (Robert Clarke) conspired to use his medical knowledge to off Victoria's father. This trope, in which a woman divides paternal influence into a "good father" and a "bad father," is in the end wasted by Ray, turning out to be nothing but a lousy red herring. Husband Terry not only doesn't credence Victoria's irrational fears, he even insists that she continue seeing Carlton for medication.

Meanwhile, Terry's got a couple of skeletons in his private closet. He's racked up big gambling debts, causing a mobster (Robert Quarry) to hire a private detective (Jan-Michael Vincent) to surveil the couple's house. More importantly, Terry's banging his secretary Lisa (Sheppard) on the side, and Lisa urges Terry to off his wife so that she Lisa can take over.

There's some time-wasting folderol in which a psychiatrist (top billed Karen Black) uses hypnotic regression to solve Victoria's obsession. Victoria supposedly imagines that in a past life she was raped by her husband's brother, though nothing in the narrative validates this vision. In any case, Terry and Lisa finally get down to brass tacks, consigning Victoria to a coffin, hoping she'll perish of a "natural" heart attack. Instead, what doesn't kill Victoria makes her stronger, and like Madeleine from HOUSE OF USHER, she inexplicably breaks out of the coffin and wreaks bloody vengeance on her would-be killers. Just to give Vincent something to do, he tries to capture Victoria and gets cut up a bit, after which she simply escapes, possibly in a riff on HALLOWEEN's ending.

Like a lot of Ray movies, the story's just an excuse to let his stock company players strut their stuff, some with very small roles, like Hoke Howell and Michael Berryman. But there's enough gratuitous sex and gore to keep things from getting too dull. 

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

Though this MASQUE is yet another "phony Poe" movie that captures nothing of the writer's unique appeal, it's certainly the best of the three films British producer Harry Alan Towers made with American journeyman director Alan Birkenshaw circa 1989. In fact, this movie shares with 1989's TEN LITTLE INDIANS the same top-billed stars-- Frank Stallone, Brenda Vaccaro, and Herbert Lom-- as well as having been shot mostly in South Africa. (I assume the exteriors showing a Bavarian castle were put together thanks to Towers' legendary European connections.) Stallone and Vaccaro definitely don't deserve their top billing in MASQUE, and though Lom's role is more substantial, viewpoint character Rebecca, played by Michelle McBride, provides the heavy lifting here. In addition, the real star of the show is MASQUE's psycho-killer, and though she doesn't have very good motivations at least she racks up a pretty strong body count.

Rebecca journeys to the Bavarian castle of a famous rich guy, Ludwing (Lom). He's holding a lavish costume party for his many acquaintances and hangers-on, and one of those guests is soap-opera actress Elena (Vaccaro). Rebecca, in line with her profession as a photographer-paparazzi, hopes to get some sensational photos of the aging soap-queen, though the only thing Elena does at the bash is to canoodle with some much younger men. I assume that the part of Elena was concocted to give Vaccaro a role, since it would have made more sense had Rebecca been focused on the mysterious Ludwig. In any case, she counterfeits an invitation to the party and dons a Cupid-costume, all the better to conceal a camera in her bow. 

Some reviews call this a "slasher." But since the victims are brought together because of the partygoers' indebtedness to wealthy Ludwig, the movie has more structural resemblance to "mystery killer" films, ranging from the "old dark house" flicks of the thirties to the aforementioned TEN LITTLE INDIANS book/play by Agatha Christie. MASQUE does have a killer dressed up in a costume like that of Poe's Red Death, but one can find cloaked murderers in the 1930s as well as in the 1980s-- though the level of violence here is definitely post-slasher. This "Red Death" does want to wipe out all of the partygoers, which is about the only element the movie has in common with the Poe story. Since writer Michael Murray had also worked on the other Towers-Birkenshaw collab of 1989, THE HOUSE OF USHER, he apparently decided to up the Poesque elements by having one victim killed by a knife-edged pendulum.

