SANTO AND BLUE DEMON VS. DR. FRANKENSTEIN (1974)

 

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

Though none of the Santo films are what I'd generally call "good movies," a number of them are at least spirited nonsense. So after watching this one, I searched my brain for a way of conveying how deadly dull this Silver Mask opus was. I came up with this:

"It's the first luchador film I ever saw where the ring-fights were better than the ones in which the wrestlers are fighting real criminals and monsters."

It's bad enough that the Frankensteinian doctor, supposedly the grandson of the original (yeah, if he lived in the early 20th century, maybe), sports the first name "Irving," and that he's NOT played for comedy. On top of that, Irwin isn't content with cobbling together his own hulking piecemeal monster-- a big black dude named "Golem." He's also abducting pretty young girls for the purpose of using their brains into the head of his dead wife. But after the film's first 20 minutes he forgets all about this gambit, preferring to unleash some of his brain-dead female victims on the public. Moreover, he becomes obsessed with beating Santo, even though it seemed that if the mad doctor didn't attack the wrestler and his partner Blue Demon, the heroes would never have had the first clue as to where to find the villain.

The few action scenes outside the ring are boring set-ups, and the only time the heroes fight Golem is in an end-sequence in the ring, for which Irving conceals the monster's skin-color so that he won't be recognized (?) The two leading ladies are cuter than average, and there's one nice scene in which Golem walks into a hail of police gunfire. The mad doctor spoils the scene somewhat by claiming that the monster can survive gunfire because he's wearing bulletproof clothes-- immediately begging the question as to what would happen if the terrified cops just shot Golem in the head!

FARSCAPE: THE PEACEKEEPER WARS (2004)

 

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

The producers of the FARSCAPE series set up so many unresolved plotlines at the end of Season 4 that one assumes they thought a fifth season was a slam-dunk. The SYFY Channel did not renew the expensive series, but an earnest fan campaign encouraged the money-men to open their wallets just enough for this three-hour, two-part wrap-up.

While I was certainly glad to see all or most of the dangling plotlines resolved-- particularly the one with which Season 4, wherein both Crichton and Aeryn are vaporized-- the thing I noticed most about the wrap-up is that the characters don't spend most of the time yelling at one another. In my review of Season One, I observed that FARSCAPE could have easily been subtitled "Not STAR TREK." On the upside, this overall attitude kept the characters from descending into the platitudinous goody-goodness of the later TREK characters. On the downside, there was so much sturm and drang between the crew of the Moya that there was only rarely a sense of esprit d'corps, or even much of a sense that the characters even liked each other. But since the writers must have known that PEACEKEEPER could be the last hurrah of the FARSCAPE franchise-- which, as of this writing, it still is-- they seem to have bent over backward to make them more congenial to one another. Naturally, there's more bonding between Crichton and Aeryn once their molecules get reassembled and Aeryn gives birth to their child-- though, in between those two events, the child is accidentally transferred into the body of grouchy Rygel (easily the best-ever use of his role as comedy relief). D'Argo and Chiana rekindle their own romance, though it's one destined for a poignant doom, and though some characters are shown the door quickly-- Jool, who apparently dies but doesn't get a death-scene as such-- others, like Stark and Sikozu, get some minor defining arcs. 

Since I was not a fan of having Scorpius join Moya's crew even on the most tentative status, I was pleased that here he's back with the power-hungry Peacekeepers, along with the ambitious Grayza. However, as the title says, war has erupted between the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans, and both groups pursue Moya with the aim of acquiring the wormhole knowledge from Crichton's brain.

The story does finally deliver on the long-deferred promise to reveal the Big Wormhole Secret, and it's thematically congruent with the series' frequently repeated criticism of centralized power (another point of departure from TREK). There's also an interesting exploration of the early history of the humanoid Peacekeepers, who became an authoritarian force after splitting off from their near relations, the Eidolons-- whose fundamental ability to negotiate proves crucial to Crichton's real destiny; to save the madding crowds of aliens from their own pride and selfishness. 

After watching PEACEKEEPER, I was mildly regretful that the regular series hadn't managed to find a middle ground in their depiction of character conflict, wherein the vivid personas might have clashed while still showing amity and respect for one another. Nevertheless, the series was a good ride overall, and the wrap-up crossed the finish line in an exemplary fashion.

THE FIST OF DEATH; THE FURY OF THE KARATE EXPERTS (BOTH 1982)

 

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

The last two movies starring the original Santo are really one movie on the same subject matter, with the same director and most of the same cast-members. Both FIST and FURY take place in some unidentified jungle (possibly somewhere in Asia, since two character have Asian-sounding names), where a small cult of devotees center their religion around a glowing rock from outer space. A flashback establishes that this cultus originally boasted twin priestesses, one of whom has the Spanish-sounding name of "Queria" while the other has the Chinese-sounding name of "Kungyan." You can tell that Queria is the good twin because she wears white, while Kungyan is destined to be the villain because she wears black. (Both are played by the same actress, buxom burlesque performer Grace Renat.)

The cause of the sisters' disaffection, however confusing, is the only scene in the two films that has even minor mythic content. Apparently these are alien entities linked to the magical stone, for they decide to send an emissary to Earth known as "Jungle Girl." She appears on Earth as a little girl of perhaps two years, and although the priestesses find her in the jungle, they don't raise her themselves, but allow her to be raised by a local tribe of friendly wolves. It almost seems like the author was seeking to mash up the Immaculate Conception with the story of Tarzan.

 Queria and Kungyan also learn that when Jungle Girl matures, she's destined to marry a local prince named Cheng. For some reason, this pisses off Kungyan the Black, so she leaves the cult with her hulking henchman (played by another wrestler, Tinieblas). But she considerately waits until Jungle Girl grows up and is about to marry Cheng, at which point Kungyan and her allies-- some of whom are demons-- abduct Jungle Girl (who can't do crap to defend herself) and steal the magical stone. So Queria calls in the Mexican hero Santo to sort things out.

While this rocky storyline might have given birth to some demented fantasy-material during Santo's heyday, FIST just meanders around in between extremely lackluster fights while the priestesses utter New Agey dialogue. FURY is pretty the same thing, and almost the same plot (Kungyan just goes back and steals the magic stone again). The actor playing Santo, then in his sixties, understandably doesn't have much of his old mojo, and Cheng, the only actual "karate expert" in either film, doesn't distinguish himself either. One distinction of the second film is that a minor character is played by Rene Cardona, best known for directing at least two dozen luchadore flicks, some of which starred Santo.

I find myself wondering who the filmmakers thought was their audience. Did Mexican kids of the eighties really care about a sixty-year-old icon blundering his way through a silly jungle-setting? It may be that aging Mexican baby boomers were the real target, though there's damn little in either film that would engage forty-something adults. It's a strange conclusion to the career of Santo (except for a later cameo in another movie), though at least it sports a few curiosities that lift it above total formula.

ESPIONAGE IN TANGIER (1965)

 

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

According to a comment on IMDB, ESPIONAGE IN TANGIER appeared at just the right time to profit from the James Bond craze, and it was one of the first of the numerous Eurospy emulations of the Bond formula. This is without a doubt the only distinction of this boring formula flick.

Argentine-born Luis Davila stars as globetrotting agent Mike Murphy (originally Marc Mato), and most of the other actors are either Spanish or from Spanish-speaking countries, including one of Murphy's attractive but underused female leads Perla Cristal. (The other, Jose Greci, was Italian.) Davila handles the heroic chores adequately but with no particular sense of style, and no one else gives more than a cursory performance.

