MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "GRIME AND PUNISHMENT" (1997)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*   

It's "torture Al" time again, though I must give the writers credit. Episodes like ROCK AND ROLL GIRL were pretty obvious that Al set himself up for humiliation as soon as he asked the whole family to contribute money. But GRIME AND PUNISHMENT does a good fake-out, making the episode look like it's going to be a "torture Bud" story.

At the outset, Bud makes the apparent mistake of telling his parents that he's making more money as a talent agent. Al demands that Bud start paying rent on his sumptuous basement lodgings. After a token "running away from home" gag, complete with Bud putting his possessions into a bindle on a stick, the prodigal son returns. Al and Peg for the first time bring out his baby book, and Bud is perplexed to see that there are no pictures. The Parents from Hell claim none were taken because he was such an ugly offspring. Further, the book attests that Bud's first recorded words were, "Bud want food-- Ow." Present-day Bud looks questioningly at Peg, who responds, "Nobody likes a needy baby." This is a rare admission of either Bundy parent using corporal punishment on either kid. It's far more common that when the Bundy parents torture their children, it's through neglect, which is explained by the enormous stupidity and self-centeredness of both Al and Peg.

             

Bud then gives in, but he stoops only to conquer. Once he has a rental contract with Al, Bud brings in a building inspector-- a big fat woman, of course-- to grade the basement as a place for human habitation. Not only does the inspector not give the basement a passing grade, she exerts an authority that only makes sense in Al's World, fitting Al with a shock-collar until he upgrades the dwelling. Al is confined to the basement, and Bud-- well, maybe he goes back to his old upstairs room, or to the couch, since it's improbable that he'd be bunking with Peg or Kelly. Al swears he won't make the improvements, and he even begins enjoying being separated from Peg's wheedling for sex. However, Bud then starts selling tickets to people who want to poke the confined bear. To be sure, Marcy is the only one who explicitly pays for the privilege of forcing Al to listen to her feminist lectures. Kelly's next up, though Bud probably just told her to entertain her daddy with her "improve class" techniques. One of these includes Kelly dressing up as Pocahontas and throwing a tomahawk at an offscreen Al. We don't know where it hits him, but it might hit the lower extremities, since afterward she calls him "Chief Thunder-Pants." (Later the writers can't resist having the pun of Kelly calling her own performances "Chinese daughter torture," even though this takes away from her appearance of innocent sadism.) Then Bud brings out the Big Guns, or maybe the Big 'Uns that Al claims not to like, sending Peg into the cell to take advantage of the fresh meat.

 The Peg-torture finally breaks Al: he agrees to pay for the improvements, and Bud trepidatiously removes the shock collar. However, in a great depiction of twisted Bundy logic, Al's proud of Bud for mousetrapping him, given that long ago Al did the same thing to his father. So for once, Al's victimization leads to a rare moment of father-son bonding, though there's still one last slapstick stunt to keep things on the wacky side.        

THE RANGERS: BLOODSTONE (2021)

 

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

Once in a great while, I'll stumble across a micro-budgeted fantasy flick that, despite limitations of cast-size and fx, still shows a little charm. Not this one, though. In addition to all the usual failings, the flick's most egregious flaw is that the script waits until the last half-hour to inform viewers as to what the object sought by good and evil questers, the titular Bloodstone, is capable of doing.

I noted a 2016 "Rangers" title on streaming that must be a precursor to this one. At least the same individual who wrote, directed, producers and starred in BLOODSTONE plays a character with the same name in the 2016 film, so I guess they must tie together somehow. I strongly doubt that the earlier movie expounded much on the fantasy-world though, or BLOODSTONE would have recycled some of that content here.

 So this much is clear: two groups are looking for some artifact, the Bloodstone. A raiding-party abducts the young daughter of the hero, forest-ranger Drustan (David Nordquist), so Drustan pursues the raiders, though he only encounters two of the evildoers: a snarky "orc" with an English accent and an unspeakin hulk. He has various back and forth encounters with the two. For instance, he declines to kill them from afar in order to follow them to his captive daughter, but they capture him instead and beat him up. He finally kills them both and leaves, but a dark-elf sorceress shows up and revievs the talky one. Meanwhile, Drustan runs into Shariya (Wendy Tuck), a lady elf. He doesn't initially trust her and they get into a short hand-to-hand fight that remains the only memorable scene, but only because it's an elf doing kung-fu blocking-blows. There are more forgettable fights, flashbacks to how Drustan became a Ranger, some mystic stuff about the Bloodstone, and-- I guess it ended somehow, I've already forgotten it.

Still better than WIZARDS OF THE DEMON SWORD, though.          

SUPERMAN LEGACY (2025)

 

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

SPOILERS OUT THE WAZOO

Yes, I'm going to discuss lots of stuff about the film's twists and turns, and so I wouldn't blame anyone for not reading this review before seeing the movie. I tried not to watch very many of the trailers or interview-spots with LEGACY's writer-director James Gunn, and nearly none of the advance commentary. Now that I have seen it, my basic verdict is that it's not "too political" or "too jokey." Rather, it's just, to play off the AMADEUS joke, "too many notions" from a former comics-fan trying to fit in everything and the kitchen sink. However, two days after I saw the film, many reviews and box office calculations suggest that LEGACY will be a winner. It's not impossible that on some future second viewing, I might even like it a little better. But it's far from any sort of masterpiece, and I don't think the movie will provide a new model for good superhero films generally.     

One aspect that other moviemakers might imitate is that here Gunn adjures the usual "one gimme" approach to superhero origin films. Instead. like the real comic books, most heroic debuts become "many gimmes" as the creators seek to blend new characters into some overall franchise-universe. Gunn gives us a Superman (David Corenswet) who began his costumed-hero career three years previous to "the present day." There aren't nearly as many wacky heroes, villains and monsters running around as there were in Gunn's SUICIDE SQUAD. Still, there's a motley-crew version of the Justice League in existence and Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) has apparently been making assaults on the Man of Steel for some time, though as in many comics the public perceives Luthor as a law-abiding businessman. Also, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) knows who Clark Kent really is, and they're seriously involved though not yet sharing toothbrush-space. What a busy three years. LEGACY is probably a better advertisement for the prolific creativity of the DC Universe than SQUAD ever was, though I have a lot of reservations about Gunn's choices.

