SUPERARGO AND THE FACELESS GIANTS (1968)

 

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

Writer-director Nick Nostro, who gave the first Superargo film a fair amount of visual panache, did not return for the second and last outing of the crimson-clad wrestler-hero. Both the new director, Paolo Bianchini, and the new writer seemed to have done better in their careers with spaghetti westerns, for this is a pedestrian if competent masked crusader flick.

In the first film Superargo already has a bulletproof costume and a superlative, Doc Savage-like control of his physical abilities. Bianchini and company at least make the effort to up the game somewhat. When a new menace threatens and the helpless spy agencies need a savior, they seek out Superargo (Ken Wood again), and find that he's been studying the mystic arts with Hindu instructor Kamir (Italian actor Aldo Sambrell). The ex-wrestler now has such powers as telepathy and levitation, and the latter makes possible the film's best scene, in which the heroes, trapped in a chamber filling with poison gas, simply float their way above the gas!

The new menace begins with a number of missing athletes, who re-appear as lobotomized slaves of an evil genius, Professor Wond (Guy Madison). Wond has no more characterization than previous villain Diabolicus, and I'm not sure Wond even has a definite world-conquering plot in mind as he sends his "faceless giants" (actually, fairly tall men with no expressions) out to assault his enemies. It doesn't take Superargo and his sidekick long to identify Wond, but once they do, there's no talk of having a local army raid his base. The two heroes just wander from place to place, being attacked by the robots. In the middle of the film, Superago becomes a scientist and invents an electronic gun that disrupts the cyborgs' hearts, but later he forgets the gun and he and Kamir just whale on the robots over and over. I commented that Superargo generally conformed to the pattern of the simon-pure altrusitic hero. Yet at the end, after the red retaliator defeats the pathetically unskilled professor in a fight, Superargo promptly tosses the evildoer into a pool of deadly quicksand. 

Bianchini conforms to one pattern of the first film: a good girl and a bad girl. Superargo's previous girlfriend is gone without comment, but he gets a new squeeze (Luisa Baratto) in the course of his peregrinations. She ends up with him at the film's conclusion, in which it sounds like the wrestler may hang up his mask for the charms of domesticity. But the bad girl is more interesting. Whereas a viewer couldn't be entirely sure about the feelings of the villain's henchwoman in DIABOLICUS, But this time the bad woman, played by Diana Lorys, forms an unquestionable passion for the lithe hero but ends up dying accidentally, just another "tainted woman" despite lending the crusader some aid in the end. Indeed, because the fights are pretty dull, Lorys provides the film's only good performance with her breathy passion for the stolid Superargo.