An altruistic professor named Greff invents a hand-held disintegrator ray, expressing his hopes that this will somehow lead to world peace. Of course the mastermind of some criminal syndicate, a fellow named Rigo, steals a major component of the weapon in order to sell it to the highest bidder, and Murphy immediately gets on the trail.

As is frequently the case, the hero performs no real detective work; his appearance on the scene provokes the main villain to send killers after him, and so finds himself drawn into the evildoer's clutches, as well as those of his female assistants, both of whom had previous affairs with Murphy. The script, co-written by director Gregg Tallas, labors to make Murphy seem like a ladykiller over which both ladies are batty, but he's like a dull version of Mike Hammer, slapping around one of the girls and torturing a henchman with an acetylene torch. The ladies are also dull, not even given attire to play up their sexiness. Rigo is a bland villain, who only has a few routine gimmicks-- a water-filling room, a chair with automatic cuffs. No one utilizes the disintegrator ray again until the very end of the movie, and it's with less than spectacular results. 

Tallas directed one other Eurospy, ASSIGNMENT SKYBOLT. I haven't screened it yet, but it's got to be better, 'cause it can't get worse than TANGIER.

THE FURY OF THE WOLFMAN (1972)

 

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

Most dubbed releases of this 1972 film-- the fourth in the "Hombre Lobo" series, following FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR, a lost 1968 film, and ASSIGNMENT TERROR-- show viewers a film that looks like it had been edited with a meat cleaver. I had long heard of a version in which some extra scenes (mostly sexual) were inserted, and I finally saw that variation, which sports the peculiar title THE WOLFMAN NEVER SLEEPS. The additional scenes don't make FURY any less incoherent, but they do give extra context to scripter/star Paul Naschy's decision to pump up the sexy content of his wolfman series.

Oddly enough, FURY has the makings of a coherent plot-- more so than any other "Lobo" film I've seen so far-- but Naschy doesn't really know how to lay out plot-points. He's claimed that his director was drunk on the set, but most if not all of the Lobo films share the same basic structure. There's a minimal setup to explain how Naschy's lycanthropic character Waldemar becomes afflicted with werewolfism-- a setup that often changes from film to film-- and then the script lurches from one spectacle to another. The characters develop in similar fashion; there's almost always a lead female who falls for Waldemar, though the script doesn't have much to say about what sterling qualities she falls for. There's usually also some other monster around to challenge the Lobo for supremacy, culminating in a battle that the wolfman wins.

This time, though, the monster is tied to Waldemar through the bonds of sex. The viewer doesn't see how college professor Waldemar gets infected with the werewolf curse, but there's some dialogue to explain that he made a trip to Tibet and was bitten by a yeti who gave him the affliction. (The Tibetan thing is probably a call-back to the Universal movie WEREWOLF OF LONDON, and Naschy decided to devote a whole film to a similar Tibetan jaunt in THE WEREWOLF VS. THE YETI.) Nothing daunted, afflicted Waldemar has returned to his teaching duties, where Karin, a female student, moons over him. By convenient coincidence, Karin also works as an assistant to famed scientist Ilona Ellmann (Perla Cristal), and there's also some connection between Ilona and Waldemar, for he confesses the truth of his curse to her, hoping her science, something to do with modifying the human mind, can alleviate his condition. Much later in the film, it's explained that he and Ilona were once lovers, but at some point Waldemar threw Ilona over for his current wife, Erika (Pilar Zorrilla). To further complicate the situation, Erika's having an affair with another man. By apparent coincidence, Waldemar morphs into a wolfman, spots Erika and her lover, and massacres them. The lycanthrope then blunders into a live wire and gets electrocuted, after which the authorities pronounce Waldemar dead and bury him.

But Ilona knows that a werewolf can't permanently die that way, so she unearths and revives him to be one of her many experiments. Despite being a respected scientist, Ilona has somehow managed to establish a whole asylum full of assorted misfits-- some of which look like contemporaneous hippies, while others look like refugees from THE BLACK SLEEP (including a guy more or less dressed like the Phantom of the Opera). Presumably Ilona has perfected her mind-control techniques on these unfortunates, and she subjects the reborn werewolf to her devices. Apparently they work, for in the film's most eye-popping scene, Ilona visits the chained wolfman, lashes him several times with a whip, and then manages to have standing-up sex with him, all without him trying to claw her to death. In one of the more confusing cuts, Waldemar-wolf either breaks free or is released, after which he kills a male student and rapes a female one (without killing her, either). 

Eventually Waldemar changes back to his tormented human self, and he appeals to young Karin for help (as well as having sex with her in a usually-deleted scene). Waldemar ends up getting trapped in the asylum, where he fights with both a crazy guy in a suit of armor and the Opera-Ghost guy. The latter turns out to be the long-lost father of Ilona, and in a separate scene, a minor character makes a big reveal: that Ilona is actually Eva Wulfstein, daughter of a controversial scientist. The mini-subplot with the father doesn't really add up to anything, except to further illustrate Ilona's depravity in that she apparently mutilated her father and drove him insane. Naschy may have tossed in this detail as a shoutout to his original script for the first Lobo film, wherein Waldemar gets lycanthropy from a guy named Wulfstein.

Ilona has her goons overpower Waldemar and chain him up, at which point she reveals new depths of turpitude. The jealous scientist used her mind-techniques to brainwash Erika into committing adultery in order to set her up for execution. Ilona's also aware that Karin slept with Waldemar, so she has Karin bound to a table in the same room with the chained Waldemar. Then, obsessed with finding new ways to humiliate her rivals, she reveals that because Waldemar bit his late wife, Ilona's been able to bring her back to life too. Ilona releases the lupine Erika to savage Karin. In traditional wolfman form, Waldemar-wolf breaks his chains, fights his wife to death, and then kills Ilona. Just as some cops break in for some reason, Karin, who loves Waldemar enough to end his rampage, kills him with a silver weapon.

Though not all Lobo films are combative, this one is, even though Naschy has more fights in his human persona than in his hairy form. The film was also padded with a few incongruous scenes from the first film, which serve to make the choppy film even more jumbled. Still, for all its wackiness FURY OF THE WOLFMAN is one of the most interesting films in the series, and Perla Cristal brings far more intensity to her underwritten role than the script deserves.

THE WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN (1971)

 

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

I saw a streaming version of this Paul Naschy werewolf film under the title in the above illustration, but going by memory it seemed substantially the same as my old VHS rental, which bore the title WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN. Though WEREWOLF was the fifth in the "El Hombre Lobo" series-- fourth, if you discount the lost second film-- it's probably one of the better known ones.

One never expects much of a plot in a Naschy werewolf film, but this time, Naschy's script has so many wild incidents that the film takes on a dreamlike quality at times, mainly in the early sections. That said, there's a small attempt to follow up on the previous release, wherein Naschy's cursed character Waldemar  was shot with silver bullets. A doctor has heard the story of Waldemar's werewolfism, but being a scoffer of superstitions, he pulls out the bullets-- and El Hombre Lobo lives again.

