THE SHADOW (1994)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

              

       

LUPIN III: MISSED BY A DOLLAR (2000)

 

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

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

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

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

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

TAOISM DRUNKARD (1984)

 

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

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

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

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

  

ONE ARMED SWORDSWOMAN (1972)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                       

FLYER AND MAGIC SWORD (1970)

 

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

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

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

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

STAR TREK: PICARD (SEASON TWO, 2022)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

          

CONSTANTINE-- THE SERIES (2014-15)

 

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

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

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

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