 The main plot can be summed up as "Superman Vs Cancel Culture." Some weeks prior to the film's main action, Superman intervened in a war between a Middle Eastern country, Jarhanpur, that was being invaded by neighbor-nation Boravia, a U.S. ally. In the 1940s the Man of Steel was occasionally seen forcefully brokering peace/ending wars using nothing but his own force of arms. But in the 21st century, real-world governments don't like it when superheroes enforce peace. Luthor plays on the U.S. government's reticence toward superheroic solutions to set a trap for Superman, though the villain seems to have been selling arms to Boravia for a long time before Superman's intervention there. (This too was a Golden Age trope for Siegel and Shuster: War Profiteers Are the Scum of the Earth.) So Luthor concocts two super-flunkies: Ultraman and The Engineer (who both sport two of the most butt-ugly costumes ever seen in superhero cinema). He dresses up Ultraman, who has Superman-like powers (cue reference to the fourth Chris Reeves film), and has the flunky masquerade as a Boravian avenger. Using computer-interfaces Luthor not only stage-manages Ultraman's fight with the hero, the super-scientist also has Ultraman knock Superman all the way to the Arctic wastes. Luthor does all this not to humiliate Superman, but to find the Kryptonian's Fortress of Solitude. How'd Luthor know of its existence? Watched SUPERMAN II, I guess.

Gunn's conception of the Fortress is almost entirely borrowed from Richard Donner's 1978 classic, except that Gunn adds some funny robots to guard over Superman's few Kryptonian relics and a handy solar healing ray, Keep in mind Luthor can't possibly know that an injured Superman will have such a ray; can't know that when injured the hero might, I don't know, call upon some fellow superhero for help. But it just so happens, for the plot's convenience, that Injured Superman whistles up Krypto, who drags the hero all the way to the Fortress. Later, after Superman has repaired himself and gone out again in search of his foe, Luthor and his crew manage to find the Fortress again. Gunn does maintain a little mystery as to how the villain gains access to the hidden retreat. But this minor note of mystery also serves to cover up the fact that Luthor does all this without having any true knowledge that he can find something in the Fortress to help him cancel Superman.                 

But of course, Luthor's trip is not in vain; he learns a deep, dark secret of Kal-El's Kryptonian "legacy" that hurts his reputation with many, though not all, of the people who have lionized the hero. This fall in popularity makes the government politicos give Luthor a free hand in taking the Man of Steel prisoner. However, as Gunn's plot makes clear, Luthor actually manages to imprison his enemy because the mad scientist also lucks into capturing Krypto at the Fortress. Superman explicitly turns himself over to Luthor because he's the kind of guy who'll even go to the wall for a mangy mutt. I could argue that it would be possible to drop the "Kryptoninan legacy" folderol and keep the plot essentially the same. The legacy plot-point only functions to supposedly motivate the U.S. government to give Luthor a free hand. But then, no government agency is explicitly involved in capturing or even questioning the Kryptonian. Even Snyder's BATMAN VS SUPERMAN did a better job of distilling how a government of humans might react to the precipitate actions of a superhuman. In essence, Gunn wants it both ways: he wants to take a shot at government overreach, but all the dirty work is done by the film's main villain, so the government's role is nugatory.

 I will give Gunn props in that he finds a way to make Clark Kent's colleagues, the reporters of the Daily Planet, vital to the story. In a comic but still essential subplot, Jimmy Olsen discovers that the captive Superman is being held in a "pocket universe." Lois takes this knowledge to the ersatz Justice League in the hope that they will succor their fellow crusader. But not only do we barely know anything about these three yobbos-- Hawkgirl, the Guy Gardner Green Lantern, and Mister Terrific-- we also don't find out why they're mostly indifferent to the fate of Superman. Hawkgirl and Guy are just jerks because Gunn wants them out of the story at that juncture, while Mister Terrific agrees to help Lois not because he holds Superman in any regard. but because Luthor's meddling with extra-dimensional forces could pose a threat to Earth. 

Now, Luthor could have come up with assorted ways of restraining the captive Superman, but in line with Gunn's "too many notions" practice, Gunn decided to shoehorn in quirky DC hero Metamorpho as the method of restraint. Gunn gives the audience no more backstory on the Element Man than he does on the Justice Jerks, but at least Metamorpho shows emotionally torment at working for Luthor, and he actually relates to Superman in a one-on-one manner. Superman, Krypto, Metamorpho, and Metamorpho's Element Baby (don't ask) manage to break out of Luthor's prison just as Lois and Mister Terrific make the scene. It's a slam-bang escape, though too busy for my taste.

The impeding menace of the pocket universe is put on hold because Superman needs time to recover from a close encounter of the Kryptonite kind. The recovery includes a rest at the Kent farm, where we meet Ma and Pa Kent (cast rather against established physical types) for one of LEGACY's few quiet moments. Then there's a well-choreographed big battle scene between Superman and the super-flunkies, while the hero must also seek to save Metropolis from a black hole and the imperiled Jarhanpur from Boravian invaders. Luthor finally has a belated monologue about his obsession with Superman that I found too little too late. The question of Superman's true legacy among humans is more or less wrapped up but in a somewhat superficial manner.

I think my main frustration with LEGACY is that I regarded both Gunn's SUICIDE SQUAD and his three GUARDIANS films as masterclasses in how to adroitly present backstories for large cinematic character-ensembles. In LEGACY, though, Gunn skimped on most of the characters except for Superman, Lois and Luthor. Maybe, despite the clear intention to make LEGACY a tentpole-film, Gunn decided that those three characters had to receive almost all of his attention. And while I have issues with some of the ways Gunn presented information about the three characters, Corenswet, Brosnahan and Hoult have a lot of good scenes playing off one another, probably as good as anything in the Reeve-Hackman-Kidder interactions. So if LEGACY succeeds, it will succeed not so much on presenting a new vision of the Superman mythos, but for being entertaining with dynamic performances and splashy action-scenes.

A last point: LEGACY is not even close to being woke next to the many artistic offenders in that category, from most of the CW TV shows to almost everything in the MCU since 2018, to Gunn's own godawful HBO Max series PEACEMAKER. The story doesn't seriously engage with whatever politics would come about from a superhero ending wars, and the whole BS about Superman being an immigrant was just agitprop from Gunn. Hawkgirl and Mister Terrific may not be very good characters, and they're jerks at times, but she's not a Girl Boss and he's not an Advertisement for Reverse Racism. No one should avoid the film because of false narratives of wokeness, despite all the garbage that almost wrecked the cinematic genre of the superhero.              
             

