CHAMBER OF HORRORS (1966)

 

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

"Jason Cravatte, a gentleman with a taste for the sewers..."

Before getting to the film proper, I'll spend some time remarking on the synchronicity of my reviewing, in the same month, two psycho-films I'd only seen once before, both of which could have been really good in their depiction of a common trope: "the Really Rich are Really Messed Up." The other one was A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES, and it shares with CHAMBER OF HORRORS the sense that the filmmakers of both weren't as devoted as they should've been to their psycho-subjects.

CHAMBER is credited to two writers, Stephen Kandel and Ray Russell, and a director, Hy Averback. Both Kandel and Averback were mostly journeymen laborers in the TV field, while Russell is best known for his short story "Mister Sardonicus," which gave rise to the William Castle film of the same name. My guess is that Russell, credited only with contributing to "story" rather than "screenplay," came up with the essence of the perilous psycho of CHAMBER-- which, even in its early origins, seems to have had some elements in common with Castle's other productions. Had Jason Cravatte been better elaborated, he could have been as good as Slade in THE LODGER.

We first see Cravatte (Patrick O'Neal) forcing a minister at gunpoint to marry him to a dead woman. Later, after the law has caught up with Cravatte, he escapes in such a way as to lose one hand. He then becomes a psycho-killer haunting the streets of 1880s Baltimore, but he's actually more interesting in the background provided by his aunt, Mrs. Perryman (Jeanette Nolan). The rich, fifty-something dowager informs the audience that despite the upper-class station of her nephew, he liked "the taste of the sewers" and apparently kept company with all manner of prostitutes (which is substantiated later when Cravatte's seen holed up in a whorehouse). If this was all there was to him, he'd just be a dime-a-dozen roue. But he also had some desire for a "madonna" as an antidote to the whores, because he courted blonde Melinda-- the dead woman seen at the opening-- in the belief that she was virginal. He killed her when he learned she was not pure, and yet he also had some notion that he "purified" her by killing her, for he seems to have every intention of taking his pleasure with her dead body. In addition, even after the madman's been condemned but escapes, he repeats this syndrome by paying a similar-looking prostitute to "play dead."

Unfortunately, the script doesn't follow the "madonna-whore" complex with any close attention. After Cravatte escapes the law and becomes "the Butcher of Baltimore"-- complete with various killing-devices he can fit into his empty wrist-socket-- he takes up a brand- new psycho-obsession. He starts killing off the men who sentenced him to the hangman, and out of nowhere there's some folderol about his forming a "composite corpse" of the body parts of his victims. This poorly conceived notion turns Cravatte into just another gimmick-oriented psycho-killer-- though Patrick O'Neal's rousing performance as Cravatte sustains the film through all its dull spots.

Now, although Cravatte is the Prime icon of CHAMBER OF HORRORS the film, he would not have been had CHAMBER succeeded in its original purpose, as a pilot for a TV-series, originally called "House of Wax" after the 1953 horror-film. If any of the networks had greenlighted "House" as a series, then the default stars of all the episodes would have been the characters Tony Draco (Cesare Danova) and Harold Blount (Wilfrid Hyde-White). These two amateur detectives-- whose backgrounds are spotty at best-- run a wax museum with the title "House of Wax," and unlike the one in the Vincent Price movie, all of their wax statues are devoted to murder and the macabre. Indeed, the script tends to suggest that Draco and Blount's fascination with the macabre-- presented as being benign, I guess like that of the pilot-makers-- is what makes them great detectives. Presumably they would have proved this again and again on a weekly basis. But though there was no series, CHAMBER still ends with the suggestion of another "episode" involving another bizarre murder.

Many reviewers have remarked on how little gore is present in a film about a psycho who frequently stabs people with his hand-utensils. Yet even without the gore, the concept was clearly too disturbing for the TV networks to accept. I speculate that the producers-- one of whom was director Averback-- were hoping to titillate TV audiences by frequently having Draco and Blount make speeches about all the horrible deeds performed by the subjects of their wax exhibits. This idea wouldn't have worked as a TV-show in a million years. But even with all the missteps in the pilot-movie-- enhanced with Castle-like gimmicks when CHAMBER went to theatres-- the Russell-Kandel provides some fun moments, albeit with a poky pace that made me appreciate William Castle's superior narrative drive. 

Next-to-lastly, while CHAMBER's script isn't interested in the opposition between "serene beauty and titillating shocks" established in Crane Wilbur's HOUSE OF WAX script, Averback et al did offer another form of enticement. Aside from the first female victim, only one feminine character is strictly necessary to the script: that of Marie (Laura Devon), a bargirl whom Cravatte makes into his partner, mostly so that she can seduce one of his victims, a horny old trial judge, and then lure the old duffer into a trap. But the script also works in technically unnecessary roles for glamorous actresses like Patrice Wynore and Suzy Parker, as well as several briefly-seen young working-women. (At times CHAMBER almost seems to anticipate how the Italian giallos developed in the early 1970s.) This strategy was doubtless meant to suggest that ladies- man Draco would have a girl to seduce every week had CHAMBER become a series. Indeed, the theatrical movie even gives some exposure to past-their-prime beauties like Nolan and Marie Windsor-- though Nolan steals the show, making clear that her side of the family is just as lubricious as that of Cravatte's paternal line.

Two other last things: first, thanks to a spectacular fight between Cravatte and Draco at the conclusion, CHAMBER, like HOUSE OF WAX, qualifies as a combative drama. Second, right around the time Hy Averback completed the pilot-movie, he became executive producer for the slapstick teleseries F TROOP, which certainly seems to have been much more up his alley.

  

   

                              

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)

 

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

It's extremely amusing that when Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) meets new romantic interest Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), she accuses of having a "practiced apathy." Apathy perfectly describes the third and last Christopher Nolan Bat-film. It's the work of a cynical filmmaker with no interest in the mythos he's exploiting for fame and glory, and when RISES is compared to either BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT, it's hard to imagine this weak effort being anyone's favorite Nolan-Batflick--not even Christopher Nolan's.

So we pick up some time after DARK KNIGHT. That film started out by positing that Batman had managed to whittle down the forces of Gotham's underworld. For RISES, Nolan simply flips the script. Now crime has been all but neutralized by the regular cops, thanks to a miraculous piece of legislation, "the Harvey Dent Act." Only Commissioner Gordon and an essentially retired Caped Crusader know that this popular idol had feet of clay, though the false idol of Harvey Dent empowered the cops so that a bat-vigilante was no longer needed. Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) clearly has a guilty conscience for having helped perpetrated the Big Lie of Harvey Dent's sainthood. Wayne, though, seems content to molder around his mansion, much to the disapproval of Alfred (Michael Caine), who wants the retired superhero to pursue a life of marriage and baby-making. But Wayne's only passion, more or less redirected from crimefighting, has been to plunge all of his company's R&D money into a fusion-energy project, in part also sponsored by rich lady Miranda Tate. 