Some time later, college students Elvira and Genevieve (Gaby Fuchs, Barbara Capell) visit "the South of France" (as the dubbed version says), looking for the legendary tomb of the Hungarian-sounding Countess Wandessa. The Countess was a witch, a Satanist, and a vampire who, despite having fangs, bled the bodies of female virgins to drink their blood from cups-- patently a take on Elizabeth Bathory. Wandessa was executed as a witch in the 11th century, but the two young girls think they can get a good anthropological paper out of the subject.

Elvira and Genevieve happen across Waldemar, who has somehow managed to acquire a castle in the neighborhood. (Lots of Hungarians in France, I guess.) He invites the girls to dinner but forgets to tell them that he has an insane sister roaming the corridors. The sister tries to strangle Elvira, but then gropes her a bit instead, and later tries the same thing with Genevieve, but without the groping. After a few more scenes the sister simply disappears without explanation, unless she becomes one of the Countess's vampire ladies.

With Waldemar's help the girls rather easily uncover the grave of Wandessa, but Elvira cuts her hand and accidentally bleeds on her remains. Wandessa soon revives and promptly vampirizes Genevieve. Meanwhile, Elvira, who's fallen in love with Waldemar, then learns that not only is Waldemar a werewolf, he's also searching for the same silver cross that originally slew Wandessa, in order to terminate his werewolf life. 

There are a few other disposable subplots-- a young man comes looking for the missing Elvira, an ugly guy tries to make it with Elvira, apparently because he's a servant of Wandessa, and there are a few sapphic touches between Wandessa and Genevieve. But the film's climax, such as it is, at least satisfies the promise of the title and gives the viewer a short battle between the werewolf and the vampire woman-- after which Elvira fulfills wolf-man mythology by slaying the lycanthrope she loves-- at least until the next movie.

ZAN, KING OF THE JUNGLE (1969)

 

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

I don't want to suggest that ZAN KING OF THE JUNGLE is, on the whole, anything but a largely dull Tarzan knock-off, sometimes billed as TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN GROTTO in whatever markets its producers thought they could escape scrutiny by the Burroughs estate. However, sad to say, I have seen many worse Tarzan knock-offs, not least the recently reviewed ZAMBO LORD OF THE JUNGLE.

The writers-- one of whom was Umberto Lenzi-- at least made an attempt to swipe from the better Tarzan movies. Zan (Steve Hawkes) is first seen riding an elephant to the rescue of an white Amazon female (Kitty Swan), about to be burned at the stake by a tribe of Black Africans for no stated offense. Zan rescues the female and takes her back to her tribe, all of whom are also white characters (no men at all in sight). They inhabit the titular grotto, whose walls are filthy with gold, and some of them think Tarzan can't be trusted with their location. Much as the Weismuller Tarzan did in TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS, the jungle lord promises to protect the gynocentric culture from exploitation.

A couple of white reprobates-- practically interchangeable as characters-- have heard rumors of the golden grotto, and they attempt to get the Black tribesmen to help them find it. One tribesman, decked out in modern garments, does better than that: he ambushes Zan with his rifle. The jungle-lord falls in the river and the bad guys presume him dead. (This may be the first/only time a Black native manages to take out a white jungle-guy with a gun.)

Zan floats down the river and is succored by an old gold-hunter. When Zan recovers, it's suggested that he may have lost his memory, for he seeks to help the old fellow by giving him directions to the Amazons' golden grotto, and even giving the prospector some of the nuggets. The prospector goes into a local town to celebrate, the reprobates find out, and force from the old guy the location of the grotto. With various Black bearers in tow, the villains attack the Amazon tribe, and though the girls put up a decent fight, most of them are slaughtered, except for the girl Zan rescued at the opening. She doesn't do much of anything but since she appears in the movie's only sequel, she had to be kept around to be Zan's jungle mate.

While all the slaughter is going on, and the reprobates start mining the gold, the daughter of the prospector comes looking for him, and engages a raffish guide to help her. This subplot, and the eventual romance of the girl and her guide, are a big waste of time, particularly since nothing they do affects the outcome-- the old prospector getting killed, and Zan belatedly coming to knock off the evil white guys.

There aren't many fight-scenes-- as is often the case, nature photography serves to burn up a lot of time-- but there's one interesting moment. When Zan enters the grotto, four Black tribal guys lasso each of his limbs with ropes and try to drag the jungle-lord down. Zan outmuscles them all like a peplum hero and they head for the hills. Steve Hawkes has been called cinema's worst Tarzan, but frankly, everyone is so blah in this movie that his bad acting doesn't stand out for me.

GODZILLA VS. THE COSMIC MONSTER (1974)

 

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

Since at least three Godzilla films reviewed here include the name "Mechagodzilla" in the title, I'll review the cinematic debut of "the Big M" under the U.S. release title. Said title was itself a substitute for the title "Godzilla vs. the Bionic Monster," which was nixed by legal action from the owners of "The Bionic Woman." (Someone might also have objected on the grounds of false advertising, since Mechagodzilla was just a big robot, and not "bionic" in any real sense of the word.)

Since COSMIC actually introduced not one but two new kaiju, its structure is something of a double detective-story. First, the forgettable human protagonists must not only pursue the clue of a fragment of "space titanium" that will lead them to the alien base where Mechagodzilla was constructed, and where an eminent Japanese scientist is being forced to work for the aliens. Second, the viewpoint characters must also look into the strange prophecies of an Okinawan priestess, who claims that an Okinawan god, King Caesar, is destined to save the world from a destructive dragon.

When Godzilla begins a new rampage, the humans suspect that he may be the dragon of the prophecy. However, the fact that the Big G viciously attacks his sometime ally Anguirus causes the detectives to doubt their eyes. They don't have to wait long to have their questions answered, for another Godzilla shows up, uses his atomic breath to burn the outer skin off the first one, and thus reveals that the marauder is a mechanical impostor, Mechagodzilla, the real "dragon of the prophecy."

In the English translation at least, the matter of King Caesar's provenance remains unclear. Though some of the Tojo monsters were worshiped as gods, the basic rationale of, say, Mothra was that he was some prehistoric survival just like Godzilla, and that he'd simply been co-opted into primitive religion (though Mothra's fairy protectors might be a different story). But not only is the prophecy of the priestess right in all respects, King Caesar actually does seem to be a magical guardian spirit who takes the form of a lion-like humanoid. Maybe this divergence from the sci-fi narrative wasn't good for the King's popularity, for in contrast to Mechagodzilla, Caesar seems to have been wildly unpopular, not getting any revivals until he made a quickie appearance in GODZILLA: FINAL WARS.

The three-way battle that pits Godzilla and King Caesar against the invading aliens' duplicate monster is overall a good fight, though I could have done without the sequence in which Godzilla turns himself into a living magnet. But on balance the film's main accomplishment is to introduce the iconic Mechagodzilla, the only seventies kaiju who would enjoy repeated revivals. Usually the later films ignored ignoring the robot's creation by the forgettable aliens in this film, and instead had the Big M constructed by Earthpeople seeking to counter the natural furies of Godzilla. Since humans could only fight kaiju with their mastery of mechanical weapons, it makes symbolic sense to imagine them casting one great weapon into the image of their mighty foe. In this case, imitation would be the sincerest form of extermination.

THE MIGHTY CRUSADERS (1957)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

This flick, predating the wave of peplum-films initiated by the two Steve Reeves HERCULES movies, falls into the bailiwick of the naturalistic historical adventure, for all that it's based on Tasso's poetic epic JERUSALEM DELIVERED, which includes a handful of supernatural events.

