LUPIN III: LEGEND OF THE GOLD OF BABYLON (1985)

 

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

LEGEND, the third feature-film centered upon the LUPIN III franchise, is yet another treasure-hunt tale, and like many of the 1980s iterations, LEGEND follows the goony-cartoony approach of the Monkey Punch comics rather than the more streamlined adventures of later years. At the same time, there are odd mythopoeic elements here that don't often turn up in either the original manga or in the 1960s gangland stories helmed by one of LEGEND's two credited directors, Seijun Suzuki. Of the two writers, one worked on one Suzuki crime-film and several "pink" movies, while the other seems to have been more invested in television animation projects.

So there's a treasure being hunted by the Lupin Gang (included their on-off ally Fujiko) and by the Mafia, while in turn Inspector Zenigata is on Lupin's trail. There's nothing unusual about the treasure being some remnant of humankind's earliest generations, this time being a fabulous golden trove from ancient Babylon. But the script gives the treasure-trove a grounding in archaic myth: to wit, that in some bygone age, the supreme god of the Babylonians ordered his worshippers to gather together all of their gold into a great mountain, which the deity-- usually just called "God"-- then attempted to lift into heaven. But "God" dropped the tower of gold so that it fell into the uninhabited wilderness of the New World and was buried far beneath the earth of what would much later become New York City. Centuries later, both Lupin and the Mafia learn from ancient cuneiform tablets the possible location of the treasure, and they begin vying to seize the gold. In fact, the first time the viewer sees "Fujiko" seeking to find out what Mafia don Marciano knows about the bounty, the "mountains of Fuji" turn out to be an inflatable disguise worn by none other than Lupin. 

Now it's impossible to conjure with the image of a Babylonian mountain of gold and not think of the Old Testament's account of the so-called Tower of Babel. I don't remember what the LEGEND script says about the Biblical Tower, if anything, but I'm sure we never hear the canonical story in toto:

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. -- Genesis 11: 4-9.

Now, I'll concede that all the twaddle about the Babylonian God-- actually some sort of alien entity-- picking up the gold-mountain and dropping it was first and foremost a writer's means of getting the treasure from the Old World to the New. However, the basic idea of a deity taking some person or object into heaven follows the pattern of humans sacrificing goods to their deities. The original Tower of Babel story follows a parallel but opposing course: mortals are building a great tower that seems to reach to the heavens. God seems vaguely threatened by the project and confuses the languages of the builders so that the tower is never finished. (Some later retellings added the elaboration of the tower being cast down.)

However, the LEGEND script has an extra ET-fillip to add to its "was God an astronaut" concept. During Lupin's peregrinations he keeps encountering a wizened old woman, Rosetta, who makes weird claims about having lived for centuries while simultaneously offering her body to the flustered master thief. No viewer will be surprised to learn that Rosetta isn't just a crazed Earthwoman, and that she's really an ET who's been stranded on Earth since the age of Babylon. The script is never clear about how Rosetta got marooned-- though it would be logical if she was somehow compromised by the same difficulty that caused the gold-mountain to fall back to Earth. It's also never clear why the ET-ship left behind both Rosetta and the mountain and only visited the planet Earth at specific intervals; intervals that Lupin coordinates with the re-appearance of Halley's Comet. Maybe the basic idea was that the ET-ship was entirely automated. This might account for why it kept returning in mechanical fashion, and maybe for why Rosetta needs Lupin's help to gain access to the ship again. In the big climax, Rosetta transforms back into her natural form-- a space-babe, of course-- and she also tries to spirit away the golden treasure (with no mention as to why her people wanted the mineral). However, though Rosetta is able to return to her people (implicitly), she loses control of the treasure, which spills back down upon Earth. I think the script meant to imply that the gold was up for grabs to whoever could get it, so that this time, the Lupin Gang doesn't make an exceptional score.

