FIVE WOMEN FOR THE KILLER (1974)

 

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

KILLER was the third directorial film for Stelvio Massi. In Italy he would become known more for hardboiled crime films than for horror, but I suspect today English-speaking film-fans mostly know Massi for his second and last giallo movie: 1989's bizarre ARABELLA BLACK ANGEL.  

Next to ARABELLA, KILLER comes as a bit too conservative, though the cinematography is always good (particularly in the generously lingering female nude scenes) and the basic situation is compelling. Writer Giorgio (English actor Francis Matthews) returns to Italy, anticipating a reunion with his pregnant wife Erika. To his horror he finds her newly dead, the victim of a miscarriage. The baby survives at a local hospital, where Giorgio consults with his own doctor, one Lydia (Pasquale Rivault), an in-law to Erika. The writer then gets a double body-blow when he steals a look at his own file, and sees that Lydia diagnosed him as infertile, incapable of siring a child.  

Erika's death then precedes (unleashes?) a serial killer who begins knife-killing women-- often pregnant women who have some connection to Giorgio. In giallos, the trope of "gotta kill all the sexy women" usually focuses upon promiscuous females who usually are not in a family way. But since no woman can get pregnant naturally without SOME promiscuity, KILLER might have offered some psychological insights on the durable "woman as virgin or whore" trope. However, most of the time Massi's pace is slow and the (subbed) dialogue is mundane. Even though the victims are just tangentially connected to Giorgio, those associations are enough to interest the police.

The slow pace allows Massi to build a better supply of red herrings than one finds in many thrillers (including ARABELLA), and the complications regarding Giorgio's infertility and the killer's identity dovetail nicely. The murderer's obsession with pregnant victims is enough by itself to propel the film into the uncanny domain, though it helps that the murdered women have strange symbols carved into their flesh. And Massi does flout convention by making the killer's glove grey rather than black.  

STARFORCE (2000)

 

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

Short review: STARFORCE, though weak in the plot department, is a much more serviceable example of a low-budget "space military" flick than nine-tenths of similar films in the same price range.

In yet another routine space-opera future, the ruling council of the united planets is protected by the Starforce, an elite cadre of test-tube bred soldiers. Space-pirates devastate the population of a colony world before being driven off by Starforce. One officer, Temetrian, crash-lands on the planet but the other Starforce soldiers don't find him right away. While stranded, Temetrian finds one survivor, a young boy named Zeb Lucene and protects the child until rescue comes. By that time, the soldier and the kid have bonded as surrogate father and son, and when Zed grows to maturity (and is played by Michael Bergin), Temetrian uses his clout to get Zed inducted into the Starforce, despite his not being genetically engineered. The first 15 minutes sets up a pretty good scenario re: Zed's need to prove himself despite opposition from his teammates.

However, then the plot proper begins, and that's where STARFORCE ceases to make sense. Zed is ordered to deliver medical supplies to a colony world, but his ship malfunctions so that he crashes. Back at Starforce, the absent Zed is accused of having stolen a ship, and his alleged orders are disavowed. So someone's got it in for Zed.

Zed survives the crash and is succored by Dahlia (Amy Weber), one of the denizens of the world-- which turns out to made up of criminals who had their sentences remitted for becoming colonists. However, apparently the authorities did a rotten job of surveying the planet, for the colonists have learned that their adopted world is rich in priceless tridium. The colonists have been debating the best way to profit from their discovery, but Zed has happened along just as some secret killer starts knocking off some of the residents.

There's no logic to why the murderous agent and his sponsors, a renegade unit of Starforce, needed Zed to be on the scene, except that there's no story if he's not there. However, if one can turn off one's awareness of the plot's failings and just focus on Zed and Dahlia fighting off nasty stormtroopers for the rest of the movie, STARFORCE provides tolerable diversion.            

STATIC SHOCK, SEASON TWO (2002)

 

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

My review of Season One was fairly long, purely because I was recapitulating some of the basics of the series' concept. But given that hardly anything changes between Seasons One and Two, this time there's hardly anything to say about this overly vanilla show.

The writers introduce a smattering of new, entirely routine villains, and one of the "independent" villains, Hotstreak, joins the gang masterminded by shadowy evildoer Ebon. Virgil's buddy Richie gets superpowers briefly, and there's an episode that amounts to an "anti-gun" PSA, which would be fine with me if I thought it had any persuasive power. I suppose the standout episode involved the villain Rubberband Man trying to become a good guy and coming into conflict with his brother, the aforementioned Ebon.

The season's "big event," as well as the opening episode, is STATIC playing host to Batman, Robin and The Joker. Though the voice-talents of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill remain excellent, the story is ordinary in every way.          

ELLA ENCHANTED (2004)

 

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

Wiki informs me that ELLA ENCHANTED is only a loose adaptation of its source novel, which I have not read. But though ELLA may be loose in one sense, in one sense this simple, tongue-in-cheek fantasy is tighter than two recent overbaked retreads of famous fantasies: 2024's WICKED PART ONE and 2025's SNOW WHITE. 

All three of these "magical-era fantasies" use fairytale-tropes to comment on perceived real-world injustices. The two later movies, though, construct sloppy scenarios, with WICKED imagining that Oz is "species-ist" towards its alleged talking-animal population, and SNOW supposing that its princess grows up in a non-hierarchical kingdom that would warm the heart of any Socialist. ELLA utilizes (but did not invent) an idea similar to that of WICKED, in that heroine Ella of Frell (Anne Hathaway) grows up in a world where human royalty has exiled most of the non-humans-- elves, ogres, and giants-- to the forests, if not turning them into abject slaves. There's no real depth to ELLA's politicized fairytale either, but since it only involves simple expropriation, the base scenario is not as stupid as those of WICKED and SNOW WHITE.

