PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* MYTHICITY: *poor* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological* In my review of the original SCREAMERS, I said that the movie's least effective aspect was building on the original story's use of the "who's-the-alien-among-us" trope. So of course, when someone decided to do a sequel fourteen years later, that's what the creators decided to build on, to Carpenter-esque heights.
The script doesn't grapple with the sociological issues set up by Dan O'Bannon's script, but at least it does follow up on the ambivalent ending of the 1995 film. The last survivor of the Screamers' devastating attacks on Sirius 6b was seen trying to return to Earth in a one-person shuttle, but he made the mistake of taking along a memento, one that was a Screamer-robot in disguise. According to HUNTING, the survivor detected the intruder's presence and blew up the ship so that the robot would not reach Earth and propagate his kind at the expense of humanity. Several years pass until the time of HUNTING's events. Earth receives a transmission from Sirius, claiming that human survivors are still alive there. One might expect the military to take such a distress call with an avalanche of salt, given that no one on Earth can be sure that the Screamers aren't still extant. But after some lame excuse about how the machines' "batteries" must have run down, a military detachment wings its way to Sirius. Lieutenant Bronte (Gina Holden) is more or less the viewpoint character, and she gets a tad more development than the other unremarkable grunts in the story. She's said to be the daughter of the survivor who blew up his ship-- but the script does nothing interesting with this. For the ninety minutes of the film, the soldiers play tag with Screamers disguised as humans, and they meet a scientist (Lance Henriksen) who claims to have invented the self-propagating mechanisms. The only two pluses to this routine outing are (1) good production values overall, and (2) the fact that the sentient robots themselves talk about their ability to evolve, a minor point of the short story that the 1995 film did not address. But everything else is purely-- er-- mechanical in nature.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* MYTHICITY: *good* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological* I only watched SCREAMERS once before this recent re-watch. Given that the primary adaptor was ALIEN's Dan O'Bannon, I tended to assume that he had translated Philip K. Dick's short story "Second Variety" to repeat his ALIEN-tropes: isolated group under siege by a relentless monster. Even the idea of the group being the pawn of governmental forces appears more in SCREAMERS than in the short story. (Note: another writer revised some or all of O'Bannon's dialogue for the finished screenplay, but O'Bannon claimed that his plot and characters were substantially unaltered.)
I freely admit that the "Screamers"-- the name given to the metamorphic robots from the Dick story-- don't even come close to the mythic appeal of The Aliens. However, I appreciate that O'Bannon reworked the Cold War aspects of the Dick story to something closer to the milieu of Vietnam. This time, the opposed parties reside not on the moon but on a colonized mining-planet named Sirius 6b. The Earth-based corporate combine known as "The New Economic Block" sends miners to Sirius to harvest valuable minerals. However, the mining activities unleash fatal radiation (more or less taking the place of the original tale's nuclear fallout). The miners refuse to keep mining, so the NEB starts a war to force their compliance, radiation or no radiation. For twenty years the Sirius-based Alliance contends with the forces of the NEB, and the former manage to come up with a counter-measure-- albeit one that's a double-edged sword. The Alliance (taking the place of "the Americans" from the prose tale) manufactures robots called "Screamers," robots that tunnel beneath the earth and attack anyone not wearing a protective screening-device, which device only the Alliance soldiers have. However, the Screamers start producing new varieties of their species on their own, and they have no loyalty to their creators if they find them out in the open without their protective devices.
Alliance commander Joe Hendricksson (Peter Weller) desperately wants to see an end to the stalemate conflict, with the hope that he might return to the planet of his birth. He's briefly buoyed up by news that the NEB back on Earth may be seeking a detente, but this proves to be a lie to keep the proxy war going. Meanwhile, a new source of minerals on another world renders the conflict on Sirius irrelevant. Disgusted, Hendricksson decides to seek out the NEB compound, presumably to negotiate a separate peace. Hendricksson takes along an eager-beaver young soldier who's completely naive about the realities of the war, and the script gets a lot of mileage out of the "young pup/old dog" badinage. On their way, the two soldiers find a ragamuffin boy, and they take him with him to the NEB compound. One of the NEB men shoots the child, proving that it's just a new model of Screamer (so called, by the way, they emit screaming noises when they attack).