THE SENDER (1998)

 

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

THE SENDER is a decent time-killer from the last few years of PM Entertainment, before the company was sold to another business entity. Like many PM productions, it attempts to cover big plot-holes with lots of gunfights, car chases and martial battles, but it does so efficiently enough.

Thirty years before the main story, an Air Force pilot named Jack Grayson disappears after his encounter with a UFO. The main tale then begins as Jack's son Dallas Grayson (Michael Madsen) visits an air base where his father's old plane is hangared, and immediately butts heads with an asshole officer, Rosewater (R. Lee Ermey). Following an action scene that has little relevance save to demonstrate Grayson's fighting-skills, he next checks out a local hospital, where he discharges his cancer-afflicted little girl Lisa. 

Some dialogue establishes that Lisa has an imaginary friend named Angel. Yet that night the viewer learns the truth: Angel (Shelli Lether) is a sexy blonde alien who visits Lisa in her bed and administers energy-treatments to save the little girl from her disease. These scenes carry a sort of emotional resonance foreign to most bang-bang crash-crash PM offerings in that, since Lisa's mother died a while back, Angel can easily be seen as a magical mother-surrogate for Lisa. 

Shortly after the lady ET departs, or seems to, Rosewater and other soldier-goons invade Grayson's house, setting it on fire after abducting Lisa and fatally shooting Grayson. However, for whatever reason Angel's still hovering close enough to come back and use her powers to save the hero's life. From then on, the armed forces guy and the alien form an unlikely duo as they seek to liberate Lisa from Rosewater's boss Lockwood. This evil scientist, portrayed by that block of wood known as Steven Williams, has learned (the film never says how) why the aliens have been watching Lisa. The tyke possesses unique genetic traits that make her capable of becoming a "Sender," someone who can magically open gateways between worlds. Angel was sent to keep tabs on Lisa, though since she is by definition a good alien, she never explicitly says that she wants to abduct Lisa in order to make her into a wormhole-engineer for Angel's people. One would think the writers would have given their villains some bwaa-ha-ha moment where they explain how they plan to profit from suborning Lisa's talent. But no, for the writers, it's good enough to say that Lockwood runs either Area 51 itself or a near relation, and that's enough to prove he's evil.       

The action-scenes are plentiful if unremarkable, leavened slightly by Angel's ability to perform an occasional energy-stunt. Madsen at this point in his career was beginning to phone in some of his performances, and as a result Grayson always seems distanced from the goings-on, even when he's supposedly on fire to recover his beloved daughter. This also holds true for Angel's eleventh-hour revelation that Grayson's father Jack is still alive. Why did the aliens keep him away from his family for thirty years, and why does Jack seem to be OK with it? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with his sharing his granddaughter's genetic propensities, since the writers go out of their way to assert that the wormhole-power only manifests in females. Anyway, once the evil Area 51 1/2 has been destroyed, Angel takes her tearful leave from Lisa. Then Grayson, his father and his daughter all plan to go get ice cream, as if there wasn't any possibility that they'd ever again be menaced by acquisitive government agencies. But if one can turn off any desire for verisimilitude in one's brain, THE SENDER manages to be marginally enjoyable.              

NATSUKI CRISIS BATTLE (1994)

 

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

YouTube's programming guided me to this two-part anime, of which I'd never heard. A manga and a game were produced around the same time, and while there's probably no authoritative reference as to which of the three was out of the gate first, I suspect that the game was paramount. For once, the OVA and the manga are equally brief, consisting (from what I can tell) of just two episodes.

And while most anime productions remain close to their manga source material (or vice versa), here it's as if someone said to the respective creators, "Do what you like, as long as you're telling the story of a high-school karate expert named Kisumi Natsuki." The manga shows young Kisumi getting into fights with male opponents, some of whom are just fellow judo/karate students, while others are more aggressive challengers, such as the school's sumo club. The anime pits Kisumi against a rival school, some of whom wear masks during an attack on Kisumi and a friend, But NATSUKI the anime is probably only thirty percent about the heroine battling male opponents, and seventy percent about Kisumi contending with female opponents. The first part of CRISIS largely deals with Kisumi bonding with a female student adept in wrestling, name of Rina, even though the two girls are feisty enough to fight one another. In the second part, Kisumi and Rina are both challenged by another girl wrestler, Kandori, who's somewhat exceptional for the time in being a FBB (though preceded by another lady bodybuilder in 1989's ANGEL COP).  

Kandori is allied to the bad high schoolers and has some vague relationship with Kisumi's current judo sensei, but there's no love-stuff in the anime, while there's only a tiny bit of potential romance in the manga. Of the two, the anime is much more enjoyable for the kinetic battle scenes, though story-wise it's absolutely average. 

ANGEL, SEASON TWO (2000-2001)

 

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

JUDGEMENT (F)-- Angel, guided by one of Cordelia's visions, seeks to protect an innocent from a demonic sacrifice. However, though he finds the innocent, a pregnant woman named Jo, in the company of a demon, the demon in question is protecting Jo from the menace of The Tribunal. After Angel accidentally kills the demon, he must become Jo's champion to preserve her life, forcing our hero to undergo a jousting-duel on horseback. The episode is mostly interesting for showing how some of LA's demons solve their justice problems, and for introducing semi-regular Lorne, host of an oracular karaoke club. There's a mini-crossover in that Angel visits Faith in prison. She never becomes a regular player in the Angelverse but eventually re-appears in the Buffyverse. There's a strong sense even in this minor encounter that Angel, whose only interest in Faith was avuncular, has become a rough parental substitute for Faith, which is a big reason she never again (to my recollection) says anything more about her previous substitute, Mayor Wilkins.

ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN (P)-- Politics and the Whedonverse never blend well. Since Angel's detective office was blown up at the end of Season 1, his entourage needs a new crib. Angel selects a derelict hotel, and it becomes obvious to his partners that he has some history with the place. Copious flashbacks take the viewer back to 1952, when the ensouled Angel lived a solitary existence in a hotel room, having contact with no one, until he gets drawn into a growing paranoia among other residents. The paranoia is partly created by one of those many make-work demons with overly specific powers, and it's later banished in contemporary times so that Angel Investigations can take over the hotel. The writer tried unsuccessfully to mix 1940s film noir with overly Liberal takes on 1950s paranoia, which was not entirely born from phantom enemies.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS (F)-- Gunn, who started making regular appearances in many Season 2 episodes, comes looking to team up with Angel to defeat a new demon. Instead he spends most of the story teamed up with Cordelia in various semi-comic adventures, which refreshingly don't focus on their respective races. The two of them reunite with Wesley and Angel to defeat the demon. In this episode Angel starts dreaming about Darla, who was resurrected, albeit in human form, by Wolfram and Hart.

