THE BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA (1971)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Here we have another giallo with an animal-name, testifying to a minor Argento influence on director Paulo Cavara. Cavara's only well-known giallo (this being the better known of two) lacks Argento's focus upon seamy psychology and aesthetic murder-scenarios, and often Cavara's pace has more resemblance to fast-paced polizitteschis. 

World-weary police inspector Tellini (Giancarlo Giannini) is thinking about a career change, maybe one that would allow him more time with his sexy wife Anna (Stefania Sandrelli). Then a serial killer with a unique murder-pattern gets dropped in Tellini's lap. Beautiful women with no known social connections begin dying at the hand of a madman who's unusually sadistic. The killer utilizes a special poison derived from that of a tarantula hawk-wasp: venom with which the wasp paralyzes a spider in order to lay its eggs in the spider's flesh. Used on the madman's victims, the venom paralyzes them so that they remain conscious as the killer eviscerates them.

Tellini isn't intellectually intrigued by the murders as some detectives might be, and indeed, despite his training he seems disgusted by the case. And after the maniac has preyed upon such victims as Barbara Bouchet and Barbara Bach-- he decides to go after the inspector's wife as well.

Though the killer's method is very inventive, and he's the star of the story as the murderer usually is in such dramas, TARANTULA is noteworthy for the ambivalent ending (that's why the SPOILER warning is there). In short, Tellini finds the madman, and after a violent battle-- simply kills him. Cavara's last shot is of the guilty officer leaving the scene of the murder and disappearing into a crowd of regular citizens. The strong implication is that Tellini will get away with the crime, but whether he regrets playing executioner, the viewer can only guess. Not many ambivalent conclusions work well in the giallo subgenre, but Cavara's is one of the best.

        

    

QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958)

 

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

The phrase "tongue in cheek" not infrequently comes up in reviews of QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE. But no matter how many tongues are lodged in how many cheeks, QUEEN's not a comedy because it isn't structured around the production of jokes and funny situations. Despite all the risible elements of the movie-- not least the presence of top-billed Zsa Zsa Gabor, the Venusian with a Hungarian accent-- the plot is structured like a drama. The essence of the story is yet another reprise of the War Between Men and Women, in which the men win the contest by killing a monstrous incarnation of femininity.

The usual backstory routine: Ben Hecht, writer of many Classic Hollywood movies, either composed or inspired a ten-page treatment about a planet ruled by inept females. Allied Artists bought the treatment for one of their low-budget sci-fi productions, such as 1956's WORLD WITHOUT END, as well as hiring that movie's director, Edward Bernds, for QUEEN. The credited screenwriter was Charles Beaumont, who has scored some success in SF-magazines but in 1958 had only successfully sold three television scripts before this job. What Beaumont and any uncredited collaborators produced was almost certainly compromised by QUEEN's low budget, recycling costumes and props from three or four other SF films, including a giant spider-puppet from WORLD WITHOUT END. 

Though Beaumont had yet to make his Hollywood bones, he does establish his gender-conflict fairly clearly in the opening scenes, at least as well as the best-known "babes in space" movie of the 1950s, CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON. Unlike that 1953 flick, QUEEN's space voyage is manned by an all-male team of four astronauts. Three of them, Captain Patterson (Eric Fleming) and two other young guys named Mike and Larry, express a desire to take on an exploratory mission in space, but they're obliged to do a "milk run" to an orbiting space station, escorting its architect Prof. Konrad (Paul Birch) to that destination. Even being told that they're to investigate anomalous signals to the station doesn't satisfy these seekers of glory, none of whom have any strong ties to females of the species (though Larry is constantly portrayed as the facile ladies' man of the bunch.)

However, when their spaceship approaches the station, a mysterious ray destroys the orbital and everyone aboard. Patterson and his three-men crew seek to avoid the ray, but it must not be the same one, for the ship is transported all the way to a jungle-planet. Despite an initial sighting of snow-- poetically described as "angel's hair"-- the four astronauts find that both atmosphere and gravity allow them to leave the ship and wander through a potted-plant jungle. Konrad theorizes that they've reached Venus, even though it doesn't look anything like established theories about the planet's nature.

Beaumont doesn't waste time on the discrepancy, for the viewer instantly gets proof that the planet MUST be Venus, since the guys are taken prisoner by a gaggle of love-goddesses. Okay, they're just a lot of cute girls in short skirts, but they're armed with disintegrator rays, so the guys have to go along. The astronauts see no men of any age (or women who are extremely old or young), and a tribunal headed by mask-wearing Queen Yllana (Laurie Mitchell) accuses the Earthmen of plotting an invasion of Venus. Yllana announces that the men are to be executed, but then she simply has them confined in some room together.

While under "cathouse arrest," the Earthmen meet Talleah (Gabor), allegedly a scientist, though she never says anything remotely technical. She gives the guys a quick and dirty summary of Venusian history. Ten years ago, Venus engaged in a war with another planet (whose name sounded like "Mordor"). Venus won, but the planet suffered radiation bombardments. Yllana and her all-female coterie somehow overthrew all the Venusian males and exiled them to a neighboring "satellite." Yllana and her allies are apparently fine with never enjoying male company again, but Talleah has assembled a gang of rebels planning to end the Queen's rule. Also, the Earth-guys learn that Yllana is responsible for blowing up the space station, and that she plans to do the same to the planet Earth.

However, everyone thinks that Patterson ought to try making out with Mask Maiden, so he vows to take one for the team. Unfortunately, Yllana takes off her mask and reveals that her real reason for hating men is because nuclear radiation ravaged her facial features (though the rest of her is perfectly fine). She wants to make an exception of Patterson, so that he becomes her consort on Venus. But not only does the captain have "butterface" issues, he's already got the come-hither from Talleah, so he turns Yllana down.

One might think that Yllana now has no reason to keep any of the Earth-dudes, and I don't think she even says anything about letting them live long enough to watch Earth die. Bernds must have insisted on re-using his damn fake spider from WWE, because the Earthmen briefly escape with Talleah and a couple of random girl-buddies, but only long enough for Mike to get attacked by, and saved from, the unconvincing arachnid. So Talleah fakes apprehending the fugitives and takes them back to their previous set. Beaumont kills a little more time by having Patterson capture Yllana and letting Talleah don the Queen's mask to impersonate her-- but this gambit also fails. Yllana escorts all of her enemies to the site of the long-range disintegrator ray, which looks like a giant easy-bake oven. Then Yllana presses what she calls a "red button" (actually black) -- and the machine simply doesn't work. Talleah's rebels attack Yllana's guards in a half-hearted battle, while Yllana runs inside the machine to make it work. Instead, the ray-machine blows up and finishes off the Ugly Duckling. Talleah becomes queen and orders the return of Venusian men from exile. The world has been safe for the return of heterosexual coitus, so the astronauts conveniently receive orders that they can stay on Venus for at least a year of humping.

