DAUGHTER OF DON Q (1946)

 

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

Without getting into my phenomenality-categories first this time, the greatest significance of this well-wrought Republic chapterplay is that it's the last of a half dozen sound serials to star, or co-star, a female with combative abilities. This leaves out assorted works in which female support-characters may be able to shoot a little, or one later serial that substantially re-uses most of its action-sequences from one of the earlier six. 

DAUGHTER's title was probably a toss-off reference to the Douglas Fairbanks Sr silent movie DON Q SON OF ZORRO, but only because the two narratives share adventurous content, not any story elements-- and both may have been distantly indebted to Cervantes' DON QUIXOTE, even though that story was all about invalidating tales of derring-do. Story-wise, DAUGHTER sounds like some of the silent serials in which some evildoer sought to deprive a rightful heiress of her inheritance. I don't know how many of those old serials showed the heiress fighting off thugs with jui-jitsu, though.

In contrast to the majority of serials, the primary evildoer, one Manning, exists just to get the ball rolling. He learns of the existence of a land grant that was bequeathed to assorted parties, but Manning's the only one who knows of it. Thus, if he hires a gang of thugs to kill off the other heirs, while making the deaths look accidental, Manning claims all the property. However, the lion's share of villainy falls to the hired killers, led by Roy Barcroft of PURPLE MONSTER fame. The murderers succeed in knocking off one or two heirs, but their scheme goes awry when they go after the judo-skilled Dolores Quintero (Adrian Booth). One might think that Manning's plan to make all the deaths look accidental is ruined as soon as Dolores and her reporter-pal Cliff (Kirk Alyn) tell the cops of the organized attempt(s) on Dolores' life. But maybe Barcroft's just one of those guys who never read his Santayana.

 Alyn and Booth (the latter under the former billing Lorna Gray) already had assorted serial roles under their belts, with Gray/Booth still renowned as lead villain Vultura in PERILS OF NYOKA, while Alyn's big roles as Superman and Blackhawk were yet to come. But the leads play off one another well and are given good dialogue and bracing action-scenes. The uncanny phenomenality only appears in two of the assassins' attempts to "covertly" knock off Dolores. In one chapter, the thugs take the captured heroine to a closed fishing-shop and set Dolores up to get impaled by a harpoon-- supposedly the contrivance of the Mafia or something. In another chapter, one of the thugs dons a museum's suit-of-armor and attacks Cliff-- and the armored crook is somehow able to defy Cliff's pistol, though in real life medieval armor could not repel bullets. In both of these peculiar stratagems-- which are weird enough to fall into the uncanny domain-- the villains don't create their own odd weapons, but just "find" them. Still, there are some serials in which costumed villains steal their only super-weapons from good-hearted inventors and put those powers to evil usage-- and if I'm going to credit those malcontents with possession of a death-ray as part of their repertoire, then I guess I can also credit Manning's mooks as having bulletproof armor in their arsenal. 

LOVE AND DEATH IN THE GARDEN OF THE GODS (1972)

 

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

All of the giallo contributions of director/writer Sauro Scavolini took place within the space of about two years, while both before and after that 1971-72 period Scavolini plied his trade in other genres. But since that small sample of works includes one of my ten best giallos, YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM, Scavolini's "farewell to giallos" merits some sustained attention.

Structurally, GARDEN isn't as well-constructed as the best of this subgenre. Like a lot of "old dark house mysteries," the film's eminent character is dead when the main story starts, and the audience must follow an amateur detective sussing out the unhappy lives of rich siblings Azzurra (Erika Blanc) and Manfredi (Peter Lee Lawrence).

The "detective," an unnamed professor of ornithology, rents the sumptuous estate where Azzurra and Manfredi were raised. The professor knows nothing of the former occupants of the estate: he only intends to study the bird life in the adjacent forest. However, in said forest the bird-fancier discovers a pile of wadded-up audiotape. The professor untangles and cleans up the tape, which he's improbably able to replay on a tape machine.