Ella also grows up more beleaguered than many fairytale heroines, for in a storyline derived from "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella," Baby Ella receives a bad birth-gift from an extraordinarily stupid fairy godmother: that of obeying any verbal command. I don't know how the book justifies the godmother's whim, but the movie shrugs off any justification in order to get the story rolling. Ella manages to keep her vulnerability secret until she's a young woman, but when her mother dies, her father (barely a character in the film) remarries, saddling Ella with a cruel stepmother and two nasty stepsisters.

The script gets a lot of comical mileage out of Ella's predicament, but her wish to protest the marginalization of magical beings brings her into a meet-cute with the wryly named Prince Charmont (Hugh Dancy). She brings the injustices to the attention of the gullible, not-yet-crowned prince, and the script makes it eminently clear that all the bad stuff has been orchestrated by his evil uncle Edgar (an unrecognizable Cary Elwes). Ella is also occupied with a search for the addled godmother in the hope of getting the obedience-spell reversed. In the end, Ella is the one who figures out how to undo her compulsion, which was a fresh approach.

Ella also accrues various supporting characters, including a talking book and an elf who wants to be a lawyer (!), but the story's main romantic thread is always the focus, and the script manages a good balance of humor and drama. There are no established fairytale characters in the story, and characters frequently make anachronistic references, mostly to modern pop music. Ella is the sole eminence here, and a big concluding fight-scene demonstrates that for no clear reason Ella can both swordfight and do kung fu. ELLA isn't a deep film, but it executes its simple scenario with a decent sense of style and moderately amusing jokes.      

STATIC SHOCK, SEASON ONE (2000-01)

 

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

Full disclosure: I've never read a single issue of the STATIC comic book, and only a smattering of other titles in the 1990s DC/Milestone line that spawned the Static character. Therefore I don't know in what particulars the TV show differs from its source material. However, given that the show STATIC SHOCK was trying to play to a kid-audience above all else, one can certainly countenance a lot of changes for the sake of that target-group. However, a lot of kid-vid adventure-shows have been capable of being entertaining even if they had to "work clean"-- and so there's some irony that a cartoon about a hip 14-year-old superhero should be one of the most vanilla shows in this category I've ever encountered.

In the fictional city of Dakota, a chemical weapon is unleashed, resulting in an event called "the Big Bang." What's created is a sub-universe within the greater domain of WB Animation; a city inhabited by instant mutants called "Bang Babies." Most of these individuals-- replete with the usual range of super-powers (freezing, flying, stretching) -- become menaces, so that they're ripe to become the rogues' gallery of the titular hero. Static-- originally high-schooler Virgil Hawkins-- gains an assortment of electrically-related powers, and being a stand-up guy, he becomes Dakota's defender, and (says Wiki) the first African-American hero to star in his own solo cartoon series. Only Richie, Virgil's white buddy at school, knows his secret; both Virgil's strict father and sarcastic sister remain clueless.

All that said, everything in STATIC SHOCK remains incredibly pedestrian in terms of plot and characterization. Of Season One's 13 episodes, only one, "Sons of the Fathers," deserves some comment. It's an "anti-racism" episode, but without the righteous virulence seen in many cartoons 20 years later. (I'm looking at you, PROUD FAMILY.) Virgil decides he wants to meet Richie's family and wangles an invitation to Richie's house. Richie's dad, however, makes no secret of disliking Black people, so Virgil takes his leave. Richie runs away from home and is captured by a gang of super-villains. But before Static can come to the rescue, Richie's father grudgingly accepts the help of Virgil's dad to find the lost kid. Given the many ways the story might have gone in depicting any character who doesn't automatically like Black people, I appreciate the meliorist approach, showing that Richie's dad is an Archie Bunker type who resents cultural/societal change. But that one episode, and various decently animated fight-scenes, don't add up to much.

 

          

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (2007)

 

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

Given my poor rating for DEAD MAN'S CHEST-- which film was shot back-to-back with AT WORLD'S END-- I wasn't expecting to rate END highly. In fact, I remember watching the film in a theater in 2007 and being exasperated by its meandering plot, its over-indulgence in trump cards and double crosses, and its make-work mythology. However, watching END back-to-back with CHEST, I accrued a greater appreciation for some of the consistent myth-motifs in the 2007 production, even if they were surrounded by a lot of chaos. CHEST now appears to be a padded middle act that introduces a lot of connective tissue necessary for a stronger third act-- which, to be sure, does have a lot of messy stuff as well. 

END, after all, is noteworthy for providing a pleasing if poignant ending to the story-arc of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley), who share the spotlight with capricious captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). The 2017 DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES added a coda to the Will-Elizabeth arc, but the conclusion of END still works as one of two major myth-motifs: that of "lovers tragically separated over long intervals," like "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl." This motif was probably derived from one of the ancillary versions of the Flying Dutchman, where the cursed captain was able to visit the human world from time to time, seeking true romance. The other major myth-motif-- that of a curse that is passed on from one victim to another-- may be extraneous to the major expressions of the Dutchman story, but END uses the motif to provide a reason why Will is forced to loosely duplicate his father's career as an absentee husband and father.