Beaumont's best movie/TV work was ahead of him. But though he crafted a sloppy script, that's probably helped the movie in its claim to "so bad it's good" status. Ironically, there are some major tropes in QUEEN that could have made for a decent formula-movie, along the lines of Bernds' equally cheap WORLD WITHOUT END-- and not just the trope of the male-female war. Yllana "coulda been a contender" for good villainy, given that she holds warring males responsible for her disfigurement, and thus for her exclusion from hetero happiness. During Talleah's mask-masquerade, Patterson comments that she could be Yllana's "twin sister" (despite the accent), and the idea of heroes and villains mirroring each other is another rich trope, even though you'd have to make Talleah interesting for the trope to work at all. It's interesting that Patterson refers to the ship's attackers as "deadly neighbors," and what better justifies regime-change than finding out that your neighbors are already plotting against you? But all of QUEEN's tropes are as stillborn babes. Zsa Zsa wouldn't have been selected for a good script at all, so her casting is another of the movie's "tongue-in-cheek" aspects. And wouldn't most actors prefer to be known for a notorious dog than for an efficient formula-film remembered only by a small coterie of nerds?

    

                        

 

LUPIN III: TACTICS OF ANGELS (2005)

 

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

I'm by no means a Lupin III expert, even where the animated films are concerned. But it's pretty evident to most of the feature films/TV specials usually involve three groups in conflict. The primary conflict is most often the Lupin Gang of superlative thieves with some other criminal gang, who are always more ignoble and destructive than the "honest thieves," and there's a secondary conflict in which Inspector Zenigata, accompanied by whatever law-enforcement agents he can draft, pursues the Lupin Gang but has to be satisfied with the defeated villains Lupin has left behind. It's a corollary tendency that if Fujiko Mine sees any advantage in betraying the gang to the villains, she usually will, but she always gets welcomed back to the fold when the evil guys seek to off her.

TACTICS starts out like a lot of Lupin adventures (though overall this TV special has better comedic elements than many of the others). Zenigata has received a challenge from Lupin to the effect that the master thief's going to raid the US installation Area 51. As Zenigata learns from head scientist Emily, the installation holds a bonafide alien artifact, a sphere called "The Original Metal," apparently because it's so hard nothing can cut it. Lupin and his associates succeed swimmingly, partly through Lupin disguising himself as an artsy statue of a giant poop-pile. Jigen and Goemon are disgusted, however, when Lupin informs that he didn't steal the artifact in order to fence it and make a lot of cash. He plans to turn the metal of the sphere into a unique finger-ring for Fujiko, the better to steal her heart. Unfortunately for Lupin, not even Goemon's peerless samurai blade can cut the metal, and Goemon must leave to seek some way to repair his chipped sword. So then Lupin begins trying to figure out some way to penetrate the metal-- though even at the movie's end, it's not a sure thing that Lupin really intended just to make the Original Metal into a ring for Fujiko.

But other forces also want the Metal. The viewer meets "The Bloody Angels" before the Lupin Gang does, as this all-female fighting force practices for the coming conflict by killing four fighters dressed up like Lupin's people. The four Angels are Lady Jo (a kung fu expert who usually dresses up as a man), Poison Sophie (a poisons expert), Bomber Lily (an expert in both explosives and stage magic), and Kaoru (a samurai whose skills are a close match to Goemon's). The Bloody Angels (whose name always sounds like that of the "Lovely Angels" of the DIRTY PAIR franchise) seek to find out which of the gang has the metal sphere. But clever Lupin has made copies, so that not even devious Fujiko can be sure of stealing the right object when she tries to sell it to Lady Jo, who almost kills Fujiko.

The four main Angels, who are the forefront of an all-female army, provide the gang with good opposition, but the best comes from Kaoru, whose sword Goemon believed to be "cursed." It's not certain whether this is the case or not, but if so it would be a very rare instance of the supernatural existing in Lupin's sci-fi world. Because Goemon's sword was chipped by contact with Original Metal, he even has to flee Kaoru in the first encounter, though of course the second face-off turns out very differently. Lupin is faced with an intriguing puzzle: if no Earthly force can scrape off a shard of the sphere, what good is it to the Angels, or to any foreign government they might sell it to? As it happens, there is a good solution to this puzzle, which involves using the sphere in conjunction with something else to create a death-ray that no government should be trusted with.

Though the Angels are initially portrayed as terrorists, one of them, Sophie, claims to have an altruistic reason to want the sphere. Since she becomes somewhat simpatico with Lupin during their clashes, she reveals to Lupin that she carries a major grudge against the US due to having lost her brother, a member of the US military forces, due to incompetent commanders. It's rare for stories in the LUPIN canon to be very critical specifically of US practices, given that America is a big market for the franchise. At the same time, Sophie's grudge is loosely demonstrated to be sophistry in that she believes she can built a new, better country out of the ashes of devastation-- something Lupin opposes for purely practical reasons. Then Sophie is killed by one of her own, and the gang has no further sympathies for the other three angels or their small army of lady soldiers.

TACTICS is certainly one of the bloodiest productions in this franchise that I've seen, with lots of characters getting shot or sliced up. The animators don't linger upon the after-effects of the violence, but the carnage is a real factor in giving TACTICS a harder edge than many similar works-- though, oddly, it's also one of the funniest LUPINs in my experience. The viewer never learns anything about the ET science that formed the sphere, and no aliens make the scene. But there's a stronger sociological theme here than in most LUPINs. (Also, Fujiko does get a chance to be more of an action-girl than in many other productions.)

                    

AGAINST THE DRUNKEN CAT PAWS (1979)

 

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

As distinctive as the title is, very little of the rambling storyline has to do with its heroine Lin (Chia Ling) using drunk-fu, or patterning her moves on those of felines. In fact, if the epithet "blind drunk" didn't mean something else, one could have credibly titled the movie "Against the Blind Drunken Cat Paws," since Lin spends roughly half the picture as a high-functioning, blind kung-fu artist.