The obsessed Zenigata furnishes some good laughs. After the inspector bungles catching Lupin in New York at the film's opening, his superior not only takes him off the Lupin case, he forces Zenigata to provide security for a New York beauty contest. Then, by a really weird conceit even for a cartoon movie, the superior gets in trouble for allegedly fixing the contest, so he placates the five runners-up by... talking them into becoming policewomen who help Zenigata track down Lupin again? The young women seem to get into their mission despite being saddled with the inept inspector, and a Chinese kung-fu beauty named Qing briefly tries to conquer Goemon, though she makes more impact on the samurai's heart than on his body. In fact, Lupin gets most of the good LEGEND scenes, with Fujiko and Jigen getting short shrift, while Goemon's most memorable scene has him dueling with a bolt of lightning. Clearly the writers were less beguiled with the regular Lupin gags than with their ambitious story of an astronaut/"god" who manages to leave behind a buried sacrificial treasure and its custodian, who looks like a "loathly lady" until she's reunited with her "dragon-hoard." But while LEGEND doesn't achieve the mythic concrescence of the better Lupin movies, unpredictable Lupin is always better than the predictable kind.                                      

           

HEAVENLY SWORD (2014)

 

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

Though there aren't many high-mythicity sword-and-sorcery works in the world of live-action movies, there seem to be even fewer in animation. This situation seems counter-intuitive, since animation in theory would allow producers to get around some of the expense of FX in live-action productions. And HEAVENLY SWORD, a CGI adaptation of a 2007 videogame, certainly looks better than the average animated magical-era fantasy. And for once, the characterization is much better than the average sword-fantasy. So why does it fall short?

I don't know what elements in the screenplay might have come from the RPG and which might have come from scripter Todd Farmer. Given that Farmer's career has not been that outstanding, it's not likely that he added much of his own to the mix. Still, unlike a lot of S&S/D&D animated flicks, SWORD actually comes to a decisive conclusion with respect to the main hero's arc, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

There's a novel idea at the core of SWORD, and it relates to the titular object. Thousands of fantasies have been built around the concept of a "miracle weapon" which is the only means by which the good guys can overcome the superior forces of the bad guys. But SWORD at least poses the question as to how even fundamentally good people might make bad choices in seeking to fulfill destiny.

The Heavenly Sword was previously used to rout an evil deity in the fantasy-verse, so there's no doubt as to how powerful the blade is. However, it contains a supernatural power that can burn out an ordinary person seeking to use the sword. The usual dire prophecy asserts that a Chosen One alone can master the weapon, but how does one find-- or make-- such a Chosen One? Lord Shen, whose warrior-clan has custody of the Sword, tries to beget a Chosen One by inseminating various mothers. But since Shen believes that the only possible champion must be male, he's distressed when his only two children are both female. Nariko at least grows up knowing that Shen is his father, even if he deems her a failure, but Nariko doesn't know about Shen's other attempts. She does grow up in the clan alongside a best female buddy, the eccentric Kai-- only to belatedly learn that Kai is her half-sister.

Then Nariko and Kai must go on the run with the magic sword, for the tyrant Bolan invades the clan's stronghold, seeking the powerful weapon. Almost accidentally, the two females get a new mission beyond just keeping the sword safe, for they learn that Shen did beget a son, whom they presume to be the Chosen One. So this time the heroes must make a quest not for the magic weapon but for the only person who can wield it. Further, Nariko never doubts that the prophecy is true, for every time she uses the sword in self-defense, it drains her energy and threatens her life.

I won't reveal the question of just who the Chosen One really is, or further revelations about the Sword's nature. But even in the extroverted context of the story-- which includes a prison-break as well as the central quest-- there are a lot of good character moments for the two heroines. I downgrade SWORD's mythicity a trifle because it doesn't have any concept as to why the Sword's nature is as it is, which might have provided an apt counterpoint to Nariko and Kai's problematic relationships with their father.

Nevertheless, in terms of blade-action alone, SWORD is excellent, particularly a battle in which Nariko takes on a bulky warrior who fights by turning himself into an "armor-dillo." And the aforementioned conclusion is well-handled, demonstrating that there can be costs for even good guys when they mess around with the powers of heaven.     

THE MYSTERIOUS MAGICIAN (1964)

 

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

Opinions seem divided as to where DER HEXER, the "krimi" adaptation of Edgar Wallace's 1925 book THE RINGER, stands. Some reviews call it one of the worst of its ilk, others, one of the best. My take is somewhere in the middle: MAGICIAN is an enjoyable romp without a lot of substance.