It takes a while for Ludwig and his guests to twig to the fact that some of the attendees are being murdered (including early fatality Elena), and when they do, the film faces the usual problems of the "old dark house" plot: "how do you keep the pool of victims available for further murders?" Ludwig, who's fixated on keeping his guests together as his extended family, uses mechanical gates to keep everyone confined to the castle, though clearly, it's the script that keeps the panicky guests from escaping by other means. Ludwig is never a serious contender for the Big Reveal, and indeed he's slain by the serial slayer.

The writer doesn't bother with leaving clues to the mystery killer's ID; after a half dozen partygoers are slain, an airheaded actress named Collette (Christine Lunde) simply reveals that her intent was to kill off all the other hangers-on so that Ludwig would devote his attention to her. Of course, her killing Ludwig doesn't track too well with that motivation. But at least MASQUE ends with a lively set-piece: that of Rebecca fist-fighting Collette for three-four minutes before Collette meets her doom. 

There's nothing special about MASQUE, but production values are decent, Lom has some good moments, and McBride makes her simple character appealing throughout. Devotees of bad acting may be disappointed that Vaccaro isn't terrible, but Frank Stallone's nothingburger role as a Bavarian duke should take up the slack. 

 

SNAKE IN THE CRANE'S SHADOW (1978)

 

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

This title is horribly generic, but I suppose it's slightly preferable to the Taiwanese one, translating to something like "Adventure of the Heaven Mouse."

SNAKE is a slackly plotted "hunt for the valuable object" tale, in which two martial artists with disabilities try to keep the object and the treasure it leads to out of the hands of assorted ne'er-do-wells. This main plotline competes with a B-plot in which three goofballs with no martial skills get in the way of the female fighter and even try to become her students. One of the doofuses is played by familiar face Dean Shek, but the facial recognition doesn't make up for a lot of stupid so-called comedy.

As for the "heroes with disabilities," one is a cripple known as Unicorn (Wen Chiang-long), who's missing a leg, and the other is the blind Dragon Lady (Lung Chung-erh). Damned if I could figure out why either of them devotes their talents to protecting the pieces of a map from various bad guys, but that's what they choose to do. The fights are okay but the only somewhat memorable moments are when one or more of the villains use noise to mess with Dragon Lady's acute senses. The oddest such method is some sort of net studded with hooks, capable of slashing an enemy's face if it makes contact. I believe the enemy wielding this diabolical device was known as the Eight Steps Killer (Lung Tien-Hsiang), but I wouldn't swear to it.

Ironically, some months after this dud, Lung Chung-erh once more portrayed a martially skilled blind woman in the much more entertaining SECRET MESSAGE, aka NINJA MASSACRE. 

STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977)

 

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

I've bagged on a lot on Italian space operas of the 1960s and 1970s, but I'll give them a blanket credit for one thing: they're usually competent about distinguishing the good guys from the bad guys.

STARSHIP INVASIONS, forever to be known as "that terrible flick that came out the same year as STAR WARS, does establish that the flying saucers descending to Earth hold a bunch of bad guys. These humanoids, who boast the title of "The Legion of the Winged Serpent," generally wear black robes embroidered with said serpents, and they've been forced to look for a new planet since a supernova has destroyed their world. All of them are telepaths who never communicate except through thought, so one will see a lot of actors interacting with their mouths closed all the time. Their leader is Captain Rameses (Christopher Lee), who orders some abductions of Earthmen to suss out the natives. The research shows that the Earth-people are somehow descendants of the Legion-race, which I guess somehow plays into the alien leader having the name of an Egyptian pharaoh and using the image of Quetzalcoatl on his robe.

But belatedly the viewer's told that in order to make war on the humans, Rameses must dispose of a small task force of resident aliens, called Zetans. These bald-headed guys represent a galactic-empire-esque "League of Races" who watch over Earth to prevent other ETs from interfering with the protected species of humans. Rameses chats up the leader of the Zetans, pretending to have no hostile intent, and the unspeaking leader apparently avails himself of the Zetans' pet hookers. (The hookers all dress like Vampirella and look like regular Caucasian females.) Rameses then pulls a sneak attack on the Zetans. He fails to wipe them out, though, and for the rest of the movie the two ET forces have seesaw battles until the League defeats the Legion. To say the least, these battles are so desultory that I don't deem the movie combative.