Some time back, Lin was the martially-trained daughter of a prominent kung-fu master, who'd become famous for bringing bandits to justice-- specifically, 13 of the equally famed "14 Bandits." But the gang's leader Wolf Fang escapes, and he gathers a new mob, also called variously "14 Bandits," when the dub doesn't say "13" instead. Wolf Fang's forces-- including a blind female colossus (whose eyes are crossed) and a dwarf with a poisonous blowgun-- attack the master's domicile, killing him and many of the servants. Lin is blinded by the dwarf's poisons but gets away. Strangely, the film doesn't seek to get much emotional mileage out of this sad state of affairs. Director Shan Hsi-Ting-- who directed over 50 HK flicks, of which I've seen only a few-- merely has her holed up in some old temple with her little brother (also a kung-fu trainee) and her cat. It's not clear how Lin supports herself, much less gets all the booze she drinks (though sometimes she steals it).

However, the New 14 Bandits come to the town where Lin's hiding out, and their next intended target is some government official who also prosecuted Wolf Fang's earlier gang. The official has a kung-fu daughter named Wang (Sun Chia-Lin), and she and her unnamed female servant (also a "fu girl") seek to figure out a way to repel the villains. She makes common cause with Lu, a stalwart who had been engaged to Lin before she disappeared. Lu has recognized Lin despite her deshabille appearance, so he and Wang contrive a plan to make Lin admit her true identity. They tell Lin that the two of them are going to be married, and Lin can't tamp down her true feelings for Lu. Not only does she reveal her identity, she also cries so heavily, she weeps out the poison that has kept her blind for so long. 

Lin, Lu, Lin's brother and Wang are joined by a couple of other characters whose importance, frankly, escaped me. So they take on the 14 Bandits, who possess various talents, including Wolf Fang, who apparently has real fangs in his mouth. The various battles are decent, aside from those centered upon a supposedly "funny" character, but Chia Ling is the only performer worth watching. Her character's arc is compromised by these mostly uninteresting support-types, and so I can't say that CAT deserves to be on the list of the actress's best films. She would only make seven more movies before mostly retiring from the role of kung-fu diva.                   

MONSTER MASH (2024)

 

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

Unlike the other two movies I've reviewed here that used the title of Bobby Pickett's famous novelty song, the 2024 MONSTER MASH is not a comedy. This is all the more remarkable since it's a low-budget film from that maker of mockbusters, The Asylum, and it doesn't appear to be based on any current successful film. It's not a perfect film by any means, but it's a better monster-mash than, say, the bloated, near-charmless VAN HELSING.

Doctor Victor Frankenstein (Michael Madsen, practically sleep-acting) is dying. He decides to start harvesting parts from the world's most famous monsters-- the heart of Ramses the Mummy, the flesh of the Invisible Man, and the blood of Dracula-- in order to create a giant homunculus, in which he will transfer his intelligence. To this end, he first sends his undead Monster (Erik Celso Mann) to capture the lord of vampires. But Dracula (Ethan Daniel Corbett) happens to be away from his crypt, leaving behind his daughter Elisabeta (Emma Reinagel). Since she's also a vampire, the Monster drags her back to Frankenstein's castle and sticks her in a cell, so that her daddy will come looking for her and also get captured.

Now, given that I enjoyed MASH on its own terms, I almost feel guilty about pointing out that for the entire ninety-minute length of the movie, Frankenstein does absolutely NOTHING to guide Dracula to Frankenstein's castle. I suspect that writer-director Jose Prendes knew that if Frankenstein observed this bit of logic, then there would be no reason for Dracula to assemble a task force of monsters, and what we'd have would just be another "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" flick. So the mad doctor leaves Dracula to figure things out on his own. Dracula happens to know a (non-monstrous) witch who guides the count to the mummy Ramses. Ramses teams up with Drac and they find The Invisible Man Griffin, and Griffin in turn brings in a friendly werewolf. 

While I'm glad that the various monsters don't do the Marvel thing where they fight before they team up, the lack of an immediate menace means that every time the monsters come together, it's a lot of talking head scenes. Admittedly Prendes' script gives some clever lines to the mummy and the invisible fellow. The wolf-man is a blank slate, but it's cute that his civilian name of "Charles Conliffe" is not the usual variation on "Larry Talbot" of WOLF MAN fame but is rather the name of the father of Talbot's girlfriend in the 1941 movie. Still, it's Corbett's Dracula whose grim sense of purpose lends even the talking-head scenes a degree of urgency. 

For a B-plot, the imprisoned Elisabeta builds up a friendship with the Monster, whom the neglectful mad scientist treats a pliable stooge. Mann does a very pitiable Monster, so that his scenes with the young vampiress somewhat make up for Madsens's equally neglectful acting-job. 

Eventually the Monster Squad finds its way to Frankenstein's hideout, but Dracula is separated from his allies, so that the evil doctor transfers his blood into the giant homunculus. This is where MASH's low budget most lets down viewers, for the giant CGI critter can't interact with the normal-sized monsters. So the goodguy-monsters have to defeat the behemoth with some rather predictable strategy, and the Monster--whose name is "Boris," ha ha-- joins forces against his "father" in the homuculus-body. 

The only other "name" performer in the film is Michelle Bauer, who plays, in very heavy makeup, a resurrected corpse who helps the witch in her divinations. I surmise that Prendes knew he didn't have the money to make an impressive movie, so instead he made a mildly enjoyable trifle with some decent performances, primarily by Corbett and Mann. Worth seeing if you keep your expectations on the low side.

          

DRAGON QUEST/DRAGON WARRIOR (1989-91)

 

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

I'm indebted to this YT channel for providing fansubs for the Japanese anime series DRAGON QUEST, based on a popular 1980s video game that received distribution in the US and other countries. In 1989, 13 of the anime's 43 original episodes were dubbed and released to American TV under the title DRAGON WARRIOR. I presume that the translation company hoped that 13 episodes would "prime the pump" and create viewer demand to see the entire series in English. But this did not occur, and I presume that only fansubbed editions are available for non-Japanese speakers.

As a viewer who was frustrated in the Day to see only a small number of episodes, I'm happy to have some closure. That said, I was never under any delusion that QUEST was any hidden mythopoeic treasure. Even in 1989 I was pretty sure the anime was just a very basic fantasy RPG, in which noble, sword-swinging stalwarts went on quests to defeat evil demons and/or sorcerers. I later learned that there had been a manga prior to the anime, and that the two are only loosely related to either the video game or to one another, though I'm unclear as to when the anime started using different names for the main characters.  There are only a few minor myth-kernels in the TV show at most.

