MULAN (1998)

 

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

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

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

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

                  

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

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

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

    

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

PIRATES OF DARK WATER (1991-93)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

               

           

VIRTUAL COMBAT (1995)

 

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

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

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

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

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

NIGHT OF THE GHOULS (1959)

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

                      

                    

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

 

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

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

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

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

Will follows Jack Sparrow to find Jack's compass,

And they use the compass to find a key,

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

And in the chest they find a heart

From another chest, that of Davy Jones,

And with that heart they can win their desires--

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

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

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

          

THE FOX WITH A VELVET TAIL (1971)

 

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

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

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

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

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