THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1972)

 

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

This is an average but still tolerable adaptation of the classic Doyle tale. As I just finished rereading the source material today, I find myself excusing a lot of odd changes just because it was a TV-movie with limited time and money.   

I rather liked the straightforward Holmes of Stewart Granger, while the Watson of Bernard Fox (best known as the character "Doctor Bombay" on BEWITCHED) was efficient enough. Watson's long sojourn at Baskerville Hall is cut for time, which makes sense. Yet the writer also tries to work in Holmes' masquerade as a moor-hermit, which only makes sense if Holmes is absenting himself from the hall so that he can study all suspects at his leisure.

Unlike the 1939 version, this HOUND keeps the idea that the villain Stapleton (William Shatner) has his wife masquerade as his sister to hoax his prospective victim, as well as having used another female pawn to kill the earlier target. On the other hand, the writer troubled to build up Doctor Mortimer as a red herring, which Doyle never does. This proved an enjoyable development because it gave Anthony Zerbe better lines than the literary character got.

In my review I asserted that the thing separating Doyle's novel from most film adaptations was that Doyle made the Hound-mystery a meditation on the human tendency to regress to the primitive and egoistic. The 1972 HOUND is no different, but its depiction of the killer hound is more bracing than I've seen in two of the more expensive productions. This is particularly true because the beast turns on its master, which is in some ways more visually satisfying than Doyle's conclusion. And this may be the only HOUND where, after the dog's dead, the heroes still hear a distant, mysterious howl.     

       

X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME THREE (1994-95)

 

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

At this point it's hardly worth reiterating that Volume Three offers a sampling from both Seasons 3 and 4, for reasons that are not evident. My only general feeling is that some stories show a bit more originality, as opposed to adapting established tales with some cosmetic changes.

SAVAGE LAND, STRANGE HEART, for example, builds on the X-Men's last visit to the Savage Land, but mostly drops Magneto's mutates in favor of pagan priestess Zaladane, who conspires with the X-foe Sauron to revive a god (probably also a mutant). This narrative only slightly resembles the X's first encounter with Zaladane. Ka-Zar and Shanna guest star but Shanna gets no lines.   

Four episodes are devoted to the second half of the Phoenix Saga. Again, the Phoenix Force is changed into a more sentient entity, rather than a discarnate force that unleashes the "id" of Jean Grey. Thus Jean doesn't seem compromised when the Hellfire Club corrupts Phoenix, and when Phoenix goes berserk and destroys the sun of an alien system, no living beings are harmed, in contrast to the original story. The denouement allows Jean to live but she's phased out of the rest of these episodes.

I frankly don't remember how, in the comics, Cyclops finds out that Corsair's his long lost father, but this version is probably as good as any other.    

Less well-realized was an episode devoted to charter X-hero Iceman. It starts out well, showing the frosty crusader as having broken away from the X's because he wanted a normal life. But then there's a confused plot about Iceman breaking into a military base to save his girlfriend Lorna-- only to learn she doesn't need saving, because-- she's now part of a new group of motley Marvel mutant-heroes? Why bring back Iceman just to recapitulate a big melodramatic breakup with his GF? Maybe the writers liked Nightcrawler better, since he certainly gets a better solo outing.

Finally, from what I can tell, an episode called "One Man's Worth" seems to be an original attempt to do another dystopian "Days of Future Past" tale, but with an ongoing romance between the future versions of Storm and Wolverine. Nothing in the volume knocked my socks off, but I was sometimes diverted.             

ACES GO PLACES 2 (1983)

 

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

The second ACES movie is more of the same freestyle farce, but with fewer memorable jokes. The producers probably rushed TWO into production to keep the audience interested. 

Unlike the first film, where the only metaphenomenon appeared near movie's end, TWO begins with supposedly reformed burglar Kong (Sam Hui) breaking into a building. He meets, and fights with, a big robot guardian that looks like a Japanese tokasatsu creation. Later, for no reason related, the same robot turns up to fight a bunch of little robots, using ray-beams from its eyes. I think the robots tie into some more amorphous "plot" about a Hong Kong space program, since other jumbled astronaut-stuff appears elsewhere.

Two other very loose plotlines take up more space. Kong is being pursued by the pawns of a hitman called "Black Gloves." He's supposedly the brother of the first film's villain, though the guy's barely seen after his first appearance, played by Joe Dimmick and made to look like Clint Eastwood. Kong is also framed for bank robbery by a cute girl-- not sure what her thing was-- and so he runs for help to his two best friends, Albert and Nancy (Karl Maka, Sylvia Chang). However, Plot One engenders Plot Two, in that Albert and Nancy are trying to be bonded in wedded bliss.

The matrimonial jokes are definitely better than all the forgettable cops-and-robbers hijinks, and there are some decent fights from Hui and Chang, though still too much vehicular chaos. The bloom is off this secondhand rose.

         

KISS THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM DIE (1966)

 

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

I'm using my label "eurosploitation" for this Italian-American production because KISS feels a big-budgeted version of one of Italy's cheapie eurospy flicks-- not least because it shows what I've found to be those films' worst feature: crappy villains. Conversely, despite KISS having a storyline that ought to make maximum use of beautiful actresses, I've seen a number of cheap spyflicks that did a better job with their presentations of pulchritude.

The middle sixties displayed the apogee of the superspy movie. KISS was preceded in 1966 by both OUR MAN FLINT and the first of the Matt Helm movies and followed in 1967 by the "Bond-comedy" CASINO ROYALE, which used a "world-peril" very similar to that of KISS, but did it better. By the early seventies the more naturalistic spy-films became prevalent and the superspy subgenre didn't rally until the early 2000s. KISS probably did the subgenre neither lasting harm nor any good.

The story was mostly filmed in Rio de Janiero, where much of the action takes place. The famous Rio statue of Christ the Redeemer provides journeyman director Henry Levin with what might be his only "Hitchcock moment," as American agent Kelly (Mike Connors) fights off an attacker beneath the statue's shadow. Allegedly Kelly came to Rio investigating a white slavery ring, but this mundane rationale is dropped. Somehow Kelly gets on the track of eccentric Brazilian businessman Ardonian (Raf Vallone), who's seen hanging out with a gorgeous jet-setter type, Susan Fleming (Dorothy Provine). Kelly questions Susan and learns that she's a British agent who's also investigating the disappearance of nubile young women. In contrast to most Bond knockoffs, the hero's leading lady shares the spotlight here, even though Susan tends to fight with assorted gadgets (like a ring with a drugged needle) while Kelly uses basic fisticuffs.