The screenshot above shows the five main heroes. In the foreground is the hero Abel, while his girlfriend Tiala clings to him. At left is the lady warrior Daisy, while to the right, the floating fellow is the magician Yanack and the fellow with the skull-helmet is Abel's pudgy buddy Mokomoko, who provide much of the comedy relief. The setup is that Tiala is the hereditary protector of a magical stone capable of releasing a powerful dragon from its slumber. The devilish-looking Baramos abducts Tiala from her village in order to gain control of the dragon, whose blood can confer immortality. Abel and Mokomoko arm themselves and seek to rescue Tiala. On their way they pick up the aid of the good sorcerer Yanack and the woman-warrior Daisy. Yanack has no real backstory, but Daisy became a warrior in order to seek her lost brother. She originally joins Abel and Mokomoko because she thinks there's profit in their quest, but naturally she bonds with the guys and becomes a hero dedicated to defeating the various minions of Baramos. She also falls in unrequited love with Abel and also must bear the indignity of being ogled by the dirty old magician Yanack.      

I don't remember exactly why the quest becomes a matter not of just rescuing Tiala but also about finding holy objects that will make it possible to resurrect the dragon. Appropriately the objects are a Holy Sword and a Holy Grail, mirroring (if only unintentionally) the sexual propensities of Abel and Tiala, who are implicitly a holy couple whose unison can redeem the fallen world. Baramos is just a dime-a-dozen magical menace, but the scenes of the heroes, as well as their encounters with ordinary folks, allow for much better character interactions than one sees in most American-made animated TV shows. A couple of storylines involve Baramos corrupting or controlling the relatives of the heroes and causing Daisy to fight her lost brother and Abel to battle his father. So far as I can tell, it's not recounted as to how Baramos was far-sighted enough to suborn these characters. This is particularly true of Daisy's brother, who's actually raised from childhood by a villainous minion, long before Baramos could possibly have known that Daisy was going to be one of the heroes who opposed him. Still, QUEST also isn't afraid to knock off some of the lovable side-characters, such as a "nice monster" who befriends Tiala.

Still, good design triumphs over limited TV animation, and QUEST always feels action-packed. And one extra benefit of the American dub is that the translation company produced what I consider a superior theme-song, complete with quick cuts from the episodes, that I still find stimulating thirty-plus years later.

      

STEEL FRONTIER (1995)

 

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

Now THIS, unlike some of the sludge I've recently reviewed from the defunct PM Entertainment, is what the company was capable of when it put good people in charge of their low-budget action-movies. I've seen other good formula-flicks from director/co-writer Jacobsen Hart and co-writer Paul Volk, but STEEL FRONTIER is an exceptionally good reworking of the post-apoc subgenre and of the westerns that partly inspired them.

Once again, some idiot dropped the Bomb, and that instantly flung the remnants of humanity back into the framework of the Old West, with scattered enclaves of hard-working tillers of the soil, continually menaced by wasteland savages (cannibals called "roach-eaters") and by a roving gang of ruthless bandits. In deference to the influence of MAD MAX, this gang of "Death Riders" use automobiles rather than horses to cross the desert, and the bandits themselves seem to be rogue members of the US army. That their leader (Brion James) is given the name "Quantrell," emulating that of the post-Civil War raider, indicates that the writers wanted to allude to the power of the military to foster tyranny. Other members of the Riders include Quantell's second in command Acker (Bo Svenson), the leader's wimpy son Julias (John C Victor), and other weirdos, one of whom is named Chickenboy in reference to his feathery attire.        

 We meet the hero first, though, when he has to mercy-kill one of the Death Riders' victims: a man with his legs torn off, left to die in the desert. This is the taciturn Yuma (Joe Lara), whose origins are never revealed, though there's the suggestion that he might have been, like Mad Max, an enforcer of the law. Some reviewers compared Yuma to Jesus, I guess because he has long hair and because late in the film he gets wounded in the side. But there's a clever allusion to Yuma's real nature in a conversation between Quantell and Acker, where Quantrell opines that he doesn't like his gang's name because "Death rides alone." And who does director Hart immediately cut to, riding alone on his motorcycle to his death-dealing conflict with evil? Only one guess allowed.

 There are no great surprises to the plot. The Riders take over a peaceful town and began heaping indignities upon the residents, including beautiful Sarah (Stacie Foster) and her young boy. Yuma shows up and joins the Riders in order to whittle them down from within, before making an all-out assault, aided by Sarah and some of the more courageous townfolk. Quantrell, who's left town to coordinate with other members of his gang, finds out about the rebellion and leads more bandits to wipe out the whole town. Instead the bad guys are taken out and heroic Yuma gets the de rigeur final battle with the main villain, before cycling off into the sunset.

Aside from the allusions to Yuma being both Jesus and Death, the writers provided the actors with lots of quick emotional moments. Quantell, raging when he finds that Yuma killed his son. Sarah trying to get the cowardly populace to fight back. Sarah's son trying to save his mother from rape with a slingshot and undergoing a rite of passage as he manages to kill the idiot Chickenboy. Svenson confessing to Yuma that before the Bomb fell, he'd hoped to become an astronaut, and wondering if some of them are still in orbit above the ruined world. And though I've rarely been impressed with Joe Lara, here he does a fine job of putting across his version of a "man with no past." And for once, the usual PM policy of punctuating the drama with explosions, gun-battles and fistfights works to good effect.    

THE SEVENTH CURSE (1986)

 

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

Most of the Western attempts to cash in on the popularity of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK-- most of which appeared in the 1980s-- were low-level formula at best. The two Duncan Jax films have the virtue of being the wackiest emulations of Indiana from the West-- meaning the US and Western Europe-- and I favorably compared the Jax films to many of the more brain-friend Japanese adventure-films. But what about Hong Kong? Certainly, that Asian  powerhouse could outdo the Westerners in sheer insanity?

Well, two of the laborers on THE SEVENTH CURSE, co-writer Wong Jing and director Lam Nagai Kai, did indeed produce their share of absurd adventures. But this specific film, adapted from a Chinese book-series, isn't a rival to Duncan Jax, much less Indiana Jones.