     

    UNTOUCHED (F)-- While Lindsey monitors Darla's efforts to mess with Angel's mind, evil junior lawyer Lilah pursues a harder-to-follow plot to suborning a young woman with telekinetic powers, I guess to make her a Wolfram and Hart asset. The dubious plot involves sending a couple of men to rape young Bethany, thus triggering her psychic powers so that she kills them. Angel finds Bethany and talks her into visiting his HQ. When she does so, the heroes learn that Bethany's powers were activated by the trauma of parental abuse. Eventually W&H even use the evil father as an agent, hopiing to convert Bethany to the Dark Side, but Angel manages to save her.

DEAR BOY (P)-- Now, Angel's seeing Darla in the street, not just in her dreams, part of yet another dubious W&H plot. Angel goes a little nuts to find Darla alive again, and his friends fear for his mental health, while Detective Kate thinks this is her chance to bust the vampire. Not much going on beyond some good flashbacks showing how Angel and Darla decided to turn Drusilla back in the 19th century.

GUISE WILL BE GUISE (F)-- This is at least a fun caper, as Wesley is forced to pretend to be Angel in order to satisfy the whims of a dangerous gangster/sorcerer, Paul Lanier. Lanier appears merely to want his twenty-something daughter Virginia protected from enemies. However, the Angel group soon learns that Lanier has his own insidious plans, which lead to a pretty large falling-out between father and daughter. A worthless subplot keeps Angel out of the story for a time.

DARLA (F)-- This episode connected to the BUFFY episode "Fool for Love," but was not nearly as good. The strongest of the many flashback scenes is showing Darla introducing Angelus to her sire, the Master. The corrupt old vampire and the "stallion," as the Master calls him, do not get on well. Meanwhile, Lindsey falls in love with Darla and is concerned that his superiors at W&H are just using her.

THE SHROUD OF RAHMON (P)-- Now Angel and Gunn get mixed up with low-level demons making a museum-heist to get hold of the titular relic. There are a few decent jokes, and Boreanaz gets to play a character opposite to Angel's nature, but it's thin gruel indeed.

          

THE TRIAL (G)-- Despite Darla's having helped Wolfram and Hart, Angel is still obsessed by her, even though in past centuries she deserted Angel when he became "the vampire with a soul." She loses her desire to assail him further and reveals that her return to humanity comes with a penalty: she once more has the social disease she had before she was turned. Lorne informs Angel that there's a supernatural entity that should be able to heal Darla, and so Angel and Darla travel to that entity's dimension. The entity, known as The Valet, puts Angel through three grueling physical trials, and Angel triumphs in each of them. However, the Valet reveals that he can't heal Darla because she was already resurrected once. The entity does confer a "blessing" of sorts on Darla that won't be revealed until later. Angel and Darla return home, only to be ambushed by commandos under the aegis of Lindsay. With Angel neutralized, Lindsay brings in Drusilla, who promptly re-vampirizes Darla. 

REUNION (F)-- Though Angel seems still motivated by noble intentions as he seeks to locate Darla and Drusilla, the script doesn't quite make clear, until episode's end, how much he's become alienated from his status as a champion. As for Darla, though she's initially displeased with her return to undead status, and quarrels with Drusilla, the two finally bond once more and decide to assert their control over the satanic law firm that has manipulated them. The two bloodsuckers invite themselves to a party at Wolfram and Hart, intending to massacre everyone there. Angel makes an appearance, but this time, he refuses to intervene and leaves the senior partners to their fate. (Lilah and Lindsay are spared, however.) Angel's friends find out and try to reach out to him, and his response is to fire them from the agency.

REDEFINITION (F)-- Angel's friends worry about the vampire's descent into darkness, as well as fretting about their own employment prospects. Lilah and Lindsay have similar concerns about their future with Wolfram and Hart as the only survivors of the party-massacre. (However, by episode's end the two rivals are forced by their employers to work together.) Darla and Drusilla attempt to form a gang of demon-servants, but Angel becomes brutally pro-active. Angel kills all the demons and sets the vampire women on fire, though they're able to save themselves. At the episode's end, Wesley tells Angel that they intend to continue helping the helpless, but he remains committed to his ruthless mission of vengeance.

  BLOOD MONEY (F)-- Here we have another crime-themed episode, with Angel seeking to undermine W&H's plan to use a children's charity to bilk rich people of their charitable donations and divert the money to evil enterprises. The story's engaging but nothing special.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY (F)-- Lorne's talent alerts him to a non-supernatural apocalypse: a physicist working on a machine able to stop time. The "anniversary" of the title is the fellow's one-year celebration with his cute girlfriend, but he overhears her telling a friend that she plans to end their relationship. The scientist's attempt to meddle with time puts the universe in dire straits, and Lorne can just barely talk the reluctant Angel into intervening. The episode does spotlight the hero's immense frustration with trying to do good, and it does give Andy Hallett his first real chance to shine in the Lorne character.

THE THIN DEAD LINE (F)-- Someone's bringing dead cops back to life as unkillable zombies, so Angel again puts his W&H jeremiad on hold, reaching out to Detective Kate for aid. Meanwhile Gunn, Cordy and Wesley encounter Anne Steele, manager of the youth shelter, and the trio start working the rotting-cop case from that angle. There's some strong drama when Wesley's shot by one of the zombies, and only Angel's defeat of the zombie-maker saves the lives of the hero's former partners. Angel makes a token gesture of reconciliation to them, but Cordelia turns him away, unaware that he saved them indirectly.

REPRISE (F)-- Hostilities between Angel and W&H ramp up as one of the firm's Really Senor Partners-- implicitly a major demon from Hell-- plans to visit and review the progress of the company. Angel seeks out a special gauntlet with which to kill the demon, thereby to commence a direct assault on Perdition. Darla is taken in by Lindsay, while Drusilla leaves town, but for reasons not entirely clear, Darla steals the gauntlet from Angel so that she can make her own assault. Angel foils Darla's plot and then launches his own pyrrhic attack but finds his mission to prove metaphysically futile. Detective Kate is relieved of her duties by superiors who just don't believe in monsters. The lady cop attempts suicide, but Angel can't be bothered with her problems. Darla appears on his doorstep, intending to kill him-- and instead, the two of them make at least three beasts with two backs.      