Ardonian may be the most under-characterized "bad spy" from this period. The viewer soon learns that he's conspired with Red Chinese agents to engineer a radiation-weapon that can sterilize all of the United States, thus putting China in the catbird seat as a world power. The Dino Maiuri script gives Ardonian no particular motive, ideological or pecuniary, for collaborating with Red China or for building a rocket-silo in Africa, in order to launch a radiation-satellite into orbit. But Maiuri's reticence stems from a "Big Reveal:" Ardonian actually plans to neuter every other man on Earth, aside from himself and maybe a few aides. But the script presents this revelation with zero insight into the villain's psychology, in marked contrast to the better-conceived motives of Woody Allen's evildoer in CASINO ROYALE. All that said, the Reveal does provide KISS with its only mythic moment: a scene in the facility showing that all the kidnapped women have been placed in frozen blocks of ice, moving on a conveyor belt like so many delicacies at the villain's command.

There are a few decent moments of action and comedy in KISS, but they're drowned in lots of dull, pokey scenes, suggesting that often Levin was just marking time. There's also a senseless incident wherein Kelly enters a beauty's room, saves her from a deadly scorpion, and then-- tells her to leave her own room? Half a dozen lovely actresses appear in KISS, but the only ones who have half-decent roles are Provine and Marilu Tolo, the latter playing one of the villain's Chinese contacts.                        

  

KONG: THE ANIMATED SERIES (2001/2005-06)

 

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

As a metaphenomenalist, I don't mind it when a show asks me to believe twelve impossible things, whether before breakfast or any other time. But even in a cartoon series aimed at kids, I could wish those impossible things added up to something more than ordinary.

It's curious that the writers even bothered to connect their KONG to the primal 1933 masterpiece, which related the complex but straightforward fable of an island where prehistoric life survived, and where a primitive Black tribe sacrificed women to the appetite of their gargantuan simian god. But that's the setup: after the 1933 Kong fell from the Empire State, a scientist, Lorna Jenkins, took a DNA sample from the big ape. She also did a lot of research on the renamed "Kong Island," where she found no primitive African tribe, but objects called "Primal Stones," which hailed from ancient Atlantis. (Kong Island is now located in the Bermuda Triangle, which I guess excuses the DNAPE's association not only with Atlantis but a host of other New Age concepts.)

Why Lorna does all this comes down to "just reasons," and this includes waiting about sixty years before she creates Clone-Kong-- possibly so that she could mingle the original ape-DNA with that of her grandson Jason. Young Jason grows up thinking of Clone-Kong as his "big brother"-- but only until Lorna's family is endangered by a villain who wants access to the magic of the Primal Stones. So Grandma takes her DNAPE and her research to the hard-of-access island, not reaching out to her grandson until he's of college age. Not content with re-creating a mammoth monkey. she's also invented devices called "cyber-links." A human who wears such a doohickey can magically merge his DNA with that of an animal, and conjure forth a gigantic humanoid creature. Why did Grandma want such a device? Reasons.

The real extrinsic reason was to provide heaps of Big Monster Action. The aforementioned villain gets hold of some of Lorna's links, and with them he can make himself, or one of his numerous henchmen, into huge beast-men in order to catch all the Primal Stones. Only Kong, who is "The Protector" of his mystic domain, can battle such titans-- and heroic Jason gets to tag along by merging his mind (but not his body) with that of Kong, sort of a primeval mecha-pilot.

While some kid-vids are clever enough that adults can appreciate them, KONG was designed to be dully repetitive, as evidenced by the fact that most of the episodes can be watched out of broadcast order. Villain and henchmen ferret out a Stone and use the links to become temporary monsters. Kong defeats them and they transform back and escape to do the same thing next episode.  

Jason BTW has two other partners in peril besides the big monkey: his comic relief college-buddy Tann, and what appears to be the only native of Kong Island. an acrobatic, copper-skinned shamaness named Lua. The three young people and Kong provide all the hero-action, with Lua using her shaman-powers to explicate whatever needs explication.

The only other point worth making is that if I watched this as a kid, I would rather have had the DNAPE dueling with traditional monsters. But there only a few of these-- a giant Yeti, a Wendigo--to allay the monotony.      

THE NEXT VICTIM (1976)

 

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

SPOILERS

A lot of the hour-long progarmmers on Brian Clemens' THRILLER emphasized mundane naturalistic psycho-killers. My only real reason for labeling this psycho as "uncanny" is because Clemens' script models him strongly after Norman Bates, with a "Lodger" touch or two worked in.

Rich lady Sandy Marshall (Carroll Baker) returns to the apartment she shares with her not-so-rich husband Derek. Sandy has been in the hospital recovering from a car crash, and she's still occupying a wheelchair, though her prognosis is that she will regain full mobility. Sandy's expecting just to pass the day quietly while Derek's gone on business. However, it's a hot summer day in London, and most of the locals have gone to the beach for the weekend. Unfortunately there's also a serial killer who's been preying on London women lately. The cops have one clue: a single prospective victim escaped the murderer, and she heard him refer to her as "mother."

A couple of cops get on the psycho's trail, and though they ferret out the correct suspect, they have no impact on Sandy's apartment ordeal. The killer gains entrance to the gated complex by pretending to be a delivery driver, and the camera's careful not to show his face at first-- though there's no mystery because there's only one suspect, aside from a briefly seen, creepy maintenance guy (Ronald Lacey).

Sandy doesn't hear from a neighbor when she expects to, which causes her to start worrying. Then in the near-deserted complex, Sandy encounters a handsome young guy named Tom (Max Mason). She appreciates his company at first, since he claims to be a resident. But eventually Tom seems "off" to Sandy, especially when he speaks of her car accident as highly improbable-- as if someone might have arranged it. And he also mentions that he served his wheelchair-bound mother for ten years, which seems to be his reason for wanting to hang out with Sandy.   

Clemens almost seems to be setting up Tom to be some amateur detective who (correctly) suspects Derek of being a wife-killer. So when Sandy knocks Tom over the head and tries to wheel away for her very life, Clemens seems to be leading the viewer to believe Tom's a good guy. But no, Tom's the Oedipal assailant, though Clemens, to keep his precious ambiguity, barely explicates Tom's psycho-profile. The beleaguered viewer can only presume that Tom targeted Sandy and meant to kill her but started seeing her as "good non-sexual mother" rather than the "bad sexual mothers" he believed his other victims to be. But as Sandy flees, she needs a new antagonist--so Deadly Derek comes back that same night to knock off Sandy and blame it on the psycho. He and Tom end up fighting over Sandy, and after both men die, the movie just ends, unceremoniously. Usually Clemens' THRILLER dramas are solid if unambitious melodramas-- but this one is just a jumbled botch.  

X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME TWO (1993-94)

 

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

Volume One of this series didn't confine itself to the show's Season One but added on three episodes from Season Two. Volume Two shows even greater impatience, adding a full seven Season Three episodes to the mix. This does allow the collection to conclude with an adaptation of a major comics storyline, The Phoenix Saga-- or at least the first half of it. 

Narratively speaking, Two features the same game, mixing old and new material to make the cartoons resemble the then-current comic books. But though there's no evident change in creative personnel, Season Two looks better. Perhaps succeeding in the ratings gave the second season a bigger budget, resulting in better animation for both drama and fight-scenes,

Notable moments include:

--The finish of a long plotline with Magneto and the Professor stuck in the Savage Land, beleaguered by a bunch of mutants Magneto created. Marvel heroes Ka-Zar and Shanna guest star.