A young woman is gruesomely murdered and her body gets tossed in the Thames. When Scotland Yard investigates, it's discovered that the victim possesses an indirect celebrity: she's the sister of a professional assassin, the Ringer-- whose name in German became "hexer," meaning magician or wizard. (The English dub uses the latter term, even though the movie's title uses the former.) He's called the Ringer because he's got an uncanny ability to assume many disguises in order to knock off his targets. The movie's vague about what the Yard knows about the Ringer: on one hand, they have the info that he was somehow exiled from Britain, yet no one knows what he looks like sans disguises. Perhaps the book's more consistent on that point.

I would guess that the book doesn't inject as many allusions to sex as MAGICIAN does. For instance, from Goodreads reviews I know that though the book-version of the story has the sister killed for discovering some skullduggery, MAGICIAN has her find out that her employer's involved in white slavery. Similarly, I'll bet the main character of the book isn't as much of a "player" as Joachim Fuchsberger's Inspector Higgins-- for all that the cop's engaged to a pert young miss named Elise (Sophie Hardy). The overall sexiness of the film stands in contrast to the comparatively higher quotient of violence in many krimis: only the opening murder and the Ringer's killing of the big boss-- with a sword-cane through his heart-- caught my attention.  

Edgar Wallace created a fair number of oddly named masterminds in his career, but the Ringer's only an "uncanny villain" by virtue of his power of disguise-mastery. It's suggested that the cops covertly admire the assassin because he's only targeted other criminals, and indeed the Ringer is really the star of the story, more than any of his pursuers. I can't speak for the book, but the movie ends with the assassin escaping after killing the last of the white slavers. I don't think Wallace usually resurrected his criminals for any encores, but Goodreads also informs me that the author also published a collection of stories, ALIAS THE RINGER.        

EL ROJO (1966)

 

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

The "fair mythicity" rating on EL ROJO isn't at all for the generally routine spaghetti-western plot, but for an assortment of odd little touches writer-director Leopoldo Savona throws into the mix. 

We open on the scene of a wagon-train family arriving at the site of their newly acquired land, where they intend to work a gold mine. Then everyone in the family gets shot dead by arrows-- yet we don't see any marauding Indians about. Years later, four stalwart citizens of a nearby town are celebrating how rich they are before the admiring townfolk. Then a mysterious arrow is shot from an unknown Indian assailant, just missing the luminaries-- all on the very same day that a laconic stranger named Joe (Richard Harrison) arrives in town. Can there be a connection between all of these events?

No surprises here: the four rich guys-- Navarro, Wallace, Laskey and Ortega-- made their riches by killing off the family of goldminers and then by acquiring their mine. However, one member of the family wasn't there to be slaughtered, and it's the laconic stranger named Joe, who's looking for revenge. The Indian sniper, who has no lines in the picture, witnessed the slaughter of the family. Maybe the association of their bloody deaths is why Joe is called "Rojo" just once-- not counting a very oblique reference at the movie's end.

Though Joe has four obnoxious targets for his revenge-- one of whom, Laskey, married a local girl, Consuelo, who was apparently Joe's girl at some time-- director Savona doesn't play up the action/violence scenes as one might expect of a 1966 spaghetti western. Yet ROJO does maintain a curious offbeat charm in some little details Savona throws in. On a couple of occasions, Joe offers cubes of sugar to acquaintances and never explains where he picked up this habit. During one of Joe's revenge-plots, an accomplice-- also a patent-medicine peddler-- sets up a means of distracting the town by offering to burn the Devil in effigy, an odd ritual that the locals immediately embrace. Joe snipes at Consuelo for having sold her soul to one of the rich guys, and the script seems to agree with Joe, for unlike the majority of spaghetti-heroines Consuelo bites the dust.

However, the oddest thing in ROJO is also the only element that makes the film an uncanny western. At one point, a gunhawk comes to town, wearing a black mask over the lower part of his face-- except once, when he removes the scarf and displays an extensive scar that would do Jonah Hex proud. One assumes that one of the villains summoned the outlaw, not least because he's billed as "Nero Burt"-- in English, "Black Bart." Yet Bart (Angelo Boscariol) doesn't make any moves on Rojo. Then, near the movie's end, when Joe has wiped out the last enemy, Bart shows up and utters some cryptic line to Joe about how "the red and the black are together at last." Then the movie just ends, implying-- possibly-- some equivalence between the righteous vengeance-seeker and the Man in Black.

