tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604745521187697712024-03-17T20:03:55.986-07:00NATURALISTIC! UNCANNY! MARVELOUS!A blog devoted to sorting out the phenomenology of film.Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.comBlogger2604125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-37100451847094579422024-03-16T12:40:00.000-07:002024-03-16T12:50:58.779-07:00PAN (2015)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAtxuTaCFQ6iTNd4xgzAP_SmX-PDscHkJikMDXYjsTWdhCY6Ih2X91BTx1csW0_TmKXu84shiteYietBRR2pc6pyE3PiRSwwG5jXTTe47csCFckbSqi2WvcJY_hg9gA1eCY-0ABDgiJzLfQEGcquUTCtmndpW1o7lkYS4eFnlJz4tG76D2BXufIzgABQ/s580/pan.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="580" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAtxuTaCFQ6iTNd4xgzAP_SmX-PDscHkJikMDXYjsTWdhCY6Ih2X91BTx1csW0_TmKXu84shiteYietBRR2pc6pyE3PiRSwwG5jXTTe47csCFckbSqi2WvcJY_hg9gA1eCY-0ABDgiJzLfQEGcquUTCtmndpW1o7lkYS4eFnlJz4tG76D2BXufIzgABQ/w640-h478/pan.webp" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In PETER PAN J. M. Barrie provided the perfect mythic representation of the child's desire to be free of all parental constrictions and go seeking adventures. Barrie clearly showed that this desire was ambivalent, as the Lost Boys do miss the blandishments of home life. Nevertheless, Peter Pan still incarnates all the rebellious aspects of male childhood-- vanity, quarrelsomeness, and even a tendency to "edit" his memory to erase experiences that don't suit the young hero. A prototype of Peter was a very small child, but clearly, in both the play and book, Barrie aged the official version up, since it would hardly be credible for anyone younger than a preteen to go around crossing swords with pirates.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">One's enjoyment of PAN may be affected by the viewer's insistence on all versions of the title character following the Barrie template in terms of character, for the Peter of director Joe Wright and writer Jason Fuchs lacks any vanity, adventurousness, or lapses in memory. Fuchs apparently decided to invert Barrie's idea of Peter Pan's origins, in which Peter deserted Earth for Neverland because he thought his mother had left him alone. In this movie, infant Peter is left on the doorstep of an orphanage by his mother, who has a complicated history of her own. This Peter (Levi Miller) grows to ten years of age under the control of corrupt and greedy nuns, but he always remains steadfast to the idea that his true mother will someday come for him again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the film's most confusing plot-thread, it's suggested that the nuns are in cahoots with the pirates of Neverland, who stage a raid upon the orphanage one night. From the deck of their ship-- able to fly around the Earth-skies thanks to fairy dust-- the pirates cast down sky-hooks and simply snatch several boys from their beds. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">However, the flying pirate ship is under the command of a captain named Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), who's never expressly said to be identical with the 17th century buccaneer. Blackbeard and his crew of rowdies (among whom is comic-relief character "Mister Smee") periodically kidnap young boys to work in the Neverland mines. Within these mines are deposits of Pixum, concatenations of fairy dust which confer the power of flight upon Blackbeard's ship and some degree of youth upon the captain. The script never elaborates upon the exact relationship between the race of fairies and these mineral deposits.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">While Peter and his fellow orphans work the mnies, Peter meets Indiana Jones. Okay, it's James Hook, but actor Garrett Hedlund plays him exactly like the Harrison Ford character. Hook seems to be the only adult in the mines, but he never says how he came to be in Neverland. Peter and Hook manage to escape with the help of Smee.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">All three are captured by a tribe of "savages" who are perpetually at war with the pirates. (The producers made this tribe loosely multi-racial and elided all representations of their being Barrie's Native Americans, clearly seeking to avoid any negative blowback-- which they got anyway.) Princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) requires Hook to fight the tribe's best warrior before all three will be put to death. However, though Hook acquits himself well the trio are saved by a token suggests that Peter may be a predicted savior called "The Pan."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Peter's true origins here are even more wildly revisionist than his relationship with James Hook (which had seen a better revision in 2011's <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2012/09/neverland-2011.html">NEVERLAND</a>).It turns out that that his beloved mother was a mortal brought to Neverland by her lover Blackbeard. (The nature of their relationship remains as murky as any accounting for the pirate captain's gaining access to the Never-verse.) However, the mother, name of Mary, fell in love with a male fairy, and the two of them conceived Peter. The fairy perished as the result of his having assumed a human form (curiously, neither Peter nor the script is the least bit curious about Peter's pater). Mary took shelter with the savages, and at some point managed to return to the Earth-realm, where she left infant Peter on the orphanage's doorstep. Then she was accidentally slain by Blackbeard, though the aggrieved Peter later manages to see his mother again, after a fashion.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">All of these revelations are a set-up for an admittedly rousing conclusion, in which Blackbeard and his horrible hearties invade the fairy kingdom to gain more Pixum. Peter and Tiger Lily seek to warn the fairies while Hook deserts them, trying to find a way to his own universe. Peter and Tiger Lily fall afoul of Blackbeard, but they're given respite by Han Solo. Okay, it's Hook reprising the Millennium Falcon rescue from STAR WARS, but with a second flying pirate ship to match that of Blackbeard. This long climactic sequence-- during which Peter finally master his nascent ability to fly, here an inheritance from his fairy father-- is easily the best part of the movie, and does a lot to redeem the script's many plot holes. Some critics complained of too much CGI, but really, how else but through computer animation could anyone bring to life the sight of two flying frigates having a dogfight? Alas, while I found PAN to be good popcorn entertainment as long as one ignored the plot holes and the non-traditional characterization of Peter Pan, the film tanked.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I ventured my considered opinion that probably the main reason the filmmakers elided Native Americans from this PAN adaptation was to avoid controversy. Given all the belated condemnations of Disney's PETER PAN for its use of "redmen," there's nearly no chance that PAN could have dodged recriminations no matter how "respectfully" they chose to depict the tribe. So the PAN tribe becomes an unspecified polyglot, with White actress Mara assuming the role of Tiger Lily-- and this got the film accused of "whitewashing." There are real incidents of whitewashing worth citing, but here the casting had nothing to do with denying some Native American actress the role, but with trying to rework the whole tribe to stem the tide of controversy. As it happens, Tiger Lily is a strong enough role that any Native American performer ought to have considered it honorable to play the character (and indeed, few Tiger Lilies in film-history have been real Native Americans). But I can well understand the producers not wanting to take the chance. In any case, Mara's shipboard duels with Jackman's Blackbeard are one of the highlights of the movie. It's also of passing interest that both Hedlund and Mara, whose characters have a maybe-romantic interaction, were both about thirty years old in 2015, so there's no sense that this Tiger Lily will ever become Wendy's potential rival for an older Peter. Also, it's interesting that the Princess claims to have been trained in fighting by the deceased Mary, which gives Tiger Lily a slightly maternal resonance re: Peter.</span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-67040479168433607612024-03-14T19:33:00.000-07:002024-03-14T19:38:50.612-07:00THE ZEBRA KILLER (1974)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiicV4oXPt4hwAAf6ck_1Py3no7qk47kRggwOZzeF_MET51HhfndPT-MYkyNTf4SxidPgc7g0ie-VaIhWLK36v-m1-ehSMgKjWtI-kUgq06aFpkxUsgZL3WGvJSEklDhf0aLmuqFexJHyRZdP6iERb69iaOMYQsUBT_cRn7TTWXpMXx_ro55zmF_XA4Kw/s1553/zebra.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1553" data-original-width="1138" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiicV4oXPt4hwAAf6ck_1Py3no7qk47kRggwOZzeF_MET51HhfndPT-MYkyNTf4SxidPgc7g0ie-VaIhWLK36v-m1-ehSMgKjWtI-kUgq06aFpkxUsgZL3WGvJSEklDhf0aLmuqFexJHyRZdP6iERb69iaOMYQsUBT_cRn7TTWXpMXx_ro55zmF_XA4Kw/w468-h640/zebra.jpg" width="468" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Once more a streaming service has unearthed a specimen of "weird cinema" for all interested parties, one that, from what I've heard, has never received an American VHS or DVD release.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Slightly before he directed the well known "blaxploitation" film <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2023/10/abby-1974.html">ABBY</a>, grindhouse veteran William Girdler (a White guy, incidentally) made this obscure low-budget psycho-thriller, starring Austin (ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13) Stoker. The city of Louisville is plagued by a serial killer, but with a difference. The killer not only executes various victims with no known connection to one another, he uses different murder-methods each time. Stoker's character, Black police detective Frank Savage, is assigned to find the killer, alongside his cheery White partner. Strangely, even though the police captain is constantly raging about the need to end the threat, there's only one mention of the possibility of other cops pursuing the case, and nothing, least of all a task force, comes of it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As I recall, the big reveal turns out to be the old "killing off the jurors who sentenced his father" trope, though Girdler, who also provided the script, doesn't spend much time on the murderer's motivations. Even less well explained is his peculiar disguise. Though the Zebra Killer (never called that in the film) is a White guy (James Carroll Pickett, who only acted in two other films, both directed by Girdler), during his crimes he dons blackface and a big Afro, and affects a stereotypical Black accent. To complicate things further, Zebra Killer holds a grudge against Savage. Zebra not only calls Savage to berate him with racist insults and to give him clues, he kidnaps the detective's girlfriend and threatens to kill and/or rape her. Zebra has one long scene where he rants at his captive about race relations, but nothing he says possesses any psychological heft, and he doesn't even try to assail her in any way. Did Girdler, without saying so and perhaps losing his grindhouse audience, want to imply Zebra had some negative compensation issues? The world will never know. But Zebra's attire and varied killing methods make him an uncanny psycho, even though none of the methods themselves are uncanny.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In contrast to the majority of American films in this subgenre, the script treats Zebra's racism as an unusual deviance. Savage gets along fine with his White partner, and they toss racial barbs at one another like a low-budget Culp and Cosby. Savage is a cool, laid-back hero even though it takes him a really long time to get anything done. Girdler shows a scene of Savage practicing karate at a dojo to foreground a later battle (though not a climactic one) in which Savage nearly beats the stuffing out of Zebra. Possibly Pickett simply didn't know how to do anything in a staged fight but fall down? This means that Girdler, after giving Savage several chances to overcome his opponent, then has to let Zebra whip out a hidden knife and wound the detective, so that the killer can escape for the final reckoning later.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It's an odd movie, which invokes racial tension verbally but barely shows any incidents. In fact, Savage even shakes down a Black guy purely on suspicion, which most blaxploitation heroes would never do. There's a comic scene in which the two detectives come across a pimp (familiar face D'Urville Martin) who's being beat up by five of his hookers. The cops' solution is to call a paddy wagon, pile the pimp and the hookers into the same van, and let the girls continue beating their victim. Nevertheless, I rate the film's mythicity as "fair" simply because it captures some of the sociological dynamics of the period.</span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-37493199765831281752024-03-14T15:25:00.000-07:002024-03-14T15:30:04.379-07:00TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (2014)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9krt71ZNDodnpvaNW3sk2ohCms9i4QpGq4rUOwH53ctQlgY2iGanMgDl8ZuHoXMYOYkW4oUsfxFCILStVAsO0CvUHz2vq702S_e22wgfJTBwIeFHQFQY8i7NZ_Wn1xHUDOrAu-17rolF3CXCbOIt1m2eTRugUhyphenhyphenOQlI9FTLJkm_fEsXHiCkwSQVZ2OA/s1920/tur.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9krt71ZNDodnpvaNW3sk2ohCms9i4QpGq4rUOwH53ctQlgY2iGanMgDl8ZuHoXMYOYkW4oUsfxFCILStVAsO0CvUHz2vq702S_e22wgfJTBwIeFHQFQY8i7NZ_Wn1xHUDOrAu-17rolF3CXCbOIt1m2eTRugUhyphenhyphenOQlI9FTLJkm_fEsXHiCkwSQVZ2OA/w640-h360/tur.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I seem to remember that this reboot got an unusual amount of fan-hate back in the day, though I admit I didn't see it in the theater. I stated my opinion the TMNT franchise back in my review of the <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2023/06/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-1990.html">1990 live-action adaptation</a>-- that it's fun but lightweight. As long as the four jive-talking terrapins and their rat-daddy keep their standard characterizations consistent and there's lots of high-octane action, what's to hate?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Possibly 2014 got some hate just because it's become standard for critics to despite anything produced by Michael Bay. I've seen my share of Bay films that were so hyper-active that they were visually incomprehsible. But 2014, directed by Jonathan Liebesman and scripted by three writers that seemed to get the Turtles mythos pretty well, was quite easy to follow. Of course, the conflict is standard Supevillain 101. This time, the Shredder (Tohoro Masamune) isn't interested in petty matters like seducing young teens to a life of crime, as he was in 1990. He, his Foot Clan, and a new mad scientist (William Fichtner) go straight to the city-blackmailing option, planning to unleash a radioactive mutagen on New York. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Of course, being the righteous reptilians they are, the Turtles start assailing his operations, and this attracts the attention of reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox). In fact, 2014 somewhat improves upon the usual origin in which April has no common backstory with the five mutants. Here, she's the daughter of a scientist who was involved in the experiment that created the mutagen, and he was killed by colleague Eric Sacks (who has "bad guy written all over him from his first scene). In April's first encounter with the vigilantes, she recognizes their names, having known all five experimental animals in her dad's lab. It's pretty improbable when the script claims that rat-sensei Splinter actually remembers Aoril from before he was mutated, but since I liked a lot of the humor (particularly the joke about the "99-cheese pizza"), I'll give that one a pass.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I also thought that all the big honking action-scenes were well done though not exceptional, and commensurate with what Michael Bay's fans expect of his films. The script is weak on the motivations of both Shredder and Sacks; they shake down cities just because they can, and Shredder's daughter Karai (Minae Noji) is reduced to the role of a bare functionary. Shredder wouldn't make my list of great comics-villains, but on occasion he does have a grandiose quality. 