 The tapes reveal the history of Azzurra as she confides in her psychiatrist regarding her twisted history with Manfredi. Both were raised without the oversight of their parents, so that they started sleeping together as kids, which grew into a sexual relationship. Later Azzurra marries another man, and Manfredi takes up with a "free spirit" named Viola, but neither of them is able to let the other sibling go. For instance, the tapes reveal to the professor that after Azzura married, Manfredi left the estate for a while, only to return with Viola, attempting (without much success) to maintain an art studio. In keeping with the title, the forbidden love of the siblings culminates in death, and the surviving sibling even extends his menace to the amateur detective.

GARDEN's pace is slow, possibly to take full advantage of the opulent setting of mansion and vernal paradise. The "love and death" trope isn't uniformly maintained throughout the professor's discoveries, but I assign high-mythicity to GARDEN less because of its rambling plot than for Scavolini's formulation of the transgressive couple, an "Adam and Eve" who exist not to propagate a new future but to be destroyed by their past. To be sure, the script (by Scavolini and a woman with no other IMDB credits) backs off on the incest-theme. Azzurra, who often manipulates Manfredi to keep him at her beck and call, cruelly tells him that they were never brother and sister: that he was a boy adopted by the family after Azzura's actual brother perished in childbirth. But this revelation seems random, since it doesn't hold any consequences for the plot-- and besides, if Azzurra's parents wanted to preserve the illusion of a viable male heir, why didn't either of them stick around to administer the estate and make sure that the two phony siblings made good marriages? The unnamed parents are more like a pair of otiose divinities who just dump their progeny into a beautiful paradise, just to watch them destroy one another.

Oddly, the trope of "perilous psycho" applies to both siblings, and though Manfredi is the one who becomes a murderer, Azzurra's Sadean influence seems far more profound and pernicious.

                  

  

CREEPING DEATH (1972)

 

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

CREEPING DEATH is certainly a better title for this unwieldy mix of spaghetti western and giallo than KILL THE POKER PLAYER. The odd thing about this failed fusion is that many of the more violent spaghettis sometimes show elements in common with equally violent giallos. However, westerns in general have a harder time dealing with "slow burn suspense"-- and despite DEATH's quota of saloon brawls, that seems to have been the intent of director/co-writer Mario Bianci, a prolific filmmaker though most of his works have not been translated into English.

Like many spaghettis DEATH begins with a double cross and centers upon a hunt for hidden riches. However, two-fisted federal agent John Pinkerton (Robert Woods) lacks the usual cynical motive of the spaghetti fortune-seeker. He seeks to locate a cache of bank money stolen by three outlaws, one of whom kills the other two. Pinkerton centers his investigation on a particular town where one or two persons have been killed by poisonous snakes. The same town plays host to a herpetologist, suggesting that some malcontent in the populace decided to weaponize the reptiles to eliminate witnesses.

The snakes, and the "bizarre crimes" for which they're used, aren't all that important to the story until the climax, and Pinkerton's detective work seems at best random. DEATH is generally boring and wastes the lovely Nieves Navarro in a purely decorative role. A better meld of western and murder-mystery appears in 1974's A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES.   

      

THE SHADOW (1994)

 

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

Back in 1994 B.I. (Before Internet), I disliked THE SHADOW because I assumed screenwriter David Koepp had been overly influenced by Howard Chaykin's 1986 graphic novel BLOOD AND JUDGMENT. I assumed this simply because the Chaykin work was the first time the moldy-oldie pulp hero had made a tidy profit since the heyday of his magazine and radio show. Of course I knew that the major influence upon the Shadow's revival was the mega-success of the 1989 BATMAN, though in fairness, raconteurs like Sam Raimi attempted to adapt the pulp avenger a few years prior to the Burton film. Still, Koepp was hired to produce a new script in 1990, so Burton's achievement probably did light a fire under the Universal rights-holders.

If Koepp read the Chaykin comic, the only influence would have been indirect. Chaykin took the violent but righteous crusader and made him into a 1980s dickhead. Koepp first shows the hero as a 1930s dickhead but has him get somewhat more righteous over time, which is certainly an improvement. Thirty-something Caucasian-American Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin) somehow becomes a druglord in Tibet, but despite his many crimes, a spiritual teacher, Tulku, decides that Cranston can be rather forcefully redeemed into becoming a champion of justice back in his own country. Koepp's script conveniently vaults past the difficult process of turning a hardened gangster into a fighter against evil-- hence, one who "knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men"-- and in no time, Cranston is back in the States, posing as a worthless playboy while battling crime as The Shadow, armed with twin automatics and "the power to cloud men's minds." 