Just as Indiana's career is all about confronting specters of remote cultures, the hero of CURSE, Doctor Yuen (Chin Sui-ho) seems similarly constituted. He ventures to Thailand in search of AIDS medicine but has an ill-fated encounter with a local cult of "worm priests" when he tries to liberate a sacrificial cult victim. For Yuen's effrontery, the cult inflicts on him seven "curses," which manifest in his body as suppurations of flesh and pus, tormenting him until the seventh and last curse kills him. Yuen escapes Thailand and cheats death thanks to a female priestess who shares a piece of her breast-flesh with him (!) But to foil the curse permanently, he must return to the cult and somehow get the curse reversed, this time with the help of bazooka-toting Chow Yun-Fat and spunky reporter Maggie Cheung.

I don't take issue with the fact that the film's creators meant CURSE as "leave your brain at the door entertainment." But aside from a couple of big fight scenes, most of the time the heroes are fleeing from crude, practical-effects menaces like living skeletons and killer fetuses. CURSE is certainly okay escapist divertissement as it stands, but it's awfully predictable, not only in terms of the menaces but also in terms of the rather dull heroes. Compared to the most absurd films Hong Kong has been able to muster in the past, CURSE is third-rate at best.   

          

ONE PIECE: STAMPEDE (2019)

 

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

The ONE PIECE manga series, the TV show, and (I assume) all the movies, even those I haven't seen, are first and foremost big noisy shonen spectacles. They possess mythicity only when the creators put all the gob-smacking action in some sort of context-- the cosmological innovations of the pirate-world's biological sphere, the sociological conflicts of the lawless and the law-abiding.

Of the five movies I've reviewed here, the aptly named STAMPEDE just thunders past any epistemological context, and fairly runs over the viewer with action, action, action. Probably insiders who know the OP universe inside-out will have no objections. But even though I'm reasonably well grounded in the OP cosmos-- having read 78 tankobon collections of this wack-a-doodle manga-- I found that so much concentration on action left me enervated.

The setup is that the Straw Hats attend the planet's first "Pirate Fest," on a remote island supposedly shielded from the World Navy. Though a lot of the other pirates seem to have been designed (poorly) for this cartoon movie, a fair number of characters from earlier manga-storylines pop up here.  Some are rogues who challenged Luffy and company in the past, like Buggy the Clown and Crocodile, while others are loosely affiliated with the law, like Smoker and Boa Hancock. But none of them get any introductions, so you'd better bring your own scorecard.

The festival is quickly broken up by the Navy, when someone finks to them, and by the Menace of the Day: a colossus named Douglas Bullet. He may deserve the distinction of ONE PIECE's worst villain, being just another sorehead with a grudge who tapped into some ultimate power, which nevertheless can be surpassed by the incredible tenacity of Monkey D. Luffy.

Aside from the mostly forgettable crossovers, STAMPEDE has one other small distinction. The organizing premise of ONE PIECE is that prior to the start of the Grand Pirate Era, a superb pirate left behind a hidden treasure, "One Piece," before he was executed. However, though the allure of the treasure supposedly spurs the multifarious pirates to seek it out, One Piece is never the actual subject of a plot in the 78 volumes I've read. STAMPEDE does depart from that tendency in that the prize of Pirate Fest is a device that can guide one to the desired goal. But since such a contingency could interfere with the continuity of the still-ongoing manga series, the device is naturally disposed of.      

     

ONE PIECE: GOLD (2016)

 

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

A Marxist critic would probably view GOLD as a commentary on the corrosive power of the cash nexus upon human beings. I doubt that the writer had anything ideological in mind when he invented the villain Gild Tesoro (roughly, "golden treasure"), but one could certainly argue that he's one of many evildoers who seeks to hold a godlike control over his subjects, and even explicitly calls himself a god three or four times.

 Gild Tesoro manages Gran Tesoro, a mammoth ship that hosts its own Vegas-like community, entirely organized around the activities of his casino. The Straw Hat Pirates initially view the city-at-sea as a beguiling place of fun and adventure, and they even show off their powers by kicking the asses of some sore-loser pirates who try to rob the casino. Tesoro's lovely henchwoman Baccarat then invites the Straw Hats to enjoy the gambling activities and extends to them a munificent line of credit. However, Baccarat also possesses "luck-luck" powers, and she messes with Luffy's luck to cause the Straw Hats to lose all their credits, putting them in debt to Gran Tesoro.

Tesoro himself is the epitome of the "gladhander" villain: the type who pretends to offer everyone a good time. In truth one of the evildoer's showy stunts is to shower newcomers with gold dust-- dust with which he can then control them, thanks to his "gold-gold power." Everyone, except perhaps Tesoro's henchmen and casino guards, become Tesoro's slaves as soon as they enter the city, and that includes the hero-pirates. To provide his customers with "bread and circuses," he contrives a game to challenge the Hats to absolve their debts before Tesoro executes Zoro. 

 The Straw Hats get some timely assistance from a more landbound type of pirate: professional thief Carina. She's also an old acquaintance of Nami, who has her own larcenous past, and the joined allies try to heist the vast treasures of Gran Tesoro in order to ransom Zoro. Happily, the script doesn't allow the heroes to waste time in a reprise of "Ocean's Eleven," but instead finds a clever way to counteract Tesoro's gold-controlling power. In the big splashy climax, Luffy squares off against Tesoro, Zoro against a big goon, and Baccarat is taken down by three of the generally weaker members of the crew: Usopp, Chopper and Brooke. There's a belated flashback to Tesoro's early life, showing how he became attached to the idea of gaining gold and owning people, but it doesn't make him any more sympathetic, in contrast to Zephyr from the Z movie.

Curiously, though, all of the online sources credit the script to one Tsutomu Kuroiwa, the credits for GOLD assert that the film was based on an original story by series-creator Eichiro Oda. In addition, the brief appearance of a character called Spandam, a villain from an unrelated manga-arc, makes GOLD an example of a villain-crossover.          

   

ONE PIECE: HEART OF GOLD (2016)

 

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

HEART OF GOLD, though a TV special, looks as good in terms of design and animation quality as any of the movies. In fact, HEART directly leads into the next OP movie, GOLD.