2014 just turns him into a human Transformer for the big fight-scenes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Fox makes a decent support-heroine here, and Will Arnett provides a lot of "confused guy over his head" humor. I take away a few points because the Foot Clan aren't dressed as traditional ninjas, which is really about the only charm they have. The film was a box office success but the follow-up was less so, killing this reboot series, though another would appear seven years later.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-25106692198737582482024-03-13T18:55:00.000-07:002024-03-13T18:56:33.798-07:00HELLBOY: THE GOLDEN ARMY (2006)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsbR57wI8CaONCjtJV4imoTIn1SXtDt_wfkKap3LSU8iNVzCN96WyxnQ5Jd6MORIN0NYp2dQ3rTcxr7tKIMmSjbleEC05YhYcNwpaDfDROE3K4UhXYsfcAx__gPJ0hgAkd-cgKF1HdBKff0oCte-uqeMzYwWepSIOOzofFlUM6DerxRj_fsftwOoXztw/s640/goss.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="336" data-original-width="640" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsbR57wI8CaONCjtJV4imoTIn1SXtDt_wfkKap3LSU8iNVzCN96WyxnQ5Jd6MORIN0NYp2dQ3rTcxr7tKIMmSjbleEC05YhYcNwpaDfDROE3K4UhXYsfcAx__gPJ0hgAkd-cgKF1HdBKff0oCte-uqeMzYwWepSIOOzofFlUM6DerxRj_fsftwOoXztw/w640-h336/goss.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>HELLBOY 2 picks up some time after the conclusion of <a href="https://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2024/03/hellboy-2004.html">the first film</a></span>, which ended, in part, with the decision of Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) to accept Hellboy (Ron Perlman) as her lover. Guillermo Del Toro, who wrote an original story with the franchise's creator Mike Mignola, is careful to follow through on all the emotional beats established for the hero and his cast of support characters, including amphibious Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and fastidious manager Manning (Jeffrey Tambor). Unfortunately, I don't think Del Toro paid nearly as much attention to the main conflict of his story.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The first HELLBOY had a rough unity, in that the hero loses his adoptive father therein and then must overcome a sort of "bad father," an occultist who brought the young demon into the Earth-plane. The conflict once again has apocalyptic consequences for the survival of mankind, but Del Toro's script fails to give his basic idea any deep resonance, and I give the film a fair mythicity only for its romance-elements with respect to both Hellboy and Abe Sapien. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It seems that in antiquity there was a great battle in which archaic humans attempted, for reasons unknown, to exterminate all the various supernatural beings of Earth, such as trolls, ogres and fairies. Balor (Roy Dotrice), King of Faerie, has his smiths create an unstoppable army of golden clockwork soldiers (not fully seen until the film's last half hour). This "golden army" decimates the human forces, who are saved only because compassionate Balor spares the race. A truce is forged between the humans and their supernatural opponents, and it endures until the early 21st century.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Contemporary humans are only marginally aware that supernatural entities still exist-- except for those working for the B.P.R.D., such as Hellboy-- and it's dubious as to whether any of them even remember the truce. But surprisingly, it's a Prince of Faerie, Nuada (Luke Goss), who decides that he wants to activate the Golden Army and expunge humankind. Why? He references human expansion and their repugnant "shopping malls," but clearly Del Toro didn't bother giving his villain a strong motive. In any case, Balor doesn't want to make war on humans, so his son kills him. Nuada's twin sister Nuala (Anne Watson), despite her somewhat diffident affection for her brother, flees the faerie court with a device Nuada needs in order to activate the killer robots.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I'm not clear on why Nuada releases various boogiemen into the Earth-plane, such as a swarm of tiny horrors called "tooth fairies." That might make sense if Nuala was hiding on Earth, but we later learn she's hiding in a corner of Faerie called "the troll market." It looks like the only reason for various monsters to show up on Earth is so that the B.P.R.D. has something to investigate, and so that Hellboy and his buddies have someone to fight. The incursions cause the occult-hunters to check out the troll market, find Nuala, get the lowdown on Nuada's plans, and start making counter-plans. Oh, and both Nuala and Abe Sapien fall for each other. (There's a very light incestuous current between the twins, mostly evidenced on Nuada's side, but Del Toro does not develop this element dramatically.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Instead of building up the main menace, the director piles on the workplace drama and comedy. In addition to various flareups from Liz (who has a bun in her oven and doesn't know it initially), Hellboy also has to cope with a new commander. This is Johann Kraus, essentially a ghost who speaks with a German accent despite inhabiting a suit of armor. Krauss, ostensibly based on a separate Mignola character, adds some good tension to the mix, but regrettably he also supplies more evidence that Del Toro was more taken with doing his character-scenes than with building up the plot.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In contrast to most other cinematic menaces, the invincible Golden Army, or a couple of soldiers thereof, are only activated for a few minutes, which doesn't help to sell them as a major danger. Hellboy, after coping with a near-death wound, enjoys a climactic duel with Nuada. But though he saves the world from the Golden Army, his victory costs Abe his first love.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Even when I saw ARMY in a theatre, I was underwhelmed. However, in 2006 it made a substantial profit, so obviously the audience as a whole liked it, and even critics were reasonably positive. Yet for the next thirteen years up until <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2023/10/hellboy-2019.html">the 2019 reboot</a> of the franchise, Del Toro couldn't get a sequel greenlighted. I speculate that some unfathomable office politics kept HELLBOY III from happening. According to Del Toro's statements, he might have followed through on some of the ideas alluded to in the first film, regarding Hellboy's special destiny. But there's no knowing if that take would have been good. Wiki supplied a writeup of other ideas Del Toro considered for Number Two before settling on the clockwork army, and all of those ideas seem fairly pedestrian. I'm clearly in the minority in my preference for the 2019 effort, since that film flopped at the BO. Still, all the "special destiny" tropes are still ripe for harvesting, so Del Toro's failure to pursue that notion doesn't mean it will never be realized.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-25385049819240301332024-03-13T14:17:00.000-07:002024-03-13T14:17:14.461-07:00HELLBOY (2004)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheBBLsa8z_Ai0_waO4jvWQc6yhWcCS7CNrenQpbXHKx532nomFrqNl6oj187PdAz-rF6pSLxvfYyu1S9gCeYeOURobEr6Q7gH7S63eTz97BYEATOj6xsbhxUrVd2l9Ae8UGBGCHgVImMThBZ75xqrzsxNFwx3EO0hYa2C3riMlWgJXI-ykDEw5HalMLQ/s1351/tongue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="729" data-original-width="1351" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheBBLsa8z_Ai0_waO4jvWQc6yhWcCS7CNrenQpbXHKx532nomFrqNl6oj187PdAz-rF6pSLxvfYyu1S9gCeYeOURobEr6Q7gH7S63eTz97BYEATOj6xsbhxUrVd2l9Ae8UGBGCHgVImMThBZ75xqrzsxNFwx3EO0hYa2C3riMlWgJXI-ykDEw5HalMLQ/w640-h346/tongue.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The first adaptation of Dark Horse's HELLBOY franchise is loosely based on HELLBOY: SEED OF DESTRUCTION, a rough "origin-story" produced by creator/artist Mike Mignola and writer John Byrne. The movie script by Peter Briggs and director Guillermo Del Toro improves on the original in many ways, improving on the dramatic dynamics of the principal characters. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The titular character is a humanoid demon with horns and a tail, discovered in child-form by his adoptive father Professor Broom in 1944. Sixty years later, the adult Hellboy (Ron Perlman) is a big, swaggering fellow who, due to his not blending well with common humanity, has devoted his life to the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. Broom is at once the director of the agency and a nurturing but demanding father. In addition to various human agents, the BPRD, dedicated to investigating paranormal phenomena on Planet Earth, are two other super-powered individuals: pyrokinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) and amphibious Abe Sapien (Doug Jones). </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As it happens, in 2004 one of the occultists responsible for Hellboy's presence on Earth-- none other than a very long-lived Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden)-- is bringing about a plot to unleash a world-destroying demon, the Ogdru Jahad. This involves having a lesser demon, who looks like a cross between The Alien and The Predator (but bulkier than <a href="https://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2022/06/alien-vs-predator-requiem-2007.html">the "Predalien" of three years later</a>). This demon, Sammael by name, also lays eggs to produce duplicates of itself, though I think the only real function Sammael serves is to give Hellboy a heavy-duty sparring partner.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Nevertheless, precisely because of the rough family dynamics of the Briggs-Del Toro script-- which includes a possible romantic relationship between Liz and Hellboy-- the rock-em-sock-em battles possess good human context, as well as some lively humor. (The "no tongue" line is among the best.) Though given a lot of support by the other actors-- Jeffrey Tambor as a fussy managerial type, Rupert Evans as a human agent who might offer Hellboy some romantic competition-- HELLBOY is largely Ron Perlman's show. Once or twice he verges on scenery-chewing, but it's somewhat inevitable given all the intensive makeup effects. Possibly it helps that here he could play an ass-kicking hero miles away from his soulful incarnation of the similarly makeup-heavy Vincent of <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2022/01/beauty-and-beast-season-one-1987-88.html">BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The film was successful enough to spawn a sequel with essentially the same cast, more on which anon.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-29616790433441844582024-03-12T12:34:00.000-07:002024-03-12T12:37:56.658-07:00DUNE, PART ONE (2021), DUNE, PART TWO (2024)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1wCcv7WsIwozPG9OUaRyJjIx5r419GQ0cu2RbEChyphenhyphenHXRwPswN61sQIpBqZDcrI6zL6_jx2dJSV4qn9QEQaRDS4Rgodo5kMvE5wEpmHCp-tSpdnnWT5Z-6qkcdZrV0Fx6EnBvw44Qrkx1gA6p9y_norvCyiRLwaSv0r-CS84XeLR0pOroy2POoTR78TQ/s300/duneone.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1wCcv7WsIwozPG9OUaRyJjIx5r419GQ0cu2RbEChyphenhyphenHXRwPswN61sQIpBqZDcrI6zL6_jx2dJSV4qn9QEQaRDS4Rgodo5kMvE5wEpmHCp-tSpdnnWT5Z-6qkcdZrV0Fx6EnBvw44Qrkx1gA6p9y_norvCyiRLwaSv0r-CS84XeLR0pOroy2POoTR78TQ/w640-h358/duneone.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, metaphysical, sociological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>I may revisit these two films someday if I ever get a chance to reread Frank Herbert's original DUNE novel. I have read the novel at least three times, so I'm more than familiar than with the content, but I want to establish that this brief review is based on my memories of the book's incidents.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In short, I found PART ONE dull. But I held off on writing a review because I wanted to know the totality of what director/co-writer Denis Villeneueve made of Herbert's epic novel. But nothing in PART TWO does anything to change my dominant opinion, that Villeneuve takes an epic and turns it into a boring travelogue. As I write this, though, PART TWO has proven just as much a success with the mass audience as PART ONE, and so I have to conclude that many, many viewers are seeing something in the Villeneuve translation that I don't see.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I don't despise this adaptation, but from start to finish I found it no better than any of the others. Indeed, though the 1984 David Lynch version-- which I also have not yet reviewed-- at least is an exciting thrill-ride, and like the book is never dull despite its slower and more meditative sequences. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I don't claim to be an expert in cinematic aesthetics, but I believe that I've honed my own definition of what makes artful visual compositions. In both movies, I found just one scene where I thought Villeneuve realized the visual potential of the novel. When the Atreides family first arrives on Arrakis, there's a lovely contrast between rows and rows of armored guards, the epitome of male power, and a coterie of Bene Gessert, all in filmy veils, the incarnation of feminine influence. Every else in both films is just long tracking shots of deserts in Namibia and Abu Dhabi. And I frankly found the CGI sandworms underwhelming.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Villeneuve is also "meh" on the dynamics of the spacefaring families of the Atreides and the Harkonnens, and of the Empire as a whole (represented by Emperor Christopher Walken). Clearly his passion was to capture Herbert's nomadic Fremen culture, and some of his dramatizations of that culture are appealing, though not compelling throughout the length of either movie. I found the casting variable as well. Timothy Challomee may have been going for playing Paul Atreides as the deeply conflicted moral hero that Villeneuve desired, but he comes off as merely vacillating. Javier Bardem plays the Fremen leader Stilgar as a superstitious believer in messianic prophecies, ardently invested in the idea that Paul is the Fremen's new messiah. That may indeed be the way the book portrays him, but it's a one-note performance in these movies. Most of the other performances are no better, though Josh Brolin brings a rare humanity to his role of Gurney Halleck.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Technically, the best performance is that of Zendaya, an actor whom I had not liked in any previous work. Of course she gets more good scenes because Villeneuve builds her up far more than Herbert did in the book. I strongly suspect that, despite Villeneuve's assertions of fidelity to Herbert, the director wanted Zendaya's Chani to be a more authoritative figure. The actor gives a good multi-level performance, far from any of the tedious "girl bosses" of the MCU, so at least Villenueve avoided that pitfall. Still, the book DUNE does not end with Chani being pissed off because the victorious Paul must make a political marriage to secure his power. Villeneueve clearly elides Herbert's claim that Chani will become Paul's concubine while the marriage will be "in name only," because that sort of arrangement would not fly in the modern political climate. So the two DUNEs in my view are compromised on many levels, though the political compromises are far less significant than the aesthetic shortcomings.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">When all's said and done, maybe Villeneuve was just damn lucky that the commercial audience was in the mood for a quasi-LORD OF THE RINGS experience.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></div>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-14437041418812978572024-03-11T17:45:00.000-07:002024-03-11T17:49:39.626-07:00THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihKZIk9ZrqJnTkZj0C3t70ncQfqL_tMqnEqJYJiD5HPAgtO3dbxzwvbzCBZEuwrQMcpDhKYVIF1sYA8jVLi61Puh1mSI-ytYR_c34WTbBBVv9uzHxtqo-UfPDWFBLuuPrKV8Yb0oytSEaJ19aiyQQwsha37qzg_-NzO1-K-OYjWdlIBYGBx_TLbBU0gw/s1890/lovers.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1890" data-original-width="1299" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihKZIk9ZrqJnTkZj0C3t70ncQfqL_tMqnEqJYJiD5HPAgtO3dbxzwvbzCBZEuwrQMcpDhKYVIF1sYA8jVLi61Puh1mSI-ytYR_c34WTbBBVv9uzHxtqo-UfPDWFBLuuPrKV8Yb0oytSEaJ19aiyQQwsha37qzg_-NzO1-K-OYjWdlIBYGBx_TLbBU0gw/w440-h640/lovers.jpg" width="440" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>I find the above movie poster particularly amusing, not just because it promises the customer salacious sadomasochistic pleasures nowhere in the actual film, but also tries to claim that this supposed exhibition of pure pulp exploitation is "not for the mentally immature."