It's the tenth century, just prior to the Christian conquest of Jerusalem and their temporary ouster of the Muslim residents. The film does not attempt to argue either side's ethical position; the main point is to set up a romantic arc between Tancred (Francisco Rabal), the Christians' most formidable knight, and Clorinda (Sylva Koscina), a female knight of the Muslims. In contrast to later peplum, the romance is doomed to a tragic outcome, just as it is in the poem.

CRUSADERS is a cheap looking production, in which most of the run-time is spent in talking-head scenes, whose dubbed dialogue is extremely forgettable. Battles are unexceptional and dilatory. There's one okay scene of mounted combat between Tancred and a Muslim knight who also wants Clorinda. Clorinda gets one scene in which she manages to stab an enemy knight to death, but otherwise she doesn't do much better than the male characters. Still, combative female heroines are pretty rare in Italian cinema, especially those that share starring status with the main hero. Koscina, who would co-star in those Hercules films, seems far more comfortable in the traditional female role. At one point, she's somewhat contrasted with another woman, Armida (Gianna Maria Canale), who emphasizes conquering male warriors with seduction, but the contrast fails since Clorinda seems just as feminine as Armida. In the epic, BTW, Armida is a full-fledged witch, but here she's just a lady with enchanting amatory skills, seducing Rinaldo, the leader of the Christian crusaders.

Aside from providing glamorous scenes for Koscina and Canale, the film's main significance is providing a contrast to the many modestly-budgeted American swashbucklers in which women have central sword-fighting roles.

AQUARION (2005)

 

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

I've not yet reviewed any of the anime works of Shoji Kawamori, best known for the MACROSS franchise, so I can't indulge in many cross-comparisons with this 26-episode TV show. But I can observe that while MACROSS was straight science-fiction, AQUARION melds tropes from the SF-subgenre known as "giant mecha" with motifs from myth and fantasy.

Aquarion is the narrative's most prominent fighting robot, whose powers the young heroes must strive to master in order to protect their world. The robot's name is never explained, but Kawamori's most logical reference would be to astrology's notion of "the Age of Aquarius," a great shift in the celestial realms which has consequences for mortal life. This interpretation finds support in the fact that the events of AQUARION, like those of heavenly shifts in the zodiacal signs, take place over the course of eons. 

The main action takes place in a far-future version of Earth, but every episode makes some reference to crucial events that transpired 12,000 years ago. During that era Earth was attacked by Shadow Angels, winged beings who feed upon the "prana," the life-energies, of human beings. In contrast to the angels of Judeo-Christian lore, the invaders utilize their own giant mecha, which would seem to mark them as either aliens or a parallel species that may have developed on Earth, though the scripts do not dwell on the Shadow Angels' origins. The latter explanation seems better, since the archaic Angels dwelled at some point in a hidden city, Atlantia, whose name is a clear reference to the Greek legend of Atlantis. The Angels also have some nebulous relationship to a "World Tree" deep at the heart of the planet Earth, A turncoat Angel named Apollonius defeats his kindred with the help of the giant mecha Aquarion, after which the surviving Angels seemingly retreat into the World Tree and descend into sleep for the next twelve millennia.

At the heart of Apollonius' betrayal of his people is his love for a human named Seliane (a name possibly indebted to that of the Greek moon-goddess Selene). However, Apollonius previously sustained some possibly-romantic relationship with the Angels' ruler Toma, and 12 millennia later, Toma still craves revenge, even though Apollonius and Seliane are long deceased. Some measure of revenge is possible, though, because all contemporary Earth-dwellers are resolutely convinced that the spirits of Apollonius and Seliane are destined to be reincarnated in their era. to help Earth against the inevitable revival of the Shadow Angels.

DAEVA, a paramilitary organization, trains adolescent warriors, called "Elements," in their attempts to master the mecha Aquarion. Four of these characters receive only moderate development: "new fish" Jun and Tsugumi, horny bastard Pierre, and perpetually mournful Reika, whose lover lies in a coma thanks to an attack by the recrudescent Angels. 

The lion's share of narrative focus rests on a "four-sided" romantic triangle. Female warrior Silvie dotes upon her brother Sirius and fancies that the two of them will prove to be the reincarnations of Seiliane and Apollonius, meaning that they will also become lovers. Sirius does not cherish similar dreams, but seems to have some interest in Reika-- though he does become irate when a new Element, Apollo, joins the team and begins a "love-and-hate-at-first-sight" relationship with Silvie. The fourth side of the triangle is Toma, who also believes one of the Elements will be a reborn Apollonius, and who intends to take bloody vengeance on his (maybe) former lover.

Despite all the romantic travails, AQUARION boasts almost no transgressive fanservice (though Apollo does get his face close to Silvie's privates). Yet, as if to take advantage of the burgeoning hormones of the Elements, they all experience sexual ecstasies whenever they summon the power of Aquarion in battle-- which doesn't ever seem to distract them from fighting the good fight. 

Viewers of AQUARION do not learn exactly which character reincarnates what spirit; this is left to a follow-up series. What the 26 episodes repeatedly offer is the Japanese theme of Nietzchean "self-overcoming" through the pursuit of martial excellence. Silvie "self-overcoming" is tied to her need to find a male love-interest who isn't her brother, while Apollo, having been raised apart from other humans, must seek to become more socialized. The secondary heroes don't get nearly as much attention, though I was impressed by an inventive plot in which Pierre becomes "sex-addicted" to the experience of the mecha-ecstacy. It sounds risible stated in that manner, but the script does give the idea dramatic heft. I should also note the existence of peripheral Element-character Rena, who usually does not pilot Aquarion but rather stalks around, dropping hints that she may be a vampire-- which doesn't add up to anything, though it does recapitulate the energy-sucking propensities of the Shadow Angels.

At the same time, though Toma is the only Shadow Angel who acquires any personality, AQUARION also includes a subplot in which the Angels must come to terms with human independence. The disparate groups are forced to work together when the World Tree is destroyed, which will result in Earth's obliteration as well. Toma and two of the Elements must use Aquarion to take the place of the World Tree, so that the mecha from Atlantia becomes a new "Atlas," though the script doesn't actually make reference to the Greek giant who held up the sky. The references to Hindu lore, like the use of the term "prana," don't integrate with the Greek lore as well as a myth-lover might like, but on the whole AQUARION is far more mythic than the average mecha-series.

STRIPPED TO KILL (1987), STRIPPED TO KILL 2 (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

The above illustration for Katt Shea Ruben's STRIPPED TO KILL, showing a stripper using a slasher's knife as her stripper-pole, is more imaginative than anything in the film proper. 

Reportedly Ruben had visited real strip-clubs, which gave her the notion of trying to incorporate the strip-experience into a film for Roger "Blood and Boobs" Corman. But in this film, Ruben was far too literal-minded about simply filming a bunch of stripper-routines, tenuously linked by the plot-thread of a psycho targeting the club's workers. A couple of cops, Cody (Kay Lenz) and Heinemann (Greg Evigan), hunt for the murderer.

Often the serial killer is the star in such productions, but here he commits so few crimes that the audience's attention revolves back to the cops-- or, more specifically, to officer Cody, since Heinemann is her support-character. Cody, vaguely configured as a sexless tomboy, is forced to summon her inner temptress in order to ferret out the mystery killer-- and to some extent, she finds that she enjoys being a girl, years before MISS CONGENIALITY mined the same terrain. 