I don't know how often the regular series used the "treasure-hunt" theme, but that's the theme at the heart of HEART. In this case, Acier, a brilliant scientist living on an island with the patently obvious name of "Alchemi," invents a substance called "Pure Gold," more priceless than any other treasure in the world. However, a giant fish named Bonbonri swallowed the island, along with both Acier and his grade-schooler daughter Olga. The two get separated and then live within the stomach of Bonbonri for the next 200 years, and they don't age because the Pure Gold also bestows agelessness upon those exposed to it. However, at some point Olga is accidentally vomited out of the giant fish's belly, along with a tame beastie, a lizard able to skim the surface of the ocean. Olga and her riding-lizard are taken into the custody of Marines, but she has to flee when the Marine ship is assaulted by a seeker of the Pure Gold, Mad Treasure. Her flight leads her into the hands of the Straw Hat Pirates, who for once would like to gain the treasure of the Pure Gold as well as helping the helpless.

The exploration of the various environments in Bonbori's belly is amusing, and the action is kept at the usual high levels. Mad Treasure is a pleasing "bully-boy" type of foe, endowed with a colorful Devil Fruit power: the ability to extend endlessly-stretchable chains from his body, and he's aided by two other henchmen, one of whom is a lady who practices what might be called "drunk-archer-fu."

If HEART has a downside, it's Olga. She's a type often seen in sentimental anime: a kid who acts in a bratty manner to cover up her insecurities. Naturally, the good-hearted pirates take her under their wing, and she learns the value of comradeship, as well as reconciling with her father, whom she hated for having brought chaos into their lives. Still, I admired one affecting image at the climax. After all of the good guys have defeated Mad Treasure and escaped the stomach of the big beast, it consumes the Pure Gold and somehow transforms the metal into a light hanging from its brow, like that of the real-world angler-fish. HEART is another decent take on the ONE PIECE formula; no more, no less.            

THE SKULL (1965)

 

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

Many years ago, I read Robert Bloch's short story "The Skull of the Marquis de Sade," in which a collector of rare objects gets hold of said skeletal remnant. It was a good, rousing story, even though I recognized that its premise-- that the skull was haunted by the Marquis' evil spirit, due to his having been a demon-worshipping sorcerer-- was nonsense. The prose story worked because so much of it took place within the head of the protagonist, slowly becoming aware of his curio's threat. 

There are many good short stories that can be fruitfully expanded into feature-length movies, but "Skull" was not one of them. The studio Amicus had some luck with anthology movies, and I suspect that SKULL might have started out with someone tagging the Bloch story for anthology-adaptation. But someone else decided that it could be expanded into the feature-film and even hired Bloch to turn his tale into a screenplay, with input from Amicus producer Milton Subotsky.

But the story "Skull" has nothing to it beyond another iteration of "He meddled with forbidden things," and if you take away the intensity of the protagonist's growing fear of the growing menace, what you have is a talky story about art collectors putzing around looking for objets d'art, and sometimes dealing with skeevy, illicit dealers. Collector Maitland (Peter Cushing) has no particular reason for collecting occult objects; he does so just because the story says that he does so. The script might have worked had the Skull manipulated Maitland into becoming a pitiless murderer, anxious to protect his "precious." But in one of the few moments where Maitland commits murder-- killing an old friend (Christopher Lee) -- director Freddie Francis seems to underplay the scene, robbing it of any emotional intensity.

SKULL's only good scene appears halfway through the film. For some reason the Skull, apparently possessed of its late owner's malevolent intelligence, puts Maitland through a nightmare in which he's arrested by policemen and taken before a judge who forces the collector to play a game of Russian roulette. But this one scene is not enough to pull THE SKULL out of its slough of despond.

                             

THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964)

 

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

**SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS**

Roughly four years after the international success of Bava's BLACK SUNDAY, director/co-writer Antonio Margheriti made two 1964 horror films with Bsrbara Steele. Of the two, I've always thought the less heralded LONG HAIR OF DEATH the better offering. HAIR seems designed to be the obverse of SUNDAY, as in "sympathy for the witches," though in comparison to that film, Margheriti's is replete with a lot more twisty melodrama. 

At the end of the 15th century, tyrannical Euro-noble Count Humboldt orders the burning of an accused witch, Adele Karnstein. (The last name is certainly borrowed from LeFanu's central character in CARMILLA, though it doesn't carry any special symbolism.) Humboldt believes that Adele cast a spell that killed his brother Franz, though some years later the noble will learn that his own grown son Kurt killed his uncle to secure the family's power. I bring this up because some reviews claim that Humboldt is executing Adele out of lust for her body. The confusion may stem from the fact that on the night scheduled for Adele's execution, the accused's grown daughter Helen (Steele)-- also suspected of witchcraft-- sneaks into the count's castle to plead for her mother's life. Humboldt offers to delay the execution while the two of them make love, having told Kurt not to proceed until he's present. But Kurt is in a hurry to knock off his patsy and orders the witch killed. Adele dies amid threats of supernatural vengeance while her pre-teen daughter Elizabeth looks on. Helen learns that her sacrifice was for nothing, and she flees the castle, but the count doesn't want her spreading nasty rumors, so he tosses her off a waterfall. But as if inviting a serpent into his own bower, Humboldt also adopts Elizabeth as his own ward.     

Roughly a decade passes, during which Elizabeth grows into young womanhood (Halina Zalewska, who also plays Adele). She's first seen mourning at the grave of her sister Helen, and then vaguely menaced by Kurt, who wants to marry her despite what his father says about her "witchy" looks. Clearly any supernatural vengeance is going to be channeled through innocent-seeming Elizabeth, the same way Katya, descendant of evil Asa in SUNDAY. was the medium through which the evil witch worked her will. However, Elizabeth apparently doesn't have any conscious magic mojo, because Kurt uses his royal power to force her into marriage. So even though Kurt doesn't know that his father deflowered Helen, here we have the makings of a cross-generational incestual pattern. 

Time passes, and in line with Adele's final curse, plague strikes the land. Elizabeth prays to her sister's grave for counsel, which may lead to the next big event: lightning strikes the grave and restores life to Helen-- though when she appears at the Humboldt's door, she pretends to be an amnesiac stranger named Mary. The sight of the woman he killed strikes Humboldt dead, putting Kurt fully in charge.

At this point one might expect a pretty linear path in which Helen/Mary (who also in a sense Adele as well) takes vengrance on Kurt, who caused Adele's death and who violated Elizabeth, albeit under the auspices of formal marriage. However, the script takes an odd turn in that Elizabeth-- who may have brought Helen back in the first place-- has become possessive, if not actually enamored, of her husband, and doesn't like it when Kurt starts moving in on Mary. History seems to repeat itself as Kurt makes love to the Helen-Doppelganger even as his father made love to the original. Elizabeth, far from collaborating with her sister-semblance, considers stabbing Kurt from behind but can't pull it off.