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">On this blog I ended up reviewing Hammer's "Karnstein trilogy"in reverse order, starting with <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2017/06/scars-of-dracula-1970-twins-of-evil-1971.html">TWINS OF EVIL </a> and then getting round to <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2022/07/lust-for-vampire-1971.html">LUST FOR A VAMPIRE</a>. I'm sure that I procrastinated on the first film in the loose trilogy because it was the only one directly derived from LeFanu's 1872 book CARMILLA, which I've recently <a href="https://arche-arc.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-reading-rheum-carmilla-1872.html">reviewed here.</a> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In my re-read I concluded that LeFanu was very much in love with all manner of ambiguity, in strong contrast with the much more straightforward action of Bram Stoker's more famous vampire-novel. Even my vague memories of Roy Ward Baker's VAMPIRE LOVERS told me that it would certainly follow the model of Stoker more than that of Carmilla's creator. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Many of the elements LeFanu saved for CARMILLA's big finish are moved forward by scripter Tudor Gates (also credited with the other two Karnstein flicks). For instance, a vague "vampire hunter" who only appears in the book's last few chapters is elaborated into a major supporting character, one Baron Hartog, in LOVERS' prologue. Some decades before the movie's main action, Hartog hunts down and decapitates a blonde vampiress, possibly some relation of the Karnstein family of fiends. The scene's only purpose seems to be to reassure the reader that the monster of the main story will meet a similar defeat.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the book, the action remains entirely focused upon the insular world in which teenaged viewpoint character Laura lives, and she only hears, without any understanding, news of various fatalities, like the death of the niece of the neighboring General Spielsdorf. In LOVERS, the main action begins at the lavish home of Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing), and it's Spielsdorf's pretty daughter-- oddly given the name Laura-- who is the first definite victim of Carmilla Karnstein (Ingrid Pitt). Viewers are shown a woman who purports to be Carmilla's mother-- though she may just be some random bloodsucker-- and this "countess" contrives to leave Carmilla in the General's care, to ensure that Carmilla can get close to her chosen prey. Gates even repeats another tidbit from LeFanu's wrap-up, to the effect that vampires sometimes exsanguinate their victims right away, while other times they "court" their prey with exaggerated romantic rituals.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Laura, of course, is one of Carmilla's quickie meals. (For clarity's sake, I'm passing over the other two names Carmilla uses in her endeavors.) Her main victim, the one she courts for most of the movie, is renamed "Emma" (Madeline Smith) and she, like the book's heroine, lives an isolated life at her father's estate with a governess and some servants. She is the meal on which the vampire will feed more languourously, while the bemused males-- including a potential male romantic interest not present in the book-- try to fathom what's going on.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The specific points of the plot aren't that important; the main thrust of the story is that of the sympathetic characters' slow discovery of a viper in their midst. Gates naturally drops the book's subplot about Carmilla visiting the protagonist in childhood, but he does manage to convey that Emma's interest in her house-guest is essentially innocent. True, in place of the book's incident of Carmilla braiding Laura's hair, we see Carmilla and Emma doff their tops while the former teases the latter about her choice in dresses. But Emma, like book-Laura, is clueless about her guest's avaricious intentions. To up the sexual ante, Carmilla also dominates governess Mademoiselle Perrodot (Kate O'Mara), apparently making her into a useful slave but not a literal bloodsucker. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This version of Carmilla does fang a couple of male victims to death, but those incidents don't really spur the sluggish story on to greater excitement. Peter Cushing naturally gets top billing, but his character adds nothing to the story, given that Gates' script builds up Hartog as the Van Helsing of the narrative. The dramatic beats are only adequate at best, and so the movie's main assets are also those of Smith, O'Mara, and Pitt. Pitt is good in the one role for which she became celebrated, but Carmilla didn't offer her, as an actress, any substance into which she could "sink her teeth," so to speak. LOVERS is certainly not, any more than the novel, any sort of lesbian "true romance" tale, and the film's main claim to fame is its place within early seventies' cinema, with its embrace of greater sexploitative story material.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></div>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-59828155795124975092024-03-10T19:57:00.000-07:002024-03-10T20:00:03.164-07:00BATMAN: BAD BLOOD (2016)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSEGm9UErpFxjKQdmWUW_qjQEZiTFBFYbb43oSh4nKU9bDmlX1FsehsNf07pKkGufRt8jYS1bz0TG7stUXLOir5rX9VufOYe7QtqdP63osa3LxeKy3lQgvZu6GVG5kcHRtkryYd2v9wWWStLzZFpk3pkfJ35X0MLB0QFQU7Z_DhExpzsyRfDkjg2Gapw/s1280/batt.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSEGm9UErpFxjKQdmWUW_qjQEZiTFBFYbb43oSh4nKU9bDmlX1FsehsNf07pKkGufRt8jYS1bz0TG7stUXLOir5rX9VufOYe7QtqdP63osa3LxeKy3lQgvZu6GVG5kcHRtkryYd2v9wWWStLzZFpk3pkfJ35X0MLB0QFQU7Z_DhExpzsyRfDkjg2Gapw/w640-h360/batt.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span>Though there was one more Bat-film that was issued under the "DCAMU" rubric, that last entry, <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2020/11/batman-hush-2019.html">BATMAN: HUSH</a>, appeared three years after this DTV release. In contrast, <a href="https://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2024/01/son-of-batman-2014.html">SON OF BATMAN</a>, <a href="https://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2024/03/batman-vs-robin-2015.html">BATMAN VS. ROBIN</a>, and BAD BLOOD all came out in three subsequent years, and all focus in differing degrees with the period during which "Fourth Robin" Damian Wayne. son of the Crusader by Talia Al Ghul, became a sometimes unruly member of the Gotham Bat-family. Thus all three together become a rough "Damian Trilogy," even though they select assorted sequences and motifs from different comics-stories. </span></span>Despite this shared focus, though, the three movies fail to express common themes and are occasionally wildly divergent in characterization. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">BLOOD derives several tropes from the interlinked Grant Morrison serials <a href="http://arche-arc.blogspot.com/2019/01/mythcomics-demon-star-gothams-most.html">DEMON STAR and GOTHAM'S MOST WANTED</a>, which focused less on Damian than on the long and complicated relationship between Batman and his sometime love Talia. The Talia character, appearing in the 1970s slightly before her more famous father Ra's Al Ghul, has for the past fifty years been portrayed as angel or as devil by various DC raconteurs, and in Morrison's case, he chose "devil, but with an explanation." Unfortunately, the three DTV Bat-films, perhaps because of over-focusing on Damian, don't come close to consistency, ranging from "angel" in SON, no appearance at all in VS., and then to "devil" in BLOOD. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I gave VS. a high rating, a just-barely-fair rating to SON, and BLOOD falls in the middle. Since both SON and BLOOD were indebted to Morrison, I suspect that his take on the Bat-verse is just too far-out for DC's animation-scripters to assimilate, not least because the same writer who did a good job on VS. did a mediocre job on BLOOD. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Though Talia is at least roughly as "devilish" as she is in the Morrison comics, DeMatteis dispenses with any explanation for her evil, except for a line where Damian claims she's all about "control." To be sure, her opposite number Batman isn't exactly an indulgent father either-- that, indeed, was the main theme of VS.-- and in fact for most of BLOOD he's under the brainwashing aegis of Talia, which undermines whatever point the script might've had about contrasting the two approaches to familial dynamics. The script musters a couple of weak lines about how Batman can bring diverse heroes together through their shared pain and trauma, but this idea remains stillborn.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Talia's master plan is strictly Superhero Villainy 101; using electronic brainwashing techniques (facilitated by The Mad Hatter) to manipulate key figures in government. Her deviltry is just a backdrop for tensions between Damian and Nightwing (who masquerades as Batman while the genuine article is Talia's prisoner) and for the animated debut of "the Kate Kane Batwoman" and Batwing. The latter was one of Morrison's creation for his Batman run of the 2010s, while Batwoman, DC's first starring lesbian heroine, had appeared in 2006. Both debuts are decently if not imaginately handled. The biggest indulgence of the BLOOD script is that De Matteis injects far too many unnecessary costumed crooks into the mix, particularly in the movie's first half-- villains who are, as Batwoman herself points out, "C-listers." One wonders why a magisterial master planner like Talia would have bothered with such mediocrities, when she has her own League of Assassins (redubbed "the League of Shadows" thanks to one of Chris Nolan's lesser sins).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Once one gets past the movie's first half, there's some decent interfamilial drama and some decent action, particularly hand-to-hand battles between Talia and Batwoman and between Nightwing and the brain-fogged Batman. But it's a bit of a slog to get there, although this time out, I confer top voice-acting honors on Sean Maher, whose Nightwing provides the glue holding together all the disparate pieces. Amusingly, three years after this uncertain paean to "Bat-family values"-- which at least bore some similarities to Morrison's theme-- BATMAN: HUSH ends on the image of Batman's trauma pushing members of his family away, rather than uniting them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-49929278068078881472024-03-07T19:40:00.000-08:002024-03-07T19:44:30.807-08:00QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE (1935)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGWeq_TPXCYR6d4JMzLIeVn-_0C1rIYyuMUl5S1uhGmH_UDkUyZizcj1QDDDnRf6umIT4Gpaw13fqm2-CnTPbsfPzG0BNAqfgGmQ-SRvCqPDhf_ifJ3XK4wo0DAgIP3lx_-eV7fshBGHJbGcWQpvzYjdASkmiE39RLeTcrmOtvSKwBqR7LeAHxIVAITQ/s350/rayy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="350" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGWeq_TPXCYR6d4JMzLIeVn-_0C1rIYyuMUl5S1uhGmH_UDkUyZizcj1QDDDnRf6umIT4Gpaw13fqm2-CnTPbsfPzG0BNAqfgGmQ-SRvCqPDhf_ifJ3XK4wo0DAgIP3lx_-eV7fshBGHJbGcWQpvzYjdASkmiE39RLeTcrmOtvSKwBqR7LeAHxIVAITQ/w640-h476/rayy.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>There's just one element in this 12-chapter serial that renders it marvelous: a short sequence in which two people in the African jungle are pinned down by some sort of "strangler vines." To the best of my knowledge there exist no such plants, so QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE is marvelous. But most of the significant phenomena are uncanny, so as I occasionally do on this blog, I include labels for those tropes for my own reference.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>QUEEN gets a "fair" rating for mythicity just because it manages to touch on five or six major jungle-adventure tropes. Nevertheless, the serial is a mess. It recycled footage from a 1922 silent serial, JUNGLE GODDESS (now lost), which was noteworthy in its time for having been shot on a forested backlot in the U.S. and for having a better than average budget for a chapterplay. But in the 1930s silent films were unmarketable. So a producer named Herman Wolk chose to cannibalize certain sequences from GODDESS and to shoot a lot of matching sequences on soundstages. This leads to a lot of padding with the use of stock jungle footage, none of which includes either old or new players. This creates one amusing sequence in which a chimp, cornered on a high rock by hungry lions, is rescued by a helpful elephant, who's never in the same frame with the lions.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Two of the major jungle-tropes used here are that of the "lost city" and "the white goddess." To be sure, there are actually two bizarre African cultures crammed close together. In the ERB tradition, there's a small coterie of White people-- far from the usual "city"-- that have somehow established a priesthood over their Black neighbors. To be sure, the two groups are never seen together, aside from an early scene in which the Black chieftain confers with head priest Kali (Lafe McKee), so apparently this mirrors the original plot of GODDESS. The White priests all wear big conical hats that I suppose are meant to look vaguely Semitic, but their only cultural identification is that they consider themselves citizens of "Mu." Since this legendary locale did not appear in print until one James Churchward wrote a book about it in 1926, I think it's safe to assume this tidbit is a 1935 interpolation.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The more numerous Black natives venerate a huge statue that sometimes shines deadly rays from its eyes. Since the viewer eventually learns that there's a radium deposit nearby, in the so-called "Garden of Rad," possibly the original idea in GODDESS was that the statue was inhabited by minions of the priesthood. The statue is seen to move its hands a little, which sounds like real votive statues (albeit much smaller ones) that were designed to "come to life" and impress the gullible. Did GODDESS originally include the idea that priests inside the statue somehow projected energy from raw radium through the statue's eyeholes, in order to create lethal rays and execute sacrificial victims? Hard to say, for that serial's gone, and QUEEN never explains the statue at all. ("Rad," by the way, is the name of the priesthood's god, so maybe they're supposed to be Latinate Romans?)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The white queen comes to the Black tribe by accident. As a small child, Joan Lawrence is taken away from her parents, and from neighbor-kid David, when she's caught in a hot-air balloon. The balloon's descent into the territory of Mu impresses the Black tribesmen and they raise little Joan to be their queen (Mary Kornman), even referred to a few times as "The Queen of the Jungle." </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Little David, however, grows up to be Adult David (Reed Howes). Joan's parents could never find her, or the radium mine that the father came to Africa to locate. Yet David apparently takes that right turn at Albuquerque, since he makes his way to the Mu territory with no big hassle. He does however get captured and slated for sacrifice by radiation-gaze. Adult Joan at first seems totally okay with the White guy getting burned to ash. Then a crawl asks rhetorically if her "White blood" will allow Joan to endure such savagery. By the next episode, naturally, Joan rescues David.