This setup might sound like basic space opera so easy, "even an Italian filmmaker could do it!" But American-born writer-director Ed Hunt executes this Canadian flick with an enervating lack of energy. Lee doesn't help by playing his character as utterly stone-faced, and the two name-actors playing a UFO researcher and his wife (Robert Vaughn, Helen Shaver) are just as boring, but without any external justification for their dullness.

As far as which character is the star of this tired show, I suppose it would be Rameses, who's the representative of his self-interested people. But damn, it's an uninteresting choice.

THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR (1993)

 

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

I've screened BRIDE and its sequel a few times before this, but this was the first time I saw the up-front romantic conflict as reflective of a deeper sociological quandary. And although BRIDE was adapted from a 1958 novel, its conflict reminded me of the clash between "order and chaos" as depicted by many cinematic versions of China's "White Snake" folktale, of which the best in my view is 2011's THE SORCERER AND THE WHITE SNAKE.

Both in dubbed and subbed forms, I don't think the script-- co-written by director Ronny Yu-- explicitly maps out the nature of the differences between the two warring clans of BRIDE: the WuDang and the WuShuang. Midway through the film, a flashback establishes that the villains-- the conjoined twins "Male Ji" and "Female Ji" (Francis Ng, Elaine Liu) -- once belonged to WuDang. The twins committed some transgression against WuDang ethics, prompting some of the elders to call for their execution. One elder, Ziyang, pleads for mercy, so that the twins are simply exiled-- though the Jis end up forming their own antagonistic clan, the WuShuang, christened by the twins' surname. 

However, though I don't speak Chinese and don't know precisely what the performers are saying in the film, visually I think Yu *shows* us the aforementioned opposition. WuDang is a clan dedicated to strict orderliness, in which everyone wears dark, sober colors and talks about the necessity to expand their influence over the rival clans. The members of Clan WuShuang wear gaudy clothes and celebrate with wild dances, with at least one woman gamboling about in the nude-- hence, "chaos." Yu never explicitly asserts that the individual can suffer equally from "too much order" as from "too much chaos," but such is the fate of the tragic young lovers.  

The tragedy of the lovers is foreshadowed by a brief frame-story, which I'll address later. Presumably the source novel established the way the two protagonists were raised. Male lover Yihang (Leslie Cheung) is taught martial arts, presumably since his youngest years, by the WuDang Clan, with Ziyang functioning as Yihang's father-figure. Female lover Lien Nichang spent her earlier years as a "wolf girl," but the Ji Twins bring her into the WuShuang Clan. Implicitly the twins teach Lien both martial arts and some sort of magic, but initially their main intention is to use her as a tool in their war with WuDang.

But self-interest muddies the water on both sides. In WuShuang, Male Ji conceives a deep passion for Lien, even though his female half mocks him for thinking he can enjoy normal sexual relations. In WuDang, Yihang gets slightly less overt interference, but the spartan young woman Lu Hua (Kit Ying Lam) makes clear that she's warm for his form. However, Yihang experiences his first stirrings of romance when he meets Lien on the field of battle. Lien is awesome as she whips her way through multiple WuDang soldiers, but what most impresses Yihang is seeing her care for an infant birthed by a dying mother.

It doesn't take long for Yihang to worm his way into the affections of Lien, who hasn't exactly had a long list of boyfriends at this point. In no time, they've plighted their troth, and Lien asks Yihang to swear his love for her. So naturally, the competing factions work to pull them apart, and Lien, feeling betrayed, turns against all humanity, transformed (for reasons never made clear in any version I've watched) into an affect-less white-haired witch. Though the Ji Twins are destroyed by the forces they set in motion, and most of the WuDang is decimated, the lovers remain separated for the next ten years. This is the substance of the frame-story: that for ten years Yihang guards over a unique magical flower that he thinks may return Lien to human status-- and this plays into the narrative of the sequel, released in the same year, albeit with a new cast of support-characters for Cheung and Lin. More on that in a forthcoming review.