CHEST's strongest moment appeared toward the movie's conclusion, when the good-hearted Elizabeth unleashes her "inner pirate" and so betrays Jack Sparrow, so that he's consigned to the afterlife ruled by the predacious Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). CHEST also concluded with the mercenary Beckett, representative of the East India trading company, gaining the heart of Davy Jones. With this talisman, Beckett forces Jones and his Dutchman crew to serve as his enforcers in a campaign to eradicate all piracy. Here the script builds upon the first film's suggestion that piracy can be a counter-agent to the compromises of respectable society, and so END opens with a series of grotesque executions of everyone even suspected of associating with pirates. This one sequence might be the best scene ever directed by Gore Verbinski.

Will and Elizabeth, along with former enemy Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), plan to rescue Jack from perdition, in part to overthrow Beckett's tyranny. To accomplish this, the trio engage the help of a pirate brotherhood. These "pirate lords" add a fair amount of narrative confusion, but they seem necessary to expound on just how former human Davy Jones was transformed into a soul-collector by the goddess Calypso. The brotherhood also somehow forced the goddess to become human, though they don't know which human, and indeed one of the lords thinks Elizabeth is Calypso's reincarnation. Indeed, Calypso and Jones were lovers in antiquity, making them the precursors of the pattern that will consume Will and Elizabeth.         

                

Actually, because the script concentrates so much on the Will-Elizabeth arc-- and some minor ones involving Will's father and Elizabeth's former fiancee Norrington-- Jack Sparrow doesn't have that much to do. Indeed, one of the best scenes toward the big finish has Captain Barbossa marry Will and Elizabeth while all three of them are engaged in mortal combat. Davy Jones too gets closure to his arc, while END shows Jack and Barbossa still engaged in their perfidious but harmless pirate games-- as they still will be in the fourth installment. END has no end of flaws. But as far as putting across the message that we all need to embrace our inner pirates, this is the best of the Caribbean franchise.     

THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)

 

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

Under the sea


Under the sea
Nobody beat us
Fry us and eat us
In fricassee

Yeah, yeah, everyone's all "THE LITTLE MERMAID, beginning of the Disney Renaissamce." I see "The Little Mermaid, Sellout." "The Little Mermaid, Species-Traitor!"

I exaggerate for effect, but not by much. Fetching mermaid Ariel is both an accomplished songstress and the apple of her father Triton's eye. She often hears, from both her father and her crustacean music-teacher Sebastian, that the humans from the surface-world have a marked propensity to devour the denizens of Triton's subsea domain Atlantica. Yet from the movie's beginnings-- long before Ariel has her "love at first sight" moment with human Prince Eric-- this fish-girl is as nuts for surface-world detritus as a Zoomer for the latest K-pop fad. The script never says why Ariel is such a human-lover, though theoretically one could chalk up her diffidence toward her own world to the seeming absence of virile young mermen. (Maybe Ursula ate 'em all up?) Ariel seems pretty indifferent to the fact that Eric's people would gleefully chow down on her buddies Sebastian and Flounder. Yet in terms of exogamous mating, one must admit that the seaweed looks literally greener in the surface-dwellers' "lake."

The fear of being eaten naturally exists "under the sea" as well as on land, not to mention the fear's prevalence in animated cartoons since the medium's origins. Carnophobia is also a big part of Disney gag-humor, making its presence in MERMAID one of two big divergences from the Hans Christian Andersen story on which the MERMAID writers riffed. The other big change from the source-material is the injection of diabolism. Andersen's Sea Witch has no Satanic propensities; she just tells the Mermaid: "you want to change your nature; here's what it'll cost you." Ursula though is a Tempter who takes sadistic pleasure in the misery of others; Lucifer as sardonic drag-queen. When Triton rages at Ariel for wanting to date outside her species, Ursula sees the chance to up her game. By securing Ariel's soul, Ursula can pull off a Satanic version of an Imitatio Dei, becoming the new ruler of the ocean-domain, the ultimate Big Fish that eats all smaller prey.

Happily, MERMAID's suggestion of heavy themes is more than counterbalanced by all the fun, light-hearted stuff that made Classic Disney possible from the beginning. When Prince Eric meets the voiceless Ariel, he can't believe she's related to the haunting mer-girl who saved his life, and she can only try to draw his love to her through the power of her fundamentally innocent sexuality. "Kiss the Girl" is the sort of musical number that would have been impossible in the days of Raging Feminism: the Awfuls would have been railing that in their world women didn't have to wait for the guys to make the first move. But underneath all the singing birds and frogs in the background dwells a priority older than humankind: if the male can't summon the mojo to make the first move, he might as well be sitting on the sidelines and watching the parade go by.

I recall one discordant note voiced back when MERMAID was new to movie-screens: some ultra-Feminist critic didn't like it when Prince Eric, who didn't do much of anything for the entire story, received the honor of killing Ursula by stabbing her with the "phallic" prow of his ship. There's not much one can say to that sort of dumbass thinking beyond, "sometimes a prow is just a prow." But even if some Disney scripter was actively thinking "prow=penis," who in the audience really cares who cares who kills the Sea Bitch, as long as she's sung her last note?

So, okay. expected happy ending, and maybe when Eric and Ariel ascend to the throne of Wherever, the ex-Mermaid enjoins the whole kingdom to lay off the marine delicacies. Buth human and merman realms are implicitly improved by the joining of houses and the expulsion of the Principle of Evil-- not counting the lesser evils of sequels, prequels, and live-action remakes.          
                          

MULAN (1998)

 

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

Along with the 1999 TARZAN, MULAN was among the last box-office successes of the Disney Renaissance, after which the fortunes of the animation division began taking a downward turn. Though it's not one of the classics, MULAN shows more of the great Disney combinations of humor and pathos than any of the company's animated productions of the 21st century.

