FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966)

 

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

Though I reread Ray Bradbury's book before re-screening Francois Truffaut's adaptation, I won't address most of the alterations. A few served to prune unnecessary excrescences like the Mechanical Hound. Others were more puzzling, like the director deciding that the two women in the life of rebellious protagonist Guy Montag (Oskar Werner) -- his near-catatonic wife and the young teacher who inspires Guy to investigate the forbidden activity of reading-- would both be played by Julie Christie. I thought this created the expectation that the teacher-character was going to be the wife's romantic replacement, when in truth Truffaut's film is almost as unconcerned with Eros as Bradbury's novel.

The most important difference is that, whereas Bradbury accurately said that 451 was the story of a man's romance with the world of reading, I don't think Truffaut captures much of RB's passion for books. I know nothing about how the 451 film came about or why Truffaut wanted/consented to take on the project. But what I see on the screen is Truffaut using RB's projection of book-burning fears as an excuse for a lot of arty futuristic visions.

In the prose 451 one of RB's main complaints is that future-humans have sacrificed their sense of an existential connection to the complexity of life-- what Bradbury calls "texture"-- by becoming over-fascinated with beguiling, superficial images. This critique works tolerably well when one is immersed in the texture of prose, but not so well when one watches a movie. For that reason, I felt Truffaut was less invested in the repressiveness of the book-burning firemen, and more with the hallucinatory entertainments in which Guy's wife Linda loses herself. Similarly, Truffaut wrote original scenes showing the scholastic experiences of Clarisse-- who's not a teacher of any kind in the book-- and working in scenes of her child-students, when the book lacks any significant children. Possibly Truffaut, who gained fame for a coming-of-age film, THE 400 BLOWS, just had a yen to show what education would look like a learning-bereft culture-- though if so, he didn't bring much to the table. Probably the only sequence in the film that cineastes cherish is the conclusion, wherein Guy finds his way to a colony of "book people," who show their dedication to the printed word by becoming living records of literature.

The book FAHRENHEIT 451 earned great regard with what I would call "elitist critics," those who validate fiction only when it puts forth some utilitarian intellectual proposition. 451 the movie does not quite so beloved by the intellectually arid, though it is one of the first commercial films within the SF-genre that ought to be deemed "elitist art." Perhaps the Truffaut work, with its roots in ironic storytelling, loses something even for those readers, as soon as it's contrasted with the immense passion within Bradbury's sci-fi drama.                   

SCANNERS III: THE TAKEDOWN (1992)

 

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

Despite having the same director and writer as SCANNERS: THE NEW ORDER, the second sequel to SCANNERS doesn't rise to the level of competent genre-material. It does give viewers many scenes of Scanners tossing people around with telekinesis, but it screws up the psychological motifs that could have made for a better film than the original.

It's still roughly 10 years from the time of the original film, and though I don't remember much about NEW ORDER, it seemed odd to me that the general public now knows what Scanners are and what they can do. Some time back Elton Monet, a scientist who's been researching the Scanner phenomenon, adopted and raised to maturity two European kids, Alex (Steve Parrish) and Helena (Liliana Komorowska). Both have the requisite psychic powers, but for some reason the script doesn't venture to explain, Alex suffers none of the usual side-effects of his in utero mutation. In fact, at a party whose attendees all know what Alex is, the partygoers ask Alex to perform a trick with his powers. The trick results in a friend's accidental death, so Alex goes off to a Thailand monastery to learn how to control his powers. A better script might have made more of Alex's search for spiritual clarity, but the Thai-trek is just a plot-point.

To be sure, Alex gets secondary status because Helena is the star of the show. The young woman-- who incidentally remains friends with Valerie, Alex's ex-girlfriend-- suffers migraines whether she uses her powers or not. Her adoptive father reveals a new project: chemical patches that may be capable, after adequate testing, of eradicating the Scanner side-effects. However, Helena steals the patches to anneal her suffering. In nearly no time, the untested tech unleashes Helena's "Miss Hyde." She kills her adoptive father and enlists a small army of institutionalized Scanners to become her agents, and one of the first things she does is to send her pawns to Thailand to kill Alex.