WHITE-HAIRED DEVIL LADY (2020)

 

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

Whatever the credits of this 2020 film might aver, WHITE HAIRED DEVIL LADY certainly seems to be dwelling under the long shadow of the celebrated 1990s BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR films. 

Whereas those films were broad and operatic, though, writer-director Tianyu Zhou turns out a somewhat fast-paced rendition of the earlier films' favorite tropes: a dastardly plot by royal conspirators, a doomed romance between a loyal Chinese soldier and a mysterious female fighter, and the female's alienation from romantic love, culminating in her transformation into a white-haired witch-woman.

There's not much question that the BRIDE films explored all of these tropes with greater dramatic power than LADY. Nevertheless, director Zhou-- who may be a young guy, since he's only directed one other movie-- displays a fine power to stage enchanting scenes in a fantasy-China that never was. The actors don't really have a chance to shine because the complicated plot races from point to point, but they and their costumes all look very good, particularly the titular "devil lady" Lian Nishang (Weina Zhang). While I can't say that the action-sequences are as evocative as the quieter, more lyrical moments, Nishang has a bravura sequence in which she takes out about ten men with nothing but a dagger.

I really love the look of this film and wish the plot was the equal of the visuals. Incidentally, though IMDB lists a separate film on Zhou's resume. "White-Haired Princess," I watched twenty minutes of a film with that title online, and I believe this is the same film as DEVIL LADY.

KIM POSSIBLE (2019)

 

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

The KIM POSSIBLE series was one of the better Disney Channel offerings of the early 2000s. Like most teleserials, the show had its moments of repetitiveness or lame humor. But its simple mission-- to portray a female super-agent as an indicator of "possibilities" for young girls-- was handled with a light touch, in contradistinction to the "toxic femininity" movies of Marvel's Phase Four and onward.

The script for the 2019 movie, co-written by the cartoon's creators and one other writer, zeros in on the fantasy behind Kim Possible, that of "the overachieving high school student." With her goofy partner Ron Stoppable, non-animated Kim (Sadie Stanley) starts out the film by saving a captive scientist from the evil Professor Dementor, and still having plenty of energy to go out for cheerleading the next day. Kim and Ron even find time to take pity on a poor, friendless student named Athena (Ciara Riley Wilson). They show Athena how to come out of her shell and be more assertive, like Kim. The only trouble is, Athena learns her lessons too well. Soon she's eclipsed Kim as the Alpha Female at the high school, and even faithful Ron remarks that she's "out-Kimmed Kim."

It's a devious plot, of course. Possible's favorite fiends, the goofy Doctor Drakken and his acerbic henchwoman Shego (Todd Stashwick, Taylor Ortega) created Athena, a robot able to duplicate Kim's feats so as to undermine the super-agent's confidence. The diabolical duo lure Kim, Ron, and their helpers (Kim's mom and grandmom, both of whom are also ass-kickers) to their sanctuary, where they reveal Athena's nature. With customary nonsense-science, Drakken plans to use a machine to drain off Kim's confidence to make himself a superman, or something. Further, the process of transferring this emotional state from Athena, his go-between, will destroy the young girl robot-- unless Kim, Ron, and Kim's toughgirl relatives can stop the evildoers.

For a Disney TV movie, production values are very good, and the fight-scenes are well-handled both in terms of action and comic timing. I could have done without Ron Stoppable coming across his wacky pet from the cartoon show. Why does the comedy relief need another comedy relief? But the histrionics that result when Kim gets depressed at not being the Number One Worldsaver, and then critiques herself for her unseemly ego, are much better than I would have expected. Stashwick and Ortega get across the same constant backbiting relationship seen in the animated versions of Drakken and Shego, and I give the flick extra points for casting BUFFY's Alyson Hannigan as Kim Possible's live-action mother.    

Though Dementor doesn't share any scenes with Drakken and Shego, I rate the movie as a crossover just for having two independent "villainy-generators" in the narrative.