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Despite the fact that Joan has forgotten the English language, and David doesn't speak the local Swahili, the young hunter talks the Queen into leaving the only people she's ever known. More oddly, they agree to let her go with no fuss. However, the writers, probably loosely following the earlier movie's template, did this so that Joan and David could be attacked by diverse menaces on their trek back to civilization. I think Kali is at least responsible for some assaults, because he's afraid David will bring back other invaders and mess up Kali's setup-- but the continuity's excruciatingly hard to follow. In addition to the aforementioned strangler vine, and the usual jungle-animals, David is attacked by a pair of natives who are implied to live beneath the surface of a river (no, no explanation of that either) while minions of Kali blind Joan with radium, stick her in a canoe and send her careening toward a waterfall. For a time White hunters capture Joan and David to find out the mine's location, I think because they've been sold minute quantities of radium by Kali. But the funniest assault comes when a native somehow manipulates a chimp into attacking Joan with a knife. David's priceless line as the chimp runs away: "I wonder who put him up to it."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Since Joan never learns English "on the road," her personality is confined to that of wide-eyed innocence. She's not any sort of fighter, but her scenes in Mu make the loose implication that she MAY have a psychic connection with elephants for some reason. She's seen commanding a trained elephant in Mu, and then later, on the hunters' ship, she actually commands an elephant whom the hunters have taken captive to do her will-- that is, by reaching its trunk through a porthole to strangle a bad hunter-guy. David therefore shoulders almost all the action-scenes herein, and Reed Howes acquits himself quite well, given that most fights in thirties' serials were spottily choreographed. He's seen to be a stand-up guy, tempted to take advantage of Joan's innocence but not yielding to the temptation.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Whenever the 1935 producers utilize footage from 1922, they don't bother to synch the two, so the viewer sees various scenes of "undercranking," resulting in characters moving like jumping-beans. The longest scene from GODDESS is one in which Kali tries to make his fellow priests think that Kali's own little boy is a god made flesh. But there's a mixup and the priests get the idea that a chimp is the new god in town, so there's an amusing moment where the simian cavorts around the room and the priests imitate his holy actions. However, Kali, like a number of other characters, just disappears from the story when it's convenient for the filmmakers, and so he never pays for his crimes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">QUEEN is a real curio. It's not good, or even "so bad it's good." But it's not as dull as some serials out there, and that's something.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></div>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-11917357671834562812024-03-06T17:23:00.000-08:002024-03-06T17:23:51.173-08:00 SISTER STREET FIGHTER: FIFTH LEVEL FIST (1976)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNVzDPr2bMmWnixPda4iLF-yb7xUYzk5S0PIb7IMRV4eGuqyqUVdo11GPfsuJt1UnVcwo8gowBn5pBU-p2S93CEji-n-AIG46cS7UFawqk0LhugBnfdlQ4z_lBH42UabEvlo1w1caaP-SKIou8xWT5XzbSkSqsPHYHXuPKp5voazNrQRqs9V5Zr1nQNQ/s1920/fitth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNVzDPr2bMmWnixPda4iLF-yb7xUYzk5S0PIb7IMRV4eGuqyqUVdo11GPfsuJt1UnVcwo8gowBn5pBU-p2S93CEji-n-AIG46cS7UFawqk0LhugBnfdlQ4z_lBH42UabEvlo1w1caaP-SKIou8xWT5XzbSkSqsPHYHXuPKp5voazNrQRqs9V5Zr1nQNQ/w640-h360/fitth.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *poor*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Possibly Toei Studios thought the Tina Long character (called two different names in different releases) was played out, for though they used the SISTER STREET FIGHTER rubric for this movie, star Etsuko Shihomi played a new character, name of Kiku, There's also a move away from the wild pulp fantasy of the trilogy, with a heroine taking on a variety of disparate kung fu practitioners. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Kiku exists in a fairly ordinary world, practicing kung fu while her parents pester her to get married. She has some sort of job, the nature of which I couldn't figure out, but somehow she's assigned to be a translator for an American bigwig coming to Japan. In this way she unwittingly meets a group of criminals who will become her enemies, and a Japanese cop, Takagi, with whom she shares some possible romantic sentiments. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>The villains are drug smugglers again, but this time they operate in a Japanese movie studio, where it seems like the majority of employees are in on the illicit practice. One of their minor employees, a half-Black, half-Japanese guy named Jim, is made by Takagi's anti-drug unit. So the gangsters just kill Jim so he can't roll on them.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">However, the late Jim's half-sister Michi (Mitchi Love, who appeared as a different character in the first and third Tina films) is also a member of Kiku's martial arts class. Michi seeks to avenge Jim and gets captured. Takagi can't find her, so Kiku decides to launch her own investigation. She takes the role of an extra on a current studio movie, finds Michi, and then it's action, action, action for the film's last half hour. Only two elements reflect the pulpiness of the earlier films. Instead of warriors dressed up in archaic garb, some of the actors in the gang remain dressed in traditional Japanese garb, and one particular guy, wielding a real katana, looks to me like a ringer for LONE WOLF AND CUB's Tomisaburo Wakayama. The second element is that when Kiku is captured, the villains tie her to a fully functioning sawmill, implicitly a prop, yet as capable of slicing a heroine in half as any sawmill from ancient "mellerdramas." Sadly, no one makes any knowing comments on the hoariness of this death-trap.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There are a few liberal political touches here. One is Jim's alienation from his mother's people because he looks Black. Another is a scene in which Takagi urges Kiku to be more traditionally feminine. He's not seen to complain when the two of them join to take down the movie-gangsters. But Kiku doesn't get a chance to crow, because strangely the film ends on a freeze-frame, implying that Takagi may die of gunshot wounds. And so on this curious note the SISTER STREET FIGHTER franchise came to an unequivocal conclusion.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></div><p><br /></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-59871268416854831312024-03-06T11:47:00.000-08:002024-03-06T11:50:36.571-08:00THE SISTER STREET FIGHTER TRILOGY<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiii7pprNw9qjz12yU3ZAiPJu0DnNMxKID-fxojoOaUC1IK-5hFSmqK-IuX-c-_xshAKYrR6tno3o2fsjOmRGpx3tQf4Qyo1DVvxiVRwFs50ejpOujIGisT9ft0W0LCWHwwcgUvu2J_Qrnx4CCg36FCjpk-Vx7VtySsGJhGJ5dyPHd-YUzRVexOpsFtkA/s1920/stree.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiii7pprNw9qjz12yU3ZAiPJu0DnNMxKID-fxojoOaUC1IK-5hFSmqK-IuX-c-_xshAKYrR6tno3o2fsjOmRGpx3tQf4Qyo1DVvxiVRwFs50ejpOujIGisT9ft0W0LCWHwwcgUvu2J_Qrnx4CCg36FCjpk-Vx7VtySsGJhGJ5dyPHd-YUzRVexOpsFtkA/w640-h360/stree.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Though the trio of films starring a character called (in the English dub) "Tina Long" are given the rubric "Sister Street Figher," there's no actual connection between this series and that of Sonny Chiba's <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-street-fighter-trilogy-1974.html">STREET FIGHTER series</a>. Chiba, who worked with star Etsuko Shihomi on several projects, does contribute a minor support-role, but he's in no way compared with his "Terry Tsurugi" character. There's also no attempt to give the Tina character any psychological depth; she's just a loose cannon that the authorities unleash upon a band of evil drug-smugglers.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Tina's a private citizen, renowned as a martial arts champion, and when her undercover cop brother Lee goes missing, the Hong Kong cops assign Tina to go find him, because I guess that's what HK police do in those situations. The thin thread of logic relates to the fact that drug-boss Kakuzaki keeps around a stable of killers with disparate kung-fu styles (the gangster considers it his hobby, the way other rich guys keep stables of horses). Thus Tina can use her fame to infiltrate various kung-fu haunts-- though, truth to tell, the bad guys obligingly come looking for her. By the way, though most drug-lords just kill off undercover cops, Kakuzaki keeps Lee a prisoner and pumps him full of heroin, just to be a sadist.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>That's all the plot one gets, as the rest of the film is wall-to-wall action. All of the uncanny content comes from the gangsters. One group of female karate-killers dresses up with face-masks and jaguar-pelt costumes and weird devices include a spear-pistol, a blowgun, and a metal claw-hand that Kakuzaki wears in his final fight with Tina. The latter is almost certainly a callback to ENTER THE DRAGON, whose main villain sports a similar weapon. In essence, Kazuzaki is just a reprise of that character, switching his venue of operations from an island-tournament to the mean streets of a big city.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdtJ4QiIq9WDUogbMyDZI9GiBCIiEdp5cBcs6p18LW-2QXvRohrdNq6HfvIP1P5fIDdmF24RrMxVozC51uSl2yizdUGFl38T14KBpFZXVIsShgzowsqGTNGrypeCFExpL-Ztwu5qC55XqK_v99fozakLWARRrsC0GqH9jdMkepnqbwOyT_acOmc2F5RQ/s3840/ysa.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="3840" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdtJ4QiIq9WDUogbMyDZI9GiBCIiEdp5cBcs6p18LW-2QXvRohrdNq6HfvIP1P5fIDdmF24RrMxVozC51uSl2yizdUGFl38T14KBpFZXVIsShgzowsqGTNGrypeCFExpL-Ztwu5qC55XqK_v99fozakLWARRrsC0GqH9jdMkepnqbwOyT_acOmc2F5RQ/w640-h360/ysa.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>When SISTER was a hit, the company rushed out a sequel, subtitled HANGING BY A THREAD, and the new boss of Tina's enemies, Osone, is once again both a drug-smuggler and a collector of exotic killers. This time an official asks Tina to take on the smugglers to save the official's daughter, with whom Tina is also friends. However, in case a family friend doesn't seem like enough-- and since the cop-brother died in the first film-- this time Tina has a sister who gets mixed up in the drug trade. And though there's no Sonny Chiba this time, Tina gets help from another prominent male fighter, played by well regarded performer Yasuaki Kurata.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There aren't nearly as many wild gimmicks in this film, though there are enough to keep up the uncanny phenomenality. There's another spear-pistol and a woman who has poisoned fingernails, but they don't poise major threats. I thought I saw something like a shuriken that spurted acid demonstrated, but nothing like that was ever used against Tina. Osone doesn't seem as formidable a villain as Kakuzaki, though the script gives Osone a weird fetish for putting out the eyes of his enemies-- which almost guarantees the method of his demise.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCsDhPrBFuWyJuoDIyqqqkgac-ymwy-_GWE5on0jjMncp2R0g3UuqpQh5_9ZWxdFizLcrpP8pCrJJ5K4-GE1ZPGHPD-Shcbn8mC1BEiki5sZkrVE38sYmqaDp6kM1IXgnUfLt7TxLTqkAbAGEWoESHRVxElWv9gHG-UJjr9Y-HueOY2-Y4P58sVIyggQ/s300/gold.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCsDhPrBFuWyJuoDIyqqqkgac-ymwy-_GWE5on0jjMncp2R0g3UuqpQh5_9ZWxdFizLcrpP8pCrJJ5K4-GE1ZPGHPD-Shcbn8mC1BEiki5sZkrVE38sYmqaDp6kM1IXgnUfLt7TxLTqkAbAGEWoESHRVxElWv9gHG-UJjr9Y-HueOY2-Y4P58sVIyggQ/w640-h358/gold.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The trilogy wrapped up with RETURN OF THE SISTER STREET FIGHTER the next year. Curiously, Tina is asked for help to find the missing sister of a cop named Cho (played by Sonny Chiba's brother Jiro), but he perishes early on. This leaves Tina to both go looking for the missing woman, one Shurei, while also playing nursemaid to Shurei's grade-schooler daughter Rika.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Again Tina encounters the inevitable gang with lots of martial artist thugs, though at least this time, they're smuggling gold instead of drugs. The main evildoer this time is the wheelchair-bound Mister Oh, and once again in deference to the model of evil Master Han of ENTER THE DRAGON, this villain stages a mini-tournament for eight prospective bodyguards, to whittle the applicants down to four. (This sequence is the only one to use really exotic costumes.) Once Oh has his four bodyguards, a late entry named Kurosaki (Yasuaki Kurata) horns in, kills one of the four, and claims he's the only one able to kill Tina.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Kurosaki comes close to doing so, but when he fails, Oh has Rika kidnapped to lure Tina into a trap, Supposedly the idea is to have Tina cornered by Kurosaki in a wooden building, but whether it's Oh's idea or that of the bodyguards, the henchmen fire the building, intending to trap Kurosaki, Tina and Rika inside. Kurosaki enables Tina and Rika to escape but seemingly perishes in the blaze. (However, he turns up at the climax with no explanation.) </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Oh proves himself the stupidest fiend in the series. After gratuitously shooting Shurei in front of her little daughter, Oh has Tina strung up by her heels from an A-frame that's just standing out in the open for some reason, and then-- leaves her behind to starve and be picked over by crows. Tina of course escapes and she and Kurosaki join forces to thrash all the villains. Incidentally, Kurosaki reveals some hard-to-follow info about Oh being a Japanese WWII officer who absconded with the gold somehow, but how he knew this, no one knows. This end-battle is the only decent fight in this, the least of the trilogy, and it also contains the only uncanny device. Calling out to Master Han AGAIN, Oh reveals that he's not only not crippled and doesn't need his wheelchair, one of his hands is solid gold and capable to crushing skulls. Of course he still loses and dies clutching at his illicitly-acquired gold bars. Kurosaki disappears, so his agenda remains up for grabs, while Tina ends her adventures by becoming a new mother to orphaned Rika. A fourth film with the "Sister" moniker came out but in it Shihomi played a different character. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></div>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-64978187628922926232024-03-05T15:20:00.000-08:002024-03-05T15:22:00.925-08:00THE INVISIBLE MAN'S REVENGE (1944)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI3riOOQ29ZbtemaW2H7hAwWs6nVnQ9FsNFGSOFDi7nbl7tGzvtbiRQnsMxpko9cOSYaw36Ln9jHSdtEVfp6DxWrHAoQlSVCjQtXZvI4DpER8e_2qoZ8-FU94jFoxbVZ0qCjZTt789sKH5uPI_AIWC3VwP0zpY9F0yeg30SsGbzx_FpWojd3aOWrQOWg/s1439/reve.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1439" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI3riOOQ29ZbtemaW2H7hAwWs6nVnQ9FsNFGSOFDi7nbl7tGzvtbiRQnsMxpko9cOSYaw36Ln9jHSdtEVfp6DxWrHAoQlSVCjQtXZvI4DpER8e_2qoZ8-FU94jFoxbVZ0qCjZTt789sKH5uPI_AIWC3VwP0zpY9F0yeg30SsGbzx_FpWojd3aOWrQOWg/w640-h480/reve.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Aside from an Abbott and Costello flick, REVENGE was the last in Universal's "Invisible Man" series. Wikipedia mentions that the studio made some effort to lure Claude Rains back to the part that he made famous. But when Rains passed, Universal defaulted to Jon Hall, who had played another invisible character in the last entry, INVISIBLE AGENT.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Though the new unseen star is named Robert Griffin, he's not related to the Griffin of the first film, nor does the invisibility-process stem from that character's mad science, as had been the case in various sequels to the original. Writer Bertrand Millhauser evidently attempted to follow in the footsteps of the first movie, because this time much of the attraction is that the Invisible Man is once again an unstable madman, first seen escaping an asylum after killing two guards.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That said, the opening scenes make it hard to tell if he's more sinner than sinned-against. Griffin makes a beeline for the ritzy home of Jasper and Irene Herrick (Lester Matthews, Gale Sondergaard). Griffin accuses them of leaving him to die during a venture to Africa, where the three of them discovered a diamond mine. Griffin wants a share of all profits from the mine, but the Herricks put him off, claiming the money's all been lost. Griffin, who still has a copy of their shared deed despite his having come directly from the asylum, threatens legal action. Irene, for her part, just happens to have a sleeping-pill handy, and she drugs Griffin and steals his deed. While the Herricks are never shown to be guilty of murder, they're still far from nice people. Not only do they have their servants eject Griffin, they later use the local constables to try to drive him away.