However, though one of Wayne's father-figures wants him to pursue the course of pipe-and-slippers, his other surrogate dad, Lucius Fox, encourages a return to crimefighter-mode. So does a proxy for a surrogate-son/Boy Wonder, a twenty-something cop named "Robin" Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who's figured out Wayne's deep dark secret. But as always, it's the bad guys who call forth the Batman.

Some forgotten film-reviewer of the 1970 DIRTY HARRY film made the incisive point that the regular cops were fine for dealing with regular criminals, but for super-criminals, the world needed a super-cop. Two super-crooks (not counting yet another piddling appearance by a road-company version of The Scarecrow) come to town not to duel with Batman but to ruin Bruce Wayne. (Alfred doesn't know the new villains' intentions when he castigates Wayne for returning to the superhero game, but the butler's ire mirrors the liberal director's pansy squeamishness toward vigilantes.) At any rate, a brand-new version of Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) steals Wayne's fingerprints, which are used to beggar the billionaire by none other than mercenary Bane (Tom Hardy). The latter fiend, equipped with a Darth Vader breathing-apparatus, resembles both the city-destroying Ra's Al Ghul (who was one of Bane's employers) and the Joker (in his cheerful desire to upend Gotham's financial structure). Oh, and there's a fourth villain in stealth guise, for Miranda Tate is really Talia Al Ghul, daughter of the assassin-lord who gave a wayward, guilty plutocrat the idea of becoming a bat. 

Since Ra's in the first film was a poor excuse for the comics-version, it's no surprise that the Demon's Daughter is similarly underwhelming. Bane in his original appearance was a stupid villain, but Tom Hardy's performance elevates the character slightly. However, the schtick from the comics, in which the villain breaks the hero's back, after which the latter just gets better later on-- is still lame. Nolan's mediocrity, though, knows no limits in his ruination of Catwoman. Hathaway gives her terrible character a game try, but a few decent fight-scenes don't make this Princess of Plunder anything but a wuss. Her only motive for robbery is to pursue a method of erasing her criminal past-- a redo of a similar trope from DARK KNIGHT-- and she betrays Batman to Bane with only minimal regrets. Nolan's Catwoman, as much as his Batman, is defined by what I previously called negative compensation: both are not pursuing positive ends but are fleeing the ghosts of their pasts. Not surprisingly, Nolan, after having given Bruce Wayne two previous drippy love-interests, can't even come close to getting the allure of Catwoman.

So it's another expensive Bat-fake, with carefully crafted (but empty) dialogue, some big FX-scenes at the climax, and a conclusion that does not show the Dark Knight "rising" in any way. i guess Nolan got what he wanted out the Bat-franchise, for he went on to a lot of big, bloated Hollywood projects, none of which I liked. I've accused Nolan of holding a Marxist sympathy for the criminals of his three Bat-films, but his investment in villainy may be more personal. His theft of the Bat-franchise certainly indicates that for him, crime did pay.   

      

                

BEASTMASTER, SEASON 2 (2000-01)

 

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

Compared to Season One, Two evinces more of an elegaic sense, a sense of changing realities and shifting allegiances. But one wonders if this was the original plan, before any shooting began, or if the writers were subconsciously reacting to the departures of some of the key supporting players, and the addition of new ones.

One major addition, which extends to Season Three as well, is the introduction of a potential romantic interest for Dar, who'd lost his lifemate at the end of Season One. Warrior-woman Arina (Marjean Holden) hails from another region-- maybe even another dimension-- but she like Dar has lost her people. Her purpose in her first couple of appearances remains vague, but after a time she becomes an employee of Season Two's "big bad." In due course, though, Arina is sufficiently inspired by the noble altruism of Dar and Tao to join them in more heroic endeavors.

Some of the early episodes of Two suggest that the previous season's main villain, King Zad, represents a fading approach to the acquisition of power: that of simply unleashing hordes of killers to scour the land. Zad's savages, the Terrons, get some substantial competition from a new band of warriors, the Nords, whose leader is supposedly more sophisticated than Zad.    

The more sophisticated tyrant is King Voden (David Paterson), who approaches conquest with a more deliberate, considered air. He's a master schemer rather than a warlord, and one of his big schemes involves taking over the city of Xinca, the home of Tao's Eiron people. Another plot is to suborn Dar's power, to make the Beastmaster turn his animal allies into Voden's shock troops. The episode "Rage" gives Voden something of a psychological backstory. He was one of two princes of the Nord people, but his brother Bakhtiar was the older son of Nord queen Margret, and thus first in line for kingship. Much like cunning Loki playing games with the forthright Thor, Voden taunts Bakhtiar so much that the prince becomes consumed with murderous tendencies. Bakhtiar's mother, wanting to save her favorite son, appeals to an old lover-- none other than the acidulous Ancient One-- to erase his memory and to enchant him so that he'll change into a beast, a puma, when stricken with the urge to murder. Naturally, Dar and Tao intervene to solve the problems of Bakhtiar and Margret. But since the showrunners didn't have any concern with those characters except to show Voden's treachery, both of them disappear.

The Ancient One has his own shakeup. He finally gets sick of "Sorceress #1" (Monika Schnarre) becoming invested in the drama of human lives, so he imprisons her in amber, and replaces her with Sorceress #2 (Dylan Bierk). However, #2 is just as much a human-booster, and she disappears at the end of Season Two also, while Sorceress #1 returns in that final season.

Season 2 also bids farewell to Dar's quixotic patron, the forest-demon Curupira (Emilie de Ravin), who seems to have picked up a mild fancy for her human servant. However, Dar becomes the unwitting target of a demoness chick-fight, for the water-demon Iara (Sam Healy) wants Dar as a lover. Iara wins the contest, exiling Curupira from the BEASTMASTER world, but by the end of Season Two, Iara also fades from said domain.      

All of this character-shuffling makes for pedestrian stories at first, and sometimes the writers work in mythological references that don't track well. "Golgotha" is the title of a jejune episode in which Dar breaks up a sacrificial cult. No person or place in the episode shares the name of the hill on which Christ was sacrificed. So apparently the writer just tossed in that reference because it sounded lofty and significant, even though the sacrifice of Christ, even to a non-believer, is functionally distinct from pagan sacrificial rituals. 