Perhaps the dumbest subplot involves Helena to get revenge upon a scientist at Elton's institute who tortured her when she was a young girl-- wait, what? What was Elton doing at the time, and how did the guy get away with such actions? I think the writer might have been evoking the old "good father's who's really a bad father" trope. But he lacked the guts to give Elton such a personality, so this nugatory scientist was used to provoke Helena to vengeful violence.

Naturally Alex and his girlfriend save the day from the bad sister. Since the FX scenes are only fair, the sole reason to watch TAKEOVER is to watch Komorowska pull out all stops as a psychic super-villain.        

ORGY OF THE VAMPIRES (1973)

 

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

The alternate title for this film, VAMPIRE'S NIGHT ORGY, is closer to the original Italian title. But what's the point of emphasizing "night" when the movie's main conceit is that Tolnio, the town where all the "orgies" take place, is so overcast that vampires and other horrors can walk around with no problems.

The little I've read about director Leon Klimovsky suggests that he had no great enthusiasm for horror but simply regarded the movies as routine labors. I've seen all but two of his fear-films and regard only THE WEREWOLF AND THE VAMPIRE WOMAN as better than average, though that was probably because the writers stuffed the narrative with so many incidents that the movie seemed dream-like. But there's nothing dream-like, or even very sexy (save for one scene) about ORGY.

 This time the reigning vampire-aristocrat, the Countess (Helga Line), doesn't plan to "pull up stakes." So instead of just inviting one outsider to her dismal domain as did a certain Count, she sends for a half-dozen professionals to service her mansion. Most of these earnest jobseekers are cannon fodder for the horrors of Tolnio, and even the leads Luis and Alma (Jack Taylor, Dianik Zurakowska) are pretty one-note. This wouldn't be a problem if the starring monsters were more interesting, but they're almost as desultory in execution.

What are the monsters of Tolnio? Well, the Countess is a fangs-and-all vampire, but she seems to be the only one. All of the other townsfolk seem to hanker more after flesh than blood, and I could easily believe that ORGY started out as a "town of cannibals" idea to which someone added a vampire to snare the lovers of sanguinary specters. But despite the addition of a measly subplot about some sort of "ghost boy," the Countess' scemes are the only one that inject some "life" (so to speak) in the dull proceedings.

In one scene, the Countess (quite fetching though the actress was pushing forty) seduces the twenty-something tutor, beds hi, fangs him, and then tosses him to her cannibal minions. She doesn't seem worried about other feedings, for she doesn't attack anyone else until the climax. As Luis and Alma steal a car and flee the evil town, the Countess stows herself in the back seat and waits till they're driving to attack. Alma kills the vampiress with a handy stake, but her body dissolves into worms and mold. And when the couple takes the nearest constables to the site of the murders-- no Tolnio, nor even a vague rumor of some cursed place that once existed there. Aside from the pulchritude of the two primary Euro-babes, this is one dull ORGY.             

RAWHIDE: "INCIDENT OF THE BLUE FIRE" (1959)

 

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

Like INCIDENT OF THE PALE RIDER, BLUE FIRE is one of a handful of tales from the early seasons of RAWHIDE that use uncanny scenarios to throw doubt upon the substantial and rational aspects of the world.

Gil Favor's band of hard-working drovers and the cattle they shepherd are far from civilization when they encounter the "blue fire" of the title. The electrical phenomenon is said to herald lightning-strikes, but the drovers don't need the azure discharge to tell them that they stand in peril of a stampede, if the prevalent storm clouds should panic the easily spooked "beeves." Favor assures his men that the "St. Elmo's fire" is harmless, but the fact that he, like other 19th-century cowboys, don't know what the hell it is makes the situation even more unnerving. The terminally superstitious Hey Soos makes things no better by maundering about deaths and devils.