Although by 1998 it was standard practice for the Disney heroine to sing an "I want" song near the outset, "Reflections" seems more amorphous than others. Mulan is uncomfortable as she fails to fulfill his feminine destiny by simply making a good marriage for her family's sake. but she's not rebelling against the restrictive, honor-bound culture of dynastic China. (Disney's writers surely knew that China itself was a promising market even in 1998, so they didn't want to suggest a critique of Chinese culture.) Mulan simply wants to find her true self, whatever it is, little suspecting that her identity is going to be revealed through another imposture.

 An invasion of the Huns ("Mongol" being politically incorrect) proves bad luck for China but indirect good luck for Mulan. To keep her infirm father from being conscripted for anti-Hun repulsion, Mulan dresses up as a young man and joins the army. In this endeavor she's joined by a miniature ancestral dragon named Mushu (Eddie Murphy) and an intelligent cricket whose only purpose is to give Mushu a second character (besides Mulan) on whom to run lines. Despite having almost no powers beyond an ability to annoy, Mushu is functionally modeled on the Genie from ALADDIN, allowing him to indulge in assorted anachronistic jokes.

                  

Once she's ensconced at boot camp for new recruits, Mulan, using the name "Ping," meets her other support-characters: the handsome young commander Shang and three funny stooges: Ling, Yao and Chien Po. Initially Mulan gets on the wrong side of Ling and Yao, introducing her to the rough-and-tumble testosterone world. But it's Shang, the demanding drill sergeant, who provides the heroine with a criterion for identity: that "once you find your center, you are sure to win." Mulan's many fumbles almost get her dishonorably discharged, which would have solved the problem of how to keep her father and herself out of the army. But now Mulan wants to succeed, to excel among men even if she can't really "be a man," and she does so by performing a feat no one else in the unit could. As if by osmosis, Mulan finding her center causes everyone else in the troop to do the same.

But to its credit MULAN is much more than a service comedy, though the script plays up more hilarity on the troop's way to its first sortie. The soldiers have stoked their spirits by singing about their amorous intentions-- except for an embarrassed "Ping"-- only to be cut off when they sight a village burned out by the Huns. No dead bodies are seen, and only indirect evidence suggests that Shang's general father perished in the conflict. A little later, a horde of Huns charge the unit. Mulan unleashes an avalanche that kills most of them (bloodlessly), but the sequence captures much of chaos of warfare. And then Mulan's secret is exposed, to the mortification of those who've come to respect "Ping" for his courage and resourcefulness.

But to redeem Mulan for the crime of being a woman out of her place, the writers have to make Shan Yu do a Freddy Kruger and imperil the Emperor of China himself. The big finish includes a few strong moments, as when the Three Chinese Stooges are forced to dress up as women, but the last section is the weakest part of the movie. Still, MULAN manages to put across the ideal of a heroine who achieves masculine goals but who is not, unlike the later girlbosses, some ideological mixture of femininity and masculinity. The romance here is subplot rather than plot, and though Shang and Mulan will come together, Mulan finding her center is the thing that makes her movie a winner.

    

X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME FOUR (1995-96)

 

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

One odd note about Volume 4 is that although it doesn't contain all the episodes attributed to "Season 4," at least this time every episode on the discs came FROM Season 4. That said, a few had already appeared on the Volume Three collection, and there's at least one Season 4 tale that I assume will show up on Volume Five.

That said, the selections for Four are the same mixed bag seen in earlier volumes. "Proteus" is, despite cast-changes, one of the show's closest emulations of a Claremont-Byrne story, and it even succeeds in putting across some of that tale's horrific tonality.  One, "Sanctuary," was based on a story I'd not read, but it was tolerable, while "Lotus and Steel" is a complete reworking of the history of Wolverine's occasional opponent Silver Samurai, with mediocre results.

 An event of sorts takes place in that Cyclops and Marvel Girl are finally married, with less folderol than in the comics. That said, the wedding gets lost in yet another of the time-wasting time-travel stories to which the showrunners seemed addicted. Cable, Bishop, Apocalypse and Mister Sinister get four episodes devoted to a forgettable outing. The storyline was intended to conclude the series, but if nothing else, the fifth season deprived this mediocrity of that distinction.  

Strangely, the showrunners devote just one episode to disclosing Magneto's paternity of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. While I don't fault the adaptors for not translating the many continuity-nuggets from "The Yesterday Quest," at this point the show had only briefly introduced Quicksilver in one episode, as a member of an off-brand version of X-Factor. Then suddenly everyone in the story knows both Quicksilver and his sister Scarlet Witch, and Wolverine provides the X-hero connection while the two siblings encounter both Daddy Magneto and a fanatical version of the High Evolutionary. Niggles aside, it's still a better story than most of those on Volume Four.       

PIRATES OF DARK WATER (1991-93)

 

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

Since I've always liked both pirate films and high fantasy, the combination of the two in Hanna-Barbera's PIRATES OF DARK WATER excited my admiration back in the day. At the time I knew that PIRATES was very different in tone from the 1980s product of H-B. With the exception of the Scooby Doo franchise, most of H-B's offerings seemed starved for fresh ideas. I didn't know that a producer named David Kirchner had assumed CEO duties for the company, taking over from William Hanna. Kirchner's reign only lasted from 1989 to 1992, when Fred Siebert took over as CEO. Overall Siebert seems to have done better helming the company in its final years (1992-96) of making serial cartoon shows for television. But even if one views PIRATES as the sole accomplishment of Kirschner's brief reign, it was ineluctably that breath of fresh air many viewers wanted, to judge from the persistence of nostalgic fandom for the series.