EPIPHANY (G) -- What would a good Irish boy like Angel be doin', if he couldn't have an epiphany-- though admittedly no James Joyce quotations were made in this episode. Darla thinks that her having sex with Angel several times will revert him to Angelus. Instead-- possibly because Angel's vibe with Buffy was categorically different than his vibe with Darla-- he only experiences perfect despair, and the return of a moral prerogative that erases his ruthless persona. He tells Darla to leave and then rescues Kate from her suicide attempt. Later, after he helps the other heroes save Cordy from vengeful Sikosh demons, he's finally able to explain to Kate the nature of his epiphany, which comes down to an existential version of "doing good is its own reward." He comes back to Angel Investigations but agrees to let the others call the shots while they gauge whether to trust him again.   

DISHARMONY (F)-- Harmony shows up in LA and approaches Cordelia alone, seeking to relive some of the good times the two of them once enjoyed-- though without mentioning her new status as a vampire. The two homegirls enjoy hanging out, but Cordy mistakes Harmony's growing bloodlust for lesbian urges. This results in one of the season's funniest scenes, when Cordelia gets Willow on the phone. Being informed that Harmony's a vamp, Cordelia uses the "L" word and also gets an update on Willow's recent conversion. While the heroes try to cope with the dippy bloodsucker, they must investigate a vampire cult organized like a self-affirmation course ("I'm in control of my unlife!"). The episode's dominant comic mood does not keep Cordy from unloading on Angel for having hurt her with his indifference. And yet "Disharmony" ends with a humorous conclusion that can stand with the best of the Buffy-endjokes.    

DEAD END (F)-- W&H are about to review the futures of Lilah and Lindsay, to determine who gets cut-- and the senior lawyers seem to favor Lindsay, since they make it possible to get an organic replacement for his prosthetic hand. At the same time, a Cordelia-vision puts the heroes on the trail of a human-parts chop shop maintained by W&H. Lindsay finds his new gift a mixed blessing, since the new hand seems to have a mind of its own. He seeks out the karaoke bar for counsel from Lorne and gets the unpleasant news that the Fates want Lindsay and Angel to work together. After much sparring, they do so, and the chop-shop takes a flop. Though W&H don't know what Lindsay did, he bids them farewell and leaves LA, though it's not a final farewell.

BELONGING (F)-- A destructive beast called a Drakken begins to feed on humans, but Lorne brings it to the Angel Team's attention because the creature attacked his club. While tracking the beast, the heroes learn that five years ago, a female physicist nicknamed "Fred" disappeared from her college, and as they make further investigations, Cordy reads a spell and a dimensional portal opens. Out comes Landok, a barbaric warrior with skin as green as Lorne's, and he immediately recognizes the karaoke host. Landok renders the heroes aid in slaying the Drakken and his exchanges with Lorne make clear that the host fled his home dimension for Earth, where he might enjoy culture above the level of barbarism. The good guys activate a spell and send Landok home, but the spell drags Cordelia into the world of Pylea as well.

  OVER THE RAINBOW (F)-- The Angel Team labors to figure out a way to cross into Pylea, but they must do so without Gunn, who owes his allegiance to his crew. Cordelia finds herself stuck in a medieval-looking world dominated by low-level demons of various types. In this world native humans are treated as beasts of burden and are known as "cows," who are kept in line by shock-collars, and Cordy is almost immediately captured and enslaved. She had a brief encounter with the lost physicist Fred (Amy Acker, who will become a regular cast member in Season 3). Wesley figures out a way to enter a new portal, and he, Angel, Lorne and Gunn (who changes his mind about going) make the transition. Meanwhile, Cordy's visions attract undue attention, though this doesn't have quite the dire consequences she expects.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (F)-- Surprise! Because of her visions, Cordelia is elevated to the position of a princess, and she even gets an "off with their heads" line. Unfortunately, though her presence saves her four male buddies, she's also expected to mate with a being called The Groosalugg. Angel and Lorne go looking for a portal and seek help from Lorne's estranged family. Landok is there and he talks up Angel the Mighty Warrior so much that everyone celebrates him and ignores Lorne. Angel enjoys the barbarian life for a time, until he realizes he's expected to execute a "cow" for dinner, and it just happens to be Winifred Burkle, the physicist. Angel and Lorne liberate Fred and flee, while back at Cordelia's castle the other three guys leave but Cordy gets stuck. She meets the Groosalugg and finds him not hard to take, but the priesthood that put her in place have their own plans for the princess. Meanwhile, the first time Angel tries to use his vamp-powers, he turns into an almost mindless demon and attacks his friends, only to be lured away by Fred's intervention.                 

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE PLRTZ GLRB (F)-- The season finale keeps the flow of incidents coming thick and fast. Angel manages to recover his normal personality, only to be attacked to the warriors of the priesthood. Gunn and Wesley almost get killed by a gang of rebels, and Lorne literally loses his head. However, Lorne has more success getting put back together than did Humpty Dumpty. Wesley and Gunn ally themselves with the rebels in order to bring all their people together again. Angel shows up but Wesley almost immediately drafts him in a distraction-gambit, which involves him challenging the demons' champion the Groosalugg to single combat, much to Cordy's displeasure. The priesthood is defeated pretty easily-- hey, it's a TV show, after all-- while Angel is able to stop himself from killing the equally noble Groosalugg. So all the good guys, including Fred, get to go home, though the Groosalugg stays behind. But there's a sad ending, because this episode takes place in parallel to the events of the BUFFY episode "The Gift."     

Overall Season 2 isn't as strong as Season 1, and that's partly because the writers logically tried to come up with storylines largely independent of the Buffyverse. But I for one did not find most of the major characters that the season focuses on-- Lilah, Lindsay and Darla-- to be capable of carrying the added narrative weight.            

THE WILD WILD WEST: "THE NIGHT OF THE UNDEAD" (1968)

 

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

The four seasons of THE WILD WILD WEST were replete with all sorts of "wild" supernormal phenomena, almost always explained through the rationale of "the scientific-Gothic;" that someone came up with a new scientific discovery that emulated the effect of a supernatural phenomenon. In "Night of the Undead," though, writer Calvin Clements Jr-- a long-time TV scribe-- also throws in a plot with a strong sense of Gothic transgression.