No detente discussions ensue. The NEB forces--two soldiers and female civilian Jessica (Jennifer Rubin) -- recently lost most of their forces to another infiltration by a human-looking Screamer. Hendricksson and his aide escort the other three back to the Alliance base, only to find it too has been overrun by Screamers. There are various Carpenter-like moments where humans accuse other humans of being robots, but these don't develop into anything compelling. The script does play into Hendricksson's desire for normalcy by having him fall in love with Jessica, presumably the first woman he's seen in many years. When the survivors have been narrowed down to just the two of them, Hendricksson tries to make Jessica use a one-person emergency shuttle to go back to Earth-- an action that loosely parallels the conclusion of the Dick short story. And as in the Dick story, the only female turns out to be one in a series of robotic human pretenders. However, in a turnabout ending that I'll bet resembles NOTHING in the Philip Dick oeuvre, the Jessica-Screamer reciprocates Hendricksson's feelings, fights another model of her type, and makes it possible for Hendricksson to escape-- though there's an indication that even now, he may not be alone. Though all the performers are good, Weller is the glue that holds the whole apparatus together-- though, to be sure, the Screamers comprise the main icon of the film. Despite SCREAMERS' commercial failure, years later there was a sequel-- though I'll surprised if it works that well without being able to draw from the wellspring of Dickian paranoia.
PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*, MYTHICITY: *poor* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* The streaming title for this Korean-made revenge-fest is the horribly generic DRAGON FROM SHAOLIN. However, the American title THE BRAWL BUSTERS, while meaningless, at least doesn't sound like a million other kung fu flicks. That said, there's almost nothing else to say about BUSTERS. The identities of the characters and their motives are barely sketched out. An older kung-fu fighter named Tien holds his province in a grip of terror. But a strange female, usually called "The Mistress of Purity Manor," starts knocking off Tien's henchmen with the help of a coterie of female kung-fu fighters. This formidable woman is named (I think) Shao (Seo Yeong-Ran), and several years ago, Tien killed Shao's father. Fortunately, a wandering Shaolin priest finds Baby Shao and teaches her martial arts so that she can take vengeance. A couple of male fighters get involved in Shao's quest, but their motives proved impenetrable. As one of the very few reviews online observed, the only notable aspect of BUSTERS is that it tosses in a lot of weapons: a scarf that can lengthen to a yard long to strangle a victim, a room with closing walls, and circular saw-blades that can be flung at enemies but will zoom back to the thrower's hands like boomerangs. Oh, and there's one scene in which Shao is attacked by ninjas in differently colored garments. This is significant only because one of the BUSTERS producers was Tomas Tang, who became infamous in the eighties for unleashing on videostores a horde of cheap ninja flicks, which also often contained multicolored ninjas.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* MYTHICITY: *fair* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical* LAS VAMPIRAS was the second feature film to star wrestler-actor Mil Mascaras, but by the end of that decade, director Frederico Curiel had devoted more than a fair share of his career to luchador-movies, having turned out a generous sampling of Santo and Neutron flicks, not to mention THE SHADOW OF THE BAT, which was IMO the best of the Blue Demon films. VAMPIRAS is also noteworthy as one of a handful of Mexican films made by John Carradine. Had I paid anything for the price of seeing this, Carradine alone would have been worth the price of admission, for the veteran performer overacts wildly, possibly confident that none of his countrymen would ever see any of his south-of-the-border efforts.
Though Mil Mascaras is the hero, he doesn't have very many memorable scenes, in terms of either dialogue or fight-scenes. This may be because Curiel wanted to justify his title by concentrating on the female bloodsuckers of the title, who dwarf Carradine's vampire character "Branus" in terms of screen-time. Mil comes to Some Mexican City to engage in a wrestling-gig, but he learns that his opponent, like other sports-figures in the city, has been mysteriously abducted. Mil himself witnesses a car crash in which the drivers disappear, and he sees only bats flitting away. I don't think the vampire cult tries to abduct Mil, but while he's researching vampires, he makes contact with a reporter named Carlos (Pedro Armendariz Jr) who has a passion for the subject. Mil and Carlos team up to investigate a local cemetery, but rather than finding the cult, they unleash a female vampire imprisoned there, who joins up with the cult right away.
It's not easy to piece together the order of events here, but prior to the movie's story, the original Dracula was slain by mortals, possibly the same ones who imprisoned his wife Velia (Maria Duval) in the tomb. When Velia shows up at the cult's hideout, the bloodsucker in control is not Count Branus (Carradine), but a new leader named Aura (Marta Romero). She controls about a dozen female vampires, all garbed in green tights, but aside from Branus the only males in the group are the kidnapped sportsmen, who have been turned into slaves. As for Branus, Aura has confined him to a metal cage. Somehow a splinter of wood got lodged in Branus' brain, so that he now acts erratically and seems to have lost his powers. Branus does act oddly but it's not certain that Aura just wants him sidelined so that she can control the others.