Some of that nostalgia, though, stems from the fact that Kirchner treated PIRATES like any other open-ended show. Thus, despite introducing the series with a world-threatening peril, the story ended without even a partial resolution. PIRATES takes place in a fantasy-domain with no connection to Earth: the world of Mer, wherein all land-masses are island-sized, not unlike LeGun's Earthsea novels. Mer lies under the existential threat of "Dark Water," a mysterious, poisonous sludge that infests the seawaters and that boils up from the earth's center. Later, main hero Ren learns that a malefic force lies behind Dark Water, but when the viewer meets the 17-year-old, he doesn't even know that he's a child of high estate, son of King Primus of the decayed kingdom Octopon. Ren also learns that for most of his young life, Primus has been the prisoner of the pirate-lord Bloth. The loose implication is that Ren was raised as a commoner because Bloth killed all of Primus' other relations. Primus escapes, finds Ren, tells him that Mer's peril can only be averted if Ren gathers "the Thirteen Treasures of Rule," and then suffers an ambiguous fate, maybe or maybe not dead.

Ren does have one bequest from his father: a compass that will guide Ren to each of the treasures in turn. Because Bloth also covets the treasure, Ren needs a ship with which to sail Mer's seas, and a crew as well. He gets them all in short order: Ioz, an older male pirate hungry for treasure, Tula, an athletic woman with mystic "ecomancer" skills, and Niddler, a comical "monkey-bird." All three initially have selfish reasons for following Ren, though it doesn't take long for them to be swayed by Ren's altruism, not to mention  their need to escape Bloth's relentless pursuit. 

The design-work for PIRATES-- costumes, vehicles, flora and fauna -- is as good as most animated fantasy-films, and the voice-work is excellent. But as is usually the case with TV serials, the continuing characters evolve certain "tics" that become their reasons for being. Niddler complains about not having enough to eat, chauvinist Ioz makes some rude comment about women at sea, Tula snaps at him, and Ren tells them all to stifle themselves.

Similarly, the "guest stars" aren't much better, and so only a few episodes stand out in terms of characterization. In "A Drop of Darkness," the crew encounters an elderly sorceress named Cray. Ren is surprised to learn that Cray may have had some relationship to his father Primus, though Primus rejected Cray for Ren's mother. Cray wants to relive her life, using Dark Water to restore her youth and trying to romance the naive prince. And in "Sister of the Sword," the heroes meet Ioz's kid sister Solia, who's as larcenous as her brother and who incites Tula's jealousy when Solia outrageously flirts with Ren. 

Yet too often the motives of the guest stars don't bear close scrutiny. The last episode, "The Living Treasure," presents Tula becoming wroth with Ioz's chauvinism. By the wildest coincidence, the treasure-hunt drops the hero-pirates in the laps of a tribe of man-hating Amazons, who enslave Ioz and Ren but invite Tula to join their ranks. Though it's not a horrible story, it's very predictable. At the conclusion, the good guys find a treasure that suggests a way that the Dark Water may be nullified. But then the series ended, so that only devoted fans could complete the abbreviated epic via fan-fiction.

               

           

VIRTUAL COMBAT (1995)

 

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

Hyde Park Entertainment came close to PM in terms of churning out reams of STV products for cable and video rental stores. PM tended to concentrate on action movies, while Hyde emphasized softcore thrillers like the NIGHT EYES series. That said, the redoubtable Don Wilson made three flicks for Hyde Park. I've found a number of Wilson programmers to be passable formula entertainment. But though I've not seen them all, VIRTUAL COMBAT may be the worst thing Wilson ever did, though the fault surely lies with the guys behind the camera.

COMBAT takes place in the near future, and like most such action-fare, it's really just the modern world with one or two SF-tropes added. VR technology has become the big thing in future-Las Vegas, so much so that local cops like David Quarry (Wilson) and his partner John spend most of their time hanging out in VR parlors-- though John avails himself of VR sexcapades, while David hones his martial skills by battling VR opponents. One opponent is Dante (Michael Bernardo), and he kicks real boy David's ass in their first bout. Unfortunately, a world-beater named Burroughs (first and middle names "John Carter," hah hah) has his scientists invent a way of bringing VR programs into the real world-- sort of the 3-D printing of the 1990s. Burroughs' main purpose seems to be to corner a new market on VR prostitutes, both creating regular good-lookers like Liana (Athena Massey) and "specialty types" like whip-wielding dominatrix Greta (Dawn Ann Billings). But the same tech that births cyber-babes also unleashes cyber-villain Dante, and one of his first actions is to kill David's partner.

Avenging his partner then becomes David's only motive in life for the rest of the film, though he finds a little time for a nothing sex scene with Liana. But director Andrew Stevens's idea of a plot is that of providing minimal connective tissue between a bunch of mediocre fight-scenes. Even Liana and Greta get to throw down a little. But only the climactic combat between David and Dante shows decent choreography, which may stem from the two actors working to their strengths. But Dante's never very threatening, not least because he doesn't utter his own lines, but strides around close-mouthed while his dialogue is uttered by the booming voice of Michael Drn.

Eventually all the rogue programs are destroyed, even "good VR" Liana, though David can still visit an iteration of Liana. Where? Why, in the VR sex parlors! And so COMBAT ends by coming "full circle"-- or is that "full-circle jerk?"                 