Kurt plans to kill off his wife in order to possess Mary. who has continued to sleep with the evil ruler but doesn't seem in a big hurry to knock him off. Then she changes her mind and conspires to drug Elizabeth and entomb her alive. This section feels like the scripters trying to extend the run-time with a meandering salute to Poe's "Premature Burial," and it has the consequence of crippling the momentum of the plot. Kurt goes through the whole rigamarole of wife-murder, and the next day, his courtiers act like she's still walking around healthy as a horse, though Kurt never catches sight of her.

Then things get freakier still, as Kurt conveniently finds a document left behind by Franz, the uncle he murdered. The paper tells him that Franz left provisions to acknowledge that he left behind a bastard daughter by the witch Adele, who is none other than Elizabeth. Therefore not only did Kurt sleep with two women who were his half-sister and her sister, Humboldt slept with a woman in a sibling relationship to his niece. These revelations upset Kurt's sense of control as the court prepares for the ritual sacrifice of a human-sized effigy by fire-- but when the supernatural vengeance finally falls, guess who winds up inside the effigy?

There's a lot of good potential in the script, which was also co-written by Ernesto Gastaldi, one of the premiere giallo writers. The problem with HAIR-- whose title makes no sense whatever-- is that it takes too long to deliver the vengeance, and that, when it does come, it seems a routine turnabout at best, with none of the personal touches of a really great revenge-dish.

           

ONE PIECE: Z (2012)

 

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

This OP movie draws more than did STRONG WORLD upon the social matrix created in Eichiro Oda's manga. Said matrix isn't concerned very much with anything but the ongoing contest between the seemingly endless pirates preying upon shipping in this predominantly aqueous environment, and the dedicated forces of the Navy, who seek to end all piracy. Both groups include a number of powerful people, some of whom have "Devil Fruit" powers-- all to furnish the nine "Straw Hat Pirates," the world's only "heroic pirates," with as many colorful opponents as you could shake a shonen at.     

Z is named for its villain and does a good job of inserting a cool new character into OP's ongoing continuity. The fellow's real name is Zephyr, and I'll call him that from now on. to distinguish the character from the movie's title. As a young man, Zephyr joins the Navy and distinguishes himself as a brave comrade and a master planner. He grows old in the Navy's service and becomes a trainer for many younger marines. But tragedy strikes, when a pirate with Devil Fruit powers kills Zephyr's family. Zephyr does his best to knuckle down and continue the law-abiding ways of the Navy. But a second tragedy strikes, when pirates massacre a ship at sea. Only Zephyr and two other officers, Ain and Binz, survive. And so Zephyr becomes devoted to a new cause: to eradicate the evil of the pirates, even if it means eradicating the world that pirates, marines, and civilians hold in common. To this end he arms himself with an artificial arm made of a material that's like kryptonite to Devil Fruit users. However, he oddly encourages his two officers to take on such powers, so they can raid a naval base for a special weapon. 

Their attack backfires, and Zephyr is hurled out to sea by an explosion. The Straw Hats find him, and he receives medical care from the ship's doctor, Tony Chopper. (I'm still not going to hold forth on the qualities of all nine crewmembers, but Tony's a good example of the manga's wacky inventiveness, for he's an anthropomorphic reindeer who varies between a "little cute form" and a "big brawny form.") Zephyr's two henchmen show up right about the time Zephyr wakes up and realizes he's among pirates. Zephyr, Ain and Binz fight the Straw Hats, who are wanted for various crimes though they never actually commit acts of piracy. Zephyr and company escape, but Ain's Devil Fruit power ensures that the Straw Hats will have to follow, for she causes four members of the crew-- Robin, Nami, Brook and Chopper-- to de-age by twelve years each. This development furnishes most of the movie's humorous byplay, of course.

Z does feel weightier than many other OP excursions, and that's probably because the script consistently elucidates that all the seekers in Oda's world, even merciless pirates, are pursuing "dreams" of some sort, and that even evil dreams are part of existence-- while the justice Zephyr seeks would eliminate all dreams, and all life. Yet Zephyr remains a mighty, admirable figure in his destructive quest for justice, and he and the Straw Hats' leader Luffy have a particularly strong battle at the climax. This is much more Luffy's film than anyone's, though everyone in the heavy ensemble does get some time, and there are various appearances of other characters whom a viewer will be expected to know from the comics. I can't quite claim that Z's theme reaches into very deep sociological resonance, but it's not just another wildly violent/wacky shonen either.      

          

ONE PIECE: STRONG WORLD (2009)

 

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

I'd never attempt to review the multitudinous productions of ONE PIECE, the still-running manga and anime, any more than I'd take a shot at DRAGONBALL, the 1980s shonen that PIECE essentially superseded in popularity. Both are just too much of a time-commitment. But I can take a shot at the various movies and TV specials.

Phenomenality in ONE PIECE is problematic at best. It's not science fiction, nor what I call magical-era fantasy. The portmanteau term "science fantasy" is best, for it represents a world where all sorts of bizarre creatures and environments exist according to whatever phenomena the author wants to introduce-- much like the Mars books of Burroughs. Some characters in the PIECE universe use technology of a sort, but it's tech-gear filtered through the lens of historical fiction-- in this case, that of the Golden Age of Piracy. To further complicate the universe, there's some entity that scatters so-called "Devil Fruits" throughout the endless islands, and each fruit can bestow a particular, unique power on whoever eats one. So PIECE crosses the worlds of Burroughsian science-fantasy with that of superhero comics.

STRONG WORLD takes place after the manga and anime had been running roughly a decade, and stars nine-- count 'em, nine-- do-gooder pirates who never seem to find time to do the sort of things real pirates do. Instead, they're forever stomping out evil tyrants, or avenging little girls who've had their dollies messed up by bandits, and that sort of thing. In this case the goody-good "Straw Hat Pirates," led by the courageous moron Monkey D. Luffy, pit themselves against Shiki the Golden Lion, a villain who plans to dominate the world with a horde of mutated animals. In addition, Shiki abducts the Straw Hats' lissome lady navigator Nami to serve in his crew and scatters the other eight heroes all over the place. Naturally, after various exploits, they converge and kick the evildoer's ass.