Although Velia and Aura are rivals for the throne, they make common cause to get rid of Mil and Carlos. Their opening stratagems fail, but when the heroes manage to access the hideout, the two females are fighting for supremacy (oddly, with torches). Then the ladies decide that they want the two humans to fight one another to see who's worthy to join their ranks. Mil and Carlos fake a battle until they get the chance to use their weapons to destroy the whole clutch of vampires, including Branus. This description might sound a bit bare-bones, but Curiel tosses in a number of interesting comic touches. For instance, even in human form all the vamp-girls have batlike wings that hang down behind them, and when the henchwomen aren't doing anything in particular, they let their arms rise and fall, as if their instinct is to keep flapping their "wings." There are some peculiar bits of dialogue too, often from Carradine. But since I didn't write anything down, the interested reader will have to check out VAMPIRAS' loony charms for himself.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* MYTHICITY: *fair* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical* Joaquin Cordero returned for the last outing of Doctor Satan, but not so director Miguel Morayta, who lent the 1966 b&w movie such strong atmosphere. MAGIC, the color-filled follow-up, was helmed by Rogelio Gonzalez, today best known for the daffy SF-comedy SHIP OF MONSTERS. Ostensibly the writing-staff was the same for both movies, so I don't know why one was really tightly constructed while the other dithers about with lots of talking head scenes for inconsequential characters. On the positive side, though, there's still no lame comedy relief here either.
At the end of the first film, Satan had been placed in a cell by Interpol, but he simply disappeared with no explanation. At the beginning of MAGIC, that little old zombie-maker has apparently descended to the infernal domain of his master King Devil. The setup loosely implies that Doctor Satan has died, maybe as a result of going to Hell, and that he expects to pass on to "eternal peace." (As in the first flick, the Devil King's sphere doesn't seem to be in line with one's expectations for Hell as a place of punishment.) King Devil informs Satan that he needs to complete a mission on Earth before he can know peace. A scientist has invented a way to transform any metal into gold, but another super-villain, name of Yei Lin (Noe Murayama), has stolen the secret and plans to use it to advance the cause of his master. The master's name is "Lucifer" in the dub I saw, and apparently no writer thought this could be a source of confusion for viewers, given the fact that Lucifer and Satan are interchangeable names for the Christian Devil. Anway, whatever Lucifer wants to do with the gold, King Devil wants Doctor Satan to prevent it by killing Yei Lin. The doctor rather reluctantly accepts his new mission, and in no time King Devil has apparently set up his minion with his own ritzy office in a swanky buidling. When we see Satan there, he's already turned a hot young woman into one of his obedient zombies, and after a short interview with a new employee, a second hot girl is added to Satan's ranks. These henchwomen are the only minions Satan gets, and they're not as obviously dead people compared to the villain's earlier servants. To be sure, the title character's opponent doesn't exactly have a pocket army either.
Yei Lin duplicates the main traits of Doctor Satan, being both a scientist and a user of black magic. In fact, Yei is also a vampire of the Stoker brand: he can walk around in daylight without consequence, but he only manifests vampire powers at night. In addition to three or four male henchmen, Yei also has Dea, a female assistant who's also a girlfriend-type. It's never clear how Yei and Dea will use the gold-making process to gain power, so I guess it's just the old standard: "whoever has the gold makes the rules." Yei and Satan spend the whole movie trying different gambits against one another until a climactic mano-a-mano combat at the end. Though the energy of the proceedings weakens sometimes, there are still some diverting scenes. Two standouts are (1) Yei gets the drop on Satan and simply shoots him to death, though Satan is preserved by King Devil's power, and (2) Yei infiltrates the room where Satan's zombie helpers lie in state, and when he bites them for the purpose of turning them against their master, he fails to have any effect on the two undead women.
There are also a few Interpol agents buzzing around in search of the stolen formula, but they never have any effect on the plot. Though this time viewers are in a brightly colored world with lots of mundane shots of people driving cars and the like, MAGIC still works pretty well because actors Murayama and Cordero put a lot of moxie into their villainous roles. And though Satan doesn't canoodle with his lady zombies as Yei does with Dea, the dour servant of King Devil does make sure to send the females on to their eternal reward when he Satan doesn't need their services. Not surprisingly, Satan doesn't remain unscathed after defeating his foe, and so he too apparently dies a real death-- which proves a fitting end, with no Fu Manchu-esqe predictions for recrudescence.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* MYTHICITY: *fair* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological* Once again, I am indebted to a YouTuber who downloaded this very obscure sixties Mex-horror for the delectation of fans. DOCTOR SATAN is a rare example of a Mexico-made supervillain who starred in his own series, even though only one other installment was produced. This black-and-white movie is, unlike a lot of south-of-the-border horror flicks of the period, remarkably tight in its melodramatic plot, not wasting any time even on comedy relief. At the helm this time is Miguel Morayta. Morayta had been directing Mexican films since the 1940s, and though I can't be sure that none of them contained metaphenomenal content, today he's largely celebrated for two atmospheric vampire films he made in the sixties, THE BLOODY VAMPIRE and THE INVASION OF THE VAMPIRES. He directed DOCTOR DEATH three years after the second of those films, but maybe Morayta didn't really like the horror genre, despite his being quite good at it. From 1967 to his retirement from the industry in 1978, I see only one other movie that clearly had fantasy-elements, and that was the comedy CAPULINA CONTRA LOS MONSTROS.