Into the drovers' camp comes an individual who becomes a flashpoint for all the cowboys' inchoate fears: a footloose fellow named "Lucky" Markley. Markley himself is a would-be drover, as he tries to sell Favor a tiny herd of scrub cattle he's rounded up. The cows are of such inferior stock that Favor won't have them. However, because they're in the midst of marauding Comanches, the trial-boss allows Markley to work for him as a drover, at least until they reach some civilized port. Unfortunately for Favor, Hey Soos openly disparages Markley as the harbinger of bad luck, and the rest of the men are just as leery of the stranger.

 Markley (affably played by Skip Homeier) does nothing to provoke this hostility, though he makes one arguable error. While he and another drover are rounding up a stray steer, three Comanches accost them, demanding not only the steer but also Markley's horse. Markley shoots one brave, and the other two flee, but return later with a larger contingent of Comanches. The drovers resent Markley for bringing on more trouble, though the Comanches probably would have sought to plunder the herd no matter what happened. The men want Markley cast out. Favor alone defends the man, so much so that even Markley wonders why the trail-boss protects him, given that Favor owes Markley nothing. Favor tells a tale of having lost a young male companion during a round-up due to "bad luck," and it's implied that Favor believes in determining life by one's own actions, not through beliefs in good or ill fortune. It's this novel approach that keeps FIRE from being just a dime-a-dozen "it is wrong to give in to mob rule" morality play.

The stunning conclusion suggests that Favor's view is too simple. Finally, just as the Comanches move in for a raid, lightning strikes and the cattle stampede. Only a skillful maneuver has the chance to box the cattle in and quell their rampage, and Lucky Markley performs the deed-- sort of. The viewer alone sees how Markley, riding his cowpony, is struck in the head by lightning, killing him-- and yet, somehow horse and rider curtail the stampede, as well as scaring off the Indian raiders. Later the drovers find both horse and rider. The horse is dead from falling and breaking his neck, but there's nothing to indicate how the so-called "jonah" died, except slight burn-marks on the back of his neck. Was Favor's "favored son" killed, only to complete his task despite being a dead man in the saddle? The episode ends with no pat answers for anyone and thus stands as one of the very best "weird westerns" ever produced for television.         

X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME FIVE (1996-97)

 

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

Season Four was supposed to be the final one for the 90s X-MEN, but ten more episodes were ordered, albeit without giving the production company much money. So some of the episodes were done in-house to save money-- and oddly, I like some of these better than any from the previous seasons.

I said in my first review of the series that I could never celebrate the show because it wasn't "my" X-Men. But I also wasn't crazy about the series' concentration on action-- even well-mounted action-- at the expense of characterization. (Admittedly the cartoon arguably did the soap-opera thing better than did the live-action movie series.) In any case, the last 14 episodes on Volume 4-- which of course mingles stories from both Seasons 4 and 5-- sometimes show a greater emotional tonality than I've observed before. For instance:

Most of the episodes are so action-heavy that there's no time for romance. But the two-part "Storm Front" posits a (non-canonical) hookup between Storm and the extradimensional tyrant Arkon. Here I appreciated some scenes that lingered on the bodies of the two principals, playing up their mutual visceral attraction before any sweet nothings were uttered.

"Old Soldiers" explores Wolverine's early (pre-clawed) years in WWII, when he undertakes a special mission alongside Captain America. Nice interplay between the very different characters without resorting to a hero-fight.

Another tale feels like Claremont in his more playful phases, with Jubilee entertaining some kids with a fairytale-fantasy in which unreasonable facsimiles of the X's appear.

 "Bloodlines," a follow-up to Nightcrawler's previous guest appearance, stands as the best story of all five seasons, being a very accurate translation of his abandonment by his mutant-villain mother Mystique. This version of the hero is a moody religious fellow rather than the daredevil type from the comics, but the contrast between Nightcrawler's faith and Mystique's nihilism is well handled.

Finally, the real final episode, "Graduation Day," present the heroic mutants with the strong possibility that they may have to carry on without Professor X, A last minute contrivance saves the Prof, but he's still obliged to leave Earth, and so the sense of a dramatic transition remains.            

   

  

FIVE WOMEN FOR THE KILLER (1974)

 

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

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

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

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

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

STARFORCE (2000)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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