Kay Lenz does a nice job portraying the officer's reluctant transformation, and she gets the most kinetic sequences, uncovering not one but two demented killers. But the various strip-routines come close to making female nudity boring.

STRIPPED TO KILL 2 is a sequel in name only, and given its genesis, it ought to have been even worse than its predecessor. Corman had the use of a strip-club set for a few days, so he hired Ruben to churn out another slasher-vs.-stripper opus. Ruben admitted that her filming-time was so restricted that she had to script sequences on the fly.

Ironically, Ruben's scenes of beautiful women bumping and grinding is much more involving this time around, for the setups have a certain ethereal mystery to them, for all that they don't technically display any more epistemological content than those of the first film. They just look better, and thus all the scenes of a hard-boiled cop looking for a slasher become more engrossing as well. This time the central heroine is a stripper named Shadey (Maria Ford), who suffers from hallucinogenic dreams and doesn't know whether or not either she or one of her fellow workers may be the killer. I think the true killer is supposed to have suffered some sort of molestation, but the point is never made explicit. A minor bonus is the appearance of Marjean "BEASTMASTER TV show" Holden, who gets to punch the cop out. No wheels are invented here, but things roll along from start to finish with respectable alacrity.

KILL BILL 1-2 (2003-04)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *superior*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

SHERIFF: "If you was a moron, you could almost admire [the carnage]."

_________

KIDDO: "Are you calling me a superhero?"

BILL: "I'm calling you a killer. A natural born killer [...] All those people you killed to get to me-- felt good, didn't it?"

___________

Because Quentin Tarantino (henceforth QT) is so well known for his snappy dialogue and mastery of ultraviolent action, many viewers tend to overlook certain other propensities. One such is QT's ability to dramatically shift the perspectives of his apparently simple characters in order to force audiences to make their own evaluations as to how villainous or heroic they may be.

KILL BILL, for all of its signaling to different genres and story-tropes, is first and foremost a revenge-fantasy, a trope-category that transcends genres. The "carnage" referenced in the first quote above takes place when the pregnant Beatrice Kiddo (Uma Thurman) is almost murdered by the titular Bill (David Carradine of KUNG FU fame) and his gang of professional assassins, a level of mayhem that ought to inspire almost anyone to seek bloody vengeance. Yet Kiddo is not the innocent victim seen in most revenge-dramas. She too was one of Bill's killers, and although QT never shows Kiddo plying her trade, she is, as Bill says in the second cited quote, "a natural born killer." The viewer has no way of knowing if Bill is correct, for QT reveals nothing regarding Kiddo's early development, not even supplying any reason as to why she chose the life of an assassin. Her story-arc is all about the future.

Kiddo attempts to leave behind the killer's life in order to make a better life for B.B., the daughter she conceives by Bill. She attempts to fake her own death and to subsume her old life by marrying an ordinary small-town guy. But Bill finds her in the midst of a wedding rehearsal, so he and his top four aides slaughter everyone in the party and almost kill Kiddo. Only one life is deliberately spared, since apparently Bill somehow manages to remove the unborn B.B. from her wounded mother's womb via Caesarian section. But for most of Part I, Kiddo-- who awakens from a coma four years later-- does not know that B.B. still lives. Thus she goes after all those who attacked her and her child, starting with the four top aides before going after Bill himself. Yet the question that Bill will raise in Part 2 is suggested by the events of Part 1: in seeking bloody vengeance, is Beatrix Kiddo even a hero, much less a "superhero?"

Kiddo certainly comes off as heroic compared to the outright villains, though, to be sure, by the time she awakens, two of Bill's top aides have left his service, just as Kiddo intended to. Bill's aide O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) is not only the only character in the film to get a substantial "origin story," she becomes, with Bill's covert help, the queen-pin of the Japanese Yakuza. Yet QT doesn't begin with Kiddo's spectacular assault on O-Ren and her many henchmen. He saves that for the film's climax, while the opening action sequence shows Kiddo ruthlessly track down one of the retired henchwomen, Vernita Green (Viveca A. Fox), now settled down in suburbia with a husband and daughter. Even though the viewer still empathizes with Kiddo, this setup is meant to throw some doubt into the justice of her quest. 

Vernita's defeat. though seen first, actually takes place after Kiddo's Japanese adventure, including her acquisition of a fabulous Japanese samurai blade, with which she defeats O-Ren and her gang of henchmen, all of whom wield only swords and seem not to have heard of firearms. Here too, despite the audience's tendency to view Kiddo as a hero, she takes a certain pleasure not only in dismembering many of O-Ren's lackies, but also in claiming ownership of their severed limbs. 

Part 2 veers in a different direction. The triumphant Kiddo next goes after the other aide who left Bill's service, Bill's brother Budd (Michael Madsen). Despite possessing only very basic resources, Budd neatly mousetraps Kiddo and consigns her to a living death; that of being stuck in a coffin and buried alive. This leads to a long flashback in which Kiddo thinks back to her training under Bill's previous tutor Pai Mei (Gordon Liu)-- which sequence becomes relevant when the viewer learns that the martial master taught Kiddo a maneuver that gets her free of the coffin. Before Kiddo can take vengeance on Budd, her last hench-foe, Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) kills Budd-- after which Kiddo vanquishes Elle with a short but intensely violent battle-- thus leaving the heroine's path clear to face her ultimate foe.

Having laid out some of the ways in which Kiddo's vengeance-quest is rendered problematic, I'll refrain from spelling out the encounter of Kiddo and Bill, except to say that Bill gets more than ample time to tell his side of the story, in which Kiddo again doesn't quite come off as spotless, much less an altruist after the examples of American comic-book superheroes.

And yet, QT almost certainly does not mean for the viewer to take Bill's discourse at face value. Bill associates superheroes and natural born killers only on one basis: that both of them exist outside the realm of ordinary people, what Bill calls "worker bees." Kiddo never tries to counter any of Bill's arguments; her sole desire is to avenge her injury by Bill and to reclaim B.B., in order to keep the four-year-old child from being corrupted. (To be sure, even the little girl isn't entirely "innocent" in QT's world, as one learns from the tale of Emilio the Goldfish.)

But although Kiddo's altruism doesn't go beyond her concern for her daughter, her existence is a refutation of Bill's concept of the superhero. Bill makes most of her discourse about Superman, but Kiddo is really Batman. Batman learns the ways of crime to fight crime, and Kiddo learns the ways of death to fight the minions of death. The "worker bees" will never know it, but their world has been made better by the elimination of these evildoers, opening up more possibilities for the future.

All of the principals are excellent in their roles, but of course Uma Thurman and David Carradine take the top honors, with the part of Bill appearing as both a homage and an undercutting of Carradine's classic role of Kwai Chang Caine from KUNG FU. QT's eclectic sampling of musical themes is never less than accomplished, but my particular favorite appears in the Death of Bill, scored with an excerpt from Ennio Morricone's "Return of Joe" from the otherwise unremarkable spaghetti western NAVAJO JOE.

 

DICK TRACY, DETECTIVE (1945)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

This 1945 B-film was the first of four produced by RKO Studios. Prior to DETECTIVE, Ralph Byrd was the only actor who had portrayed the famed comic-strip character. For whatever reason, Byrd was unavailable this time, so the studio cast Morgan Conway for this film and the next, DICK TRACY VS. CUEBALL Reportedly exhibitors complained to RKO that audiences didn't accept Conway, after which Byrd was hired to star in the series' final two films.