Then three scripts ascend into the realm of high-mythicity, all co-written by one Tony DiFranco-- and all three following one another in broadcast order-- almost as if once everything got sorted out, the writers got more venturesome. The 15th episode, "Centaurs." starts it off. Though BEASTMASTER is set in a world divorced from human history, it's still a mortal realm, and thus capable of being invaded by the denizens of more primeval realms. Two beings from such a realm, a male and female archer both mounted on horses, escape a cataclysm, and for once, they're the ones who pick a quarrel with humans. The archers Rax (female) and Sagitto (male, patently named after Sagittarius) start liberating horses from the warriors of King Voden, which naturally causes Voden to react badly. Dar and Tao seek to help the archers, who turn out to be bonded to their horses in such a way that they and their mounts can morph into centaur-forms. Voden, on learning the centaurs' secret, seeks to bring them under his control.

"Fifth Element"-- Dar and Tao accidentally release Annubis, a spirit of chaos (Bruce Spense), from the confinement placed upon him by the Ancient One in primeval times. Instantly the powerful deity wants to plunge the existing world into chaos, first by changing Tao into a dog-man (supposedly to make Tao resemble the god's former pet, Cerberus) and then causing torrential rains to pervade their world. Even serpent-woman Iara, now in charge of the natural world, can't stand against Annubis' mastery of the four elements, but Dar can, if he solves the riddle of "the fifth element." The mythological names are poorly chosen, but the trope of a deity who simply wants to eradicate the world to start over is mythically strong.

"A Terrible Silence"-- Iara abandons subtlety and seeks to make Dar her leman, but he refuses. Like frustrated Ishtar to Gilgamesh, Iara curses her servant. In this case, because Iara inherited all of Curupira's powers, Iara can strip Dar of his Doctor Doolittle powers. This, however, causes the entire natural world to fall into chaos, discommoding even the Ancient One and the second sorceress. Dar must complete a great task in order to regain his abilities.

But after those three tales, the show returns to relatively simple formulas-- even other episodes written by DiFranco. Arina returns after being absent for several stories but becomes more of a regular in the last season. And despite the Ancient One's prophecies, to the effect that Zad was doomed to fade away, he triumphs over King Voden, who brief reign as "big bad" comes to an untimely end--after which Zad takes on a new role in the third season.   

       

       

HULK VS (2009)

 

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

Arguably, following the conclusion of MCU's Phase Three, the Hulk was treated even more shabbily than Thor. However, for whatever reason Marvel's animation division didn't stint on exploiting the Green Goliath's name value, and even relatively late projects like HULK: WHERE MONSTERS DWELL and the AGENTS OF SMASH series look much better than sad live-action bile like SHE-HULK. That said, of the two short features comprising HULK VS, appearing the year after the exemplary INCREDIBLE HULK movie, is all that impressive. 

In HULK VS. THOR, two of the Thunder God's perennial opponents, Loki and The Enchantress, whisk Bruce Banner to Asgard. There Loki separates the Hulk persona from Banner and sets the Green Goliath on Asgard, with Loki himself pulling the Hulk's strings. Meanwhile, the evil duo consigns Banner to the realm of the death-goddess Hela.

The big problem with this routine outing is that for the menace to Asgard to be credibe, Bannerless Hulk must be a juggernaut who's far beyond Thor's capacity to defeat-- and that means that the video has to downgrade Thor. We're not really watching "Hulk vs Thor," because in every encounter, Hulk kicks Thor's ass-- and where's the fun in that? The video might've been titled, "Hulk vs. Asgard," except that the supreme power in the realm, Mighty Odin, is conveniently sleeping the Odinsleep during the crisis.

Thor does win the contest in a sense, for he browbeats Loki into chasing down the spirit of Banner in Hel, and convincing Hela (who is Loki's daughter this time round) to merge Banner with Hulk. This returns a measure of sanity to the rampaging goliath, and he goes back home, while Loki gets to suffer his daughter's less-than-tender mercies for a time. Other items of interest: (1) warrior-woman Sif gets a solo attack on Greenie, and scores a few good blows, (2) Enchantress is in love with Thor and resents the hell out of Sif, though the witch-woman seems okay with the possibility of Thor getting killed thanks to Loki's scheme, and (3) as in the later TALES OF ASGARD video, Asgard looks pretty good here.

In contrast, though HULK VS WOLVERINE is no deeper in terms of symbolic discourse, it's a helluva lot more fun. 

According to the continuity mentioned in the commentary, this tale is Wolverine's first encounter with Old Jade-Jaws, preceding a second encounter chronicled in the series WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN. The feisty Canadian still works for his native government and barely knows anything about the Hulk, much less the never-mentioned X-Men. Hulk is suspected of destroying a Canadian town, so Wolverine, aka "Weapon X," is sent on a search-and-destroy mission. 

However, the real malfeasants are a team of four villains, three of whom are infamous Wolverine-foes. Lady Deathstrike, Saber-Tooth, and Deadpool are the infamous three, while the fourth is some low-grade X-thug, Omega Red, whom I do not know and who contributes next to nothing. The four super-fiends now work for the Weapon X facility, the same one that gave Wolverine his adamantium additions, and not only did they destroy the town, they're out to capture the Hulk. It seems their boss at the facility, the otherwise unnamed "Professor," wants to make more Hulks as part of an over-ambitious ordnance scheme.

The thing that makes this featurette so good is sharp dialogue and characterization. Wolverine is a testy hero, none too charitable with "weakling Banner," and the three good villains are also consistent with the traits of their comic-book originals. Deadpool's lines contribute most of the humor and are easily as clever as the best jokes from the live-action Fox films. It's practically one half-hour- long fight-scene and WOLVERINE'S take on the "Marvel heroes always fight each other" trope is one of the best I've ever seen in animation.

       

THOR: TALES OF ASGARD (2011)

 

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

A few years after Marvel's THOR comic became a good seller for the company, creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby instituted a backup feature, "Tales of Asgard," which also lasted a year or two before the THOR feature took over the whole book. The backup gave artist Jack Kirby the chance to focus only upon Thor's hometown of Asgard, doing his best to convey Fosterian magic and grandeur within the space of seven pages an issue.

The MCU's live-action THOR series, which began the same year this DTV was issued, barely attempted pageantry in its depictions of the Norse wonder-world. TALES doesn't manage to come close to Kirby's passionate depiction of a universe governed by magic and martial prowess. However, TALES makes a sincere effort, and on the whole looks pretty good in terms of visuals.