Savona directed four or five westerns I've not seen, some period historicals and one horror movie with the wild-sounding title, "Byleth the Demon of Incest." I may check out other sagebrush sagas in Savona's ouevre to see if any of them are as oddball as ROJO.                 

         

HULK AND THE AGENTS OF SMASH, SEASON TWO (2014-15)

 

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

The second and last season of HULK/SMASH is almost indistinguishable from the first. In fact, the first six episodes of Season Two deal with the Smashers getting "lost in space" following events in one of the last Season One episodes. I'm not sure that these agglomeration of Hulks were well-suited to cosmic adventures with the Skrulls, the Silver Surfer and Ego the Living Planet. But the space-stuff doesn't last that long if one doesn't like it.

Much as with Season One, the weakest stories are usually those that try a little too hard to be humorous, like "A Druff is Enough," in which the impulsive A-Bomb takes a cute little alien aboard the Smashers' spaceship, with the expected chaotic results. Two different stories deal with villains seeking to drain gamma energy from one or more of the Hulks. but I confess I didn't notice the plot duplication the first time out. Arguably, there might be slightly less usage of standard Marvel villains this season, concentrating mostly on the Green Hulk's main villain The Leader, the Kree leader the Supreme Intelligence, and The Maestro, an insane time-variant of the Hulk himself. Season Two also includes a version of "Nick Fury's Howling Commandos." who had previously appeared on a contemporaneous SPIDER-MAN episode. But the most noteworthy story involves the Smashers teaming with the Avengers to oppose the Kree, which conflict concludes somewhat after the fashion of the "Kree-Skrull War" from a 1970s AVENGERS continuity.    

There are a smattering of stories about the Smashers feeling ambivalent about being both "heroes" and "monsters," but this conceit doesn't go very deep. The level of characterization is always light and breezy, like many (though not all) Silver Age Marvels. However, there's a less salutary likeness to Sixties Marvel in that the group's one female member gets short narrative shrift, just like certain femmes formidables of the comics, principally Scarlet Witch in AVENGERS and Marvel Girl in X-MEN. Overall, the SMASH series isn't so much notable for doing great new stuff as for not getting things wrong as do many other Marvel animated adaptations.

          

NIGHT FRIGHT (1967), TOP LINE (1988)

 

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

Despite having lots of trash-films to choose from on streaming channels, I can't help checking out the various junk offered on the Mill Creek collections. I haven't found anything outstanding yet, even in a "so bad it's good" way. Yet at least sometimes even crap gives me exercise in finding a new way to condemn it.

I'd seen the cheapie "teens vs space monster" flick NIGHT FRIGHT broadcast on TV long ago and remembered nothing about it but a general negative impression. And there really was almost nothing to remember. It's at least a small curiosity that this dull 1967 drive-in fodder got re-released on some 1980s video label with a new title, implying that FRIGHT might be a more violent version of Spielberg's E.T. 

Most of the film involves a gorilla-like monster who emerged from a "spaceship" stomping around a rural town and killing off a few generally "clean" teens, before the sheriff (John Agar, the only "name" actor) brings the creature down. No one else can act their way out of a paper bag, and the monster is only shot in darkness, probably to conceal the suit's zipper. One small novelty in the script is that the monster isn't an alien. According to an explanation by the town's high-school professor-- who was apparently involved with the US space program at some time-- the creature is an Earth-animal, possibly a real gorilla, whom American scientists experimented on so that it could survive in outer space. So the "spaceship" was American-made, but it was launched with, what, zero publicity?  Frankly, the 1959 origin of DC's monster-ape Titano-- also an Earth-anthropoid sent into space, where he got special powers-- makes this bland piece of tedium look pretty sad.

     

TOP LINE, an actual eighties movie, is at least lively if no more consistent than NIGHT FRIGHT. 