The plot concerns hardened criminal Splitface (Mike Mazurki), so named because he bears a huge scar bisecting the sides of his face. Splitface gets free of prison and goes on a rampage, slashing up an assortment of citizens. His motive is revenge upon the jury members who sent him up, but a confederate, a psychic grifter named Starling, complicates things by extorting some of the intended victims. Starling seems mildly psychic since he goes into trance and foretells his own death, but the vibe isn't strong enough to sustain the uncanny, though said vibe is supplied in spades by the imposing scarred visage of the hulking murderer Splitface. In addition, there's some business about the daughter of a nightclub owner, played by a not-yet-famous Jane Greer, and there's also a comic mortician named Deathridge.

In contrast to the serials, the RKO flicks incorporated a fair number of supporting characters from the Chester Gould strip-- Junior, Pat Patton, Chief Brandon-- though only the hero's neglected girlfriend Tess Trueheart (Anne Jeffreys) gets much characterization. As the dogged detective, Morgan Conway is an okay substitute for Ralph Byrd, and he acquits himself well in the concluding fight-scene with Splitface.

Conway's two outings as Dick Tracy were the only outstanding roles in his short career, and although director William Berke accrued a much longer (if equally journeyman) set of credits, DICK TRACY DETECTIVE is probably the only film on his resume that even old-time film-buffs would remember, though I found THE MARSHAL'S DAUGHTER mildly interesting. Of the films on Berke's resume, none are visually memorable, but maybe Berke tried to up his game somewhat for this flick, because DETECTIVE makes nice use of noirish shadows and atypical camera angles.

THE DEVIL'S RAIN (1975)

 

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

Not until the debut of 2004's LOST would I encounter a script so completely disinterested in the principle of exposition as that of THE DEVIL'S RAIN. And since director Robert Fuest seems to have been no more than a hired gun on the set, the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the script's three writers, two of whom have no other credits on IMDB while the third has about six-seven other citations. To be sure, player Ernest Borgnine has alleged that he never got paid for the film because it had been financed with Mafia money. This may also mean that the script was chosen for its badness, so that it would lose money and so end up on someone's books as a tax write-off.

That said, before the production company purchased the script, they must have had some notion of being able to deliver to distributors something to justify the name: that of a Satanic rainfall that will dissolve anyone it lands upon. This might mean that someone consulted with makeup and/or FX people before greenlighting the movie, and at least promising a lot of well-known actors that they'd be paid. Thus the cast includes, in addition to Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino, William Shatner, Keenan Wynn, and Tom Skerritt, as well as a then-unknown John Travolta. In addition, celebrity Satanist Anton LaVey had a small role, but was certainly hired so that the filmmakers could ballyhoo having hired LaVey as a consultant on matters devilish. I suppose if you're going to orchestrate a cinematic flop, you have to project the illusion of really trying to make money.

The script drops the viewer in the middle of some incoherent struggle between a group of Satanists, led by Jonathan Corbis (Borgnine) and a small family, the Prestons, whose ancestors had bad blood with the ancestor of Corbis (or maybe Corbis himself) back in Puritan times. Lupino plays the matriarch of Clan Preston while William Shatner and Tom Skerritt play her sons Mark and Tom. The first two are seen being pursued by the occult vengeance of Corbis because they've stolen a ledger full of names of people who have signed over their souls to the Devil. Brother Tom only comes on the scene later and I for one was never sure if he was complicit in the theft. The Preston patriarch is also said to have been in on the book-thievery, but he is apparently the first victim of the Devil's Rain, a rainfall that descends capriciously from the desert skies and turns Preston into a gooey putrescence. (Even this simple plot-point is rendered nonsensical because Mrs. Preston claims that the oozing horror isn't really her hubby, but the script never comes back to this subject.) 

Mark leaves his mother alone for a few minutes in their house, and somehow that's enough time for sly Satanists to invade the building, half-slaughter an old retainer and bear Mama Preston away. Mark hides the stolen book and drives out to a ghost town to confront Corbis, possibly to make a deal. Instead Corbis's followers overpower Mark and "Captain Kirk" spends the rest of the film being tortured or hypnotically enthralled by the Satanists. One addition to the flock is a lovely girl named Lilith (HEE HAW's Lisa Todd), who makes up to Mark, only to transform into Mark's now blinded mother, a convert to the demonic cause.

Other plot-points are cast out haphazardly. Tom Preston, his psychic girlfriend, and psychic researcher Dr. Richards (Albert) drive out to the area where Tom's relations disappeared. After many boring scenes where not much happens, Tom and friends find out that the magic through which Corbis manifests the Devil's Rain is a glass vessel with damned spirits swirling around in it. For some reason Corbis needs both the bottle and the ledger to secure his power, though it''s not even clear what one has to do with the other. Eventually, through the intervention of Tom, Richards and a briefly recovered Mark, the vessel is smashed. I guess that means that the released souls then unleash their power and destroy Corbis and the Satanists with their "acid rain"-- but not completely, since that ole debbil finds a way to survive.

I'll give the scripters a couple of points for the originality of the Rain itself. In the story of Noah we do find one very big destructive rain, but it doesn't make people dissolve into a primordial ooze, like something out of Arthur Machen. Rain IMO is more often used to suggest redemption, the washing away of sins, and there are no major Satanic connotations to any sort of downpours. But at least the basic idea is memorable, if not really mythic. Despite all the acting experience on the screen, most of the players just do what's required of them and no more, but the movie gets another point just for Borgnine's bravura performance, using this black-hearted character to play against the sort of upbeat roles for which he was predominantly known, like Quentin McHale and the protagonist of MARTY.

WOLVERINE: ORIGIN (2013)

 

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

I won't relate any plot or characterization details of this motion-capture animated video, since this is a broadly accurate translation of the 2001 Marvel graphic novel of the same name, whose content I discussed here. What I will discuss are the reasons why even a broadly accurate replication of a mythic story may still fail the acid test for mythicity.

ORIGIN is on balance a failure as myth and as entertainment, but there are a few good things about it. The first is that because the animated project existed, I investigated its source material before watching it and was extremely impressed with the graphic novel. There are two bonus interviews on the DVD that gave me a little more detail on the genesis of the GN, particularly with respect to the fact that artist Adam Kubert produced the lushly detailed artwork through Photoshop tools rather than with traditional pencil or brush. But ORIGIN's main strength is as a negative example of mythicity.

I've often noticed that an accurate adaptation of a mythic story may not be mythic. For instance, I would probably judge Conan Doyle's original HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES to be a myth-tale, but my favorite cinematic adaptation, the 1939 Fox Studios movie, rates only as fair. 

The problem I perceive is that those media that allow the reader to "peek in" on the thoughts of the characters allow the author to express a greater amount of symbolic discourse than do those media that don't allow such introspection. That said, the latter types of media-- paintings, lyric-less music, and both animated and live-action versions of film and TV-- can express mythicity in different but still impressive ways. But most adaptations simply attempt to reproduce what one might call the "peak experiences" of a pre-existing narrative, often excising the "valley experiences" that allow characters more opportunity for meditation and reflection. The lack of introspective "valley moments" in the 1939 HOUND film is the thing that keeps it from emulating the mythic content of the Doyle narrative.