West and Gordon (Robert Conrad, Ross Martin) are in New Orleans, on some vague government mission to protect a valuable scientist, Armbruster. Armbruster disappears and West has an encounter with what seems to be a voodoo ceremony. One of the worshippers, a bulky fellow (Rosie Grier), tosses West around and initially seems unharmed by a gunshot. Later the agents find the man's dead body and take a medallion off him. This device is simply present to give Gordon an excuse to pursue a separate course with his disguise-antics (more on which later), while West chases down the main thread of the story. Fortunately for him, Armbruster's old colleague Eddington (John Zaremba) happens to live in the same city where the agents were to meet Armbruster, so West interviews him. West also encounters Mariah (Joan Delaney), whom he saw earlier at the voodoo ceremony, apparently as a worshipper, seen walking barefoot over burning coals. Eddington mentions that he and Armbruster once worked with a disgraced scientist, Articulus, against whom they planned to bring charges of illegal experimentation. However, Articulus supposedly died in a lab accident. West keeps snooping around and ends up a captive in the house of the supposedly dead scientist. More specifically, he ends up beneath the house, in a mine where Articulus (Hurd Hatfield) maintains a small workforce of men-- including Armbruster-- enslaved by a potion that makes them as will-less as zombies. (That word is never used, though strangely West uses the term "robots" many years before it was invented in the 20th century.)      

   I'm not sure where writer Clements might've got the name of Articulus, which obviously suggests the word "articulate." Possibly Clements was being ironic, since what Articulus does is to render all of his slaves "inarticulate"-- including his new acquisition Mariah, who's now under his control and whom he plans to marry. (If he had her under his control enough to make her participate in a voodoo ceremony, why'd he let her go back to her father? I guess so that she'd be around when West got the first part of the story from Eddington.) The second part of the story, as Articulus helpfully provides, is that after he faked his death, he also allowed his bereaved fiancee to think him dead. Eddington then moved in and convinced the fiancee to marry him instead. Since the mother is absent and is meant to have passed on, Mariah is the naughty scientist's way of possessing the mother, through the daughter. However, Articulus also has in his service an age-appropriate housekeeper-confidante, with the odd name of "Phalah," and Phalah is clearly in love with Articulus and resents his plan to consummate his lost nuptials with a younger woman. 

Gordon dons two disguises in his endeavors. While in the first disguise, he flashes the medallion around in a tavern. This results in Gordon being directed to a certain house by a young Black woman named Domino, who plays no further role in the story. Maybe she was a contact between the all-White gang of the scientist and the Blacks who were helping Articulus perpetrate some voodoo illusion for unspecified reasons. That alliance might also explain her name, since a domino is both white and black. The house in New Orleans is never really explained, but that's where Gordon encounters Phalah, who feels the bumps on his head and gives every impression of her being a student of phrenology. There seems no particular reason for Phalah, if she was just a housekeeper, to be living in town, so it may be that she set up the phrenology shop as a way of maintaining contact with other agents in New Orleans. Does her practice of phrenology have anything to do with her collaboration with a guy who messes with brains? Quien sabe? 

Anyway, Phalah sends Gordon on to the house of Articulus and also sends a subordinate to tail the disguised agent. But apparently Gordon loses the tail, for the agent next shows up at the scientist's house in a different disguise. But Phalah is there too, and she recognizes Gordon by the bumps on his head. The two agents are imprisoned together but inevitably work their Bond-mojo, escape, liberate the villain's enslaved minions, and blow up the house. But this time West doesn't get to kill the villain. While West struggles with the demented scientist, Phalah gets fed up with Articulus' wedding plans and shoots him, causing him to fall to his death. 

One detail I omitted from the episode's "cold open" is that West sees the mesmerized Mariah wield a machete and chop down a dummy made up to resemble her father Eddington. The script never states outright that Articulus plans to have Mariah kill her father, but this too sets up reverberations with early Gothic prose fiction. The prototypical Gothic plot is that of a young woman menaced by an older man, sometimes a symbolic substitution for a "bad father." "Undead" presents Mariah as being caught between "good father" Eddington and "bad father" Articulus, and this time the latter's relationship is not entirely symbolic, given that Mariah could have been Articulus's daughter had he married her mother. If one took Eddington out of the equation, "Undead" could be the story of a natural daughter menaced by her transgressive daddy, but willing to fend him off with a deadly weapon in self-defense. Additionally, Phalah could be replaced with a genuine, and very censorious, mother, who's out to kill the bad dad for his unwholesome pursuits-- and maybe for finding the daughter more attractive than the mother. For a voodoo story set in New Orleans, "Undead" has far less to do with race than with incestuous sexuality. (It's also one of the few episodes where James West doesn't get to romance even a single female.)

            

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE, SEASON THREE (2016)

 

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

I was a moderate fan of AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES, and nothing I saw in the first two seasons of that show's replacement, AVENGERS ASSEMBLE, made me think the follow-up was an adequate substitute. However, though there were still various weak episodes in Season 3, for the first time other stories were at least on the same level of good melodrama as the best tales in MIGHTIEST.

One of the weaker arcs is an attempt to boil down the very involved introduction of the 1990s superhero-team The Thunderbolts into a handful of episodes. As in the comic, the members of the team are all supervillains pretending to be heroes, in line with a master plan by their leader Baron Zemo. In the comic book. the whole idea is to gradually show some of the villains turning good, but that's not possible in ASSEMBLE, so the best thing about the Thunderbolts is just that it puts a few new costumes into the mix. The character Songbird makes a few other appearances, and has a slight rapport with Hawkeye, who's a former criminal in the comics (not sure about in the cartoon).

 Ultron and Kang make return appearances, and they're both as forgettable as they were in previous seasons. But I greatly appreciated the show's take on The Black Panther's first encounter with these Avengers. I don't know to what extent this Disney XD show was privy to the MCU's articulation of its Panther-iteration, though elements of that variation began to appear as early as 2015's AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (with the introduction of the Panther's regular enemy Klaw) and then with the Panther himself appearing in CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR the next year. In contrast to 2018's BLACK PANTHER, the Panther-episodes in ASSEMBLE do not over-emphasize a "woke" political viewpoint, and in that sense the cartoon-Panther is better than the live-action one. However, I think that one or more of the ASSEMBLE writers may have known about the politics brewing in Ryan Coogler's teapot. In the episode "Panther's Rage"-- significantly named for a famous (if unrelated) arc in the comics-- Panther gets into a battle with Klaw, who of course now looks like the live-action character. During the battle, Klaw has a line which I'll paraphrase as, "I'm gonna steal all your vibranium for the cause of colonial supremacy! Just kidding; I'm doing it for the money!"