Now, the 2011 live-action THOR largely rejects the Norse "don't die in your bed" ethos, TALES follows that same course in large part, pushing a pacifist message. However, because this DTV is depicting Thor as a young male god seeking to prove himself within a male culture, the script doesn't quite reject all aspects of masculinity. However, there remains an orientation toward a judgmental feminism, incarnated in this video's concept of the warrior-woman Sif-- though nothing as toxic as the MCU would later embrace.

Thor's support-cast members-- adoptive brother Loki, and the Scandinavian Three Musketeers known as Fandral, Hogun, and Volstaag-- are also younger and greener, and Loki at this point is a novice schemer, still on good terms with his boisterous brother. But none of them burn to prove themselves as Thor does. However, Daddy Odin's noble brow is perpetually bent with the weight of keeping Asgard's peace with their long-time enemies the Frost Giants, so he can't be bothered figuring out a rite of passage for the young Thunder God. But there is a sort of "impossible quest" that Asgardian males are allowed to undertake, in order to satisfy their desire for adventure. Odin's troubles start when his son takes on the quest and comes back with a dangerous prize.

There's a hard-to-follow backstory about how the Frost Giants almost wiped out the Dark Elves. Apparently the Elves were allied to Asgard, but Odin's warriors didn't come to the Elves' defense for whatever reasons. So the latter made a pact with the fire-demon Surtur, which risked the survival of all the Nine Worlds. The Frost Giants annihilated most of the Dark Elves anyway, and one of the survivors, Algrim, took a position as a court advisor to Odin. However, Algrim's position in Asgard is not unlike an emigre from South Vietnam taking shelter in the US: deep down, there's a sense of betrayal by an ally who didn't live up to his part of the bargain. Thor seeks to discover the lost Sword of Surtur, but his masculine bull-headedness imperils Asgard from both the covert menace of Algrim and the overt one of the war-happy Frost Giants. In the end, Thor learns humility, at least until it comes time for him to relearn a parallel lesson in the 2011 live-action flick.

While in the regular MCU movies Sif is just One of the Boys, here she has some sort of vague grudge against the males of Asgard, and she has an affiliation with a tribe of female warriors who live apart from Asgard proper. At least some of her testiness stems from having the hots for Young Thor and thus expecting him to be more than an entitled heir. This isn't much of a conflict, even for a B-plot. Still, there's nothing actively bad about TALES-- while all of the "live" THOR films suffer from major narrative problems.                           

V: THE FINAL BATTLE (1984)

 

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

At the end of my review of the original V miniseries, I described how Kenneth Johnson, creator of the V franchise, had contributed ideas to the 1984 three-part sequel. However, he parted ways with NBC and distanced himself from the project by letting his work be billed under the protest-pseudonym "Lillian Weezer." 

I also noted that it's impossible to know if Johnson's V-vision would have been better than what NBC put together with its own producers and their director of choice, Richard T. Heffron. Now, while I don't find in Heffron's repertoire as many famed accomplishments as I find in Johnson's, I did see a lot of the former's TV and theatrical works, and he certainly was no hack. I particularly admired a telefilm he directed regarding the Nez Perce tragedy, I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER.

One big advantage Heffron had was that Johnson's 1983 story supplied all the necessary setup for the Visitors' stealth invasion of Earth, thus eliminating much of the need for exposition in the sequel. But one great improvement is that Heffron's writing-staff pared down a lot of the extraneous characters from the '83 series. Additionally, whereas the main characters of Julie and Mike (Faye Grant, Marc Singer) proved a little banal in the first film, the addition of a third central character, Ham Tyler (Michael Ironside), provided a greater sense of conflict. Unlike civilians Julie and Mike, Ham joined the rebels as an experienced combat veteran, and he wasn't shy about expressing his opinions on how the resistance should be run, or even openly defying his "old pal" Mike. 

An equally strong parallel idea focused more upon the villainous head of the Visitor operations, Diana (Jane Badler). Technically in both serials, a male alien named John (Richard Herd) held the power of command over the mission, but Diana received much more attention in the '83 two-parter, and BATTLE found even more ways to play up the feminine fiend. In fact, she too had to deal with internecine troubles, since a superior officer, one Pamela (Sarah Douglas), comes to Earth to take over the project. However, Diana shows her propensity for super-villainy by simply assassinating her commander.

That's not to say BATTLE is perfect. Despite fewer characters, there are a lot of disposable subplots, giving the three segments a choppy feeling. However, the best subplot from the '83 serial-- that Earth-girl Robin giving birth to a hybrid-- receives strong execution. In fact, the Interplanetary Mama gives birth to two such hybrids, and Part 2 shows a particular moment of horror when Robin's birth of a human-looking girl infant, Elizabeth, is followed by a reptilian goblin springing from her uterus. However, Part 3 saves the heroes the difficulty of putting down the goblin-child, for it perishes by exposure to Earth-bacteria-- which development in turn gives the Earthlings the chance to show the Visitors that visiting-time is over.

There's also a decent arc for the quirky "good alien" Willie, played in a modest, self-effacing manner by the future Freddy Kruger. Compared to the Johnson narrative, BATTLE has much less pontificating about a return of fascism, and more visceral action. Even the Julie character, usually not seen in the field, gets to shoot down bad aliens with her laser pistol. Heffron and company also drop one of the plot-threads suggested in '83, that the Earthpeople might seek to summon some of the ETs who'd been enemies to the Visitors-- which was a terrible idea, even though it would have fit Johnson's labored WWII parallel. It's far more satisfying to see the Earthlings win the BATTLE on their own.

            

GARTER COLT (1968)

 

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

Along with 1967's LOLA COLT, the similarly named GARTER COLT stands as one of a very small handful of Euro-westerns starring tough female protagonists. Unfortunately, it also may be the worst of that small group.

The script shows traveling gambler Lulu "Garter" Colt (Nicoletta Machiavelli) as sharing the distanced manner of standard spaghetti male protagonists: emotionally reserved and super-competent. However, Lulu is never interesting, even when she shows off her skills with a pistol, routing stagecoach robbers or protecting a young maiden from rapine. Part of the problem may be that Lulu herself is never in real danger. Her projection of coolness is interrupted when she falls for a French soldier involved in the war between Emperor Maximillian and Juarez, but the lover is killed by a bandit named "Red" (Claudio Camaso).