--Wolverine gets a quickie origin and encounters the Canadian hero-team with whom he trained, Alpha Flight. So many heroes are jammed into one episode that what appeal the Alphans had in the comics is nullified here.

-- Though in my Season One review I doubted that the showrunners would delve into the intricacies of Rogue getting her powers from Ms. Marvel, they actually did a decent job with the conceit, though the plot is necessarily simplified and Ms. Marvel does not have an active role in the main story. Rogue's involved relationship with Mystique gets attention as well.

--Lady Deathstrike's origin is revised to make her an old Wolverine girlfriend, which adds nothing to this iteration of the character.

--And finally, the Phoenix Saga comes across well enough, though it skimps on Jean Grey's reaction to becoming a powerhouse and implies that her empowerment was part of some entity's scheme to protect a cosmic gateway. Cyclops' lost father Corsair appears but his paternity is not discussed.  

THE BATMAN, SEASON FIVE (2007-08)

 

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

I suppose someone in authority decided to use the last BATMAN season to spotlight a handful of DC heroes on the theory that a few kids would get hooked on the comics or other secondary materials. The only result I see is that this stratagem did not play to the strengths of the showrunners, because what they produced were thirteen fairly pedestrian episodes. There's none of the passion for re-creating Bat-myths seen in the other four seasons, and even the episodes without guest-stars seem desultory. 

THE BATMAN/SUPERMAN STORY, PT2. 1-2 (F)-- This one is the best of the crossover episodes. Batman, newly inducted into the Justice League, has his first encounter with Superman in Metropolis, interfering in Luthor's attempt to kill the Man of Steel. Despite this collegial encounter, the two alpha males become testy with one another, albeit for better reasons that those of BATMAN V. SUPERMAN. Luthor gets peeved at the Caped Crusader and recruits five Bat-villains to defeat the two Leaguers (and Robin) -- Bane, Black Mask, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, and Clayface II (who, unfortunately, gets neither character development or any good lines). Technically, Ivy alone makes the biggest contribution, turning Superman into Luthor's slave-- at least until the Dynamic Duo free him and all the good guys stomp a squad of Luthor-robots. Best of all, the guardians of Gotham and Metropolis mend fences.

VERTIGO (F)-- Count Vertigo, who's nearly the only memorable Green Arrow villain, belatedly becomes responsible for stranding Oliver Queen on an island, where the millionaire masters archery and decides to become a costumed vigilante. Sometime later, Arrow trails Vertigo to Gotham, to foil the evildoer's plans to unleash city-wide chaos.

WHITE HEAT (P)-- If the writers wanted to use Doctor Phosphorus, why not use him, instead of mutating Firefly into him?  Small points for the depiction of Firefly's girlfriend.

A MIRROR DARKLY (F)-- A few clever tropes redeem what is a Flash-Mirror Master battle, shoehorned into a Batman story.

JOKER EXPRESS (F)-- Batgirl finally shows her cowl in time for the Terrific Trio to trade blows with Joker, who becomes nutty for trains.

RING TOSS (P)-- Even the title sucks when Sinestro comes to Gotham, seeking to steal the power ring of her perennial foe Green Lantern. Penguin gets hold of said ring. Hijinks ensue.

THE METAL FACE OF COMEDY (F)-- The idea of Joker's mind getting downloaded, so as to create the cyber-entity Joker 2.0, is at least livelier than Joker-Bane. Harley Quinn has a few funny moments trying to decide where her allegiance lies.

ATTACK OF THE TERRIBLE TRIO (P)-- The Silver Age Trio were simple but slightly clever pattern criminals: the Fox committed land crimes, the Shark, sea crimes, and the Vulture, air crimes. BTAS couldn't work any good changes on the original and neither could THE BATMAN. There's one good joke where Batgirl guilts Batman for not realizing she's in college

THE END OF THE BATMAN (P) -- Apart from the puzzling title, this is a workmanlike take on a minor Bat-villain, The Wrath. This Wrath acquires a kid sidekick, Scorn, and the two seek to become crime-enhancers, protecting Gotham's crooks from the Duo. Villains Joker, Harley, Ventriloquist, Penguin and Croc are duly ungrateful. At least the action is decent.

WHAT GOES UP (F)-- Though it's another so-so superhero tale, I give it points for returning Hawkman and his recurring foe Shadow Thief to prominence. In JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, both were placed under the shadow of Hawkgirl, but she's not around this time. Shadow Thief teams with Black Mask to take on the two heroes (and Robin).

LOST HEROES PTS 1-2 (F)-- Hugo Strange summons the alien Joining for a second shot at world conquest and facilitates the invasion by disappearing the super-powered crusaders. Why Strange overlooks his Bat-bane, as well as Robin, Batgirl and Green Arrow, the script does not explain. The other heroes eventually are released and get a little action, but it's a rather underwhelming conclusion to an inventive series.

  

         

THE SCREAMING SKULL (1958)

 

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

The Wikipedia essay on SCREAMING SKULL mentions that when director Alex Nicol was trying to persuade his lead actress to take the part, he faked her out by claiming he intended to do a remake of Hitchcock's REBECCA. This was not a coincidence. The SKULL screenplay from John Kneubuhl has almost nothing in common with the F. Marion Crawford short story, which contributed the title and (maybe) the name of one of the characters, which happens to be "Marion." For the most part SKULL is a reprise of REBECCA, being about a second wife's anxieties as to her new husband's feelings about his deceased first wife-- though Kneubuhl also seems to have injected a fair amount of the pop-Freudianism found in the Hitchcock oeuvre.

The film starts with Eric Whitlock (John Hudson) bringing his timid second wife Jenni (Peggy Webber) to the estate Eric once shared with his first wife Marion. The estate seems lavish, with extensive gardens, live peacocks, and the grave of Marion, topped by a monument with her image. Curiously, the interior of the main house is largely bereft of furnishings. Eric explains that though the mansion was bequeathed to Marion by her late parents, she, upon marrying Eric, had all the furniture put in storage, intending to re-decorate, so that Marion could put her own stamp on the dwelling of her dead parents. This loosely implies that only a few months ensued between Marion's marriage and her accidental death, caused when she slipped near the swimming pool, cracked her skull and drowned in the pool. Eric inherited the property only, which circumstance will probably set off warning bells for detectives in the audience.

Jenni also comes from money, and both of her parents are dead-- though under more psycho-dramatic events. She tells her husband's pastor Reverend Snow-- one of only three other characters in the film-- that she Jenni at some point experienced an Electra complex. She became aware of loving her father and hating her mother, not least because she thought her mother disliked Jenni for not being "gay" like the mother. Jenni's fantasy of wishing her mother dead comes to ironic fruition when both parents drown at sea and she's unable to save either of them, despite her best (conscious) efforts. She enters a sanitarium to recover from a breakdown, and after being released she meets and marries Eric. To her horror, one of the few furnishings in the mansion is a portrait of Marion, which reminds Jenni of her dead mother. The other three characters are also living reminders of Marion-- Reverend Snow and his wife to a lesser extent, and to a greater extent, the retarded-seeming gardener Mickey (director Nicol). Mickey was raised on the estate alongside Marion, as if the two were siblings.