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But Griffin stumbles across mad Doctor Drury (John Carradine), who needs an experimental subject for his invisibility process. Griffin agrees, hoping to use the power to achieve his ends. (Perhaps to save money, Griffin really does very few invisible stunts.) But he manages to terrorize Jasper and Irene enough that they're willing to let him share in their estate. Griffin then decides he wants them to also persuade their daughter Julie (Evelyn Ankers) to marry him, despite the fact that Julie already has Mark, an age-appropriate beau.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">However, to marry anyone, Griffin has to undo his invisibility. He witnesses Drury restoring visibility to an earlier subject, his dog Brutus, with a blood transfusion. When Drury won't help Griffin commit murder so that Griffin can go back to normal, the madman kills the scientist and uses his blood to return to normal. However, Griffin's course is then complicated by two forces. One is Brutus, who "hounds" (sorry) Griffin's track seeking revenge for his master. The other is that one blood transfusion is not enough, and soon Griffin must look for more victims. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Aside from the bland Julie and her equally blah boyfriend, no one in REVENGE is a very nice person. Most Universal monster flicks make the main monster the source of all trouble (however sympathetic he might be otherwise), while at worst the support-players are just cloddish fools. But Griffin loses all sympathy once he starts plotting to use blackmail to force Julie into marriage with him. By the conclusion, Jasper and Irene are still alive, which is probably meant to imply that they're not guilty of attempted murder and that Griffin just has a persecution complex. But they're rich assholes anyway, and two low-income specimens who try to take advantage of Griffin's legal claim are no better. Drury's a mad scientist, and the constable is a creep who automatically sides with rich people. Still, Jon Hall takes top acting honors here as the maddest of the Invisible Men. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-26447777945668628042024-03-05T14:27:00.000-08:002024-03-05T14:27:53.642-08:00LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE (1973)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYhavc2Z4lJ09VvhPLECLFu4CcptLfFdrXNkSs3p-b0pdylU7Ktx6N84T2UFkuv1xwpejM8-0gg8EjdbdY4VMYLgDtIBnIxTm5RAGUl6ZZ976DCkVspjnXfP4UcFYljAADmxJVY1put4GIUK99jXPYEzBN5NimbgntEUx6Ak8eE8KmfAUPt67EVJvo7g/s853/little.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="853" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYhavc2Z4lJ09VvhPLECLFu4CcptLfFdrXNkSs3p-b0pdylU7Ktx6N84T2UFkuv1xwpejM8-0gg8EjdbdY4VMYLgDtIBnIxTm5RAGUl6ZZ976DCkVspjnXfP4UcFYljAADmxJVY1put4GIUK99jXPYEzBN5NimbgntEUx6Ak8eE8KmfAUPt67EVJvo7g/w640-h360/little.png" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *good*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Chris Warfield's LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE (a more fittingly ironic title than TEENAGE INNOCENCE) isn't a metaphenomenal movie, though it almost certainly inspired 1977's DEATH GAME, which makes it into some concordances due to its psycho-thriller additions.The version I saw on Youtube has certainly had a lot of sex-scenes removed, as well as a scene mentioned in an IMDB review, in which one of the female characters mentions having been raped by her brother.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Fifty-something bachelor Rick (John Alderman), gainfully employed as a music arranger, enjoys a comfortable pad in Los Angeles. Driving along a boulevard, Rick spots two teenaged girls thumbing for a ride and he lets them hitch. The slightly more dominant female is Carol (Sandy Dempsey), while her more soft-spoken companion is Judy (Terri Johnson). Rick lets them out at some point, but not before they find out where he lives. After some puzzling discussion as to Rick being old enough to be a father to them, they nevertheless show up on his doorstep.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Rick thinks they just want a quick roll in the hay, so he enjoys a night with both girls. There also follows a rather misleading scene in which Rick squires the girls around to see the local sights, as if he were a devoted dad with his two teen daughters, but I assume this irrelevant sequence was thrown in to substitute for deleted sex-scenes if the flick was sold to television. But the crux of the real conflict is the girls won't leave when Rick tells them to do so, and they make certain Rick can't call the cops by informing him that Judy's underage, so he's guilty of statutory rape. Yet even their private dialogue doesn't clarify what they want of Rick. Not until the last half hour does the viewer hear that Carol has talked Judy into a big experiment, to see if it's possible to screw a man to death.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Carol's hostility to the male of the species would make more sense with the rape backstory. But the script, co-written by Warfield, doesn't put all the blame on her, and indeed, the relatively shy Judy is the first one to initiate sex with Rick. Clearly she's at least partly intrigued by the experiment to see how much sex an experienced male can dispense.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Toward the end, the two young vixens exhaust Rick. Carol at least considers other options-- the use of a dildo, or tortures a la De Sade, whom both girls know about, at least by reputation. But no exotic sex-acts are shown, although Rick's hands are bound at the time when the young ladies finally decide to leave. Yet, while they could just leave him tied up to starve-- since he doesn't seem to have any regular friends who might stop by-- even hard-ass Carol consents to let him loose before they depart. The clever irony at the end is that Rick begs them not to leave, because he's grown addicted to their sweet torments.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I grade the mythicity high precisely because the girls aren't true sadists or psychotic man-haters. They have a clinical, "innocent" desire to explore the functioning of the male anatomy, and Rick is their experimental subject. In closing I'll note that the director of photography is cult director Ray Dennis Steckler, but I've yet to see any of his directorial efforts look this well photographed. </span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-56505876298289825612024-03-03T14:27:00.000-08:002024-03-03T14:30:34.340-08:00STARGIRL SEASON THREE (2022)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvaxu1ilCWvpiWS2QNNuxCFuRPesJ8t_8Ky25xCk84ry8GCfiYb2cSheonI9AX323DWNaKuP2vJJx3IF_zEzsMdjLxCLSm5QyLGhEo-T7SU0-NRLlREWuqD-QOZEB35SyBjdtpxBfecfGqgdOMxE5yKCAHwumRKc8iKo3EHqGNn6GT8w5TCww78AAjTg/s800/reck.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="800" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvaxu1ilCWvpiWS2QNNuxCFuRPesJ8t_8Ky25xCk84ry8GCfiYb2cSheonI9AX323DWNaKuP2vJJx3IF_zEzsMdjLxCLSm5QyLGhEo-T7SU0-NRLlREWuqD-QOZEB35SyBjdtpxBfecfGqgdOMxE5yKCAHwumRKc8iKo3EHqGNn6GT8w5TCww78AAjTg/w640-h288/reck.webp" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After two strong seasons, STARGIRL perhaps inevitably fell victim to the CW Curse: too many plot threads. Seasons One and Two managed the feat of skillfully juggling many story-arcs at once. But that was partly because the threats were persuasive ones-- first, the heroes' need to avenge the slain JSA and to prevent the villains from mentally enslaving the country, and then, the heroes' battle against a force of Satanic corruption.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Here, though, the scripts lean too heavily into a theme suggested by the season's title, "Frenemies:" the theme of second chances and reformation. The narrative opens as The Gambler, who escaped Blue Valley after the other members of the Injustice Society were defeated, returns to the small Nebraska town with the professed intention of making amends. Before Courtney, Pat and the other heroes even have time to assess his claims, The Gambler is murdered, creating a mystery for the teens to solve. (There's no question of the police being involved: nowhere in the three seasons does one see so much as a deputy sheriff in town.) Their investigation leads the young heroes to discover a network of surveillance devices throughout most of the town. So who's watching the defenders? The Shade, who's still hanging around? Cindy, a.k.a. "Shiv," who's discovered near the body? Or Cindy's evil father, back from the dead in some fashion?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Within the group arise new irritants. Rick/Hourman, obsessed with staying strong to meet all contingencies, begins using his power-device all the time, resulting in addictive behavior. Courtney's tentative boyfriend Cameron must be told about the death of his father The Icicle. And Starman-- whose return from the vale of death is finally explained-- proves an irritant to Pat and Courtney, constantly treating Pat like he's still a sidekick and infringing upon Courtney's possession of the cosmic staff. There's also a mostly irrelevant side-trip to find the lost brother of Jade, Green Lantern's daughter, and I suspect that maybe the producers had some notion of using this arc as a back-door pilot for an INFINITY INC project.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLIJslwNL8340iCfghmYfOpOKTSEh0j5NHxkYOqmuyBQZePQAx0rk5mZkwg9oMrrX8FFDEKe0D1OPXhP0llzH-5svTXKUy5u_h0RhhETC7eXdiIsKkslX4UgTo8Gf19tSZ8O5AT0EUpx9OurYMspN09b4okJlowdeXz9eQCxK50WDeQp_NN20yoR3E6A/s1444/ultra.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="874" data-original-width="1444" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLIJslwNL8340iCfghmYfOpOKTSEh0j5NHxkYOqmuyBQZePQAx0rk5mZkwg9oMrrX8FFDEKe0D1OPXhP0llzH-5svTXKUy5u_h0RhhETC7eXdiIsKkslX4UgTo8Gf19tSZ8O5AT0EUpx9OurYMspN09b4okJlowdeXz9eQCxK50WDeQp_NN20yoR3E6A/w640-h388/ultra.webp" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At this point I'll invoke the "spoilers" to give away the hidden villains. Dragon King is one of the adversaries, though he becomes linked to a former SUPERMAN foe, The Ultra-Humanite, who takes the form of a giant albino ape. Only the ape-body that the evil scientist once inhabited is now occupied by the brain of Dragon King, and the brain of the Ultra-Humanite is in the head of-- Starman. Yes, it's the old brain-switching trick, and so all of the things Starman says and does are really just gambits by a super-villain. This concept was pretty lame when a similar plot appeared in the 1993 graphic novel <a href="https://arche-arc.blogspot.com/2021/11/near-myths-jsa-golden-age-1993-94.html">JSA: THE GOLDEN AGE</a>, and it's even lamer this time, particularly since there doesn't seem to be a compelling reason for the masquerade. The brain-switching mad scientist just doesn't prove a very interesting mystery killer, and even the return of Icicle-- who re-constitutes himself after his apparent destruction-- comes too little, too late.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There are certainly many good moments in the season. Beth/Doctor Mid-Nite gets to fight a little thanks to combat-programs built into her suit, and both Mike and Jakeem generate a lot of comedy relief with their invocations of their literal-minded Thunderbolt. Yet the arc for Yolanda/Wildcat never proves satisfying, and Courtney's concerted efforts to seek the good in people are overdone, as is Pat's inferiority complex in the face of his mentor. Surprisingly, Artemis, whose presence seemed adventitious in the first two seasons, gets her own arc here, and so justified her reason for being in the show at all. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Despite my opinion that the INFINITY INC subplot proves largely irrelevant, it makes possible more scenes for Jonathan Cake's sublimely sardonic Shade. Because the scripts are so exposition-filled, I didn't feel most of the actors got a lot of stellar moments. But even conveying coherent exposition was a skill that died on the vine for every other CW show after about two seasons in. The coda to the entire series is a celebration of DC Comics' rich history, which means that it will mostly be accessible to hardcore fans, but there are a lot worse things superhero shows can do than preach to the converted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-61248287726706674942024-03-03T11:58:00.000-08:002024-03-03T12:02:03.396-08:00BATMAN VS. ROBIN (2015)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpukBtR_Krl51zetNHoXyq0lUKYNp6zxlwG4cx-J_Q9HXbz_ItoguVwF7-W9NIQzHLzPnObcWbVrjYEfP7PAzBoxEJNmPEfYlw51uk4PHQTbyaDTpOv0PJBECeRZzLav-XuJtlHsYIgW2dvUkEaxaCLsF3cOInHtxeWdFQ1f5NF-ijd4h3o75UmANZkg/s650/ending.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="650" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpukBtR_Krl51zetNHoXyq0lUKYNp6zxlwG4cx-J_Q9HXbz_ItoguVwF7-W9NIQzHLzPnObcWbVrjYEfP7PAzBoxEJNmPEfYlw51uk4PHQTbyaDTpOv0PJBECeRZzLav-XuJtlHsYIgW2dvUkEaxaCLsF3cOInHtxeWdFQ1f5NF-ijd4h3o75UmANZkg/w640-h360/ending.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *good*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The second Batman film for the "DCAMU," following <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2024/01/son-of-batman-2014.html">SON OF BATMAN</a>, takes place six months after that film. VS. charts the difficult progress of the relationship between Batman and Damian Wayne, his ten-year-old son, raised by the League of Assassins without the hero's knowledge, and now assuming the role of the Fourth Robin. As the title indicates, the course of filial affection does not precisely run smooth between the two characters.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The title owes something to one used by Damian's creator Grant Morrison, but whereas SON dumbed down the actual content of a Morrison arc, VS. adapts material from three separate comics-arcs, according to Wikipedia. I glanced at the two I had not read and decided they probably didn't contribute that much to the structure of VS. The arc with the most influence on this entry was Scott Snyder's first "Court of Owls" sequence. This I had read, and judged it to be of merely fair mythicity, to say nothing of not being relevant to the Damian Wayne narrative. So VS. almost comprises a new, alternative take on that narrative as it developed in the comics.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Despite the new Robin having worked with his cowled tutor for half a year, the partnership is a difficult fit. Batman can't manage the easy quasi-paternal relationship he had with "First Robin" Dick Grayson. When faced with a son of his own blood, one raised by an organization of killers, he compensates for his own fears by relentlessly riding the ten-year-old. He fears that his son, who has sometimes expressed a casual disregard for the termination of lives, may be too far gone, and incapable of living his life without killing again, in keeping with the ideals of The Batman.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Damian, for his part, desperately wants his father's unqualified approval, irrespective of his performance as Robin. At the same time he chafes at being reined in, and becomes fiercely jealous of the First Robin, now operating as Nightwing. And to make a tense situation even worse, during Damian's takedown of a criminal named Dollmaker, Dollmaker's slain by a third party, and for a time Batman's not entirely sure Damian didn't do it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The third party is an acolyte of the Court of Owls. The killer is billed only as "The Talon," though in the bigger picture the Court is served by several deadly minions, all of whom are called Talons. The script faithfully reproduces the Snyder concept: the Court is a cabal of many wealthy elites from Gotham, who have built up a shadowy organization of influence to the extent that they've become a part of Gotham folklore. As a child, Bruce Wayne even conceives that the Court might have stage-managed his parents' deaths, and while this was not the case, the Court still represents for modern-day Batman the epitome of the societal corruption he battles. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The Court, having shut down operations at some unspecified time, seeks to become a force in Gotham, and one of their current schemes is to bring the prominent Bruce Wayne into their fold-- with the broad implication that refusal brings a penalty of death. At the same time, The Talon approaches Damian as part of his own plan to increase his importance, by encouraging Damian's bloodlust as the mark of the superior man. He spins Damian a sad, and possibly true, story about having been abused by an older tutorial figure, in effect offering the New Boy Wonder a Faustian bargain: to take on The Talon as a new parent/perceptor, and to throw off all piddling moral quandaries.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This is a rare DC animated film, offering well-choreographed, imaginative fight-scenes without stinting on the dynamics of the four principal characters of Batman, Damian, Nightwing, and The Talon (with faithful Alfred serving as chorus). The credited scripter is Marc DeMatteis, whose comics-work I have never liked, but who has on occasion managed to convert so-so comics-stories into better than average adaptations, as he would also do five years later with <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2022/01/superman-red-son-2020.html">SUPERMAN RED SON</a>. Credit also devolves to the voice-actors, with a much improved Jason O'Mara as Batman, Kevin Conroy as Thomas Wayne, David McCallum as Alfred, and "Weird Al" Yankovic, strangely effective as the psychotic Dollmaker.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-17191112863323051512024-03-01T14:42:00.000-08:002024-03-01T14:46:07.355-08:00THE STREET FIGHTER TRILOGY (1974)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAzeIyk0cW9i16UpF_gpTorfymzjudVe1i0teP9hRxn9Lwb2CjQkODp9gLdjXOlsZyzrvDLshviKNlXdRtFs323Ufm0FR-lBCW2YbEusnQZroXWmMUEe2mUugHIgzvN5dlqkcrJgSgQqEDA6cNeH9vpYtg2cyLY8-kUIPCMSGp7FxJOtriGlBq3VIRKA/s1000/dirty.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="718" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAzeIyk0cW9i16UpF_gpTorfymzjudVe1i0teP9hRxn9Lwb2CjQkODp9gLdjXOlsZyzrvDLshviKNlXdRtFs323Ufm0FR-lBCW2YbEusnQZroXWmMUEe2mUugHIgzvN5dlqkcrJgSgQqEDA6cNeH9vpYtg2cyLY8-kUIPCMSGp7FxJOtriGlBq3VIRKA/w460-h640/dirty.jpg" width="460" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>All three of these films register as "uncanny" because their anti-heroic hero has such amazing martial techniques that he's frequently seen jabbing his fingers through human flesh and bone, or ripping organs from his opponents' bodies. They're of course also united by an ethos of doing anything it takes to destroy one's opponents. The main character does so with more elan than any prior heroes, with the possible exception of Mickey Spillane's sadistic crusaders.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I'll refer to the character by his Anglicized name "Terry Tsurugi" because in all three cases I watched the dubbed versions of the Japanese originals. I don't think I missed a lot of cultural subtleties, for Toei Studios and star Sonny Chiba clearly designed the movies to be as international as possible, with fast action, extreme violence, occasional crude humor, and boobs. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">STREET FIGHTER is unquestionably the best of the three, and that may be because the Japanese often display a cultural genius for concocting dire conflicts between personal emotion and societal duty. Terry (Chiba) is in every way a bull in a china shop, and eventually we learn that he became that way after seeing his father shot for treason, and after he himself was ostracized in Japan for being half-Chinese. But the viewer doesn't know that when he sees Terry's really bad side. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Terry, who's sort of a jack-of-all-trades criminal for hire, accepts a commission to liberate a murderer from his scheduled execution, a martial artist named Shikenbaru. But after Shikenbaru gets out of Japan, those who hired Terry-- the murderer's sister and brother-- reveal that they can't pay.There's a fight, and it's not exactly Terry's fault that the brother dies. But few feminists will sympathize with Terry after he sells Sister Nachi (played by Chiba's frequent colleague Sue Siomi) into sex-slavery to mitigate her debt.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That said, Terry's rage is soon turned against a better target. The Yakuza tries to engage him to kidnap the daughter of an oil magnate, so that the criminals (who are in league with the American Mafia) can gain control of the magnate's company. Terry's reason for not taking the commission are vague, but when he refuses, the crooks decide he can't be allowed to live. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">For spite more than anything else, Terry becomes the protector of oil heiress Sarai-- and this brings on loads and loads of skull-busting violence. The gangsters bring in various assassins to kill Terry, including a blind swordsman (a shot at Zatoichi maybe?), but their main ally is Shikenbaru, brought back to succor his sister and avenge his slain brother. After a hard fought end-battle, Terry kills his opponent by the rather original method of tearing out Shikenbaru's vocal chords.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdzijy5VfFogUDqPRNu23dLKX-iJkgzHg0RV-LHtchOyfgv_Tq1steMREBQLEhuM0dFv7MTZy6XvlwG3TCUWZd3_Z31C5gRs-2vCzo17FisCXj15lqQd23R6lsdLB4z5CzdGG3S-6FYcW10GvSdF9POqlDuDd33GQ3mESKd4yerTm1bfFKyTw7m1HCOg/s500/ret.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="350" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdzijy5VfFogUDqPRNu23dLKX-iJkgzHg0RV-LHtchOyfgv_Tq1steMREBQLEhuM0dFv7MTZy6XvlwG3TCUWZd3_Z31C5gRs-2vCzo17FisCXj15lqQd23R6lsdLB4z5CzdGG3S-6FYcW10GvSdF9POqlDuDd33GQ3mESKd4yerTm1bfFKyTw7m1HCOg/w448-h640/ret.jpg" width="448" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The next two entries in the series stick closely to the first movie's template: Terry Tsurugi pisses off some gang and they hurl goons at the Street Fighter until he kills them all. RETURN is probably the least interesting of the trilogy. Terry's earlier brush with heroism doesn't sway him from going back to his hitman business. He's okay with working for the Mafia this time, silencing a witness with a fatal finger-jab to the throat. But then Terry and the gangster have a falling out, and there's lots of heads and arms broken. However, Terry is a little less intense this time, palling around with a goofy girl named Kitty in a non-romantic sense. (He does have sex with a woman who tries to knife him, though.) Oh, and Shikenbaru, thought dead at the end of the first film, is back with artificial vocal chords. At least he does die for good at the end of RETURN.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW8CnPzXoGxz3phx62lj39hoxe3J5MwypBeW_O9PAOa3V9Fo1R4ADJ7nOwg1Ve5Io3419Geku31MaalLJG5lZFwc5HVlqrwMVr5SJWsUmAZW5BUtkaIV1N794lpslwCNFbFfNFA8ucQPwB9XjLTpqDt3TjUVPZqdmeP3TSrTiVOjFehPrC_xVfIc_mrA/s500/last.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="353" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW8CnPzXoGxz3phx62lj39hoxe3J5MwypBeW_O9PAOa3V9Fo1R4ADJ7nOwg1Ve5Io3419Geku31MaalLJG5lZFwc5HVlqrwMVr5SJWsUmAZW5BUtkaIV1N794lpslwCNFbFfNFA8ucQPwB9XjLTpqDt3TjUVPZqdmeP3TSrTiVOjFehPrC_xVfIc_mrA/w452-h640/last.jpg" width="452" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE at least has a better variety of villains. Terry does a job for a crime family named the Owadas, and they cheat him. After he takes the first step in his "last revenge," he encounters a female district attorney, Huo Feng (Sue Siomi). She's monitoring his activity for her bosses, who want to see if they can use Terry as a pawn against the Owadas. But Huo has some ties with the Owadas herself, though when they make war on Terry, she ends up siding with him instead.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Kung fu kicking Huo is an interesting "frenemy," though she only gets one really lengthy fight, and a female Owada named Aya (Reiko Ike) also shakes things up when she becomes Terry's bed-partner. Yet the most colorful villain is the unimaginatively named "Frankie Black." Aya sees Black, a Mexican in full mariachi gear, demonstrate tremendous physical strength on a talk show, so of course she correctly presumes he'll jump at the chance to engage Terry Tsurugi in a martial battle. The hero's second fight with Black is the best, partly because it ends with Black suffering a terrible execution by immolation. It may be hard to keep track of the stakes this time, but at least Terry ends up on top-- of another big pile of bodies.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">All three movies include a martial arts master, Master Masaoka, who repeatedly counsels Terry to overcome his rage and find spiritual peace. But of course the Street Fighter's fans want him to rage against a sea of troubles, so his trauma can't be healed. And Chiba plays the role with more intensity than any other actor of the time could have managed, to say nothing of his own martial artistry.</span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-39480410785112178602024-03-01T11:05:00.000-08:002024-03-01T11:05:57.092-08:00TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS (1968)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIyQnZT_uFH_kkPLI6RpKNTkws7SO2HvrWC1F_lYrxkr14EDSQJ_Kvs346w97IqLo3dYzfieI9zEXkzRj-ZvpdyiKPimNW5VR1VjcHyzj4ZDV1Juqpxsibo1yuYWPLpJyWpsIeTPNHo2drE05QE7HFJ5hmDnxl2-3ZLZP9V0oxybfvAhaOeDv2D7iMHg/s750/twer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIyQnZT_uFH_kkPLI6RpKNTkws7SO2HvrWC1F_lYrxkr14EDSQJ_Kvs346w97IqLo3dYzfieI9zEXkzRj-ZvpdyiKPimNW5VR1VjcHyzj4ZDV1Juqpxsibo1yuYWPLpJyWpsIeTPNHo2drE05QE7HFJ5hmDnxl2-3ZLZP9V0oxybfvAhaOeDv2D7iMHg/w426-h640/twer.jpg" width="426" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>LONG LONG LONG SPOILERS</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>This English-dubbed French thriller, despite its exploitative title, boasts a distinguished lineage. The source material is partly from a legend from French history: that, in the 14th century, Margaret of Burgundy, wife to King Louis X, committed adultery within a Parisian guard-tower, the Tower of Nesle, for which offense the unhappy French queen was imprisoned for the remainder of her life. A writer named Frederic Gaillardet dramatized the incident, though Alexander Dumas rewrote the play, possibly because he'd become famous for a stage-success in 1829, prior to his later fame as a novelist. However, the Gaillardet-Dumas story only takes various names and places from the historical account, concocting a wild hybrid story I'm tempted to call a "psycho-swashbuckler." I have not read any version of the prose source material. But I theorize that one of the authors borrowed a folklore-tale about Cleopatra, which asserted that the Egyptian queen had the habit of taking male lovers into her boudoir for one night of passion, only to have them executed afterward. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TOWER, like the play on which it's based, spins out the idea that Queen Margaret-- who, according to the story's dynamics, ought to be in her middle thirties-- uses the deserted Tower of Nesle for a series of one-night stands with young Frenchmen, whether they are or aren't "virgins" like the title says . In fact, there are usually three such encounters each night, since Margaret (Teri Tordai) sets up liaisons for her two handmaidens as well. Then comes the "screaming," as Margaret's main henchman Orsini and various hooded thugs slay the male victims and toss them into the Seine River. I don't know why any of the henchmen, or Margaret and her ladies for that matter, affect any sort of masks, since they expect all to be killing off any and all visitors. The attempts at secrecy don't keep the locals from getting the sense that nasty things are happening at the "Tower of Sin," as they call it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Then a celebrated war-hero, Captain Bouridan (Jean Piat), approaches Paris. On the way there, he meets and chats up a cute young noblewoman, the curiously named Blanche DuBois (Uschi Glas), finding out that she plans to petition the king's court for her father's inheritance. Blanche provides a subplot to TOWER as she gets drawn into the life of the Queen's lady-in-waiting, due to the machinations of the lust-minded Orsini.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In a tavern Bouridan's master swordsmanship saves the life of a naive young man named Philippe, who came to Paris with his brother Gautier for obscure reasons. The captain noticed that both young men have strange marks on their wrists but makes no comment on it. By chance a procurer for the Queen talks both Bouridan and Philippe into attending one of the tower-parties. Bouridan already has some suspicions about the "Tower of Sin" but doesn't try to talk Philippe out of participating. The upshot is that although Philippe sleeps with the Queen and is subsequently killed, Bouridan escapes both being bedded and murdered. And this sets up a series of complicated revelations, double dealings, high and low intrigue, and many more swordfights than one would expect of a film titled TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In fact, there are so many complicated revelations that I've belatedly decided to devote a separate ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE essay on them to explore how TOWER does or does not satisfy my criteria for mythicity, and why I call it a "psycho-swashbuckler." I will note that the swordfights, while plenteous, are just okay, as is most of the acting-- though director Austrian director Franz Antel, best known for lots of Euro-sex flicks, does a fine job of selecting pulchritudinous women for even very minor roles. In my opinion the script softens Margaret too much, given that we know she's callously sent countless young men to their deaths just so that she could have a few rolls in the hay while her husband the king was away. There are no special murder-methods used to slay the victims, nor do any of the disguises serve any purpose by that of concealment, and many critics would not consider this film metaphenomenal at all. I argue that this particular "bizarre crime," while maybe not uncanny in Cleopatra's Egypt, is definitely beyond the pale of the ordinary in 14th-century France. And although Margaret and her tower occupy a lot of screen time, Bouridan's courageous cavalier is undoubtedly the star of this show.</span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-61445170501845349452024-02-28T15:50:00.000-08:002024-02-28T15:50:49.366-08:00THE STORY OF DRUNKEN MASTER (1979)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjx_bHxhsJWvY_Q5usZs8vGMJlLvl4pSS-phq_xCVpF4yxwfFGox1hcglEthVqfRuj2_apCo0DmZZHUGOmihyphenhyphenl7hdvd2AlHVh3kHxAt3O8vTfysLB8S-9EnOgYfrBnvkPFY4KHx4RNJqK0UdQWmtsIjuYFNW2N18bZZHL2hcNkmVmzR7pfiCFxjtML-A/s1920/SEED.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjx_bHxhsJWvY_Q5usZs8vGMJlLvl4pSS-phq_xCVpF4yxwfFGox1hcglEthVqfRuj2_apCo0DmZZHUGOmihyphenhyphenl7hdvd2AlHVh3kHxAt3O8vTfysLB8S-9EnOgYfrBnvkPFY4KHx4RNJqK0UdQWmtsIjuYFNW2N18bZZHL2hcNkmVmzR7pfiCFxjtML-A/w640-h360/SEED.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *poor*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In 1978 Jackie Chan catapulted to worldwide fame thanks to his breakthrough hit DRUNKEN MASTER, in which his protagonist, despite initial reluctance, learns the "drunken fist" style of his master Beggar So (Simon Yuen) and so conquers his enemy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Since this film-- also known as DRUNKEN FIST BOXING-- cast Yuen in a role with the same name and appearance, there's not much question that he was selected to coast on the fame of the Jackie Chan film. But maybe the producers feared some legal reprisal if they followed the template too closely, for there's only a minute or so of drunken boxing, and that comes at the very end, from a supporting character.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The main characters are a brother and sister, Chi Wai (Casanova Wong) and Gam Fa (Yeung Pan Pan, who are perpetually training under their aged master Beggar So. I think Chi runs a pawn shop while Gam performs an acrobatic act at a local saloon, so they don't have any heroic motives for their training. So is seen imbibing wine a few times but not teaching any drunk-fu. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">However, So has an enemy from an earlier encounter, a nasty martial arts master named Bill Chan. Chan wants to humiliate So by attacking his students, and one of Chan's pupils wants to get busy with Gam. So most of the film concerns a series of peripatetic conflicts, though not that many full-fledged battles. One comic scene, for example, involves Gam "accidentally" inflicting small injuries on her unwanted suitor. However, because the suitor has money, Gam's dick of a father encourages her to marry him. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The meandering plot is of no consequence, and the only good fighter by my reckoning is the athletic Yeung Pan Pan. The actress never had a major breakout success in old-style kung fu films, but became somewhat better known in the Hong Kong "girls with guns" genre. The minute or so of drunk-fighting comes courtesy of a third So-student, Ah Chong, who drinks So's wine and briefly confounds Bill Chan in the big end-fight-- though Gam and Chi are the ones who earn the real victory. A couple of times fighters use weighted ribbons or belts as weapons, but there's no uncanny effect and so they register only as naturalistic.</span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-58670891142327575882024-02-27T16:15:00.000-08:002024-02-27T16:17:39.955-08:00HEY, THERE, IT'S YOGI BEAR! (1964)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs6IT9lFvbR_peJfBQA42J44ylxAKTiUchLP4mOm6m-Ww3lha5druU0f7pU_SHuFKHQfmhUaZOxm85ngleO3Hf8Pf3xyQJl7CZ09u4K06sZs3mn_Ah40AN4xMZnUpiYuoewX3mhdgIG67DtEW2lzckE3I_-9Fzx_0Tq1Rghq-tv8tnUFrDqtjlK_KVIg/s2560/louis.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="2560" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs6IT9lFvbR_peJfBQA42J44ylxAKTiUchLP4mOm6m-Ww3lha5druU0f7pU_SHuFKHQfmhUaZOxm85ngleO3Hf8Pf3xyQJl7CZ09u4K06sZs3mn_Ah40AN4xMZnUpiYuoewX3mhdgIG67DtEW2lzckE3I_-9Fzx_0Tq1Rghq-tv8tnUFrDqtjlK_KVIg/w640-h360/louis.webp" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *poor*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I saw this YOGI BEAR movie in general release, just as I did <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-man-called-flintstone-1966.html">THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE,</a> but even as a kid, I had more pleasant memories of the latter cartoon-film. I knew both franchises from their TV incarnations, but I don't remember having a lot of regard for Yogi in any version. He was pleasant, "comfy-couch" entertainment, historically significant for being Hanna-Barbera's first breakout TV character, far more recognizable than Huckleberry Hound or Ruff 'n Reddy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I'm not going to relate the plot at all. Like many of the TV episodes, the movie's action hinges on the vaguely parental relationship between the impulsive "not as smart as he thinks he is" bruin and Ranger Smith, the voice of authority in Jellystone Park. There's a subplot in which Cindy Bear hopes to tame Yogi's wastrel ways and mold him into a proper boyfriend. But no one will be surprised to learn that though Yogi does reciprocate Cindy's feelings, nothing about the status quo changes-- though it certainly COULD have, since the TV cartoon had ended two years previous. Oh, and Yogi's perennial sidekick Boo Boo is in there, but he only gets to do a few slapstick-routines. In short, Yogi's scheming tendencies cause Cindy to get sent from the park to a zoo, but on the way she ends up forced to perform in a cheapjack circus. Yogi rescues her and then he himself must be corralled back at Jellystone.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOkr0cNIQJBEIzwKoooa8rJWFU16booCVH852HjMpk9uady9JGuxmnR44Ui-AgdbDagLGcfizumZhoM4LYCZuEMkhWgYYrnJjLT9s-LWvA-f22scNDeMdyhVwtsBFWTzNRfRhPVDLbxgzKaV1U0uSfW9ExNJKcel5TJmM2blvS2WnEOr_9LpxXjNKG_Q/s1920/mutt.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOkr0cNIQJBEIzwKoooa8rJWFU16booCVH852HjMpk9uady9JGuxmnR44Ui-AgdbDagLGcfizumZhoM4LYCZuEMkhWgYYrnJjLT9s-LWvA-f22scNDeMdyhVwtsBFWTzNRfRhPVDLbxgzKaV1U0uSfW9ExNJKcel5TJmM2blvS2WnEOr_9LpxXjNKG_Q/w640-h360/mutt.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There are only two interesting facets of the picayune story. One is the movie's only good musical number, a jazzy little ditty called "St. Louis," which I still recall enjoying from my kid-viewing. The other is that HEY THERE includes an embryonic version of Dick Dastardly and Muttley of WACKY RACES fame, in the form of the crooked circus-owner Grifter Chizzling and his dog Mugger. Voice actor Don Messick had done one or two "snickering dog" characters prior to HEY THERE. Yet it seems to me that the credited writers for this film-- one Warren Foster as well as the titular producers Hanna and Barbera-- really came up with the winning combination of characters. Of course, no one would remember Grifter and Mugger if they hadn't been recycled into two far superior comic villains. But that's what makes, uh, cartoon races.</span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-26559709735240251852024-02-27T15:45:00.000-08:002024-02-27T15:45:22.481-08:00SPIDER-MAN; ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (2023)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOSlH83Orjlm5LXsmtzRZa0KpvxbFlc-zkunenKyZl-Ahk5VxJS1BsuCsyxmPABreoCRJQhAhzyxfWzbNtsHooTl7eD1kCjAWBSd6shAvylsQH_abddLi2e5MlGg3grb5jyyA69a606QZVPVdwBclPWmW_9vlpRsAJai49AdKuqPr6RWKTK6Ku9EKpng/s1200/gwen.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOSlH83Orjlm5LXsmtzRZa0KpvxbFlc-zkunenKyZl-Ahk5VxJS1BsuCsyxmPABreoCRJQhAhzyxfWzbNtsHooTl7eD1kCjAWBSd6shAvylsQH_abddLi2e5MlGg3grb5jyyA69a606QZVPVdwBclPWmW_9vlpRsAJai49AdKuqPr6RWKTK6Ku9EKpng/w640-h360/gwen.webp" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Unlike the majority of moviegoers, I found <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2019/07/spider-man-far-from-home-2019-spider.html">INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE</a> rather predictable, so I didn't bother to see the sequel in the theater. Ironically, aside from one giant demerit, ACROSS is a much more entertaining film than INTO. I notice that though there's one writer who worked on both scripts, there were two new scripters involved with ACROSS-- which has much funnier dialogue, for one thing. (An early scene, in which Spider-Gwen fights a variant Vulture, includes some humorous stuff about the subjectivity of art that may be intended to comment on the movie's own status.) There was still far too much of Miles' family, but at least even they had a few laugh-lines.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Though Miles Morales gets the lion's share of attention once again, there's more focus on his interaction with Spider-Gwen, while most of the other Spider-variants play subordinate roles, including the most virtue-signally one, "Jessica Drew as Black Pregnant Spider-Woman." The confusion of continuities from INTO continues here, but with a greater sense of consequence. Spider-Gwen, Miles learns, has been inducted into a dimension-spanning "Spider Society" oriented on preventing temporary abnormalities. Trouble is, to ride herd on the right running of time, they must sometimes let innocents die. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>The whole "preservation of time" trope is nothing new, and ACROSS' script doesn't bring that much conviction to the theme. But the action is much better executed this time, once more supporting the dictum that animated superheroes will always be able to do things that their live-action "variants" cannot. And nothing proves this better than the villain. Whereas INTO was boring in its choice of providing variations of the most famous Spider-foes, ACROSS took a fairly minor rogue, The Spot (Jonathan Schwartzmann) and made him a visual delight.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Those who have seen the film will easily guess the "big demerit" I mentioned: it's a Part One without having advertised as much. I tend to doubt that there's enough of a story here to justify a Part Two, and I think it likely that the filmmakers just got intoxicated with all the neat things they could do with crazy-ass Spider-continuities. Or maybe they realized that in the last couple of years, the only superhero franchises that have remained strong have been those of Batman and Spider-Man-- and they want to reap what rewards they can from the Spider-franchise, lest even that one go the way of all celluloid.</span></p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></div>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-32103956513993906252024-02-27T15:03:00.000-08:002024-02-27T15:07:58.836-08:00SUPERMAN: BRAINIAC ATTACKS (2006)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3B-IKIqKAKE_9d4FtR1sxvTk6t_QJno2UO0gB5pgP6cbnj2TlySxDIhzUmQdIBIZ-lRRRnyUEcyR_8FEfqWCIwHusHaKL4dJqUcaIZz8iYqGHYBWzCBvJ-otBSkcM2e5-Mgh-6M5Y2iQkcdMxX3d2jueKVcrln7z9KFcxfRq7RgfMSlI4U-LkDzNEmQ/s2000/att.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1541" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3B-IKIqKAKE_9d4FtR1sxvTk6t_QJno2UO0gB5pgP6cbnj2TlySxDIhzUmQdIBIZ-lRRRnyUEcyR_8FEfqWCIwHusHaKL4dJqUcaIZz8iYqGHYBWzCBvJ-otBSkcM2e5-Mgh-6M5Y2iQkcdMxX3d2jueKVcrln7z9KFcxfRq7RgfMSlI4U-LkDzNEmQ/w494-h640/att.jpg" width="494" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>This DTV animated film used a number of the same voice actors from <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2011/12/superman-animated-series-1996-2000.html">SUPERMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES</a>, but it's not "in continuity" with that show. Like the live-action film of the same year, it presumes that Superman has been tilting with Lex Luthor for some time and, additionally, that both of them have encountered Brainiac in previous incursions. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Perhaps because the writers, unlike the director of ATTACKS, had not worked on the aforementioned series, they were able to tap into an aspect of the Superman mythology that the TV show neglected. And that aspect had nothing to do with the Man of Steel's rogues' gallery, but with his on-again, off-again involvement with ace reporter Lois Lane, a subject the teleseries tended to avoid.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Happily, though the DTV was released to profit from the same-year debut of Bryan Singer's problematic SUPERMAN RETURNS, the script here sticks to the classic triangle-conflict. Lois is gaga over the Man of Steel, but can't see Clark Kent for dust. Clark wants Lois to love the Smallville part of him, not just the Kryptonian heritage, and much of his conflict revolves around trying to decide if he'll confess his true nature.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Luthor, ever motivated by envy and spite, seeks to one-up the superhero with a new defensive satellite-system. The system backfires when Brainiac makes a return visit to Earth and takes control of it, forcing Superman to fight both the computer-criminal and Luthor's machines. After the Man of Steel bashes Brainiac to bits, Luthor manages to swipe one of the evildoer's components. Later he reconstitutes Brainiac with the idea of having the knowledge-hungry machine kill off Superman and promote the idea that Luthor has become humankind's new savior. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Of course things don't go well for Luthor's plan, and in the crossfire between Brainiac and Superman, Lois is bombarded by deadly radiation. Thus the hero's main goal shifts from the protection of humanity to finding a cure for one human, which necessitates his entering the Phantom Zone.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>The Zone sequence is too short and underdeveloped, but once Superman's back in the real world, the animators go all out in showing the three-way battle between the invulnerable hero, the computer in a huge battle-mecha, and Luthor in a mechanical battle-suit. I can't be sure, but I got the sense that the animators were trying to come up with action-scenes good enough to rival the best from the old Fleischer cartoons of the forties, with far more attention to kineticism than one sees in other Superman DTV films.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>To the writers' credit, the melodrama of the triangle is played out nicely without upsetting the status quo-- and no, of course Lois does not die. Perry White and Jimmy Olsen both provide above-average support-scenes, with Jimmy distinguishing himself by managing to defeat (though not exactly out-fight) Luthor's female guard-dog Mercy Graves. ATTACKS stands as one of the better efforts in the world of Superman cartoons.</span></span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-72229210095126090382024-02-27T13:53:00.000-08:002024-02-27T13:59:04.210-08:00SEVEN NUNS IN KANSAS CITY (1972)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixq_VlbO6-HnvNxyl7EaUyC8o4pYaRcNRavrAqa6RjFWhbdzRG7JXfEK7mzKyaGYweMjL8Pc8ha_UFZAX5A2zLD2Zhz-vOSDDWPKodpoPkaZxWYqYl6pJI9m0cKmo5ci0Ve6rG0yFeonP0vRmE0Q4ZqWpu9U6-VWpeA6IU-YWgi1rvikX3VveD6jOEwA/s1600/NUNS.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixq_VlbO6-HnvNxyl7EaUyC8o4pYaRcNRavrAqa6RjFWhbdzRG7JXfEK7mzKyaGYweMjL8Pc8ha_UFZAX5A2zLD2Zhz-vOSDDWPKodpoPkaZxWYqYl6pJI9m0cKmo5ci0Ve6rG0yFeonP0vRmE0Q4ZqWpu9U6-VWpeA6IU-YWgi1rvikX3VveD6jOEwA/w480-h640/NUNS.jpg" width="480" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *poor*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>Getting the phenomenality matters attended to first: in the opening scenes two prospectors are riding on their mules, and the mules talk to each other. I think the miners understand them, but the sequence is so short I rate it just a minor deviation from consensual reality.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As for the rest of this comedy-western-- right in the tradition of the knockabout slapstick flicks that the Italians prize so much-- the real puzzle is not, why is it bad, but why isn't it bad in the usual way?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Knockabout comedies only require a loose, often goofy premise that provides ample opportunities for various heroes and villains to get into big honking fights. A toss-off flick like <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-story-of-karate-fists-and-beans-1973.html">THE STORY OF KARATE, FISTS AND BEANS</a> may be formally bad, but it was bad in the way its audience wanted it to be bad, and so that's an accomplishment of sorts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">NUNS has the simple premise. After one of the old sourdoughs gets killed in what is supposed to a funny manner, the other discovers gold and makes a map of the location. Somehow two separate outlaw gangs start looking for the map. I forget how the crooks get the idea that two roving cowboys-- coded gay, because they wear pastel-colored shirts-- possess the desired item. The rhinestone cowboys go on the run. All of this setup is standard for this type of film.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Up to the first big slapstick set-piece, the film has been slow, but not without incident. The gay guys seek sanctuary in a Catholic convent, inhabited by something like a dozen nuns. One outlaw gang follows their quarry into the convent, and a fight erupts between the outlaws and the nuns. Apart from the usual comedy antics, like hitting the outlaws with clubs and fruits, the nuns are fairly beefy women and use their fists pretty well. The fight lasts about six minutes, which might some sort of record for female-male fights, at least in Italian cinema. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And then the gay guys run off, the outlaws chase them, and seven of the nuns give pursuit-- and nothing happens.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitUkGJABmuwP-rAr5PwW9jxiZPA1FCPly4jyPZLjW9TiPfKUf0dgkvT1xb4FsxmJGJwqaUkHm65kTjWwGVXs4vsp0djWIPlTQs1TNRcMPIegiBnSJRQl44pX3ppTVYh-bQcGCWcbLeUyZaDHZg_KMtG4k1gSOVQpEez5HRUjFwLY0DKXDi2LK098zMGA/s1280/GAYS.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitUkGJABmuwP-rAr5PwW9jxiZPA1FCPly4jyPZLjW9TiPfKUf0dgkvT1xb4FsxmJGJwqaUkHm65kTjWwGVXs4vsp0djWIPlTQs1TNRcMPIegiBnSJRQl44pX3ppTVYh-bQcGCWcbLeUyZaDHZg_KMtG4k1gSOVQpEez5HRUjFwLY0DKXDi2LK098zMGA/w640-h360/GAYS.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Or rather, most of the same things happen, lots of shots of people riding around, one or two scenes of people shooting at each other, and no more slapstick combat. That's what I mean about the film not being bad in a way its prospective audience would have wanted, because it looks like a knockabout comedy, but it barely is one. Oh, and the two swish-kabobs end up dressing like women and joining a dance-hall to escape their pursuers, The End.