Though most of the screenplay is filled with jokes and absurdities that go nowhere, the one thing the writers seem to be passionate about is the Red character, who is as "hot" as Lulu is "cold." For once a spaghetti villain has his own romantic arc, for throughout GARTER Red pursues a spicy young lass, Rosy, whom he may have already bedded. Rosy mostly resists Red in favor of a younger swain, but the movie's only real amusement inheres in her vacillations as to which lover to choose. Red tries to persuade her to choose him by tying Rosy above a boiling-hot, muddy spring. Also, he situates an innocent little boy upon her shoulders, so that the kid will die with Rosy if she falls in. The setup doesn't make much sense, but it's relatively original. Lulu comes along at the right minute and propels Red into the boiling spring, which kills the fiend on the spot.

Despite various ludicrous occurrences in the wandering narrative, the only thing that rises to the level of a "fallacious figment" concerns a talking parrot. After some byplay with the bird seeming only to imitate whatever human speech it hears, the creature gets caught between two gun-happy parties-- at which point the parrot to cry out, "I'm neutral!"              

V; THE MINI-SERIES (1983)

 

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

Though I read IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, the Sinclair Lewis book that purportedly inspired Kenneth Johnson's two-part TV miniseries, I remember nothing about said novel. Johnson's V is more memorable than Lewis, thanks to those spiffy Visitor uniforms. Frankly, though, I think Johnson's main inspiration might have been those morale-boosting war movies of the early 1940s. Clearly, having the heroic rebels combat the tyrants by writing "V"-- as in "Victory"-- over the tyrants' posters was an explicit callback to Hollywood iconography.

That said, Johnson's story of a race of aliens who invade Earth using false promises and blandishments more than advanced weapons offers only a paper-thin critique of fascism. The Visitors also pose as human-like ETs clad in bright red outfits, but in due time the good guys learn that they're all lizard-like beings whose scaled bodies are concealed under plastic "human" skin-- a fairly clumsy gambit, though Johnson makes the most of various moments when someone tears away the false flesh. That the Visitors want to pirate Earth's water for the benefit of their dying homeworld is a standard enough SF-trope. However, Johnson really pours on the corn by claiming that these denizens of an alien environment just can't wait to chow down on homo sapiens. Not too many SF-authors would favor the idea that ETs from one world could even tolerate organic sustenance from another one. In addition, even though all of Earth is placed in the position of Europe under the sway of the Axis Powers during WWII, the most villainous member of the evil Visitors, deputy leader "Diana" (Jane Badler), is played by an American actress affecting a British accent.

Johnson introduces about twenty Earth-characters who respond in various ways to the wheedling impositions of the Visitors, though naturally most of them function as support-characters. The two who get the most attention are biologist Julie (Faye Grant) and reporter Mike (Marc Singer), who eventually uncover the awful truth about the aliens. Almost half of the mini-series consists of various sketched-out characters reacting to the Visitors' advent, and almost none of them are compelling as characters. I suppose I must acknowledge that one of those characters is a Jewish survivor of the WWII concentration camps, though this seems an indulgence on Johnson's part, given that the Visitors are not concerned with human racial or ethnic divisions. But one female teen, Robin (Blair Tefkin), has the misfortune to sleep with a handsome male visitor. This establishes a subplot about the first spawn of a human/Visitor mating, one that extends into the follow-up 1984 miniseries. In addition, a pre-Freddy Robert Englund shows up as one of a small number of Visitors who oppose the vicious plots of their kindred. These covert resisters eventually make common cause with the Earth-rebels, though again, not until the sequel series does their alliance become important. 

Though none of the actors are given the chance to work nuance into their performances, athletic Marc Singer, one year after his first turn as "The Beastmaster," keeps the action level high enough to counter the melodrama. The series was popular enough to generate a sequel the next year, on which Kenneth Johnson worked briefly before falling out with NBC executives. Thus whatever script-ideas Johnson contributed to the sequel were controlled by other authorities and not representative of his creative priorities. Johnson later authored a prose novel about how he felt the show should have progressed. As of this writing, though, it's impossible to say if his direction would have better or worse than what followed the original two-part series.

 

SINTHIA THE DEVIL'S DOLL (1970)

 

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

Intellectually, I know that SINTHIA THE DEVIL'S DOLL looks like the bastard child of Ingmar Bergman and Kenneth Angar-- and only if said bastard was chained in a basement during its formative years. Still, I like it better than any of Ray Dennis Steckler's other movies, probably because I never thought he took any chances in his other endeavors. Steckler's films always just lurch from one incoherent incident to another, with barely any plot or character, and SINTHIA is no exception. But when Steckler produced this psycho-nudie for the grindhouse theaters, he did make the attempt to emulate the look of a hallucinatory arthouse-movie and even used the pseudonym "Sven Christian" to gull patrons into thinking he might be some sort of Swedish artiste. Yet the grindhouse distributors of the era didn't care about films as art, only how much female skin was on display. Maybe Steckler saw some art-movie that made him want to do better than his usual tripe. That he wasn't capable of producing even above-average sexploitation is a shame, but I still find SINTHIA an interesting failure.

Although Steckler had directed one previous psycho-film, 1964's THE THRILL KILLERS, and would direct at least two more following SINTHIA, the 1970 film doesn't involve the sort of physical perils typical of most psycho-killer movies. The title character doesn't even seem to be in danger of harming herself, except in the metaphysical sense of needing to atone for past crimes. We only know two things about Sinthia (portrayed by two-time actress Shula Roan). items Steckler repeats tediously over and over. One is that at age 12, Sinthia gets her first kiss from a boy and relates this fact to her mother. Then some time afterward, Sinthia becomes homicidally jealous of her father when he makes love to her mother (who has a significant line, complaining about the father's attentions to her daughter). Sinthia stabs both parents to death with a knife (her being demurer than Lizzie Borden, I suppose) and then burns down the house as well.

Though the law never doubts that Sinthia committed the crime, for some reason she's remanded to the custody of a never-seen aunt and uncle. Sinthia does have to continue seeing a psychiatrist, which apparently goes on for eight years. But viewers only see 20-year- old Sinthia being told by her unnamed analyst that he thinks she's cured. However, one last step is required before the doctor can release her from his supervision and can pronounce Sinthia capable of re-entering society, including her marrying an unspecified suitor. He subjects Sinthia to a hypnotic trance, telling her that the only way she can atone for her crime is to imagine killing her parents again, but with the alteration that she too dies in the fire she set. This bizarre excuse for therapy allows Steckler to make most of the narrative into an extended dream, the better to work in as many nude-scenes as possible.    