LEGENDS OF THE SUPERHEROES (1979)

 

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

The seventies were an ambivalent time for costumed superhero movies. Even the plethora of low-budget superhero films seen in the sixties dwindled in the following decade, with DOC SAVAGE-- THE MAN OF BRONZE the standout failure of the decade's first half, while the second half was distinguished for the 1978 SUPERMAN, the first costumed hero film with a substantial budget. However, on the small screen, live-action superheroes like Wonder Woman and the Hulk, as well as "adjacent" types like the Bionic Duo, became moderately popular, though even the most successful shows were less successful in their aim than '66 BATMAN. 

Saturday morning cartoons also paled next to their sixties predecessors, but Hanna-Barbera's SUPER FRIENDS found a comfortable niche that lasted (in one form or another) from 1973 to 1985. The third SUPER FRIENDS series, CHALLENGE OF THE SUPER FRIENDS, was the first to closely follow the format of the various DC comics vis-a-vis having the Justice League square off against various established super-villains, most of whom got their first incarnation in another medium in the H-B cartoon.

I know that a lot of superhero fans liked CHALLENGE, but it may not have been particularly successful ratings-wise, since the next SUPER FRIENDS show, debuting in September 1979, went back to a format of simpler anthology-stories, not dominantly indebted to DC Comics continuity. But it's still odd that Hanna-Barbera decided to produce a sort of vaudeville-roadshow version of CHALLENGE. shot on videotape and on a paucity of sets. The two hour-long episodes, airing in prime time a week apart in January 1979, weren't in a position to court a regular kid-audience, and their silly approach to the subject matter wouldn't have pleased comics-fans-- not that comics-fans were even a demographic anyone in prime time cared to pursue. My best guess is that the producers had some idea of duplicating the success of '66 BATMAN-- "ha, ha; aren't costumed heroes and villains absurd to right-thinking adults"-- without understanding what made that show work for sixties adults, at least for a short period of time.  

The first special, titled THE CHALLENGE in emulation of the 1978 cartoon show, loosely follows the format as well, albeit with a more openly absurd premise. First a montage introduces the eight heroes, who are never called either "Justice League" or "Super Friends," consisting of The Flash, Captain Marvel, The Huntress, Black Canary, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Batman and Robin. The only significant performers here are the iconic performers of '66 BATMAN, with Adam West and Burt Ward reprising their costumed roles for the last time in a full live-action production. Then, as in the cartoon, the viewer sees the seven villains, never called "Legion of Doom"-- and here too, the one alumnus from '66 BATMAN, Frank Gorshin's Riddler, is the only actor I'm going to cite here. Riddler, Solomon Grundy, Sinestro and Giganta were the only characters who had appeared in CHALLENGE, while Doctor Sivana was almost certainly brought in as a shout-out to the Captain Marvel mythology, and Weather Wizard to that of The Flash. The seventh choice, the sorcerer Mordru, was the oddest choice, given that the character ordinarily operated in the pages of DC's LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES comic. It's possible that the writers just wanted a magician who could bring about various cheapjack effects, and so chose Mordru at random.

The writers' choice of plotlines also indicates a contempt for the superhero genre. The villains plot to blow up the world with a doomsday device-- without making the slightest comment about how they're going to avoid being destroyed as well, since they're physically located on the Earth. But they all agree that destroying the world's no fun unless they can rub it in the heroes' faces. Therefore, they send the heroes vague clues about the bomb, and when the champions run around looking for the device, the villains seek to undermine their efforts. At no time do the villains seek to kill their antagonists; they just seem to want to humiliate them. Most of the encounters play like comical blackout-skits-- Riddler poses as a psychiatrist and talks Captain Marvel into having a couch-session-- though the hulking Solomon Grundy does have some very short fights with Batman, Hawkman and Black Canary. Finally, the villains manage to cause the heroes to lose their super-powers-- but then the bumbling Grundy exposes himself and the rest of the Faux-Legion to the same depowering influence. This leads to a climactic but poorly choreographed brawl, which of course the heroes win, saving the world and ensuring that the first special, at least, falls into the combative mode. 