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Calling them "swish-kabobs" is specifically directed to the types the actors portray, for the two cowboys are swish-types all the way, possessed of no other characteristics. Yet, while one might expect a 1973 comedy to toss out a lot of demeaning jokes, NUNS really does not do that, any more than it makes the two guys-- the default stars of the show-- admirable in any way either. It's the most neutral depiction of gay characters I've ever seen.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Though production values look reasonably high, I knew none of the actors. I theorize, for what little it matters, that director Marcello Zeani-- who has only one other credit on IMDB-- was just handed a certain amount of money with which to take a crew to the Italian countryside and shoot enough footage to make a quickie release. And if it weren't for the ambivalent blessings of streaming TV, this mostly dull farrago would never have crossed my path.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-84428090512873188862024-02-26T16:22:00.000-08:002024-02-27T16:27:30.185-08:00THE HERMAN-HENRY CARTOONS (1944-46)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGbX_ogNmT9iCFJqd5CKPKHEWp_NQy-SCJuz19xfsxIgrZhge2p_FuvJjf6sSOEYQaq2bi22Eoyd6czH37jJvMGKXblwjEkyZNSZ-mvjuc33a5B90W_DiOBbfsswVYj63zXEAICg0uo5JLXhlfobjUpg-KCNUueMX7T02eSlsVNPSKnXRqFguWdroWrQ/s957/roos.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="957" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGbX_ogNmT9iCFJqd5CKPKHEWp_NQy-SCJuz19xfsxIgrZhge2p_FuvJjf6sSOEYQaq2bi22Eoyd6czH37jJvMGKXblwjEkyZNSZ-mvjuc33a5B90W_DiOBbfsswVYj63zXEAICg0uo5JLXhlfobjUpg-KCNUueMX7T02eSlsVNPSKnXRqFguWdroWrQ/w640-h482/roos.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">On broadcast TV, I had never seen the Famous Studios character of Herman the Mouse except in shorts where he tormented his partner-in-enmity Katnip the Cat, and even as a kid I didn't have a high opinion of them. But it was a (very minor) revelation when I learned today that Herman made his 1944 debut partnered with a far more obscure continuing character, Henry the Henpecked Rooster.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">HENPECKED ROOSTER sets up the standard Tough Wife scenario. Henry's a small, scrawny rooster, and his much bigger wife Chicken Pie can easily bully him into doing her home-chores. Then Herman the Mouse sashays in, and the Tough Wife screams for her hubby to get rid of the revolting rodent. Henry catches Herman in a cage (an important detail not here, but in the NEXT cartoon), but Herman talks fast, convincing Henry that he can rule the roost (heh) if he keeps Herman around and keeps Chicken Pie at arm's length. Once Chicken Pie figures out what's going on, she writes a letter to a "Mrs. Mouse." Minutes later, while Herman and Henry are celebrating their victory, Mrs. Mouse shows up and drags Herman away to his own marital hell. Chicken Pie winds up to massacre Henry, but he escapes, and dons a mouse costume, scaring her again. Yet a hungry cat renders Henry's triumph nugatory.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTsUnpTqlOfFyfu-TBcNPNk52zTgi8eaS0HgvkJpjcZBi5c74sFxcqLmGa8mry9oom-HEzJ6gEl0aITycmBb3G5rOzgG3AJpVkpToJ75Mi4jReXDclgncFZGnDwEqmbj9nHOtB9fiAmDV008sAi4bXhWzvxwBfI1TM_V_AYL0IGTPrpoHkxJX2DPjucA/s1435/scrap.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1435" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTsUnpTqlOfFyfu-TBcNPNk52zTgi8eaS0HgvkJpjcZBi5c74sFxcqLmGa8mry9oom-HEzJ6gEl0aITycmBb3G5rOzgG3AJpVkpToJ75Mi4jReXDclgncFZGnDwEqmbj9nHOtB9fiAmDV008sAi4bXhWzvxwBfI1TM_V_AYL0IGTPrpoHkxJX2DPjucA/w640-h482/scrap.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">SCRAPPILY MARRIED is almost a remake of HENPECKED, but this time Famous flashes a still showing Henry and Herman together in-frame, to indicate they're partners, though they seem to be meeting again for the first time. The main difference is that this time, Chicken Pie strikes back again the bonded males by dressing up in a cat costume. Herman sees through the charade and scares the Tough Wife away once more. But her next foray consists of getting a real cat to go after Herman. While Herman's busy with the feline, Chicken Pie once again almost massacres Henry. However, that mousetrap-cage is still around from the last cartoon, allowing Herman to entrap the cat and once more scare Chicken Pie away.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Z6wdt7NBRT0vSgZ_FGH_HBmpBy760u7P-EIJpuyYBUV4y5fA6kCVUlUC048Qldq1yVSHO64oyrsCMNWio1KCh4vLolfEUAQG3cKOnE2r1rff1hkAGHfIzO5Jgk4SPSW8ugwkF0VeHdhH7FTO9V5ovNofXX8dcbXWeeNxDYbz-gOtyLrE19vJz1xzqQ/s1435/sudden.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1435" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Z6wdt7NBRT0vSgZ_FGH_HBmpBy760u7P-EIJpuyYBUV4y5fA6kCVUlUC048Qldq1yVSHO64oyrsCMNWio1KCh4vLolfEUAQG3cKOnE2r1rff1hkAGHfIzO5Jgk4SPSW8ugwkF0VeHdhH7FTO9V5ovNofXX8dcbXWeeNxDYbz-gOtyLrE19vJz1xzqQ/w640-h482/sudden.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The final cartoon in the series, "Sudden Fried Chicken," is Herman and Henry's last original story. Herman sees a poster advertising a cash reward for anyone able to survive a full round with a burly boxing rooster, name of Hogan. The avaricious mouse thinks that if anyone's built up endurance to pain, it's Henry, and indeed, when Herman seeks out the happy couple's roots, he finds Chicken Pie slapping Henry around as usual (while making the expected jokes about her being a weak woman). Herman scares the Horrid Hen away and somehow talks Henry into getting into the ring, with the promise that if Henry wins, he'll be able to go around canoodling with hot chicks (meaning young hens this time). </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Boxer Hogan spends more than a minute of this seven-minute cartoon using Henry as a punching-bag. And as the laws of comedy dictate, it's only after Henry gets beat to a pulp that Herman finally pulls a cheat so that Hogan is knocked out. Nonetheless, Henry recovers in no time and the two friends celebrate with beer and skinny young hens. Then Chicken Pie shows up. Herman's presence scares her away, but from a distance she manages to knock him out of the room, so she can have some "alone time" with Henry. She spends far less time than Hogan did in slaughtering Henry with punches and clubbings, but she may be stronger than the boxer, because after her pummeling, the battered rooster ends up in the local hospital. While Herman visits him, the mouse brags about having clobbered Hogan-- who is of course in the next bed. Still, the short wraps up with Herman clobbering the boxer again, and the two buddies run off into the sunset. The duo may not be able to permanently cancel the power of a termagant wife, but at least they can get away from her.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"Sudden" was Henry's last rodeo, but Herman started getting solo cartoons the same year, 1946. And thus when the rotten rodent was teamed up with a prototypical version of Katnip (who had also appeared elsewhere) in 1947's NAUGHTY BUT MICE), this was a crossover of sorts-- which I'll discuss a little more in my "Crossover Madness" series.</span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-41140370171135307252024-02-24T16:56:00.000-08:002024-02-24T16:56:21.883-08:00THE ONE (2001)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF2E83boUcZZHaf0YM-1_-6UrxuqWgoijUm8NWRWfucnjAReSD0Pz3oLzPj7HXujtouXcMRy66-IgVn99rbgixQeEGOscFLxhV6W55TMjSAlom-J7Pw7FXeyRcMef4fbNKRu73rLyMridrs5-hNj_LkdyE8Pr5haDKvgXLsQoz86n50nBb0ua51CC4AA/s1500/oneooo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="986" data-original-width="1500" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF2E83boUcZZHaf0YM-1_-6UrxuqWgoijUm8NWRWfucnjAReSD0Pz3oLzPj7HXujtouXcMRy66-IgVn99rbgixQeEGOscFLxhV6W55TMjSAlom-J7Pw7FXeyRcMef4fbNKRu73rLyMridrs5-hNj_LkdyE8Pr5haDKvgXLsQoz86n50nBb0ua51CC4AA/w640-h420/oneooo.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *poor*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A lot of modern film-critics hate the concept of multiverses as popularized by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But seven years before IRON MAN, James Wong's THE ONE got there first-- sort of. Wong and writing-partner Glen Morgan, who'd done mostly TV episode work in the nineties, don't really use the concept of a multiverse as anything but a near-infinite hunting-ground for their villain Yulaw (Jet Li)-- and a way of motivating the evildoer's struggle against the hero (also Li).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The strucure of THE ONE is suspiciously similar to the franchise <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2023/03/highlander-1986.html">HIGHLANDER</a>, which arguably became more noteworthy as a TV show than as a movie series. The immortals of that franchise went around killing one another in order to reap the power of those slain. In Yulaw's case, he has some metaphysical connection with every other doppelganger of himself in the multiverse, and when he jaunts to other dimensions and kills a version of himself there, his kung fu becomes more powerful. Dimension-protecting agents Rodecker and Funsch (Delroy Lindo, Jason Statham) finally track down Yulaw after he's killed 123 other self-reflections, and now there's only one left, Gabe Law of Los Angeles. Predictably, Yulaw gets free and invades the Earth-dimension.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">There's a lot of running around and shooting until the film gets around between the Battle of the Two Lis, and Wong's direction is pedestrian, like the script. Wikipedia notes that the original star was projected to be Dwayne Johnson, and the substitution of Li in the two roles proves at least a moderate improvement. Because Li unlike Johnson is a martial performer, this obliged the script to distinguish the two foes on the basis of martial style, with Yulaw using aggressive, thrusting moves while Gabe uses more organic, cyclical stratagems. The film's ending stresses that Yulaw ends up in a hell of eternal battle while Gabe gets a new chance at love.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The film's most amusing moments are Jason Statham's scenes. Throughout the movie he painfully affects a neutral accent in place of his usual distinctive British lilt. He gets absolutely no chance to show off his own fighting skills in THE ONE, and even gets kicked around by Yulaw. This proves ironic since the two performers are situated as equal martial masters in the 2007 Statham-Li vehicle WAR. One year later, Statham broke out as a headliner in the first entry in the TRANSPORTER series, and I suspect THE ONE is one role he'd like to forget.</span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-460474552118769771.post-55814942116903877982024-02-24T16:26:00.000-08:002024-02-24T16:30:38.014-08:00CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT <p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMRkLfYlUZwT2WEWBOblXJwkQCFn6nx_3_F1wdJ4JS3zHICp-POXKIIhFh2ls2eb50Iy9GpnspchWgkv-4vJFSqPmUpjutarm_KfkevpXLjTjeR2b_08v2kvqVQrUZ8qD4N-as9TNlOwMP2vsLglZYNeAW8s4BeWIac7TQ8O7_gdMQ8BhLNzZJIAT0wA/s1000/chiklre.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMRkLfYlUZwT2WEWBOblXJwkQCFn6nx_3_F1wdJ4JS3zHICp-POXKIIhFh2ls2eb50Iy9GpnspchWgkv-4vJFSqPmUpjutarm_KfkevpXLjTjeR2b_08v2kvqVQrUZ8qD4N-as9TNlOwMP2vsLglZYNeAW8s4BeWIac7TQ8O7_gdMQ8BhLNzZJIAT0wA/w640-h480/chiklre.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*</span><br /><span>MYTHICITY: *fair*</span><br /><span>FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*</span><br /><span>CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span>CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, one of three films to emerge from the short-lived Fangoria Films production company, was also the third directorial effort from Tony Randel of <a href="http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2015/01/hellbound-hellraiser-ii-1988.html">HELLBOUND</a> fame. Randel also co-wrote the screenplay though an author named Nicholas Falacci seems to have been responsible for the original story.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">NIGHT is distinguished by a number of striking visual scenarios, some of which have strong mythopoeic content, but with too little story to weave them all together. Essentially, the concept is akin to Stephen King's 1975 'SALEM'S LOT, in which a small American town is overtaken by a vampire infestation, though the script for NIGHT is fuzzy about what brought the state of affairs about.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The proximate source of the infestation is Czakyr, a Rumanian vampire who somehow ended up in the Middle American town of Allberg. He had previously killed 400 victims, mostly kids, which makes me wonder if Falacci had read something about the real-life mass murderer Gilles de Rais. Many years previous he was either hiding in or caught in the crypt of a local church, and someone-- possibly a mysterious character played by Garrett Morris?-- somehow caused the church to get flooded, so that Czakyr became immobilized at the bottom of this "watery grave." However, two girls, Cindy and Lucy (Maya McLaughlin, Ami Dolenz) take it into their heads to go swimming in the flooded crypt one night, with references to the practice being a standard "rite of passage" for Allberg teens. Lucy drops her crucifix in the water and it sinks to strike and revive Czakyr. Lucy escapes the revived bloodsucker but he turns Cindy into one of the undead. Lucy goes into hiding while Czakyr implicitly vampirizes many though not everyone in the town, possibly with help from Cindy, who probably infects her mother Karen (Karen Black). </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In a neighboring town earnest young teacher Mark (Peter DeLuise) is seen counseling a young female student with a passion for horror stories. She's never seen again, after which Mark is summoned to Allberg by a Catholic priest named Father Frank (Evan McKenzie). Mark and Frank knew each other in seminary school, which Mark left to pursue teaching, but Frank more or less inducts Mark into becoming a full-time Van Helsing. Frank can't do it because he's got Karen and Cindy confined to a room, the latter submerged in a bath for some reason. So Mark is charged with locating Lucy. The young woman is the story's "virtuous Mina," the one that "Dracula" takes his time pursuing. She's also a virgin, which makes her desirable to Czakyr for some reason.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I'll pass over the other events of the story, because it's mostly lots of running around and vamp-stabbing until the climax, in which Mark manages to slay the king-vampire largely by dumb luck. The script, in addition to failing to explains lots of hows and wherefores, suffers from many jarring tonal changes, mostly from injecting lame moments of humor. I suspect Randel and his collaborators were told to yuk things up to court the perceived Fangoria audience, but there's no way to know. Morris' character, seemingly a delirious drunk, becomes one of the defenders of Allberg, and in the wrapup he suddenly sheds his alkie persona and becomes a well-dressed mover and shaker-- I guess because someone thought that was funny.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The mythicity of NIGHT probably wouldn't have been more than fair even without all the bad jokes, though. There's an interesting parallel between the vampire-lord who wants to turn Lucy (note the name) into his vampire bride, and Mark, who, while becoming her protector, is also incorrectly pegged, twice, as her boyfriend. And in one of those two scenes, Lucy's expression suggests she thinks she could do worse. But the story might have been more solid had the main hero been Father Frank, who's deeply guilty about his own transgressions. It seems Karen was the wife of Frank's now deceased brother, and that the two of them slept together while Frank's sibling was still alive. Thus Frank, a paternal priest, becomes a substitute husband/father to Karen and her daughter, and in a more ambitious scenario he might have been forced to atone for past sins by destroying a truly monstrous sinner. But Frank simply gets fanged by Vampire Karen and that's the end of the most interesting part of CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT.</span></p>Gene Phillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11495562795211277146noreply@blogger.com0