Then strange things start happening to Jenni as she sleeps by herself in the mansion. She hears screams in the night, but Eric tells her she heard the cries of the peacocks. She starts seeing disembodied skulls, and Eric tells her that crazy Mickey's gaslighting her. But as soon as the viewer sees ceramic skulls rolling around, he'll guess he's left the domain of Hitchcock for that of William Castle. Eric's hoaxing Jenni to get her money, just as he most probably killed Marion for the same reason. Unfortunately for Eric, his return to the scene of the first crime brings Marion back to undead life-- and she avenges herself by emulating the skull-motif of Eric's plot.

SKULL wasn't meant to grab the audience with anything more than penny-ante Gothicisms, so I can't claim the lousy second half of the movie was any sort of surprise. The first half does at least create some potential for Jenni to overcome her rather random complex, and it's for that unrealized potential that I grade the film's mythicity as "fair." 

ADDENDUM: One improvement might have been to suggest that Eric played into Jenni's father-fantasies. By casting Eric as more of a "bad dad," that would have made the mother-imago Marion at least benign and thus suggesting that Jenni's maternal resentments were overblown.    

RED SONJA (2025)

 

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

"[Hyrkania] was a place of breathtaking beauty and pristine nature, where people lived as one with the Goddess of the Earth ... it was a time of peace and harmony, until the rise of the barbarian king Anzus, who swept across the land, bringing terror and destruction wherever he went."-- Initial voiceover to RED SONJA.    

"It's knowledge that brings civilization to the barbarians."-- Draygan, haranguing a defeated ruler about the foolishness of theism.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

My first reaction to the voiceover was that writer Tasha Huo was putting some heavy symbolic baggage upon Hyrkania, the native land of heroine Red Sonja. The "Red Sonya" created by Robert E. Howard was a denizen of 16th-century Poland, so Marvel comics editor Roy Thomas probably decided that Marvel's version, "Red Sonja," would hail from Howard's quasi-Russian realm of Hyrkania. Since Marvel writers never made much of Sonja's national origins, it's likely Huo conceived the movie's opposition between a prelapsarian, paradisical Hyrkania, violated by barbarians, and evil Draygan's vision of a grand future that eliminates both gods and barbarians. 

The comics-Sonja became a woman warrior after losing just her immediate family, but this Sonja (Matilda Lutz) loses her whole village when it's ravaged by Anzus the Barbarian. She and a few others escape death in the forests, but the other refugees perish. Sonja spends the next decade or so looking for any other survivors in the vast Hyrkanian forests, accompanied only by her loyal steed Vihur. Aside from her fruitless searches, Sonja does little but worship her people's goddess Asherah (modeled on one of the fertility deities of the ancient Near East) and hone her swordfighting skills, like a blade-wielding Sheena of the Jungle. Meanwhile, her fated enemy Emperor Draygan (Robert Sheehan) has tapped the powers of strange science to conquer many realms including that of Anzus. Then Draygan decides to extend his empire into the Hyrkanian forests, along with a retinue of soldiers and some key henchpeople. The most notable of these is Annisia (Wallis Day), a swordswoman who was given her freedom after killing dozens of opponents in Draygan's gladiatorial games, but who is now haunted by the voices of those slain in the arena. Once Draygan starts clear-cutting trees and caging wild creatures, Sonja utters the classic line, "Now we have a quarrel." (Just kidding, that was from SWORD AND THE SORCERER.)   

Later Huo's script will get confused about whether Sonja should be termed a Hyrkanian or not, despite the voiceover's clear implication that she belonged to that realm. And here's where I unleash my only major "spoiler:" Huo allows this confusion because she wants to sell a "big reveal" at picture's end: that Draygan was also a survivor from Sonja's village. However, though young Draygan was enslaved by the ravagers, the boy somehow kept hold of an incomplete "Book of Secrets, taken from the village temple. While Sonja grew up in the forest, venerating the Earth Goddess, Draygan reviled all deities and used the proto-science from his Book to become a new Emperor. When Sonja gets in Draygan's path of conquest, he gets the idea that she, being a Hyrkanian, can lead him to the missing parts of his Book of Secrets, which supposedly will give him even greater power.

Since Draygan wants Sonja's supposed knowledge, the Emperor tries to break her by sentencing her to the arena. This backfires, for Sonja gathers her fellow gladiators into a fighting-force, and after a nice (albeit short) battle with a giant Cyclops, she and her allies escape. As a further touch of irony, one of the other gladiators, name of Daix, really is one of the "special Hyrkanians" both Draygan and Sonja have been looking for. This development leads to an equally ironic resolution of the Book-subplot, which I'll pass over. Annisia and Sonja duel just twice before both Draygan and his forces are defeated by Sonja and her warriors. After much carnage, I'll state that the concluding face-off between the three opponents isn't like any other sword-and-sorcery film I've ever seen.

It's fair to argue that Huo and director W.J. Bassett may have cadged their dialectic from a lot of earlier, non-Howardian sources, particularly the 2009 AVATAR, with its opposition between nature-worshipping primitives and materialistic, acquisitive invaders from Earth. Yet in one respect RED SONJA plays fair with its dialectic more than AVATAR does, in that SONJA addresses (to revise Ingmar Bergman) "the Silence of Goddess." Comics-Sonja lives in a world of demonstrable gods and sorcery. But there's no real magic in the SONJA world-- only scientific devices and some nonhuman species. Both theist Sonja and atheist Draygan complain that Asherah does not answer their appeals, and the Goddess only speaks to Sonja once, when the wounded heroine hovers between life and death. So is Asherah real, or is Draygan right, that all gods are just conjured from the imagination?

Now I've written so much about SONJA's plot and theme that one might think it's some feminist lecture against toxic masculinity, like the execrable 2020 BIRDS OF PREY, to name another adventure-flick with both a writer and director from the XX side of the gene pool. SONJA might not be a great adventure-movie like the classic 1982 CONAN, but it shows the same excellent bloody-mindedness seen in the early Kathryn Bigelow films. Star Matilda Lutz, despite standing only a little over 5'6", displays a tigerish quality foreign to other Sonja-actresses (all two of them). If all one wants from a barbarian fantasy is throats slashed and guts stabbed, SONJA ought to fulfill those needs. I've avoided looking at other reviews, but if it's true that most of SONJA's reviews have been negative, they must have all come from people who never saw a really bad S&S film.      

ACES GO PLACES (1982)

 

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

Though I'm far from being a great fan of Chinese comedy films, I enjoyed the zany slapstick of the ACES GO PLACES series, and the first film in the series did a good job of setting up the three principals, who I believe remained together for all five entries. The basic idea seems to be "what would have happened if the "Phantom" thief of PINK PANTHER joined forces with two eccentric HK cops in fighting crime.