However, just as Cranston stuck his nose into Asia, an Asian villain follows the hero to New York and decides to challenge the Shadow on his own ground. Shiwan Khan (John Lone) was a later pupil of Tulku, so Khan has all of The Shadow's psychic powers, plus a small army of armored Asians who believe Khan the descendant of the Mongol conqueror Genghis. Khan has decided to conquer the US, albeit in a more devious manner than his ancestor, and he courteously invites Cranston, whose previous villainy Khan admired, to join Khan's new jeremiad. Naturally the hero refuses, so battle lines are drawn.

Though SHADOW never delivers the thrill-ride Koepp promises, he arguably improves on one element of the hero's mythology. I've had little direct experience with the support character Margo Lane, either in radio plays or in magazine stories, but she seems to vary between being either a nuisance or a hard-bitten professional. Koepp makes Margo (Penelope Ann Miller) a socialite who just happens to possess natural psychic gifts, and who eventually twigs to the fact that Lamont Cranston has a shadowy secret. She also gets involved with Khan's plot in that the evildoers seeks to suborn her father's scientific services.

Koepp's script is a little pokey at times, and Russell Mulcahy's direction is never more than adequate, so SHADOW didn't score with 1994 audiences. Miller's fun whenever she's on screen, and John Lone renders his unscrupulous Mongol warlord with such a light touch, it's hard to imagine any 1990s filmgoer being offended by the "Asian Invasion" trope. Baldwin looks decent in costume, but he never masters "the Shadow Laugh," and Koepp doesn't make Cranstone's dedication to the side of virtue compelling, leaving the actor little to work with. Tim Curry has a pleasant support-role, but Jerry Goldsmith's imitation of Danny Elfman is too bombastic by half. Still, many fans still like this iteration of the Master of Darkness, so that's no small achievement.

              

       

LUPIN III: MISSED BY A DOLLAR (2000)

 

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

MISSED BY A DOLLAR was the last Lupin TV special to be animated in the traditional fashion. More importantly, though, DOLLAR is much less dominated by the tropes of wild fantasy found in many Lupin stories of the period. Here the master thief and his gang oppose an evil financial cabal that seeks to manipulate world events, and the only metaphenomenal elements of DOLLAR are the rather low-level tricks Lupin uses to bamboozle Zenigata.

As usual the Lupin gang only oppose greater evils as a means of maintaining their freedom to commit generally harmless crimes. In fact, in the opening sequence the master thief begins the adventure in an apparently legal venue: participating in a New York auction (albeit in disguise) for a rare ring. However, another party outbids Lupin by a mere dollar, and on top of that, Zenigata arrives with a squad of New York cops to seize the master criminal. Never daunted, Lupin simply evades the cops and steals the ring, However, an enforcer working for the mystery bidder steals back the ring and tries to kill Lupin in the bargain. Of course all Lupin viewers know that this means war.

Lupin briefs his comrades in crime on his plans: the ring can guide one to a fabulous brooch, which in turn confers incredible luck upon its possessor. It's not entirely clear why Lupin wants the brooch. He natters a bit about a Lupin Empire, but somehow he convinces Jigen and Goemon that the brooch will lead to a big payoff. Fujiko isn't interested because she's become fascinated with the world of high finance, though she changes her tune when reversals decimate her wealth. Fujiko's attempt to transition from crook to high financier proves the reverse of Lupin's new enemy: Cynthia Craymov, already the head of a banking empire. Her father was the deposed tyrant of a small country, so Cynthia wants to rule an empire founded in high finance. She believes implicitly in the brooch's power to convey luck, though said power is never unilaterally proven. Her main enforcer is an ex-KGB killer with a penchant for knife-fighting, but Cynthia's cool resolve makes her the main opponent.

There's a subplot in which Lupin appears to fall to his death, in such a way that both his friends and Zenigata are convinced he's finished. The sequence is good for a laugh as Zenigata mourns his foe (or at least the impossibility of ever accomplishing his monomaniacal goal). There are some decent but workmanlike action-sequences, with Fujiko getting just one femme-formidable scene in which she shoots a guy menacing Goemon. In the end Cynthia's crimes are exposed and the brooch ends up in good hands, though for a change all four of the super-crooks end up temporarily broke. There are some acidulous comments on the financial mentality, but anyone wanting a critique of capitalism would need to look elsewhere.  