The first dream-sequence can be fairly termed Sinthia's guilt-complex, as she dreams herself in Hell, surrounded by semi-clad male and female devils who mock her for wanting her father sexually. This sequence ends with Lucifer ordering Sinthia to be whipped-- and then suddenly, with no transition, she's on a beach somewhere. This sequence is not so clearly a dream, as this time she meets two older people, an artist, Lenny, living on the beach and his wife Carol. The dead father's name is said early on to have been "Leonard," and the same actors who play Lenny and Carol played Sinthia's murdered parents. So, to be as generous as possible in following Steckler's rough logic, this sequence is Sinthia avoiding the psychiatrist's commandment to atone.

As the dream goes on, Sinthia relates to Lenny and Carol as if they were her revived father and mother-- though with some wacky differences, like having a brief lesbian hookup with Carol. Yet Carol, being part of Sinthia's dream, seems to feel that she's losing Lenny, while vaguely threatening Sinthia for trying to move in. On top of that, Lenny takes Sinthia to a rinky-dink theater to see a play Carol's performing in. And it's here that Sinthia meets yet another fractious older couple, Mark and Liz. In fact, when the two of them stage a fight on stage, Sinthia intervenes to protect the "good father" from the "bad mother." I'm not sure whether it's fair to credit Steckler with portraying Sinthia deflecting from her original transgression by seeking out an older man who doesn't look like her late father. However, she does dream that she's marrying Mark in a church, and everyone seems okay with it-- until a naked woman, presumably Liz, intrudes and embraces Mark. Suddenly Sinthia's back in Lenny's arms for a few minutes-- whereupon she finally wakes up. 

The psychiatrist is waiting for her, but he just repeats his earlier counsel: she must try to dream the circumstances of the double murder, but this time force herself to die in the fire she sets. Sinthia agrees to try, and in moments she's back with her four adult overseers, who now sound like they're trying to direct her to do as the analyst suggested. Sinthia has a vision of her soul afire, and then she succeeds in returning to the death-scene in her home. Again she knifes the copulating parents, after which Lenny comes back to life to insist that she repents of her evil acts. At last Sinthia (conveniently nude at this point) concludes that "I must be pure once more," and Lenny tells her that she can only atone by loving her own soul-- whatever that means. Steckler randomly tosses in a few more hallucinatory scenes, one of which repeats the "first kiss" scene. Then there's one more confrontation scene, with both Mark and Lenny claiming Sinthia while both Liz and Carol oppose them (albeit only with words). Then somehow this all moves Sinthia to re-dream the murder-scene, set the fire-- and force her dream-self to perish in the fire.

She wakes, the psychiatrist pronounces her cured, and out of the office she goes to meet her fiancee. Which of the two male actors from the dream portrays the fiancee? Take a wild guess.

As mentioned before, my wild guess as to this movie's genesis is that Steckler saw some artfilm that impressed him, so he tried, in his incompetent way, to emulate it. Still, the conclusion might suggest that he'd read a little Freud, for it was Big Sigmund's belief that once a child became entrained upon the opposite-sex parent, in adulthood that offspring would always be looking for some sublimated version of the parent. And so sinful Sinthia overcomes her guilt, but only by acepting the sublimated version of her father-image into her adult sex-life. Or something like that.  

                

THE VALLEY OF VANISHING MEN (1942)

 

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

This is one of the more solid Columbia serials, not showing the tendency toward ruthless cost-cutting seen in later years, nor the barren strategy of keeping all the filmed action in one or two restrictive sets. In fact, of all the works of Spenser G. Bennett, credited with directing more serials than any other individual, I'd probably rate VALLEY in the top five.

VALLEY opens at the conclusion of the Civil War, with the amicable meeting of two field commanders on opposite sides, one of whom is hero Bill Tolliver (Bill Elliott). I don't remember if the script mentions what state Bill fought for, but the dissolution of the Confederacy frees him up to seek out his father, who's prospecting in the New Mexico territory. He and his wartime-buddy Missouri (Slim Summerville) ride west, leaving the turmoil of North and South behind (a motif also found in the classic western novel THE VIRGINIAN).

Bill and Missouri soon learn that Bill's father has gone missing, and that the nearest city is dominated by an outlaw gang run by Jonathan Kincaid (the superbly oily Kenneth MacDonald, forgotten these days except for THREE STOOGES shorts). Kincaid's gang has abducted several locals-- the "vanishing men"-- to labor as slaves in a hidden gold mine. Further, Kincaid is funneling the gold to Emperor Maximillian, supporting the French conqueror against the forces of Juarez. Two female agents of Juarez-- young Consuela (Carmen Morales) and her duenna-- seek to figure out who's sending the gold and how, but neither woman does much but provide exposition for the benefit of the main hero and his sidekick.

As with most serials the action comes down to various back-and-forth struggles between the hero and the villain's henchmen, but Bennett and his writers provide enough variety that the serial's 15 chapters don't become tedious. Elliott, a popular B-western actor, handles all the fisticuffs and riding-stunts very well, while his sidekick provides good comic relief, due to his being more of an "ornery cuss" rather than the more standard dopey doofus. In fact, the writers got into the antics of Missouri that for one episode alone, they had him talking to his horse, which answered him back a la "Mister Ed."

The limited sets of Kincaid's mine are given some cool decorations, such as a big Aztec deity-statue posed behind the bib boss's desk. Said desk has an uncanny execution-gimmick built into it: a concealed gun that "fires" any henchman who displeases Kincaid. The standout gimmick, however, was left behind by the vanished Aztecs: a giant mounted prism able to focus the sun's rays and start fires where directed. This device is used for the chapterplay's best cliffhanger: Bill tied to a stake and surrounded by flammable brush, while a weight-device slowly causes the prism to move toward Bill and his death-trap. Naturally, after the outlaws take all this trouble to give the hero a ghastly death, they decide to leave and do something else, making it easy for Bill to escape. 

In one of the serial's best touches, the credits-sequence for each episode plays over scenes of the vanished men (including Bill's dad) laboring in the mine, pushing a wheel connected to a rock-crushing press. In the last episode, Bill almost dies under the press. But not only are the hero and the kidnapped men liberated, Kincaid perishes beneath another crushing weight: that of the pagan idol in his office. The end of Kincaid's rule isn't quite on the symbolic level of the Philistine carnage wrought by Samson, but there's a little more religious resonance here than in the majority of serial conclusions.          

       

        

A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES (1974)

 

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

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

I saw a cut-down version of this film, running about sixty minutes, under the title JACK THE RIPPER GOES WEST. The version under this title runs a little under 90 minutes, and until I saw that, I couldn't be sure if there was any justification for the "Ripper" allusion-- which indeed there is none. Yet, going by the above poster, the lack of a genuine "Saucy Jack" in the story didn't prevent someone from claiming that the psycho-killer in the story was "The Ripper." The hyperbolic ad even attributes a Jason-like invulnerability to the lady-killer, and it highlights his alleged "blood lust for ladies naked and dead." All of this ballyhoo proves very ironic when one finds out the true nature of the character whose pustule-covered face is implied to be the referenced "Ripper."