Hong Kong super-thief King Kong (Sam Hui) rips off a diamond shipment and then finds out he's robbed the Mafia. The aggrieved crime-lords send various assassins to HK to avenge their honor, particularly a master burglar named "White Gloves." To apprehend Kong, the HK government calls in an American cop of Asian extraction, Albert Au (Karl Maka). He more or less takes the place of the wacky Inspector Clouseau of the PANTHER films, though his main physical characteristic is his total baldness, a testimony to the popularity of the KOJAK teleseries in Hong Kong. Albert's HK liaison is lady cop Nancy Ho (Sylvia Chang), who's constantly accused of being "mannish," and who does get the movie's best fight-scene.         

There are a number of nice comic stunts, though nothing particularly stands out, but the film has too many car chases and crash-ups. The finale contains the only metaphenomenal element, when King Kong counters a fleet of Mafia automobiles with a collection of tiny, remote-controlled toy cars, each loaded with explosives. I tend to doubt anyone in 1982 could actually create such vehicular weapons, but since the script believes that, I'll treat the little cars as uncanny devices.  

VAN HELSING (2023)

 

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

There's at least three other franchises named Van Helsing, and this one, by CGI-director BC Fourteen, may be the least of them.

I decided to sample this VH, though, because while researching XTERMINATOR for my review, I learned that the villainous robot made an appearance in VH, as well as (very briefly) the BC version of Bigfoot. But the great-grandson of Abraham Van Helsing, astronaut Jack Van Helsing, is the star here-- though he doesn't directly contend with either X or two other evil presences in the muddled story.

I made fun of the fact XTERMINATOR obviously swiped its basic plot from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, but VH might have been better with more story-theft. There's sort of an arc in that the script tells viewers that the Earth was turned into a wasteland in 2022, and by the end of VH, the hero returns to humankind's homeworld and sees that life has begun to thrive again. But this does not happen because of anything done by the hero or anyone else. VH is just a jumble of separate scenes that BC wanted to execute. Only in one way is VH better than its predecessor: VH has one decently executed fight-scene, where Jack in his spacesuit duels a similarly garbed  enemy while both are floating in space. But BC partly undermines his own scene by capriciously naming Jack's opponent after the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau for no good reason I can see.     

XTERMINATOR AND THE AI APOCALYPSE (2023)

 

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

I know nothing about the origins of this low-budget CGI oddity. But just as a guess, it looks and sounds as if writer/director/voice-actor "BC Fourteen" started out trying to make a fan-film about the armored adversary from George Lucas' prequel STAR WARS series, General Grievous. Then he reworked his CGI model into a more skull-faced humanoid and dubbed hm "Xterminator," but kept the raspy, acerbic voice-characterization.

The setting is some futuristic sparse-opera-- my new term for a space-opera so sparse in details that it might as well be a western. Almost all we see of humanity are various armored soldiers, under the command of one Grace Sherwood, and her raison d'etre as a commander of Earth-forces is to play "Thunderbolt Ross" to the robotic villain Xterminator. He calls himself "X" for short, but he's an apocalyptic AI who despises humans as much as humans despise him. So who does Sherwood call upon when her creator obliges her to rip off "Escape from New York" and send someone to Mars to rescue a missing diplomat? That's riiiight...

While X is on his Mars mission, motivated by both carrot and stick, Sherwood decides to hedge her bets by unleashing an intelligent shark-monster. Megalodon, to ambush X. Why does Megalodon exist in this sparse-opera? Same reason Sherwood confers with an intelligent Bigfoot: a director's silly in-joke. because he worked on an early CGI junk-flick, BIGFOOT VS MEGALODON. For good measure, Sherwood also arranges a Martian jailbreak to add to X's headaches.

Though XATAA is never more than a junk-flick, I might have been slightly entertained if Fourteen had been able to deliver on all the promised action. But just as was the case with all the SYFY big-beast fests, action costs too much money for cheapie CGI movies. There's just barely enough violence for XATAA to qualify in my combative mode category. Yet while I can't recommend the film, it did make me a bit curious about Fourteen's half-dozen "Bigfoot" junk-flicks.   

    

THE BATMAN, SEASON FOUR (2006-07)

 

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

A MATTER OF FAMILY (F)-- Season Four launches a credible reprise of the Dick Grayson/Robin origin. The comic-book story was always weak on the motivation of the Zuccos, the crooks who kill off Robin's parents-- what self-respecting gangster would seek protection dough from a business as unstable as a circus? And the tale is not improved by positing that the Zuccos themselves are ex-circus folk-- too much like gilding the lily. But otherwise, "Family" hits the right emotional notes in forging the paternal relationship of Bruce, Alfred and Dick.    

TEAM PENGUIN (F)-- Batgirl, unofficial Bat-sidekick, gets frosted when she meets the official version. Nevertheless, though Batgirl gets sidelined in Season Five, the two teens have good chemistry here, though I prefer the older-younger vibe. It's Penguin's turn to catch a case of "team envy," as he brings together established heavy-hitters like Bane, Firefly, Rag Doll, and Killer Croc-- as well as a new goofball version of Killer Moth. Then, in the midst of assorted hero-villain fights, the Moth gets mutated into a monster. Silly fun.

CLAYFACES (G)-- The Ethan Bennett Clayface had a limited shelf-life since his good side outweighed the bad one-- and Bennett proves that here, capturing Joker and turning himself in. Bruce Wayne gets researchers working on a clay-cure, but the news comes to the attention of flop actor Basil Karlo. He doses himself on the clay-mutagen and finds himself glorying in the attention he gets as Clayface II. Bennett breaks jail and tracks down his successor for a major battle of clay-creeps. Batman dispenses a cure that seems to nullify both shape-changers, but maybe Karlo still retains some power. This Karlo combines the power of the 60s Clayface and the name and profession of the 40s version. That character was named for the two horror-stars of the 1939 movie SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff-- and oddly enough, that's what this Karlo is, the offspring of a monster.   

  THE EVERYWHERE MAN (F)-- Batman and Robin must battle a scientist who can be "everywhere" because he can generate countless duplicates of himself. Or is the scientist really the brain behind the masses? It starts as a mystery and resolves into a big fight-scene with a clever twist. The script resembles that of a 1950s WORLD'S FINEST tale, "The Duplicate Man," though that titular crook could only make a single self-duplicate.

THE BREAKOUT (F)-- Though the main foe is the skull-faced Black Mask, everything else feels like a mundane crime-thriller. Black Mask is confined to Gotham Jail, and his gang tries to break him out, which Batman, Robin and Batgirl must prevent.

STRANGE NEW WORLD (P)-- In the comics, Hugo Strange made monsters, but this tale has the BATMAN version upgrading his act, unleashing a zombie attack on Gotham. Or is he just stealing from the script of the BTAS episode "Dreams of Darkness?"  