TAOISM DRUNKARD (1984)

 

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

You know, sometimes one image sums up a film better than any number of words. And in the case of the TAOISM DRUNKARD, also known as DRUNKEN WU TANG-- the image of a demon watermelon with teeth and limbs says it all about this "chopwacky," the directing debut of Yuen Cheung-Yan.

Most Hong Kong comedies are just assemblages of goofy jokes around loose plotlines, but DRUNKARD makes the ACES GO PLACES series look like the best of the Marx Brothers. I tip my hat to the stalwart online reviewers who did their best to figure who was fighting who and for what reasons, but I have nothing to add to their efforts. Yuen is clearly just tossing out anything that he thinks will make his audience laugh, and occasionally he's fairly inventive, as with an opening fight between main villain Old Devil (Yuen Shun-Yi) and his virtuous brother, where the latter wears attire able to sprout metal spikes. Old Devil enlists the aid of a female martial artist, Starry Devil (Hilda Liu), who obeys the evildoer because he fed her a potion that can make her age to death. Somehow, director Yuen's character, a weird drunken priest, gets into conflict with Old Devil, and Yuen is aided by a younger fighter and a couple of unmarried sisters. One's enjoyment of this farrago depends totally on how much one likes the wacky stunts Yuen devises.

The most interesting thing here is that the director and the Old Devil actor are part of a filmmaking clan which also includes Yuen Woo-ping, who garnered some Hollywood fame for his fight-choreography work. One review avers that Woo-ping might have helped out on DRUNKARD, but that in no way improves the movie.     

  

ONE ARMED SWORDSWOMAN (1972)

 PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

A lot of chopsockies emulated the internationally successful ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN, so frankly I wasn't expecting anything much of this five-years-later Taiwanese knockoff. I have to hold the original producers guiltless of a screwup in the English credits: "Ching-Ching Chang als [sic] ONE ARMED SWORDSWOMAN," but I was unfamiliar with any other IMDB credits for the writer-director Sheng-en Chen. Similarly, I didn't know starring diva Chang or any of the other names, so I tend to assume the whole cast was Taiwanese, even if they were attempting to mimic the look of a Hong Kong Shaw film.

SWORDSWOMAN takes the opposite tack from SWORDSMAN in the characterization department. Whereas the viewer learns a lot about the family background of the 1967 protagonist, Chang's character Pan Yi Fung starts out as a one-dimensional "knight errant," who apparently has no other goal in life but to wander about killing ruthless bandits with her sword. Her puissance is displayed in an early scene where four bandits snare her with ropes, after which Pan frees herself and slays them with one smooth move. Then a traveling stranger comes along, praising her skills, which pleases her inordinately. More bandits appear to challenge Pan, and the stranger lends his skills to help her. But the stranger doesn't happen to kill any of the bandits and instead deals Pan a wound in her arm with a poisoned sword. The traveler reveals that he's really one of the bandit gang, and that Pan will soon perish of the poison. The noble fighter tries to take many of her foes with her, but she's clearly losing strength. But then another famous kung fu knight happens along and spirits Pan away.

The heroine's apparently able to direct her rescuer to Pan's estate, where she lives with one female servant. The savior is one Chen Peng Fei, known as the Black Dragon due to his attire: all-black robes and a hat with a face-shrouding black veil. Chen tells Pan and the servant that the only way to save Pan's life is to amputate her poisoned arm. Pan agrees to the operation, after which Chen takes his leave. Three years later, Pan has re-trained herself to compensate for her missing arm, but she's also formed an intense need to see the Dragon again. The terse script does not expound on her motives, but actress Chang conveys an immense feeling of loneliness.

She meets her black-garbed ally, who unmasks before her and sweet-talks her with homilies about the loner nature of martial artists. They have offscreen sex, but in the morning, Chen sneaks away like a dog. Pan follows him, and Chen insults her by offering her a valuable pearl for services rendered. Pan is heartbroken and returns home. Strangely, her maid advises Pan that she might still be united with the man she loves, and Pan decides to look for Chen once more, in case, I don't know, he's changed his mind about being a bastard.