NIGHT OF THE GHOULS (1959)

 

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

No one would accuse Ed Wood's NIGHT OF THE GHOULS of being a "wandering minstrel" a la Gilbert and Sullivan, but the movie certainly is a "thing of shreds and patches." GHOULS, in addition to being a rough sequel to BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, borrows footage from three other Wood projects: HELLBORN, of which the director shot about fifteen minutes in 1952, and two 1957 pilots for an unsold TV horror-anthology. For decades all three were lost, but in more recent years Wood-ologists have managed to unearth both the HELLBORN footage and one of the two pilots, FINAL CURTAIN. Perhaps ironically, though, it's the other, still-lost pilot, THE NIGHT THE BANSHEE CRIED, that seems to have had the greatest influence on how Wood cobbled together his disparate materials. This site was good enough to provide a summary of the BANSHEE story as Wood presented it in prose:

A beautiful young woman is aware that she is dead but does not seem to understand why she has been summoned back to the swamp behind her father's now-decaying home. She can hear the anguished screaming of the banshee who has traditionally haunted the property. The woman scans her memory in search of clues as to why she was dragged from her peaceful grave. Suddenly, the reason becomes clear: she is to replace the banshee.

Both of the TV pilots were about characters having inevitable encounters with death, and though in 1957 Wood was only a little over thirty years old, he seems to have nurtured something of a death-fetish in some of his major works. In GHOULS what was only a mysterioso encounter between a young woman (Valda Hansen) and a banshee (Jeannie Stevens) becomes interpolated with a wider story, also about inevitable death. Hansen has new scenes in GHOULS, though I believe all of Stevens' appearances may stem either from BANSHEE or FINAL CURTAIN. (Famed cross-dresser Wood is said to have played Stevens' role-- a woman in a heavy black veil and robe-- for a few quick scenes in GHOULS.)  

 

This time out, Hansen plays Sheila, the accomplice of a phony spiritualist named Karl (Kenne Duncan), though to his customers he bills himself as "Dr Acula"-- and even had the part been essayed by Bela Lugosi, most 1950s audiences would have groaned at such a corny pun. Still, had Lugosi lived long enough to play "Dr Acula," he would have found himself on "familiar ground." At the movie's opening, fake medium Karl has moved into Willows Lake House, the location where Lugosi played the manor's original owner, mad scientist Eric Vornoff, who dies at the conclusion of BRIDE. Karl, though, has fixed up Vornoff's old house to draw in superstitious customers, and in addition he has Sheila drift around the grounds in a white dress, pretending to be "The White Ghost." Karl has a couple of other helpers, but they barely rate a mention next to his mute mountain of muscle Lobo, who survived the devastation of Vornoff's lab but has become Karl's enforcer.

Unfortunately for the mendacious mystic, some citizens catch sight of the White Ghost and ask the cops to check things out. Admittedly, the constables might have done so anyway, because the Black Ghost (and former Banshee) has also been meandering the area, and has killed at least two people. In any event, two cops are assigned to suss out Willows Lake House. One is Officer Kelton (Paul Marco), a veteran of both BRIDE and PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. The other is new character Lt Bradford (Duke Moore), who spends the entire film clad in a tuxedo. Why? Because Wood wanted to recycle one FINAL CURTAIN scene, in which Moore's tuxedo'ed character, "The Actor," encounters Stevens' (blonde) character, "The Vampire." In my review of CURTAIN, I asserted that "The Vampire" was *probably* supposed to be a creation of The Actor's imagination. But here, the Black Ghost-- both in her black-veiled and blonde incarnations-- is a real spirit, one of several accidentally summoned to the lake house. Karl knows himself but slenderly, for it turns out his medium skills are real.

To be fair to Wood, he does set up the incursion of these spirits at the film's beginning. In a monologue that seems to be a framing-device, celebrity psychic Criswell (also of PLAN 9) talks of "The Threshold People" and describes them as "monsters to be pitied-- monsters to be despised" (a line recycled from FINAL CURTAIN). However, Criswell and a half-dozen other male ghosts show up to bring Karl to his doom, that of being suffocated in a coffin. (This mirrors both the dramatic conclusion of CURTAIN and the comical ending of the Wood-scripted NECROMANIA.) Meanwhile, the Black Ghost gets the White Ghost, Lobo dies of gunshot wounds, and the cops try to figure out what happened. 

Incidentally, the three-four minutes of HELLBORN footage appear during Criswell's opening monologue. The most interesting nugget is a scene in which some young toughs beat up and rob a man while Mona (PLAN 9) McKinnon looks on coldly. I wondered if the scenario might have involved the young woman luring the older man to a location where he could be mugged. GHOULS is definitely more fully in the "so bad it's good" category than BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, with GHOULS' ridiculous excuse for a seance and a flat performance from Kenne Duncan as Karl.  There's also an odd and unresolved subplot in which one of Karl's customers is a young swindler who's been making up to a wealthy old woman, and who has apparently directed Karl to get a "seal of approval" as to his intentions. All demerits considered though, Wood does put across some genuine fear of death that's not fully diminished by his loopy dialogue.

                      

                    

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST (2006)

 

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

I'm sure Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer saved a ton of money by shooting this movie and its sequel back-to-back, and since audiences loved Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow, both films made bank at the box office. But director Gore Verbinski and his team sure sacrificed the simple, elemental appeal of two good-hearted but conventional lovers who have their world turned upside down by a roguish pirate with a heart of fool's gold.