ARTIFACTS (P)-- I guess this episode might be considered a condensation of the theme of BATMAN BEYOND: "There will always be a Batman." However, I found "Artifacts" poorly paced and uninvolving.

SECONDS (F)-- How can Batman cope with a time-manipulatitg crook who knows the hero's every move, since the thief can "reset" time and start things over again, to his advantage? Adequate but not interesting.

TWO OF A KIND (G)-- Paul Dini wrote this Harley Quinn reboot, which imagines Harleen as even more of a ditz than her original incarnation-- and this time, she's only a "doctor" courtesy of some online college. Joker spots HQ on daytime TV, dispensing bad psychological advice to her audience-- which leads to her losing her show. Joker professes himself to be her "number one fan," and the psycho-babbler thinks she can profit from his celebrity. Instead, the Monarch of Mirth unleashes her inner criminal-- though he also ends up leaving HQ in the lurch. She makes a few more support appearances in the series, and I suspect that the romantic angle of the first iteration gets played down as it does here.

RIDDLER'S REVENGE (G)-- Grimdark Riddler gets an origin, one that emphasizes some tragic aspects-- but before Batman learns that history, the two enemies have to escape a death-trap by working together. The episode's main strength is its focus upon the sustained illogic of riddles.

RUMORS (F)-- A new vigilante is collecting Gotham's supercrooks, and his name is Lockup-- oops, that was BTAS. This vigilante takes the peculiar cognomen of "Rumor," I suppose because he wears armor with invisibility gear. Rumor succeeds in imprisoning about twenty villains, so the Dynamic Ones must first defeat Rumor and then keep the vengeful villains from killing their jailer. The big battle is better than average, but Rumor's motivation is weak.

THE JOINING (F)-- The final episode of Season Four signals the direction of the fifth and last season, which uses copious DC guest-stars. Here the guest is the Martian Manhunter, who brings Batman news of an alien invasion by a force called "the Joining." The scenes with the invaders are far less compelling than the byplay between the two heroes, and the resolve of the Crusader's two sidekicks to prove their worth (since Batman's flirting with the idea of excluding them to spare their young lives).  The episode is OK if one can keep from wondering what the other DC heroes are doing during this worldwide invasion-- since at episode's end, Manhunter unveils plans for a Justice League. Four familiar figures appear at the finish, and Superman makes his BATMAN debut in Season Five's first episode-- yet somehow their presence does not weigh in the scales of the Joining's defeat.        

THE BATMAN, SEASON THREE (2005-06)

 

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

Ellen Yin gets dethroned from her tenuous position as Batman's sidekick, making room for his costumed counterpart-- Batgirl? Well, I suppose it's a twist on the standard routine, and I could imagine a scenario in which this more "human" Batman gets softened up by this distaff imitator, making him more amenable to adopting Dick Grayson. I'm not sure the showrunners gave the matter that much thought, because this version of Batgirl has no gravitas. She's like a kid sister tagging after her older brother, and not much beyond that.  

BATGIRL BEGINS, PTS 1-2 (P)-- I'm not crazy about a teenaged Batgirl, but I like even less a Poison Ivy who looks like an anime lolicon. Further, there's no payoff to making them classmates who get involved in sabotaging some pollution-making company, except that the plot-device helps the writers condense the origins of both characters. Ivy's botanical mutation comes about when she hires an earthquake-themed evildoer, Temblor, to create havoc. Ivy uses her powers to enthrall Batman, so Barbara Gordon uses her kung fu skills and a distaff costume to become Batgirl, though she's forced to fight her would-be mentor briefly. Once Ivy is corralled, Batman thanks Batgirl but refuses to take her on as sidekick.    

A DARK KNIGHT TO REMEMBER (G)-- This may be THE BATMAN's best single episode, since it's predicated on the series' notion that this Batman is as much Bruce Wayne as his alter ego. In battle with Penguin, the hero sustains a head-blow, and upon resuming his regular ID, forgets that he ever was Batman. In essence, Wayne begins acting in line with the public perception of his identity, and that includes running away when threatened by a super-crook like Penguin. Slowly, Wayne's own altruism re-asserts itself, and Alfred helps him recover his full memories-- but it's a laborious process, the obverse of the crimefighter's unshakeable sense of self in the BTAS episode "Perchance to Dream." On a sidenote, it's a pleasure to see a Penguin who can really fight: he's like a cross between Quasimodo and Sammo Hung.

A FISTFUL OF FELT (F)-- Hugo Strange still seems to be no more than an eccentric analyst, and his newest gambit is to purge the Ventriloquist of his criminal tendencies by giving the demented fellow a wacky felt puppet with no hostile personality. Of course there's no more Ventriloquist stories if he's cured, but this tale includes an epic "battle of the hand-puppets" worth seeing. 

RPM (F)-- Here's a Batmobile-centric tale for a change, and it's arguably a level up from the car just being swiped by Penguin. New villain Gearhead has some bionic abilities and can interface with a car's computer systems to usurp control. Batman loses one Batmobile but builds another to grind the evildoer's gears.

BRAWN (P)-- This is probably the series nadir. Joker gets hold of Bane's super strength chemical and becomes Super-Joker. Batman creates a power suit with which to fight the fiend, and dimwit Batgirl horns in on the action. Grueling.

THE LAUGHING CATS (F)-- Batgirl has her first throw-down with Catwoman, but both the Cat and the two Bats must make an alliance to thwart Joker's latest larceny. Batman doesn't have any response to Catwoman's overtures, aside from not trying too hard to jail her.

FLEURS DU MAL (F)-- "Makin' copies" (old SNL catchphrase) becomes Poison Ivy's new gig, as she starts replacing city officials with her version of "pod people"-- which makes a lot more sense than most of her gambits. Batgirl is understandably torqued when her father is one of Ivy's victims. The title stems (heh) from the name of a poem-collection by Baudelaire, whose own name gets worked into the story.

CASH FOR TOYS (P)-- Batman contends with a poor man's Toyman, name of Krank-- appropriately named, since the episode seems "cranked out."

THE APPRENTICE (F)-- Joker gets a case of "sidekick envy" due to Batman's mentorship of Batgirl. And though I've often liked seeing Joker as a devilish tempter, his selection of a dorky teenager seems counter-intuitive.

  THUNDER (F)-- In the comics, Maxie Zeus seems underwhelming. But BTAS did one exemplary episode with this megalomaniac and his fetish for Greek culture. The producers of THE BATMAN should have avoided Zeus for that very reason, but instead they churned out a routine programmer with no distinguishing virtues.

THE ICY DEPTHS (F)-- Alfred gets some backstory as he's obliged to cope with an obnoxious former schoolmate who drags the butler into a treasure-hunt. However, both Penguin and Mister Freeze seek the same bounty.