WOLVERINE ORIGIN is even more egregious. "Motion capture" in this type of animation consists of filming static comic-book art and reproducing the "high points" of the story. This doesn't always mean only the action-sequences. However, even relatively sedate visual sequences, such as the way Rose first comes to work at the Howlett estate at the beginning of both versions of ORIGIN, are capable of communicating the "valley experiences" of interior reflection. But the motion-capture technology usually zooms past any such opportunities in favor of lots and lots of "peaks."

And that's all I have to say about the ORIGIN video. It may capture a sense of the motion of Adam Kubert's art, or sections thereof, but it's a empty shadow-show, whose fragmented content reproduces none of the organic wholeness of the source material.

WIZARDS OF THE LOST KINGDOM II (1989)

 

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

As the above still indicates, I watched a MST3K version of WIZARDS II for this review. On occasion I'll find the bot-chatter too distracting from the actual film, but in this case there wasn't any dissonance. WIZARDS II is making fun of itself quite as much as any routine on the Satellite of Love.

The only connection between this film and the original WIZARDS  is that producer Roger Corman ostensibly made money with the first one, and so he greenlighted a "sequel" in name only, directed by Corman's long-time collaborator Charles B. Griffith, who co-wrote the script with one Lane Smith. (Lead actor Mel Welles had also co-scripted an earlier film with Griffith, 1965's SHE BEAST, so I would hazard that Welles might have contributed some of his own lines to the mix.) Not that anyone should be proud of the WIZARDS II script. 

I find myself debating over which WIZARDS was worse. The Ed Naha script for the first film was just as sloppy as the Griffith-Lane narrative, in that both are content to recycle fantasy-tropes at their most stereotypical level. But in Naha's story, there was at least the germ of a Freudian fantasy-- Bad Mommy and Bad Daddy kill Good Daddy, after which Bad Daddy tries to make it with the Good Daddy's Good Daughter. The Griffith-Lane script is designed to do nothing but mark time, giving its heroes a collection of empty quests to complete before the film comes to an end.

Griffith may at least have sought to duplicate one aspect of WIZARDS I. The first flick focuses on the avuncular relationship of a wise old Han Solo figure to a naive young Luke Skywalker character. WIZARDS II spends most of its time on elderly magician Caedmon (Welles) tutoring the Chosen One Tyor (Bobby Jacoby) in magic, so that together they can overthrow Loki, Donar, and Zarz, the three tyrant-wizards who rule the land. (Why give just one wizard a nonsense-name while the other two get the cognomens of Earth-gods? Who knows?) Caedmon converts Tyor to the cause with nearly no argumentation at all, though, being that this is a Corman film, Caedmon may have whispered to the youth that he'd get to see a lot of female booty on the quest.

Not all of the magicians' allies are female. One is a master swordsman, The Dark One (top-billed David Carradine in a really bad wig), and there's another guy, Erman, who appears for one sequence and then vanishes. However, the magi also get aid from a swordswoman named Amathea, played by Lana Clarkson, who essayed a heroine with the same name in an earlier Corman-production, BARBARIAN QUEEN. Possibly Clarkson was cast just so that Corman could once again plunder old footage from that film in order to save bucks on WIZARDS II. Another ally is a dancer (Susan Lee Hoffman), whose big moment consists of breaking a guard's neck with a leg-lock. In addition, Caedmon and Tyor also encounter a trio of captive ladies held by a demoness, and a hot young henchwoman of Donar's tries to seduce Tyor (a motif which may have been borrowed from WIZARDS I).

There's a lot of fighting, with both swords and sorcery, but it's pedestrian at best, though Clarkson comes off best-- certainly better than Carradine, who looks bored even in the battle scenes. As noted before, though this is isn't a full-fledged comedy, the script is full of tongue-in-cheek anachronisms and clumsy attempts at double entendre, as when Tyor threatens the hot henchwoman with a sword, saying, "Show me where the sword is, or I'll skewer you like you've never been skewered before." 

WIZARDS II does have the edge over the previous film in that Two has more familiar faces with which to conjure. Bobby Jacoby, veteran of various teen comedies, was at least a more competent performer than Vidal Peterson, and Welles at least commits to his silly role better than did Bo Svenson. The script brings together, albeit briefly, two actors best known for their villains: Sid Haig of BIG BIRD CAGE fame, and Henry Brandon, who rendered the best portrait of Sax Rohmer's devil-doctor in THE DRUMS OF FU MANCHU. (WIZARDS II was also Brandon's final film.) But since the jokes aren't funny and most of the action is boring, I guess that Naha's WIZARDS wins the contest, such as it was.

THE CAVALIER (1978)

 

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

I'm not sure why this chopsocky comedy earned the title "The Cavalier." I suppose the intent was to associate "cavaliers" with "knightly heroes," as I've also seen four or five other HK films with the word "chivalry" in their titles. Both words were originally associated with mounted horsemen, and though it's no surprise that not a single character in the movie rides a horse, I'm not sure that any of these characters comport themselves even as unmounted knights.

So there's this old kung-fu patriarch whose only online billing is "Grandfather." He's apparently taught a lot of his skills to his granddaughter Peng (Lung Chung-erh), and he insists that it's time for her to get married. But Grandpa wants a grandson-in-law who can bring some kung-fu skills to the match, in order to produce "strong sons." His unique approach is to haul Peng into the town square of some city and announce that if any man can defeat Peng in battle, she'll become his bride. Peng seems basically okay with this proposition, and maybe that's because she trounces almost all challengers, and thus doesn't really think she's going to get beaten. (There is a big hulk she can't vanquish with her punches, but that guy gets dragged away by his jealous wife.) 

Two guys wander into the square. They call each other "brother" but they may be using the term figuratively, since they're both Ming revolutionaries working against the Ching tyranny. (Or was it the other way round? At one point their main enemy claims to be working for the much later Manchus.) Kan (Sze-Ma Lung), the dominant member of the duo, gets pulled into a fight with Peng and he counters her moves. Grandpa decides that he's officially proposed and demands that Kan marry Peng. Kan has deep political matters on his mind and can't be bothered with marriage, so he and his partner run away. Grandpa and Peng spend most of the film chasing them, during which time all four get into a lot of comical fights with flirtatious guys and petty functionaries. As is often the case, Hong Kong's idea of broad comedy registers as lame in my eyes (especially a moment where one of the defeated functionaries wets himself). But considering that writer-director Joseph Kuo had worked on the two BRONZE MEN films, most of the kung-fu scenes are rather sloppy, with even the excellent Chung-erh indulging in what some call "swingy-arm kung fu."

Only one sequence proves an exception, and it's also the only part of the film that causes me to rate the film's mythicity "fair." Toward the end of the movie, Kuo apparently decides to inject a little straight adventure into the mix. All through the flick, Kan and his allies (including another lady fighter, Nancy Yen) have prated about wanting to knock off Kung (Lo Lieh), the "war minister" of the enemy dynasty. Kan's coterie attacks Kung's pavilion, and Kung's forces gain the upper hand.

Along come Grandpa and Peng, still trying to drag Kan into marriage. Grandpa pulls a bunch of homemade grenades out of his robes and decimates Kung's soldiers. Then Grandpa squares off against Kung, and it's revealed that the two of them are old enemies. Kung claims he can best anyone with his "magic kung fu," but when he attacks, Grandpa repels Kung with his "negative soul-power," which for some reason manifests as a jet of steam from Grandpa's staff. Kung is flung away, and Grandpa thinks Kung is toast.