Italian writer-director Nello Rossati had worked on at least two decent junk-movies known to me: the Ursula Andress sex-flick THE SENSUOUS NURSE and DJANGO STRIKES AGAIN, the only legitimate sequel to the 1960s DJANGO. I suspect that Franco Nero's association with TOP LINE was born of having worked with Rossati on the DJANGO sequel. The poster makes TOP look like another Indiana Jones clone, but what viewers got was an erratic, confusing "thriller" about an author and his girlfriend who discover that there are aliens among us.

What's the nature of the aliens, and what are they doing on Earth? Why do various government agencies pursue Author Ted and gal-pal June (Nero and Debrah Moore) to keep them from revealing the aliens' dubious secrets to the public? Why did guys like William Berger and George Kennedy consent to do glorified cameos here? Maybe this nonsense would have been more bearable if Nero and Moore had played a tough guy and girl like the leads of RAIDERS. Then, TOP might have been a decent "Indiana Clone." But all the stars do here is run away a lot. There are just two diverting scenes. In one, the protagonists are pursued by a Terminator-like robot, but they manage to thwart the automaton by luring him into the horns of a dilemma-- a dilemma consisting of a savage bull. In the other, Ted finds out the hard way that his ex-wife is one of the aliens, and that she's actually a lizard-like humanoid in Earth-disguise. Rossati doesn't write any memorable dialogue here, but Nero sells the scene with his look of horror, implicitly at having slept with a lizard-lady without catching on to any difference. The bottom line is that TOP LINE is pretty close to the bottom, but Moore and Nero keep this crap from being as stinky as many other timewasters.

            

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR (1995)

 

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

In my review of the 1986 anime adaptation of this ultraviolent shonen manga, I gave that flick a "fair" mythicity rating, but only because the makers were loosely keyed into some of the philosophical concepts behind certain forms of the martial arts. That said, it was still just a garden-variety fantasy-adventure, in which a brooding hero wandered around a devastated earth, dispensing violent justice to depraved criminals and madmen. I think director Tony Randel and writer Peter Atkins-- reunited since their teaming on HELLRAISER II, which was also the best film on both of their resumes-- tried as best they could to make a decent time-killer on a very modest budget. But the results were less consequential than the sort of efficient-if-average American chopsockies for which star Gary Daniels became best known, such as BLOODMOON and HAWK'S VENGEANCE.

Randel's direction has been attacked by some fans, but he closely followed the storytelling example of his template, as much as did the NORTH STAR anime. The manga, being a typical shonen of the 1980s, leavens its bloody mayhem with scenes of the tormented hero Kenshiro (Daniels) brooding over his sufferings. His stoicism is expressly contrasted with the freakish fiends who sadistically prey upon the weak and helpless, not least a pair of winsome children. Randel and Atkins deliver pretty much the same content in their live-action movie, but somehow it doesn't ring as true as some of the better (but still average) post-apoc films in the Western tradition. It's true that the actors playing the main villain's nasty henchmen, such as Chris Penn and Clint Howard, mug horribly. But such roles don't generally allow for any nuance, so that's not really the performers' fault.

The live-action film's main problem may be writer Atkins' inability to do anything interesting with main villain Shin (Costas Mandylor). He's pretty much the standard ruthless conqueror who plans to rebuild a shattered world in his own image, but his only personal aspect is his history with Kenshiro. Years previous to the film's "present," Shin coveted Julia (Isako Washio), girlfriend of Kenshiro and challenged Kenshiro to possess her. Though both are masters of their respective styles-- "North Star" and "Southern Cross"-- Shin won the battle. The villain then departs with his prize and leaves the hero alive. This is a pretty good reason for the hero to brood, but in most chopsockies, the humiliated protagonist trains like a demon to overcome his enemy in a return match. If Kenshiro trains in the time between his defeat and his rematch, it wasn't depicted-- and I don't think the 1986 anime shows anything similar either. 

Randel's film is also undermined in that Kenshiro's signature move involves rapid-fire blows to his opponent, which transmit such massive stress to a human form as to cause it to explode. Animation can make this fantasy seem persuasive, but in live action, even a greater budget for practical effects could not have pulled off this stunt. So it all comes down to Daniels and Mandylor slugging it out in a boring and predictable climax. The only good thing about the film is, as I said earlier, that it did lead to Daniels-- a mediocre actor but a quality martial artist-- making other films that weren't as ambitious but did not, so to speak, have as far to fall.