It's a year later since the events of the first film, and Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley) are due to be married soon. However, a Navy official named Beckett shows up at Port Royal, ordering the arrests of the two lovers for having aided the escape of wanted pirate Jack Sparrow (Depp). Beckett's also looking for former Naval officer Norrington, but this is merely a plot-device just to let the audience know that the character will show up later in the story. Beckett has zero need for Norrington, because his real plot is to use Elizabeth's captivity to blackmail Will into finding Jack Sparrow.

After the first hour, it becomes clear that the poor excuse for a plot is just a series of "go find something" tasks. The crude assemblages of goals put me in mind of the old kids' song "The Old Lady Who Swallowed the Fly:"

Will follows Jack Sparrow to find Jack's compass,

And they use the compass to find a key,

And the key they use to open Dead Man's Chest, 

And in the chest they find a heart

From another chest, that of Davy Jones,

And with that heart they can win their desires--

I understand that most pirate adventures owe a debt to TREASURE ISLAND, but all these different doodads become tedious, particularly since they're just there to pad the film's running-time. The supernatural being Davy Jones (Bill Nighy with an octopus-face), a former human transformed into a keeper of dead souls (and the captain of the Flying Dutchman), holds control of the seven seas. Anyone who can gain custody of Davy Jones' heart will also control the oceans-- which is Beckett's endgame.

After about an hours' worth of pointless stunts, Will does find Jack and reunites the querulous captain with his crew and his ship-- as well as new crewman Norrington, who nurses old grudges against both Will and Jack. While they head off to find the Flying Dutchman-- which is crewed by a bunch of fish-men-- Elizabeth wins free of prison and goes looking for Will.

The makeshift mythology here includes not only Davy Jones, but also a goddess called Calypso and a giant Kraken. I recall that these matters get a little more exposition in the third film, but I imagine the audience just rolled with it all while waiting for Johnny Depp to show up and be funny. Will has a subplot in which he meets his long-lost father, now a member of the Dutchman crew, and Elizabeth once more appears to be slightly tempted by Jack's chaotic charms. Elizabeth gets to swordfight this time, as well as handily tricking tricky Jack, while the best stunt in the film is a three-way blade-battle between Jack, Will, and Norrington. But there were also a lot more boring scenes that one should expect from a Jerry Bruckheimer production.

          

THE FOX WITH A VELVET TAIL (1971)

 

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

The "fox" in the title means nothing as such, it's probably just a marketing tactic to make consumers associate the movie with other "animal-named" giallos. However, there's nothing Argento-esque about this movie by Spanish director/co-writer Jose Maria Forque. If anything, FOX has more in common with a suspense-giallo like 1969's PARANOIA in being focused on a mundane murder-plot. 

The alternate title IN THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE applies better to the situation of wealthy lady Ruth (Analia Gade), in that for almost half the movie she seems to be peacefully ensconced on her estate, immune to any forces of chaos that might be swirling about her. At the film's outset she tells her husband Michel (Tony Kendall) to move out, because she has a new lover, Paul (Jean Sorel). Michel is downcast but not overly upset, so he leaves, expressing the hope that Ruth will change her mind. But for over half an hour, Ruth and Paul live things up in the lap of luxury. Sure, a little chaos intrudes when the brakes on Ruth's car fail, but hey, that could happen to anyone, right? And that gorgeous redhead Daniela (Rosanna Yanni) who moves in next door-- just part of the cheery scenery, right?

No detective-work is required for Ruth to suss out the destructive forces in her life: she simply lucks onto three conspirators openly discussing their plans to murder her. But with no proof of the murder-plot, Ruth must find some way to cause the destructive forces in her life to rebound on her enemies. At one point, she appears to be under the thumbs of two of her oppressors, but Ruth may have one more card to play.

FOX is beautifully photographed and both Gade and Yanni are glamorous, but there's just not enough characterization to make any of the principals seem like more than bare functions of the plot. While in many films like this the predators are eminent, this time it's the potential victim who holds the narrative together. FOX is watchable but strictly non-demanding.     

        

STAR TREK: PICARD (SEASON ONE, 2020)

 

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

SUPER HEAVY SPOILERS

Before venturing into this review, I wrote this essay to demonstrate that any nostalgic appeal for the STTNG series the producers hoped to evoke with PICARD was all but absent in me. In part I wrote:  

In the 1980s, as Roddenberry saw the franchise he'd created taken over by other hands, TNG gave him his last chance to infuse a teleseries with his guiding ethos. Yet this time he didn't want a series that stressed heroic action and character conflict. As many TNG critics have observed, Roddenberry wanted characters who had advanced beyond personal interest, not least with regard to that old devil sensuality. As the characters lacked personality in those early years, the players couldn't do much except to pontificate-- though always with the most earnest attitudes possible. For me, as a viewer not much impressed with TNG's early years, the culmination of this tendency appeared most egregiously in the first-season episode "Skin of Evil," which I call "The One Where Picard Has Righteous Conversations with an Oil Slick." 

What little online criticism I'd seen of PICARD had been negative, and I had little reason to extend the show any benefit of the doubt, given that PICARD's producer Alex Kurtzman also had his fingers in the Trek TV shows DISCOVERY and STRANGE NEW WORLDS and in two of the last three TREK theatrical movies. All of these I deemed garbage whose only merit was to make even the weaker TREK entries of the Rick Berman years look like genius. So when I liked PICARD, I can only posit that the crucial difference for me was Season One's showrunner was novelist Michael Chabon. For me, Season One's ten episodes bring out the Liberal political themes of TNG better than any ten episodes of the original series-- though of course PICARD has the advantage of presenting a unified narrative.