Now, experienced filmgoers may foresee some shenanigans, given that Pan never saw Chen without his mask the first time, and anyone can wear an all-concealing black costume. But even if a viewer suspects trickery, Pan's next experience is unsettling, for suddenly she starts running into more black-garbed men, who, when she unmasks them, are not Chen. Then she kills-- or apparently kills-- a fifth Man in Black, after she's heard a young woman call him "Chen." Jealous, she attacks and kills the man, only to be told he's blind. She's so aggrieved that she almost lets a vengeful mob murder her. But once again, the Black Dragon saves Pan and takes her back home. There he unmasks, showing her that he's not the man to whom she surrendered herself. 

For some reason Chen and Pan fake their deaths to throw off the bandit gang, but the head guy-- Lee Ming-Tse, the fellow who deceived Pan-- sees through the charade. I don't know why Chen, divested of his costume, makes a solo attack on Lee and his goons in the bandit fortress, but the sortie ends with Chen retreating back to Pan's house, half-blinded by spears that eject streams of acid (!) Of course, the reason Chen must be sidelined is because Pan is the star, and to her goes the honor of confronting Lee and his gang, atop a mountain this time. Perhaps needless to say, Pan triumphs over all adversaries, though Lee does get in a mean jab about their romantic time together. And so the film ends with Pan alone amid her fallen foes, though in an earlier scene, the door's left open for a possible union of the two crusaders.

Chang provides a good range of emotions here, though everyone else is strictly Saturday-morning serial, and she does well in the battle scenes. As I commented in my SWORDSMAN review, the mundane removal of an arm doesn't generate an uncanny vibe for the "freakish flesh" trope, but Pan performs assorted superlative feats, particularly for being able to hurl twigs hard enough to pierce an enemy's throat. 

I'm sure that neither Sheng-en Chen or anyone else thought they were making a masterpiece. In the copy on TUBI, the final scene between Chen and Pan is spoiled by a sudden cut, presumably because some censor thought the romantic interlude too racy. Yet though I've seen dozens of flicks featuring kung-fu knights, even the few that address the disadvantages of a justice-seeking life, like CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, tend to underplay the emotional cost of the martial life. That cost is evident in the ease with which the disguised bandit gets Pan to turn her back on him, and her strange obsession with the real Chen, who relates to her only as patient to doctor, residing at her manor for a month just to preserve her life. Though the villain Lee never explains how he formulated his plan to sleep with her and then gaslight her, it's likely that he figured out how emotionally vulnerable Pan was, precisely because she'd tried to live a totally righteous life and found, like many others, that virtue being the reward for virtue was worse than no reward at all.  

                       

FLYER AND MAGIC SWORD (1970)

 

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

When I only saw one online description of this Hong Kong-Thailand co-production, and said summary said it involves rival clans fighting over a salt mine, I suspected that the title was a fantasy-fakeout. And yes, there's no magic sword and no one even does "trampoline flying."

The hero is Wai Chin (billed as "Nai Mi," possibly to obscur,e the actor's Thai heritage), and since childhood he's been in love with Lan Choo (Fan Ling), daughter of Tien-Long (Dean Shek of ENTER THE DRAGON fame). I don't know why Tien-Long won't let them marry, but he seems totally preoccupied with the aforementioned salt mine. His rival for the mine-- which is barely seen-- is called "Wu Tang" in the streaming dub. But while Wu Tang is a bastard, Tien-Long might be worse. The film's opening scene-- and it's the film's best scene-- starts with Wu Tang and his soldiers attacking Tien-long's house. Outnumbered, Tien-Long, Lan Choo, and their retainers flee to a bolt-hole, but Wu Tang sets the house afire, so that the bolt-hole fills with smoke. Three retainers try to escape, and Tien-Long kills them-- moments before the patriarch changes his mind and allows the rest of his coterie to get out.

After that, FLYER is just a melange of combat-scenes and wistful romantic interludes between Chin and Choo. Only one "magical" implement appears, in that one of Chin's opponents wields a "boomerang claw-weapon." Most of the fighting is sword-fu, with Choo getting in hers only in the first scene, but nothing's memorable in that department. One might call this a reversal of ROMEO AND JULIET, where the two lovers survive and the patriarchal clans (no mothers are seen) destroy one another.      