Various other Marvel characters make peripatetic appearances. The Carol Danvers of Captain Marvel (who had appeared as the original "Ms. Marvel" in MIGHTIEST) shows up, and though she's as lousy a character here as in the comics, at least no one avoids using the Captain Marvel tag for her. Close on Danvers' heels is the Kamala Khan Ms. Marvel, who's also a nothing character, though the animators make her a better fighter than a lot of other iterations. This Ms. Marvel is made to be in line with her late 2010s iteration, who was retconned into a spawn of The Inhumans due to Disney/Marvel's attempt to build up those characters into a franchise to rival that of X-MEN. That attempt failed both in the comics and in the dismal live-action INHUMANS show. But though the Royal Family of Inhumans aren't particularly memorable in their ASSEMBLE appearances, the show gets decent mileage out of the situation where the Inhumans' mutation-chemical gets loose and transforms various humans into super-types. among them the aforementioned Ms. Marvel II. The social panic of these transformations causes the government to clamp down on the Avengers' activities, particularly upon the Hulk, and this development at least makes a little more sense than the MCU's idiotic Sokovian crisis. Though Season Four will deal with some sort of "Civil War," I liked the fact that in this arc, all of the Avengers defend their green-skinned fellow member, and thus earns better characterization-marks than many similar events both in comics and live-action movies.            

QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS (1947)

 

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

The small-time studio Lippert Pictures didn't invest much in metaphenomenal movies until the 1950s, when they gained a modest reputation for flicks like KING DINOSAUR and ROCKETSHIP X-M. In the 1940s, though, almost all of the studio's fantasy-content was tied up in their two jungle movies-- this one, and 1948's JUNGLE GODDESS-- both of which evoked the still popular "white goddess" trope.  

The title of the later film is more truthful; GODDESS really is mostly about how a young White woman gets adopted as a goddess by a Black African tribe, and how she talks a couple of White adventurers into setting her free. But QUEEN isn't really about its tribe of White Amazons. One of the two main characters is Jean (Patricia Morison), a woman looking for her missing fiancee in tribal Africa, while the other is the new love Jean finds while she's looking for the old one. Though Jean searches for long-time boyfriend Greg, she finds that new love in Gary (former Batman Robert Lowery), a jungle guide she hires to find the tribe of "she-devils" who've allegedly abducted Greg. But Greg isn't being held against his will. While he was part of some vague mission to locate ivory smugglers, he encountered the Amazons' queen Zita (Amira Moustafa), and the two of them fell in love. In the cases of both Jean and Greg, absence did not make the heart grow fonder for the established fiancee; rather, their questionable affections cooled and found better (and presumably more permanent) mates because of their separation. By the flick's end, both new couples have paired off for happy endings, and any viewers hoping that Jean and Zita might battle over the same man must content themselves with a little bit of tough talk from Zita about fighting for her beloved. (So this film does not fall into my "fighting femme" category.)      

QUEEN's writer is so focused on getting his two couples linked up that the subject of the all-female tribe is barely addressed. Apparently, they started when a ship at sea foundered, and a lifeboat containing only women and girls managed to land in Africa. There's no clear history of how the survivors decided to dress up in leopard-skins and become their own tribe, rather than trying to reach civilization. No older women are seen, and there's a line or two about how all the current Amazons grew up in the jungle and have just started thinking about recruiting some males for marital purposes, but that's not exactly a thorough exegesis. The viewer also doesn't see much evidence of whatever warlike abilities the tribeswomen mastered in order to awe the local Black residents. There's one scene where Zita hits a stationary target with an arrow, and the real villain of the story-- the head of the smuggling operation-- gets killed by a blowpipe-dart wielded by one of Zita's girl servants. If anything, Jean comes off as a figure more formidable than Zita. When Jean first meets Gary, he, like Zita later on, is busy using some stationary targets for practice, albeit with a rifle. Gary voices some "woman-hating" sentiments, and Jean impresses him by whipping out a pistol and accurately ventilating all of the targets. Later she at least draws her pistol when Gary's attacked by a lion, even if she's unable to fire for fear of hitting him.

Some of the juvenile jungle-japes of this era boasted some pleasant sexploitation elements, QUEEN is pretty blah, even though Morison and Moustafa were both attractive women. There's not a lot of action when the good guys take on the smuggling gang-- with Gary getting to duke it out with the head villain-- but it's just barely enough of a battle-scene to make this a combative film, since Gary is, with Jean, one of the movie's two main characters.           

APE VS. MECHA-APE: NEW WORLD ORDER (2024)

 

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

Just as the previous Asylum entry in this series was a deep-discount knockoff of GODZILLA VS. KONG, and so opposed its imitation Kong against its mechanical imitation, NEW WORLD ORDER loosely derives from GODZILLA VS. KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE, wherein the two title monsters team against a threat to Earth.

ORDER is a tiny bit better than its predecessor, if only because returning writer-director Marc Gottleib injected a little more mystery into the proceedings. Why is Abraham the Ape, now confined to a Pacific island, now acting as if he anticipates some new enemy by costuming himself in crude "armor?" Why does a cruise ship, whose passengers include the parents of ace reporter Naomi (Ashley Dakin), disappear at sea? And even though the government has built a "Mark II" version of the Mecha-Kong that got enlisted by terrorists in the previous film, a version that should be impossible to usurp again, why does an early scene appear to show Mecha-Kong II overtaking the cruise ship?

Well, Gottleib does have some answers to some questions, though I don't think he ever explains that early oceanic scene with Mecha-Kong II. It seems that the aliens who originally inserted the bio-gunk into Abraham's capsule in APE VS MONSTER have a much more involved scheme, involving the resurrection of an ancient giant tentacle-headed critter named Khlu-hoo (HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu under an alias). Somehow the aliens, who never make an appearance on Earth itself, orchestrate this with the help of human servitors, including a politico played by the resident "name-actor," Sean Young. Ape and Mecha-Ape botn fight the Tentacle-Menace, and though the two "heroes" are not literally on screen together, Gottleib does find a way to make the early scene of Abraham "armoring" himself pay off.