Manga-creator Eichiro Oda wrote the movie's original story, and those in the know can see him recycling a major trope for the character Nami. When she first appears, she's the virtual slave of a petty ruler, and the Straw Hats rescue her. So WORLD is a partial reprise of that trope, with Shiki defeating the Straw Hats at first, so that Nami has to agree to serve him to spare her friends. The various "caring moments" in the film never overwhelm the big noisy action-scenarios but do serve as a necessary counterpoint.

ONE PIECE, which has been a major success in the world manga market, arguably found a way to translate the appeal of "superhero powers" to a shonen science-fantasy universe, and more than any other manga, seems to have eclipsed the American superheroes with the younger generations. WORLD is a decent action-fantasy programmer, with the only debit being that Shiki is just your usual tinpot tyrant. But the animators did a bang-up job designing all of the Golden Lion's malicious monsters, who provide some of the film's best moments.            

SANTO VS INFERNAL MEN (1961)

 

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

Seven years after Rene Cardona offered the iconic wrestler a shot at the silver screen, Santo finally took the plunge-- sort of.

I reviewed the first of these two Cuban-location films, and now I found on streaming a subtitled copy of SANTO VS INFERNAL MEN. Both movies decline to call the performer in the silver mask "Santo," and his character in both movies is a subordinate to another police agent-- Fernando Oses' "El Incognito" in BRAIN, and Joaquin Cordero's mufti drug-cop "Joaquin" here. The mad scientist plot would become far more typical of Santo's adventures under producer Rene Cardona, starting with SANTO VS. THE ZOMBIES.

Unfortunately, INFERNAL is dull from start to finish. I'm sure the producers of the Santo series threw in these mundane crime-films from time to time to save money, but I doubt any of them are very noteworthy. The only interesting aspect of the film is how many performers went on to play key roles in the Cardona lucha-verse: Gina Romand, Joaquin "Doctor Satan" Cordero, and Enrique Zambrano. In addition, one story is that while wrapping up INFERNAL, the movie crew found that Castro's forces were taking over the country. The story of the crew's escape from that entanglement would probably make a better movie than anything in this infernal waste of time.  

THE SILVER MASK MAN (1954)

 

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

SILVER MASK MAN, despite its name, was not the first Santo film. A handful of online references assert that producer Rene Cardona (Sr) wanted to begin a series of Santo films, starting with this 12-part serial. Santo had already started turning his wrestling persona into a franchise, starting with a Mexican comic book, but for whatever reason he didn't want to work on this project. My guess is that Cardona's lawyers told him he could get away with using the generic name of the hero as a title, as long as Cardona didn't claim that the hero was Santo. 

In the States cinematic serials had almost died out thanks to the competition of television, but it seems that the format lasted longer in Mexico, where individuals didn't as much access to TVs. Yet it seems that at some point the Mexican government forbade the release of chapterplays, and this forced some producers to rework their serial projects into three or more standalone movies, as happened with the three strongly-interrelated "Aztec Mummy" movies.     

However, despite Cardona having both directed and co-written the chapterplay, MASK is a really boring serial. Every opening chapter begins with the hero (whose name is not "Silver Mask Man," but "El Medico Asesino," more euphoniously rendered as "The Killer Doctor.") The Doctor, with barely any information, appears on the scene when the villainous El Lobo begins trying to take over the world with a weather-control machine. However, as soon as The Doctor starts wading into Lobo's small army-- and the script just forgets about the super-weapon. All twelve episodes look pretty much the same. Lobo's goons lay a new criminal plan, the Doctor interferes, he's almost killed by some contrivance. The only exciting moment appears at the beginning of each credit-roll: as The Doctor is seen riding heroically toward the audience. I couldn't place the music, but it sounded very familiar, and I wouldn't be surprised if Cardona didn't swipe the opening from a Republic serial, since every part of MASK seems a dead-on emulation of the Republic style.

     

THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS (1960}

 

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

I confess one of the reasons I revisited both of Jean Cocteau's famous "Orpheus" films is because this one, 1960's TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS, was rumored to include an appearance by Brigitte Bardot, who passed the previous month. By all indications, the pouty-lipped blonde above is not Bardot, but Annette Stroyberg, the Bardot-lookalike whom director Roger Vadim married immediately after he and Dear Brigitte divorced.

But once one knows that-- so what? I'm sure Cocteau fooled a lot of French people with the Bardot-imposture. And though TESTAMENT has no cast members credited except for "The Poet" (Cocteau himself), some players are iconic enough to compel recognition, such as Yul Brynner and Jean Marais, while others are famous primarily for their roles in ORPHEUS, as with Princess Death (Maria Casares) and Heurtebise (Francoise Perier). Toward the picture's end Cocteau the Poet tells the audience that he included these celebrities (hence the lack of advertising) because he considered them his "friends." But then why the Bardot imposture? Because she was not his "friend?" More likely, as in most of TESTAMENT's set-pieces, he just threw in anything that appealed to his sense of fun. The characters that Cocteau channels from ORPHEUS aren't really faithful recreations of the originals; they're more like playing cards whom the poet reshuffles for a new game.

I could go into great mythopoeic detail about why I think Cocteau chose (say) to have his poet-self killed off by Athena (Claudine Auger), a deity not predominantly associated with poetry. But in most if not all the film's bewildering set-pieces, Cocteau juxtaposes banal imagery with profound imagery, as if he's trying to confound even his ardent fans. Could he be trying to say that both the banal and the profound are inextricable parts of real experience? Qui sait? I critiqued this Bob Burden's FLAMING CARROT story on the theory that Burden did have a linear narrative hidden beneath all the attempts at randomness. But I won't attempt that with Cocteau, because I feel as if every profound image is meant to be undermined by random occurrences that mean nothing to anyone but Cocteau and possibly his inner circle. For that reason, I term TESTAMENT an "irony" rather than a drama like ORPHEUS, given that in Cocteau's farewell film it's possible to choose any particular set of images over any other.

If TESTAMENT has any sort of structure, it might be a sort of career overview/confessional poem, in which the artist celebrates all of his favorite creations and/or motifs. Cocteau died three years after the film's release. I don't know if the French artist knew the works of Irish poet Willliam Butler Yeats. However, one of the last poems Yeats released before his passing, "The Circus Animal's Desertion," includes a strong resemblance to TESTAMENT's apparent theme in the verse's closing stanza.

Those masterful images because completeGrew in pure mind but out of what began?A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slutWho keeps the till. Now that my ladder's goneI must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.