Instead, Kung's magic-fu makes him into your basic juggernaut, able to stave off all the blows of the remaining revolutionaries, all the while laughing like a manic hyena. (Lo Lieh really rocks the crazed laughter thing, all the more impressive since he's keeping it up while doing his signature fighting-moves.) At last Grandpa remembers his former teacher informing him that the only way to defeat magic-fu is with a "Yin-Yang" maneuver that combines the powers of one male and one female fighter. Grandpa enjoins Peng and Kan to attack Kung together and this leads to Kung's colorful defeat. But then Grandpa insists on Kan marrying Peng again, and so Kan heads for the hills, pursued by Gramps, Peng and a whole wedding entourage.

One odd thing about this opus is the total lack of romance between Peng and Kan. From what I can tell Chinese audiences like soppy romance as much as anyone else, and even kung-fu films are rife with lovers who court each other with karate chops. But aside from Kan telling Peng that he's not rejecting her because she's ugly, there's zero sense that the two of them have any romantic resonance. I guess in the writer's mind real romance would have offset the "Sadie Hawkins" vibe he was going for.

PRINCESS OF MARS (2009)

 

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

Since Edgar Rice Burroughs' pioneering Martian hero did get a creditable (if not exceptional) adaptation in 2012, I can't very well carp that this Asylum production deprived viewers of a definitive adaptation of the John Carter mythos. I can complain that it's a generally mediocre film, and the best I can say of it is that it's far from the worst to come out of this studio. One source claims that Disney had announced their adaptation even back in 2009, which would explain the Asylum people becoming interested in the property, though I assume they actually had to pay for the rights to Burroughs' story, which is a sort of accomplishment in itself.

Antonio Sabato Jr. is at least a reasonably impressive hero-type here. His version of John Carter is a U.S. army sniper stationed in Afghanistan, and after he's injured in combat with a drug-merchant named Sarka, Carter's nearly-dead form is utilized by army doctors for a teleportation experiment. Sounds pretty counter-intuitive to use a half-dead guy for an experiment, but that's the Asylum for you. FWIW, in the original novel Carter is in danger of death before he gets magically transported to Mars, so I suppose that's what the writer-director was riffing on. (Also, because current science no longer believes life on Mars possible, one scientist notes that they're not sending Carter to THAT Mars, but to some other planet they've given that name.)

On Mars Carter is healed of all his wounds but nearly naked. He also discovers he's stronger than normal thanks to the gravity of Mars. He's spotted by his future love Dejah Thoris (Traci Lords) but she leaves him to his fate-- which turns out being captured by the tusk-mouthed savages known as Tharks. (In the books the Tharks have four arms; no surprise that this film doesn't even attempt this effect.) Carter is given a potion that allows him to talk Martian, and he learns about the long history of conflict between the Tharks and the human Martians, represented by Dejah and her people. Dejah is also captured by the Tharks and, despite a rough first meeting, eventually she persuades Carter to help her save the planet. As in the books, the planet's atmosphere is only maintained by artificial installations, and if they're destroyed, so does the populace.

The script is pedestrian and the effects-- mostly big CGI beasts seen from a distance-- are paltry. For no good reason the writer injects another Earthman, the drug-merchant, apparently just so that Carter can fight another guy with super-strength-- though their actual fight is forgettable. The villain's name, Sarka / Sab Than, sustains a little continuity interest simply because in Burroughs, "Sarkoja" is one of the primary villains of PRINCESS OF MARS, though she's actually a scheming female Thark, while Burroughs' "Sab Than" is a minor secondary antagonist.

The film's only saving graces are Sabato and Lords. It's interesting that while Burroughs' Dejah Thoris is no kind of warrior princess, both this film and the 2012 iteration make her into a sword-mistress. Sadly, though Lords looks pretty good in the role despite her age, she doesn't get to do anything but stab a small critter with her blade. From what I can tell, as of this writing the role of Dejah seems to be Lords' last role of any significance. 

FARSCAPE: SEASON FOUR (2002-03)

 

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

Following up on the plot-threads from Season Three, the steely Peacekeeper Grayza becomes the Moya crew's new pursuer, though the writers attempt to undermine her slightly by having her accompanied by a lieutenant who's secretly allied to Scorpius. The latter has taken refuge on Moya for reasons I chose to forget, and since I've already expressed my distaste for the character, I'll skip over his dubious participation as a regular with the scruffy protagonists. 

Old three-eyed woman Noranti (Melissa Jaffer) is a far more welcome addition to the cast, and though she's played for humor, she does to some extent compensate for the loss of "den mother" Zhaan. The fourth season also adds yet another new character to the overburdened crew, Sikozu (Raelee Hill), who is another scientist and somewhat duplicates the functions of Jool. (The scripters solve this problem by simply not having the two characters around one another most of the time.) She's also a key element in yet another involved plot involving Scorpius and the race who spawned him, the Scarrans, but this story-line, perhaps because of the Scorpius presence, I found less than engrossing.

One major plotline is that Aeryn remains pregnant for the whole season, though she would have to wait until the two-part telefilm to give birth to her baby by John Crichton. The latter half of the season subjects Aeryn to considerable torments when she's captured by Scarrans, who have become ever more interested in the possibility of using wormhole technology to invade Crichton's home planet. As for the other members, by this time there aren't a lot of surprises with them, which may be one reason the writers kept injecting new crew-members. Thus the better episodes tend to be the ones that stress the ensemble rather than particular character-arcs.

The most ambitious arc is a three-parter involving the Moya crew returning to Earth. "Unrealized Reality" forces Crichton to listen to an alien being's lecture on the perils of time-travel and alternate worlds. Actual time-travel takes place in "Kansas," wherein Crichton and friends end up on Earth in 1985, and is followed by the third part, "Terra Firma," in which Crichton and the others visit the "current" time from which Crichton departed, though by the story's end the Moya crew must return to space. "Firma" later gets some further elaboration in "A Constellation of Doubt," when Moya manages to tap a broadcast from Earth, chronicling the planet's reaction to its first contact with aliens, complete with "celebrity interviews" with said aliens.

All four episodes depend on one's familiarity with the characters, but "Kansas" is the most ambitious, for all that it riffs on the 1985 film "Back to the Future." In the movie, Marty McFly accidentally altered time's true course by alienating the affections of his future mother to himself in place of his actual father, thus forcing Marty to correct the problem by bringing his parents together and insuring his birth. Crichton has similar problems with validating his existence, though in 1985 he already exists as a teenager, moody and rebelling against the authority of his father. The senior Crichton is in danger of dying prematurely if the Moya crew can't prevent him from being assigned to the doomed Challenger expedition, and this leads to some amusing sequences as Crichton's alien allies are forced to pretend they're humans dressed up for Halloween. And just to keep the incest angle in, Chiana-- whose liking for Crichton has been frustrated by his loyalty to Aeryn-- finds a way around that impediment by seducing Young Crichton. Granted, Chiana's not exactly the "mother" type, but she's certainly more experienced than the teenager, and this sequence, not technically necessary for the plot, smacks of "shipping" characters who wouldn't otherwise get together.

The final episodes of Season Four are fairly dark, being dominated by Aeryn's abduction and the Scarrans' plans for Earth. This plotline would be concluded in the telefilm, though I'm sure any number of subplots were left hanging by the series not receiving a full final season.