There had been a small number of movies or TV shows about psycho-killers in the Old West before KNIFE. However, neither the three credited writers nor the director had any facility with the horror-genre, and KNIFE spotlights those limitations. Of the three writers, one has no other IMDB credits, the second went on mostly to cartoons and variety shows, and the third, Seton Miller, had distinguished himself in Hollywood Classic films, not least a favorite of mine, THE BLACK SWAN-- but Miller passed right around the time of KNIFE's release. Director Larry Spangler never worked on another horror film before or after this one, and one can see that he barely knows how to build suspense or display gory effects. In fact, at its heart KNIFE is a revisionist western, not unlike the two "Nigger Charley" films Spangler completed before it. The horror-plot is just an excuse to present a conflict of "the old generation and the new"-- though the film's handling of the theme is jejune at best.  

 

The mining-town of Mescal (named for its long-dead founder) was once prosperous, but with the mine's failure Mescal is a dying burg. Out of this poverty a serial killer arises, knocking off three ladies of the evening, one of whom is slain for an opening scene. In contrast to the governmental indifference to the fate of prostitutes in many Ripper-films, Mescal's banker wants the killer caught right away. Having no confidence in Jarrod (Jack Elam), the town's old, drunken sheriff, the banker hires a big-city detective, Burns (a big-haired Jeff Cooper). Burns never really does much detecting. He does interview a few people, notably the widow of the founder, Elizabeth Mescal (Ruth Roman), who provides the tossed-off info that she also had an adult son, Travis, by her late husband, and that he too has recently died. But Jarrod hates Burns at first sight, and eventually the two end up proving their mutual manhood with a fistfight. But because there aren't that many more murders during the film's second act, Spangler makes up the difference with a side-plot about finding the men who lynched an innocent suspect.

Both the main plot and the side-plots are dull and poorly acted, but these were apparently what grabbed Spangler and the writers, because when it comes time to deliver on the premise, they rush through it. The big reveal is that Travis Mescal-- who's been mentioned as having been a big man with the ladies in life-- never died. Elizabeth faked the story of his death and kept him in a cage within her mansion, allowing him to become both physically and mentally disfigured by a "social disease." So Travis hasn't actually been lurching around displaying his blood lust for dead, naked ladies; his momma done did it all. Elizabeth, then, is really the centric icon whom the two dull crime-solvers pursue. But the script doesn't have the stones to explore Elizaeth's maternal version of the Oedipus complex. One can guess that she resented Travis's dalliances with prostitutes, and that resentment, as well as community reputation, led her to fake her son's death and deny him whatever care might have been available in the 1880s. Yet she also blamed the whores for her son's decay and started killing them-- only to decide at the last moment to give Travis a "virgin bride," Jarrod's niece. A better script could have subtly alluded to Elizabeth's incestuous nature, as was done in the 1962 MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. But as I said, it looks like none of the principals cared about getting the horror-story right. Once the crazy mother and her spawn are both dead, the film ends with Burns, Jarrod and Jarrod's niece leaving Mescal to its decaying fate-- which doesn't seem like a very happy ending for the townsfolk.

                    

DEMON FIGHTER KOCHO (1997)

 

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

Here's another one of those one-shot anime OVAs. KOCHO seems to have been released in Japan alongside a couple of live-action movies that same year, all of which adapted a manga of the same name. The manga only endured about two years and is not well known today, so it's likely that both the anime and live-action projects were a quick cash-grab for a franchise winding up in the same year as the videos. As for the American market, it was much easier to place a translated 30-minute anime into video stores than any of the full-fledged serial shows.

Only a couple of translated manga-adventures were available to me online, but they were enough to give me a sense as to how ordinary high-school boy Kosaku gets mixed up with a ditzy girl exorcist named Kocho. These are almost the only continuing characters in the series' first two episodes, but the anime clearly jumps forward in time to introduce two or three other characters, one being Kocho's sister, who competes with the titular heroine for Kosaku's heart. The demons with which Kocho contends are not especially imaginative, so it's quite possible that the anime is not a direct adaptation of any story. The action takes a back seat to sexy fanservice, with Kocho's persona being that of a ditz who's often not aware of her own pulchritudinous charms, but who can also deal out a few hard slaps to any male caught ogling her. The use of traditional Japanese exorcism methods provides the only hint of symbolic complexity here, but I doubt that the full series ever got much better than this offshoot.

       

      

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (2019)

 

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

Though FATE is indubitably one of the many films affected by Hollywood's version of DEI, it's not nearly as entertainment-free as many others from this unfortunate period. To be sure, the only entertainment stems from the abilities of director Tim (DEADPOOL) Miller and the FX-crew, and not from the script cobbled together by three writers swiping as much as feasible from TERMINATOR 2.

Like other films in the TERMINATOR franchise, FATE seeks to ignore later films in the series, in the case choosing to proceed as if it takes place a few years after the second film. Yet the script, presumably to suit the demands of producers, perversely cancels out the audience's good will by reversing the events of T2. Eight years after Sarah Connor and a T-800 Terminator (Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger) saved Sarah's son John from death by a T-1000, another Terminator (also Schwarzenegger) ambushes Sarah and John, kills John, and escapes. The time-travel paradoxes of this event are not explored, for the script's priority is to introduce two new female presences to this iteration. 

One of them, Dani (Natalia Reyes), is meant to provide a XX savior-figure in place of the slain John, for somehow his death simply changes the future so that Dani will be the great military leader who defeats Skynet. (The script initially fakes out the viewer with the implication that Dani's going to be the mother of a female savior, but the revelation is profoundly dull.) The other new woman warrior is Grace (Mackenzie Davis), a cyborg enhanced with mechanical implants, and who deals herself into this struggle even though-- she's from a totally different future with a different cyber-intelligence, Legion? Yeah, I didn't even try to follow the logic here. But Legion follows the same basic pattern as Skynet, sending back a metamorphic "fluid metal" Terminator (Gabriel Luna) to kill Dani. And somehow both aggrieved Sarah and the T-800 sign up to protect Dani and defeat the time-traveling assassin.