Certain moments of silliness in CHALLENGE might be funny to some viewers in the right mood, maybe mostly the material written for West and Ward, playing slightly more dopey versions of the '66 TV-heroes. But I don't need to spend much time on the second and last special, THE ROAST, because it's almost humor-free. It's just one roast-style skit after another, and the only bit that had some potential was an interview asking the newly married Giganta about her connubial relations with her spouse, the six-inch-tall Atom (making his live-action debut here). Even then, the punchline is basically a variation on the old, "Hey, if she dies, she dies" schtick. Again, there may be some nostalgia value thanks to the participation of West and Ward (though not Gorshin this time). Ruth Buzzi pops up playing the CAPTAIN MARVEL villain Aunt Minerva, and Mordru (Gabriel Dell of the "Dead End Kids" film-series) sings a song. Oh, and both specials guest William Schallert as "Retired Man," wherein Schallert largely reprises the "doddering old fool" type of character he'd done for the sixties GET SMART series.

A few of the costumes, like Mordru's, are decently executed. But aside from that, and the nostalgia-value of the Bat-alumni, both specials were largely worthless-- though I must admit that "so bad it's good" is in the eyes of the beholder.

DREDD (2012)

 

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

Though like many viewers I didn't care for the sentimentality ladled into the 1995 JUDGE DREDD, the 2012 DREDD seemed to make the opposite errors: too much unstinting violence, without any of the comic book's penchant for over-the-top absurdity.

Because the 2012 movie had only a third of the operating budget of the 1995 film, the viewer only sees a handful of establishing scenes of the hero's stomping-grounds, the vastly overpopulated Mega-City One, while there's only passing reference to the irradiated wasteland surrounding the super-burg. The majority of the film's action takes place in one location, a titanic, deteriorated high-rise whose rooms and corridors all look pretty much the same.

The main thrust of Alex Garland's script follows the trope of "experienced cop trains rookie." The old hand is of course Dredd (Karl Urban), while the rookie is the character of Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby). In the British comics, Anderson got her start as a support-character in JUDGE DREDD stories and was spun off into her own solo comics-series. Anderson's first live-action outing thus constitutes a crossover between two icons with their own respective serials.

One of Dredd's superiors wants Dredd to test Anderson in the field because she's a mutant affected at birth by radiation exposure, with the consequence that she has the power to invade the minds of other individuals. Despite the possibility that such talents might benefit the Judges' operations in Mega-City, Dredd takes a hard line with his student, warning her that any infraction of Judge standards will ruin her chances at full admission.

For Anderson's baptism of fire, she joins Dredd in his investigation of a flagrant murder at a high-rise, Peach Trees, ruled by a major drug-lord, "Ma-Ma" (Lena Headey). When the two Judges enter the high-rise, Anderson's powers easily target the drug-lord as the culprit. Ma-Ma seeks to exterminate the two law-officers by closing the high-rise's nuclear blast doors, so that Ma-Ma's gang can overwhelm and slay the Judges. Even if this action had succeeded, though, it's not clear as to what Ma-Ma would have done about follow-up investigations by the Judge community.

Once the setup is complete, DREDD becomes just one attack after another, until the future-cops eventually face down Ma-Ma with the expected results. Urban's Dredd may be more of an uncompromising rock of a man than the Stallone version, but his lack of affect doesn't  encourage viewer identification. Thirlby's Anderson holds one's interest a lot more, since she has the dramatic arc of wanting a Judgeship to justify her status as a mutated human. Additionally, like the comics-character she almost never wears her Judge-helmet, ostensibly because it interferes with her psychic abilities, though the cinematic effect is that the performer is better able to convey emotional states. Thirlby does a good job of conveying both vulnerability and toughness when necessary, while Urban's characterization is compromised by the over-softness of his voice.

DREDD was a box office failure, and as yet no one has taken a shot at the third shot at the franchise. Ideally, a new iteration ought to find a way to take the best aspects of the two adaptations while leaving out all the proven flaws.  

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.