STAR TREK: PICARD (SEASON TWO, 2022)

 

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

Well, the experiment cost about 8 hours I'll never get back, but after watching Season Two of PICARD, I confirmed for my own satisfaction that only the participation of showrunner Michael Chabon resulted in a superior storyline for Season One. To be sure, he claimed prior to his departure that he was heavily involved in the Season Two storyline, so that season would have remained bad had he stayed. But Alex Kurtzman and his fellow custodians of the TREK franchise are primarily responsible for plunging TREK back into the valley of mediocrity. And while the original NEXTGEN only occasionally resorted to banal political posturing, Season Two is far ghastlier in that respect than the worst of the old series-- though I suppose those who agree with Season Two's politics would feel differently.

There's no way I can give Season Two as witty a summation as someone did for STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, which some wag re-christened "Where Nomad Has Gone Before." Nevertheless, Two really is "Where 'Mirror Mirror' and 'City on the Edge of Forever' have gone before." Some time after the events of Season One, Picard and his New Zoo Crew-- more or les including the VOYAGER alum Seven of Nine-- investigate a space-anomaly. It turns out to be a new manifestation of the Borg, which starts to assimilate the ship. A sudden transition then brings Picard into contact with another old foe, the mercurial Q (John deLancie in what I assume is a finale-narrative for the character).

Q then introduces Picard and Crew to a changed version of their enlightened Federation: a space-empire founded primarily in xenophobia. Oddly, though Wikipedia reported some anti-Trump rhetoric from Patrick Stewart during promotion of Season One, Season Two seems to be where all the real ultraliberal cant ended up. There's no attempt to explore how the super-xenophobic empire came to be, for Q reveals that he was the empire's creator by virtue of messing with time. His challenge to Picard: go back in time and make everything better.

I'm not going to dilate on all the 21st-century rambles of the Picard Crew, except to note two politically charged developments. One involves Seven of Nine's visit to the Isle of Lesbos, a state of affairs that lesbian Trekkers stumped for back during the original VOYAGER run. The other deals with a despicable subplot about anti-ICE rhetoric that anticipates the ultraliberal fanaticism about protecting illegal aliens seen in 2025. Neither development has much to do with the main plotline.

Anyway, the Crew eventually does find its "patient zero" and erases the rogue timeline. In the course of events, somehow the comedy-relief Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) becomes the new Borg Queen of the future, but this, like Q's time-puzzle, all works out for the best. I'm not feeling too sanguine about the concluding Season Three.

Will Wheaton makes an appearance as Wesley Crusher, so this season also registers as having crossover-status.

          

CONSTANTINE-- THE SERIES (2014-15)

 

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

I won't discourse on the story behind DC's John Constantine, having already provided considerable data in my review of the 2005 CONSTANTINE. For purposes of reviewing this one-season rendition of comics' most famous exorcist, one only needs to know that the edgy Englishman is living in the U.S. for some reason (to make him more appealing to American audiences, I imagine) and that he seeks to "exorcise" his personal demons of guilt by helping other people escape from supernatural infestations. In this endeavor he gets aid from a few other kindred spirits, like Zed Martin (another comics-character, played by Angelica Celaya). A heavenly angel named Manny (Harold Perrineau) hangs around dispensing mostly useless pearls of wisdom.

All thirteen episodes of CONSTANTINE are well-constructed supernatural mysteries that the hero must solve using more wit and guile, given that his magical abilities are modest at best. The various victims of curses and possessions are given realistic characterizations and the FX and costumes are impressive, particularly in one episode's depiction of a monster called an "invunche" (derived from a 1980s SWAMP THING storyline). And Matt Ryan sells the Constantine character as few actors could have, emphasizing his impatience and sardonic humor without lessening the character's capacity for guilt and empathy. Yet there's something about all of the episodes that never escapes the shadow of the formulaic. To borrow from one of my ARCHIVE essays, the CONSTANTINE scripts are all about "what things happen" and not about "how things happen."