The crappy "dramatic" arcs of Dani and Sarah are worthless, hollow imitations of the superior John and Sarah arcs from T2, and the one for the T-800 is only minimally better than either, mostly because one suspects that this derivative film marks Schwarzenegger's farewell to his signature character. But though new faces Reyes and Luna are dull, and Hamilton returns to do nothing but scowl and glower alternately, Mackenzie Davis proves a much more charismatic presence than the other newbies, and Miller gives her plenty of demanding stunts that keep this otherwise dull pot boiling. The one good thing about this bad script is that because of it, FATE bombed at the box office, and it's to be hoped that at long last this franchise, which peaked with the first two films and never really blossomed again, will be allowed to fade into the past.        

THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN (2007)

 

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

Everyone knows that the 2008 IRON MAN proved to be not only the dark horse that came in first, but the initiator of an entire "Marvel Cinematic Universe." The various animated OAVs that came out before and after the live-action movies didn't make up any sort of consistent universe, and most of them were forgettable, though I found the DOCTOR STRANGE video superior to the Cumberbatch film.

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN was probably completed while the 2008 IRON MAN was finishing up production. But though the scriptwriters probably had access to some or all of the live-action film's storyline, the only strong likeness is that INVINCIBLE duplicates the film's characterization of Tony Stark, prior to his taking up the superhero mantle. Tony, despite being a scientific polymath, is also an irrepressible ladies' man, with INVINCIBLE even suggesting outright sexual intercourse. Also duplicated is the characterization of Tony's secretary Pepper Potts, who loves him and is sardonically jealous of his hookups. But everything else is changed, both from the original comics and the MCU version.

The 1960s comic-book Iron Man sustains injuries while issuing new munitions to American troops in Vietnam. The 2008 adaptation advances the military setting to Afghanistan, but with the same outcome for the hero. In order to deal with both his life-threatening wounds and with his tyrannical captors, Tony invents the armored suit that leads to his becoming Iron Man. But INVINCIBLE avoids the military angle completely, except to state early-on that Stark Industries was a munitions industry under Tony's father Howard but converted to more humanitarian activities thanks to Tony's genius. The sense of the son having exceeded the father is here the root of estrangement between them, whereas the conflicts of the same characters in the live-action series is vague and unsatisfying.

The crucible in which Iron Man is formed does still take place in "The Orient," however. The live-action series never got the character of The Mandarin right, choosing to view him only as a facile Fu Manchu knockoff. Yet to be sure, the comic-book Mandarin didn't fulfill his potential. There was at most the suggestion that the villain represented the tyranny of the pre-industrial world, while his opponent symbolized the rise of rational democracy. Ironically, INVINCIBLE does a better job with the Mandarin character by keeping him largely offstage-- which was actually the case with the prose version of Fu Manchu.         

Tony Stark's rational, scientific view of life is shaken when he uses his tech-genius (with the aid of chief engineer James Rhodes) to unearth the palace of The Mandarin, a mass-murdering emperor from the prehistoric era of China. Tony's archeologists and engineers are challenged by a dissident group, the Jade Dragons, who in part duplicate the function of the Vietnamese troops who captured Comics-Tony. The inventor flies to China, gets near-fatally wounded by the Dragons, and is pressed into their service-- but principally to consign the unearthed palace back to the depths of the earth. One of the Dragons, the beauteous Li Mei, seems willing to help Tony and Rhodes, possibly because she like Tony has had conflicts with a paternal unit. Even she doesn't suspect that the charming genius has long had the idea of Iron Man armor in mind for a long time, and he uses it to escape. However, in contrast to the other versions, Tony gets back to America and faces a frame-up by political schemers-- and then must return to the Orient to banish the evil he unleashed there.

Both the animated action and the dialogue are far better than most such OAVs. As mentioned, the Mandarin is kept mostly offstage, while Iron Man engages in combat with various super-powered pawns of the evil emperor, including a giant dragon given no name in the script, but obviously modeled upon a Marvel Comics monster, name of "Fin Fang Foom." Li Mei's destiny turns out to be implicated with the Mandarin's recrudescence, which follows through on the parallel of Tony's conflicts with his father. To be sure, the being called The Mandarin is only "on stage" for a few minutes, with a handful of lines voiced by Fred Tatasciore. Yet the sense of the villain's pervasive menace is far more compelling, as I said, than in any previous adaptation, and in most of the original comics. Since the two live-action IRON MAN movies that followed the 2008 flick weren't all that great, maybe the MCU would have done better to have emulated the better aspects of INVINCIBLE.        

THE BLACK CAT (1981)

 

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

Since it's almost impossible to make Edgar Allen Poe's famous short story into a feature film without adding elements to complicate the plot-action, it's not a slight to say that Lucio Fulci's take on THE BLACK CAT isn't totally faithful to the story. In fact, in one thematic sense, it duplicates some of Poe's ambivalence as to the origins of evil. In some tales, Poe seems to feel that evil is the result of bad human choices, as seen in "Metzengerstein" and "William Wilson." In others, evil just erupts out the human soul with no choice involved, as in "The Imp of the Perverse" and "The Tell-Tale Heart." 

Fulci starts CAT in a small English town, as an evil black tabby gets into some random citizen's car and does some sort of hoodoo on the driver, so that he crashes and is killed. An American tourist, a professional photographer named Jill (Mimsy Farmer) gets drawn into investigating this and other strange deaths to help Scotland Yard Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck). She soon meets local eccentric scientist Robert Miles (Patrick Magee) and learns that he's been conducting experiments in talking to the spirits of the dead. In fact, early on he shows that he's less than a self-sacrificing ideologue, for he briefly tries to hypnotize Jill, implicitly to take advantage of her. But the young woman snaps out of the spell and runs away.

While the narrator of Poe's story kills a real cat and brings down on himself the vengeance of a possibly supernatural feline, there's no doubt that this Black Cat is some demonic spirit from the beginning, possibly called forth by Miles' messing with spirits. Sometimes the cat knocks off local victims in relatively naturalistic ways, but whether its methods are naturalistic or marvelous, Miles thinks the creature manifests from his own hatred toward the townsfolk-- which takes the emphasis off of his transgressions in the spirit world and puts the evil of Miles more in the realm of subconscious perversity rather than objective actions. 

There are some good shocks along the way, particularly as the Black Cat begins performing more overtly demonic acts. At one point, Miles duplicates the act of the Poe-narrator and hangs the nasty pussy, and for some reason this causes EXORCIST-style shenanigans to occur in Jill's apartment. Nevertheless, the cat is the star of the show, and Miles is doomed from the get-go. For all that, BLACK CAT sports Magee's best performance in a horror-flick, while everyone else is reduced to support-status.