GOTHAM'S ULTIMATE CRIMINAL MASTERMIND (F)-- Hugo Strange finally crosses the line, creating a self-aware computer program, DAVE, that believes itself to be the ultimate super-villain. Unlike the comics' Hugo Strange, the mad scientist here seems to be something of a "villain-fanboy," even impressing the program with his own engrams. Thus DAVE is in the grand tradition of all Frankensteinian creations who act out their creators' desires. Once DAVE whips up a robot body for itself, Batman is hard pressed to best the AI on any level, except for that most Socratic necessity-- that of "knowing yourself." And so Strange ends up in his own funny farm, vowing vengeance in some future encounter.     

SPECTERS (1987), MAYA (1989)

 

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

Having been thoroughly disgusted with this inferior "demons on the loose" flick from Lucio Fulci, I promptly watched a couple more by a director I'd never heard of, Marcello Avallone. Neither was very good, but cumulatively they did cleanse my palate.

SPECTERS had nothing going for it except that all its thoroughly routine characters are at least consistent in the ways they act and react, in contrast to DEMONIA. Donald Pleasance is the only "name" actor, and he's just playing a standard "archeologist who unearths a demon from an old sepulchre." The archeological dig takes place near Rome, but Avallone and his co-writers couldn't be bothered to name the evil entity that starts knocking off cookie-cutter victims. The one slightly memorable thing about SPECTERS occurs when Avallone shamelessly rips off a scene from a Freddy Kruger film.

The flattery of imitation served Avallone better in MAYA, his second and last horror movie. This too is also a "demon on the loose" flick, but this time he's doling out gore-scenes worthy of Fulci, whom I suspect he studied before doing this film.

This time Avallone leads off with a Carlos Castaneda quote, a Mexican setting, and a demon whose name, Xibalba, is taken from the cognomen of the Mayan land of death. William Berger-- who's the Big Name this time, at least in the Euro-market-- dies early in MAYA, when his meddling unleashes Xibalba-- not a pure demon, but a once-mortal Mayan ruler who crossed over to the land of death to escape an enemy tribe. Now that he's loose, Xibalba wants to kill pretty much all the descendants of his enemies.

This dollop of mythology has no purpose save to give context to the multiple gore-killings, but that's a good in itself, given how little context appeared in both SPECTERS and DEMONIA. Further, MAYA offers two relatively memorable POV characters: Lisa, who comes to Mexico to learn how her father (Berger) was slain, and Peter, who helps Lisa because he hopes to get into her pants. Avallone also works in three other hot girls, all of whom get horribly killed by Xibalba, and even the non-gore scenes are much more vivid than anything in SPECTERS. MAYA suggests that Avallone might have been able to do at least more passable horror-thrillers-- but the movie flopped, and Avallone turned to other genres thereafter.

            
 

   

DEMONIA (1990)

 

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

Wow. I suppose Lucio Fulci may have done worse films than this one, but it's the worst Fulci movie I remember seeing.

We see a prologue set in the 15th-century, depicting a mob slaying five nuns accused of witchcraft. Then we shuttle back to 20th century Toronto, where our viewpoint character Liza (Meg Register) participates in a seance with some friends. She suffers a vision of the nuns and collapses. Evans (Brett Halsey), Liza's professor from archaeology class, upbraids her for monkeying around with such outdated notions of the supernatural, particularly since they're scheduled to travel with an expedition to Greece for a dig. When Evans asks Liza why she fools around with such things, she has no explanation whatever.

Liza's a pretty good ringer for Fulci himself. Despite being the director and co-writer of this movie, he's not invested in any of the story's narrative action, except (maybe) for setting up a few of the gore-scenarios that his eighties fans came to expect of him. Once Liza and Evans are in Greece, along with a team of archaeological redshirts, the most immediate threat seems to be that of the Greek islanders. All of them make clear that they don't approve of grave-robbing scientists, though the locals don't seem aware of any legends about demon-worshipping nuns from the 15th century. One local corners Liza when she's alone in one of the forbidden sepulchers and mentions that he's a "butcher"-- by which he means the legal kind, though he's menacing enough to suggest the serial-killer variety.

DEMONIA jerks from one stupid horror-scene to another, and I suppose the main reason Evans doesn't close up shop is his skepticism about the supernatural, meaning that he blames the deaths of his colleagues on the locals. Liza has no such excuse, given how often she begins experiencing more visions of evil nuns. The fact that she doesn't even consider hopping the first flight back to Toronto underlines the vapidity of her non-character. Since neither Evans nor Liza can think worth a damn, Fulci sticks in some nothing characters to interact with them and suggest dire fates ahead-- a police inspector for Evans (one played by Fulci himself) and a medium for Liza (played by Carla Cassoli, who contributes the only half-decent performance).

The Satanic nuns are real of course, but they have no more depth than their victims. Sometimes they kill the redshirts directly, and sometimes they lure the victims into booby-traps, but their lack of motive made me miss the complex subtleties of SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS. Near-total waste of time.                   

EXTREME MOVIE (2008)

 

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

I don't want to devote much time to this toss-off comedy, mostly a collection of blackout sketches, though a few segments are devoted to the experiences of a high-schooler named Mike as he pursues the girl of his dreams. It has a couple of skits devoted to time-travel and to a "Weird Science" situation, but neither the fantastic nor naturalistic elements are memorable enough to merit analysis. Yet I will admit that I found EXTREME more diverting than the average bad comedy, possibly just because though the producers mostly used unknown actors, they brought in a lot of hot women to justify their sex-spoofs. Also, I noted that one online reviewer with the site FILM CRITICS UNITED felt much as I did:

The good thing for this movie, despite the fact it’s not really all that funny is that it is still funnier than those Friedberg / Seltzer theatrical disasters ‘Date Movie’, ‘Epic Movie’, ‘Meet the Spartans’ and I think there’s one more that I made a conscious effort to avoid seeing.

The only thing I'll add is though the EXTREME jokes aren't as tiresome as those of the F/S "movie" series, they have the same problem: being too flaccid to generate anything like an inventive twist. One quick example: a young guy strikes up a chatroom-conversation with a woman and wants to meet with her. Though she hasn't laid eyes on him, she thinks it would be cool for him to come to her apartment pretending to be a masked rapist, who will then ravish her. Anyone watching will know that the young horndog will not be getting any, and the scripters take the most obvious route: through exigent circumstances the masked "rapist" shows up at the wrong apartment and menaces the wrong woman, who's terrified despite his fumbling approach. But there's no twist to conclude the skit and provide even fleeting satisfaction. Maybe it might have worked if the wrong woman subdued the guy, tied him up, and began indulging in some sort of "Misery" fantasy instead of the way the actual skit just petered out.

The script here was written and directed by a team best known for the theatrical release NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE, which I have not re-watched for over twenty years. But I remember liking it mildly in the theater, and to my knowledge it may be the best spoof of teenage sex comedies. But then, ANOTHER was also a more high-ticket production, with a cast of solid B-level performers. So it looks like it didn't take long for the duo to slide into mediocrity-- along with most of the comedy-makers for the next twenty years.