The writers also tried to conceal the show's episodic nature by injecting a continuing metaphysical threat, a "Rising Darkness" capable of breaking down the borders between earth and hell. But since the series was dropped, all these dire suggestions amount to window-dressing. The writers were comics-savvy enough to toss in "Easter-egg" references to DC characters like Jim Corrigan and Felix Faust, and there's a story involving a malignant "black diamond" that may have been a covert salute to Eclipso. But on the whole, CONSTANTINE's main virtue was the energetic performance of Ryan. Indeed, when Ryan reprised this role on the LEGENDS OF TOMORROW show, not even those writers' terrible scripts could rob the actor of his formidable presence. 

DAIGORO VS. GOLIATH (1972)

 

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

I consider this the first "kaiju comedy" feature film. I've heard some critics assign that distinction to KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, but though I've never seen the original Japanese cut, KKVG isn't structured like a comedy, which requires a lot more overt jokes than even an American distributor could have possibly removed.

DAIGORO was a reworking of a failed (and ostensibly serious) Godzilla project, which was to have been a collaboration between Godzilla's studio Toho and the special effects company Tsurabaya. Once the Big G was off the table, the producers shifted gears toward a comedy for small children, quite as if someone said, "Well, if we can't use Godzilla, let's do our own version of the Son of Godzilla, but make him even dorkier." Indeed, the hippo-like visage of Daigoro, a "kid kaiju" like Minilla, seems to be a joke in its own right.

Unlike Minilla, Daigoro is dependent upon human beings for parental guidance. His mother was a subterranean creature awakened by nuclear tests, and after she ravaged Japan, the military killed her. However, she left behind Baby Daigoro. One might expect the government to take charge of the infant kaiju, whether for study or weaponization-- but this would have deprived the kid-audience of the nuclear-family experience. So the government allows one private individual, an inventor named Goro, to adopt Daigoro and keep him on an island. Trouble is. Goro has to pay for the kid-monster's upkeep, and his only way of doing so is to enter Japanese contests for wacky new inventions. However, Daigoro eventually gets to prove his mettle when a more destructive giant monster, dubbed Goliath, descends to Earth and begins tearing things up.

Though most adults will get little out of the humor here, it's at least palatable if one thinks of kids seeing such jokes for the first time. It's at least lively, not repeating the same jokes the way some Gamera-flicks did, and the weird end-scene with the genial kaiju availing himself of a giant privy has to be seen to be believed. The combative action between the giant monsters wasn't much better than that of a SyFy critter-flick. There's an ecology lecture about how human misuse of the biosphere has weakened the atmosphere, thus making it easier for meteors-- and monsters named Goliath-- to descend and wreak destruction.

The one element that's not totally aimed at kids is Goro's niece Yoshiko. She's of marriageable age, but her uncle's reputation is so bad that every arranged marriage she explores falls through. This is an odd side-plot for a kids' movie, especially since it doesn't affect the main plot, though she manages some sort of hookup at the end. Maybe the writers just thought kids of both genders could identify with having to listen to the complaints of older sisters.                   

            

WOLF LAKE (2001)

 

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

Before re-screening the nine episodes of this failed series, I remembered only one or two snippets from the show, which is admittedly more than I usually retain from a series I only saw once, twenty years ago. That said, when I watched the show with my reviewer's hat on, those snippets were the only good parts of the program. 

Cop John Kanin (Lou Diamond Phillips) proposes to girlfriend Ruby Wilder (Mia Kirschner) and she accepts-- only to flee to the wilds of Seattle the next day. John tracks her to the small town of Wolf Lake, ruled by the dominant Cates family, and though Ruby avoids contact with her former fiancee, John eventually learns that (a) Ruby is a scion of the Cates family, and (b) her family expects her to marry a local guy named Tyler Creed. But only the viewers, not John, learn that the town plays host to a clan of werewolves.

This might sound like a promising soap-opera, but the characters remain flat and uninvolving despite the efforts of talented actors. Sometimes a character acts precipitately for no stated reason, like Ruby's stepmother Vivian (Sharon Lawrence) sleeping with Ruby's intended ahead of nuptials. Graham Greene has many scenes as a guy who seems to know where all the bodies are buried and keeps saying cryptic things that don't engender mystery or humor. And for a show whose title and premise offer lycanthropes, there are precious few loup-garous.