It's quite possible that some reviewers didn't like Chabon's labyrinthine storyline, and I must admit that I don't think it fully tracks, though that doesn't invalidate other qualities. Chabon drew strongly upon two TREK narratives I've not revisited since their theatrical debuts-- NEMESIS (2002), the last movie to spotlight the TNG cast, and the 2009 STAR TREK, which did not involve the TNG mythos but which Chabon seems to have retconned into said continuity, at least with respect to one event. Since I think Chabon's reworking of the TNG mythos was key to my enjoyment of the season, in this review I'm going to focus less on the story's dramatic twists and turns than on the phases of the Chabon timeline-- hence, SPOILERS.

PHASE 1-- In the distant past, a mighty civilization is destroyed by their populace of androids, usually called "synthetics." Though the organics die, they exile the synthetics to another dimension, and leave behind a recording, known as "The Admonition," to warn other sentients of the consequences of empowering synthetics.

PHASE 2-- At some later millennium, the Romulans discover the Admonition. A secret society, the Zhat Vash, dedicates itself to the prevention of another synthetic uprising.

PHASE 3-- The events of TREK NEMESIS transpire, culminating in the death of the synthetic Federation officer Data. As I recall, in that time-frame synthetics are not prevalent.

PHASE 4-- The events of TREK '09 transpire, though the only event referenced in PICARD is the destruction of Romulus, the Romulan homeworld. Chabon asserts that this event takes place in TNG time, and that Admiral Picard leads a humanitarian effort to rescue the imperiled denizens. However. not all Federation officials approve of succoring the Federation's rivals, and for that reason, the Zhat Vash takes an action that some might deem counter-intuitive. Apparently synthetics are being used in greater numbers at the time, so Romulan operatives somehow mess with a large number of synthetics on Mars. The synthetics revolt, which somehow impairs the Romulan rescue effort. Reactionary elements in the Federation use the revolt as an excuse to both shut down the rescue effort and to legislate against the further creation of synthetics. Picard opposes both measures and seeks to reignite the rescue effort by threatening to resign-- only to have his resignation accepted. Picard does succeed in rescuing a large number of Romulans and relocating them on the planet Vashti, but then the former Admiral goes into seclusion.

PHASE 5-- Unbeknownst to Picard, Data, prior to his death, created at least two twin female androids, Dahj and Soji, with the help of human scientist Maddox. Both are separately raised by human families without their even knowing they're synthetics, probably to keep them from being destroyed under the new laws. Maddox, wanting to continue his synthetic research, emigrates to another planet with some like-minded associates and populates that world with an android population. (It's a fine touch that the world is named Coppelius, after the robot-making mad scientist of Hoffmann's story "The Sandman.") The Zhat Vash wants to annihilate all the synthetics, but they don't know where Coppelius is. But they are able to locate Dahj and Soji. For some reason, agents Narissa and Narek track Soji to her workplace-- an abandoned Borg cube-- and seek to tap her memories to learn the location of the homeworld that Soji has buried in her subconscious memories. Other agents of Zhat Vash seek to abduct Dahj for similar treatment, but her cyber-skills activate and she kills them. Other memories surface, leading Dahj to seek out Picard-- who then has to learn all of this continuity in reverse order.

Though many details of the scenario are weak, they serve quite well to advance the political ethos of the story, which coheres admirably with a running trope from TNG: "androids are people too." PICARD is almost lyrical in its efforts to champion synthetics as not just an underclass in need of rescuing, but as a species of "children" that deserve the kindness and amity of all sentients. And while the Romulans are "the bad guys" for choosing to make synthetics into scapegoats, they are not, as in many TNG episodes, totally wrong. Toward the latter half of the season, the inhabitants of Coppelius are aghast to learn that a Romulan fleet seeks to destroy their world. Picard and his new crew cannot save them, but the synthetics can reach out to the extradimensional androids to save them. Picard is naturally just as much opposed to a Holocaust of organics as of synthetics, and he manages to sway the Coppelians to renounce the alien synthetics (who are seen briefly as some sort of tentacled Cthuluoids).

Speaking of the support cast, PICARD includes two characters from TNG, Troi and Ryker, and one from VOYAGER, Seven of Nine, but they play only small, though resonant, parts. Picard engages a new motley crew to aid him in his investigation, and while none of them are compelling, they all serve their purposes well enough. The only crewmember that shows potential is the Romulan youth Elnor, who views Picard as the father he never had but resents the admiral for having absented himself. The two villains Narissa and Narek are much better than most TNG foes, though. Narek inserts himself romantically into Soji's life to probe her memories, and his sister Narissa is visibly jealous of the hookup, threatening Narek to make sure he sticks to the mission. Narissa gets a solid demise in a battle with Seven of Nine-- one of several well-choreographed fight-scenes in this season-- but Narek's fate, that of being apprehended by Federation forces, was left on the cutting room floor.

But inevitably the show wouldn't work if Patrick Stewart didn't bring his A-game. I reject critics who said Picard is just "carried along" by events, for he's clearly the moral linchpin of Season One. Stewart's Picard is just as intermittently righteous and self-deprecating as he ever was in TNG, but here he's dealing with an issue far more substantive than most of those seen in the old show. (And I say that as a person that doesn't automatically validate the many Liberal permutations of the save-the-marginalized trope.) PICARD is a rare example of a sequel that improves on the original-- though I see that Michael Chabon may not contributed as much to ensuing seasons as to this one.        

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1972)

 

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

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

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

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

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

       

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ACES GO PLACES 2 (1983)

 

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

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

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

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

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