That said, ORDER is still just another Asylum in which no-name actors stand around spouting Bad Expositions, with maybe ten percent of the movie devoted to monster-action. That said, I liked the design of Khloo-hoo (or whatever) better than either of the pongid protagonists, particularly in a scheme where Tentacle-Terror just picks up Abe and chucks him like a bad penny. But I didn't like anything about ORDER enough to give it a higher rating than poor.  

            

IN THE NAME OF THE KING (2007)

 

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

While Uwe Boll is probably not the world's worst filmmaker-- his three BLOODRAYNE films, the only other Boll-movies I've seen, were competent formula-- no one could have convinced me he wasn't the worst in 2007, when friends talked me into seeing IN THE NAME OF THE KING in a theater. I practically climbed the walls trying to find any entertainment on screen. Other viewers who saw KING must have told all their friends, for the $60 million dollar fantasy adaptation of the "Dungeon Siege" videogame flopped hard.

I read somewhere that the preparation of the script by the project's three (largely inexperienced) writers took a long time. Probably most of that time the writers weren't just trying to figure out how to build up the fantasy-world of the "Siege" videogame, but reading and rereading LORD OF THE RINGS to figure out what to swipe. That's assuming that they didn't just repeatedly screen Peter Jackson's trilogy, which had wrapped up to great accolades in 2002. The main contribution of the videogame would have been the base situation, in which a humble farmer (oddly, a female) becomes embroiled in repelling an invasion of her land of Ehb by rampaging warriors called "Krug." The game doesn't seem to involve one of the movie's key tropes: that the taciturn hero known only as "Farmer" (Jason Statham) turns out to be the lost son of Ehb's king Konreid (Burt Reynolds), which both of them learn as the humble landsman seeks to alert the royals to the invasion. This is probably the least Tolkienian aspect of the movie.

The most Tolkienian thing about KING, though, is the female lead, who might be described as a road-company Eowyn. Muriella (Leelee Sobieski) can't catch a break in the medieval patriarchy. Her father is the king's court magician Merick (John Rhys-Davies), but he won't pass on his magical knowledge to Muriella, for Reasons. She trains with the sword. but the king's captain of the guard won't admit females to the ranks. So she rebels by sleeping with Gallian (Ray Liotta), who held the position of the king's magician before getting kicked out in favor of Merick. The actor playing Gallian was about thirty years older than the one playing Muriella, so daddy issues are not impossible. But when Gallian and Muriella are first seen together, she's breaking it off with him, having realized his cold-hearted villainous nature, so we never know what brought them together in the first place. Much later in the movie, Muriella does get a little sword-action, and even some magical action against Gallian. But though she probably had the most potential of any character in KING, her arc is ultimately disappointing.

 The rest of the characters don't disappoint, because they're such ciphers no one expects anything of them. Farmer is a taciturn family man, and-- that's it. His wife is abducted by Krug warriors and he spends the movie seeking to get her back, and the belated discovery that he has royal blood, and a living father he never knew, doesn't make any real impact. As for King Konreid, his arc is unremarkable as well. Reynolds is definitely outside his comfort zone playing a medieval king, but at times he does manage to project some gravitas. But his main role is to be poisoned and eventually slain by his throne-hungry nephew Fallow (Matthew Lillard), so the monarch's role is severely underwritten. In fact, though many reviewers didn't like Lillard's hyperactive snake-in-the-grass, for me he was the only entertaining performer in the movie. At least Lillard worked hard to draw all the boos and hisses he could earn with his twitchy, despicable poser, while Liotta's primary villain merely struts around like the performer knows that the simple role is beneath him.

I'll admit that watching KING on a small screen, where I could choose other distractions than movie-house refreshments, was more forgiving than my theater-experience. Some of the big battle-scenes looked good, and Gallian and Merick have an okay magical duel with levitated swords. Sobieski's fight-scenes are so short that I almost can't label her a "fighting femme," but there's also a small role for an elf-warrioress (Kristanna Loken), whose combat-schtick might be termed "Mirkwood meets Cirque d'Soleil." Jason Statham still hadn't solidified his status as a major action-star, but atter KING he wisely stuck with contemporary ass-kickers. The most I can say about the film is that if one is in an undemanding mood, it may satisfy-- but it's equally possible that it won't, too.            

APE VS. MECHA-APE (2023)

 

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

Now this is more like the usual Asylum output. APE VS. MONSTER surprised me by interpolating a typical cheesy giant-monster battle with a decent melodrama for the human viewpoint character. So did Asylum bring back either the writer or director of that film for a follow-up? Of course not. Instead they drafted a guy named Marc Gottleib to both write and direct-- the guy also responsible for the godawful 2025 ARMAGEDDON. 

I don't blame Gottleib for not using the same human cast in this sequel, and maybe he even earns a little credit for keeping MECHA-APE loosely in continuity with its predecessor. Abraham the Ape still has the same backstory: he's an ordinary Earth-ape sent into space as part of an experiment and then infected with alien DNA so that he grew up to Kong-size and went on a rampage. In MECHA-APE, the government has set up the big simian in his own wildlife preserve. I wasn't sure exactly where the preserve was until it was eventually established to be within the States, apparently somewhere near Chicago since that becomes a plot-point. Again Abe has a female protector as he did in MONSTER, but this time it's a scientist named Sloane (Anna Telfer). But the government isn't investing its dough in Abe out of the goodness of its collective heart. Sloane, along with some vague scientific project, have constructed Mecha-Ape by using Abraham as a model. Why did the US government think it worthwhile to build a giant robot ape with artillery in its arms? Who knows? At least in KING KONG ESCAPES, the evil scientist had a comprehensible reason for making a Mecha-Kong.

In fact, for a movie filled with actors mouthing Bad Exposition, no one has much in the way of motivation. Some East European spies, aided by what one presumes are some radicalized diverse Americans, manage to take remote control of Mecha-Ape, stick a nuclear bomb in him, and send him lumbering toward Chicago. What's their purpose in blowing up Chicago? Heck if I know. Sloane manages to jump off a building onto the robot's metal back without breaking even one bone, but though she can't deprogram the mecha, she can draw her anthropoid buddy Abe into a fight with Mecha-Ape. It's not the worst CGI behemoth-battle I've ever seen, but it's still forgettable.

All of the actors were unknowns to me except for the obligatory "name" performer whom almost no one cares about any more-- this time, Tom Arnold in an absolutely nothing role.