The best thing about the DVD collection is that it contains both the unaired pilot episode, whose premise was reworked for the flop series, and a brief reflection from series creator John Leekley, who wrote the pilot but was not associated with the series proper. In 1996 Leekley had created and co-written a vampire series for the Fox network, KINDRED: THE EMBRACED. Although KINDRED only lasted one episode less than LAKE's run, apparently CBS asked Leekley to repeat the same act, but with werewolves in Washington (State). The pilot does create a more evocative sense of the werewolf mythology, and though Leekley utters no overt criticisms of the official series, he does say he thought the concept required strong investment. What probably happened is that CBS didn't like Leekley's pilot and went to some other showrunners to rework the concept; showrunners who didn't really like the premise and so played down the werewolves (except for a tedious arc about an adolescent Wolf Lake girl who fears that having sex will make her turn hairy). Leekley's original concept might or might not have resulted in a better series, but the LAKE we have is definitely one big drip.

                

FAHRENHEIT 451 (2018)

 

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

In an essay related to Ray Bradbury's classic FAHRENHEIT 451, I called attention to this passage, the closest the author comes to voicing an aesthetics of good and bad literature:

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

I then pointed out that although 451 is replete with many examples of mediocre writing-- mostly televisual in nature-- the reader never knows what sort of literature Bradbury would have found vile enough for this usually mild-mannered author to resort to the rape metaphor. But I like to think he might have considered HBO's adaptation of his novel, directed and co-written by Ramin Bahrani. to belong to the "worse than mediocre" category.    

There are two ways to *potentially* render good adaptations of established works, though neither method guarantees success.

The first to attempt to make the adaptation as faithful as possible to the original. There are many such adaptations, ranging from the excellent to the serviceable, and sometimes the approach is problematic given the difficulties of the work-- one example being Ray Bradbury's dubious cinematic adaptation of Melville's gargantuan MOBY DICK.

The second method is to make the adaptation partly unfaithful because the adaptor has different priorities than the original artist, but he still produces key aspects of the source work even if his overall theme is different, as was the case with the 1982 BLADE RUNNER with respect to the Philip K Dick novel. 

Francois Truffaut's FAHRENHEIT 451 is another example of a divergent adaptation that transcends its infidelity, and I suppose Ramin Bahrani may have had some notion of doing the same. What Bahrani and HBO produced, though, was a lame travesty of 451, quite possibly motivated by a desire to capitalize on the author's name.

Trufant's rendering might not have mirrored Bradbury's passion for the written word, but at least the French director had some notion of capturing the dissonance of a world where firemen burned books. Bahrani's only goal was to make a dull anti-totalitarian drama, in which the burning of books played a minor role. 

There's also a strong indication that Bahrani sought to change the story into one of modern race-conflict into a future setting. Not only is rebellious fireman Guy Montag played by Black actor Michael B. Jordan, he's given a White opponent in the character of Captain Beatty, played by Michael Shannon.

In the book, though Captain Beatty is Montag's pre-eminent opponent, representing the repressive government of book-burners, he's secondary to the female influences on Montag's consciousness: wife Millie, who's become totally brainwashed by the anti-book culture, and Montag's neighbor Clarisse, the elfin young girl who opens Montag's mind to new experiences. In the HBO version, Millie is replaced by a home computer, and Clarisse becomes, of all things, a police informant (!) 

In compensation, Bahrani builds up the relationship of Beatty and Montag into that of mentor and student, even surrogate father-and-son. Montag's father was a fireman too, implicitly killed by Beatty so that he could become Montag's "new daddy"-- though the symbolism is hurt by the fact that in 2018 Jordan had just passed thirty, making him a peculiar choice for the "son with a bad dad" trope. Jordan and Shannon fire up their weak characters with considerable passion, but they can't make these lousy characters seem real. Shannon, by the way, gets to play a Spike Lee White Guy by the way Beatty flagrantly uses the Big Evil Forbidden Word.

The rebels against the government, called "Eels" for some reason, aren't a bunch of pacifists memorizing books, so Bahrani transforms them into dime-a-dozen revolutionaries. I suppose there are worse adaptations than this one, but it's certainly near the bottom of the barrel.