            

FINAL CURTAIN (1957)

 

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

“I know that I must find that object, even though I don't know what it is I must seek. I also know I fear that I will find that object. This night the calling is stronger than it had ever been before. This night was to be the night I had looked forward to with fear, knowing all the time that it had to come sooner or later and there was nothing that I could do to heed that call. This was to be the night. This, the last night of our play. This night when all of the others had gone home.”

I'm as surprised as anyone else might be, knowing of Ed Wood's notorious artistic failings, to find that anything he did registers as "good." And FINAL CURTAIN boasts many of the same failings as Wood's full-length movies. But judging CURTAIN only by its symbolic discourse, it is good on those terms. This 22-minute item is like a massively clumsy version of Edgar Allan Poe-- and though I can't prove it, I suspect Poe was one of Wood's inspirations for his sometimes-rambling confessional narratives.

Long ago, SF critic Algis Budrys wrote an essay on HP Lovecraft for some SF-magazine, archly claiming that Lovecraft mastered a POV Budrys called "first person hysterical." The comment wasn't true of Lovecraft at his best, but it was true of a lot of the works of HPL's literary idol Edgar Allan Poe, whether Poe's frenzied narrators dealt with physical danger (the torture-victim of "Pit and the Pendulum") or with internal upheavals (the protagonist of "Tell-Tale Heart"). And "first-person hysterical" certainly fits the unnamed protagonist of CURTAIN, as attested by the snatch of dialogue printed above, from the very beginning of the story.

So, backstory to the project. Prior to August 1956-- the time when Bela Lugosi, the most bankable actor Wood ever worked with, passed away-- Wood had written various spec-scripts, whether original or adaptations of Wood's own prose stories, as potential vehicles for Lugosi. FINAL CURTAIN would have clearly drawn upon Lugosi's iconic Dracula image, by having Lugosi play a stage actor who had just finished starring in a play about vampires, and who remained, throughout the narrative, clad in a tuxedo because that's what his stage-character had been wearing for the play's final performance that day. (Had Lugosi played the part, an audience would have assumed that the actor had essayed the part of Dracula, though the script never says so.) After Lugosi died, Wood managed in 1957 to shoot two pilot episodes for a proposed anthology teleseries, PORTRAITS IN TERROR-- one being FINAL CURTAIN (which came about because Wood secured permission to shoot his film in an empty theater) while the other was entitled THE NIGHT THE BANSHEE CRIED. When no network bought the project, Wood subsequently re-used footage from both in his 1959 feature NIGHT OF THE GHOULS. Ironically this movie also failed to receive commercial exposure until being discovered for the home video market in 1984. Then a copy of FINAL CURTAIN was found and released to said market in 2012. 

CURTAIN's protagonist is an unnamed actor (Duke Moore) who starred in a vampire-play for "months," and now that the play's run is over, he remains in the now-empty theater because he has some unexplained intuition about finding some "unseen object." The Actor (as he's billed in the credits) never speaks out loud, but a voiceover-- the only words spoken in the episode-- purports to be the Actor's inner thoughts, though the often-frenzied mental dialogue was recorded by another Wood player, Dudley Manlove. The Actor never devotes so much as a stray thought to his past, his profession, or anything but the vague unease haunting him. He starts at every cat's yowl, every creaking board.

After ten minutes of these ruminations, the actor heads upstairs, still unusually apprehensive about everything he sees and feels in the theater. He enters the prop room and sees what he momentarily mistakes for a woman with long blonde hair. When the apparition does not move, he remembers that it's the dummy of a vampire that was used in the play. The actor fingers the dummy's dress and her long hair, and he seems to have fallen in a little in love with the image, much the way Poe's protagonists conceived sudden amours. He starts to leave the room, takes one look back-- and suddenly the "dummy" (Jeannie Stevens) smiles and beckons to him. The terrified thespian manages to blunder his way out of the room, and once he's in the corridor outside, he simply goes back downstairs. Since "the Vampire" (as Stevens is billed) does not appear again, the Actor is able to dismiss the experience. 

After more ruminations, the Actor enters the "last room" in the theater. There he discovers a coffin-- though all the audience sees is a boxy shape, like an overturned cabinet. The Actor opens the "lid" of the "coffin," which he decides is the "object" he's anticipated, and he crawls in and shuts the lid, whereon the film ends with the implication that he smothers himself to death with a figurative Premature Burial.

Frankly, I went back and forth a little regarding the phenomenality of this short tale, with respect to "the Vampire." Ed Wood certainly didn't care about making things clear, so any conclusion I make might be my personal preference alone. I wouldn't have put it past Wood to have imagined (a) a real female vampire who just happens to be the spitting image of a prop dummy used in a play, and (b) who decides to stop by the theater in which the Actor's roaming around, as she's been called to him by his "half in love with easeful death" train of thought. Indeed, the plotline of NIGHT OF THE GHOULS-- the movie into which Wood inserted scenes taken from CURTAIN-- revolves around the notion that a phony spiritualist accidentally summons real ghosts. But at least the ghosts of GHOULS actually DO something, forcing the crooked medium into a coffin, where the swindler dies just as the Actor does.

Yet, even granting Wood's capricious plotting, it might be a bit more likely that the Actor simply imagines the prop dummy coming to life and beckoning to him-- which is, incidentally, the only really scary scene I've ever seen in a Wood movie. And the scene works because, in large part, viewers half expect it. And I'm not talking about expecting the Big Reveal because any viewer can see that the "dummy" is breathing. I'm saying that, because the Actor strokes the dummy's hair and clothes as if he's thinking about making out with the mannequin, it's the perfect "revenge of the feminine" for the dummy to come to life and say, "Sure, come on, big boy" with her gestures. Therefore, the Actor conjures up his own punishment, much as the narrator of "Tell-Tale Heart" imagines that he can hear the beating heart of the man he murdered. The Vampire-scene is also a turnaround-- probably unintentional-- on the end scene from Wood's GLEN OR GLENDA, where cross-dresser Glen's wife willingly permits him to share her clothing.

The Vampire-scene also mirrors the episode's final moments, in that first we see an unliving object seem to come to life, after which a living man makes himself unliving. One online review claimed that the Actor is really dead from the first, but I think this interpretation robs the character of any empathy. Wood might not have understood how to make the Actor sympathetic to an audience, but he WANTS viewers to feel for the thespian's inner turmoil. The Actor has played a living dead man for "months," and there's the broad implication that he's been seduced by the idea of death. The setup is not unlike that of the actor-protagonist of 1947's A DOUBLE LIFE, who becomes overly invested in playing Othello, to the extent that the performer begins thinking that he is Othello, with deadly consequences. 

                    

Does Wood come close to tapping Poe's unique exploration of the dark side of human psychology? No, but I think Wood, even though he made this pilot when he was still in his thirties, showed a penchant for death-haunted characters throughout most of his cinematic career. Whatever TV-network might've watched Wood's pilot-episodes would have been entirely justifying on rejecting them as having no prime-time potential. But in some ways, the short CURTAIN does a better job than the full-length features at translating Wood's anxieties into a "personal myth"-- one with at least a little more universality than the director's passion for angora sweaters.