The villain, whom I'll continue to call "Satan" even though he goes by a more normative alias, initially looks like the usual Mex-horror mad scientist as he uses chemicals to revive a corpse, creating a subservient zombie servant. However, in the many atmosphere-heavy scenes that follow, it becomes evident that Satan (Joaquin Cordero) has a sorcerous relationship with the real tempter himself, addressed as "King Devil." Both times that Satan calls up the bat-winged Father of Evil, the devil-worshipping scientist has to request King Devil's leave before suborning the souls of others to make zombie servants. I found this interesting because nothing is said about King Devil having the souls of the mortal mastermind's victims because those souls sinned. King Devil thus seems less like the Christian lord of hell and more like a lord of the dead, like the Greek Hades. Oddly, the phony sounding first name Doctor Satan uses is "Plutarcho," which was almost certainly coined for its resemblance to the Roman name for Hades, "Pluto."
The bad doctor has some sort of major evil plan in the works, though he never actually says what it is. He only converses with King Devil, his zombie servants, and Luisa, the representative of a crime combine. It seems Satan needs deep pockets to fund his experiments, so he lends his zombie-making talents to the project of spreading counterfeit money throughout Mexico and the US. This involvement with Luisa's gang has a few fringe benefits-- Luisa's a sexy blonde, and she and Satan date a few times-- but the arrangement also brings the Mexican chapter of Interpol into Satan's business.
Inspector Mateos and his assistant Nora make slow progress linking Satan to the counterfeiting ring, particularly since they don't initially know they're dealing with killer zombies, immune to bullets. In one amusing scene, the police consult with Satan before they suspect him, to get him to interview a captive zombie. Satan simply exposes the zombie to salt, so that the creature dissolves, leaving the cops baffled. Since Morayta is more focused on atmosphere than action, there are only a few quick fight-scenes, and the police depend more on dogged pursuit than firepower. But I appreciated that Nora isn't the usual shrinking violet in many Mex-horror movies. When a zombie intrudes on her bedroom to abduct the young policewoman, she whips out her revolver and shoots him point blank-- which only succeeds in driving the monster off, of course. Nora and another woman also prove important in exposing Satan's involvement in the criminal racket and manage to bring Mateos and his forces to Satan's lair to bring about a rescue. Satan is captured but escapes for the sequel. I wish more of the horror-films of the period, in any country, were as tight and forbidding as DOCTOR SATAN.
PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* MYTHICITY: *good* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* Though I'm not going to watch every MWC episode in order, I have the general impression that Season 3-- which was the first one to become widely popular on the Fox channel-- is also the season that the showrunners abandoned any pretense of producing a "realistic" sitcom. They began showing the Bundy family as the buttholes of the universe, continually dumped on by the rest of the universe but fully willing to dump back whatever they could upon decent society. At the same time, the Bundy's favorite enemies were one another, and their favorite feud was "the war against men and women"-- a war in which Peg, Kelly, and (sometimes) Marcy won most of the battles.
After an opening bit in which Al, Bud and Kelly are scrounging for bits of food about the house (because Peg never buys anything to eat), the red witch herself sashays in, revealing that once again she's frittered away Al's hard-earned money on clothes for herself. In her usual manner, Peg argues that she's the one suffering from the pitiful wages Al brings home due to his job as a lowly shoe salesman. She urges Al to take another job to supplement his meager income, and he refuses. Bud and Kelly refuse to defend their father, as they're eager to take dough from Peg--even though she's only giving them the money Al makes. Despite Al's refusal to take a second job, Peg consults with neighbor Marcy. Marcy naturally thinks Al should become a trainer of pit bulls, but that's the extent of her contribution to the gender-war. Peg comes across an ad for the selling of "Patty Bright Cosmetics," and decides that would be a perfect second job for Al.
When a Patty Bright representative explains how their product "sells itself," Peg takes the job for herself, since she loves the idea of a job where she doesn't have to work. However, because Peg can't sell the cosmetics to any of her friends, she buys the products herself, so that Patty Bright will send her commission checks-- apparently not remembering that her breadwinner will have to pay for the total expenses. The episode's most interesting psychological touch is that before Al figures out Peg's shenanigans, he feels emasculated to think that she makes more money than he does. He ends up getting a second job at a burger joint with a STAR TREK theme, and of course gets further humiliation from the young employees there (including Pauly Shore). The two kids don't have much to do this time, it's almost all Peg vs. Al. The episode ends with Peg having to take over Al's burger job, but it's a given that her punishment won't last long, and that by the next episode she'll be right back on the sofa, busting her spouse's balls at every opportunity.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* MYTHICITY: *poor* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical* I confess I only checked out this subtitled streaming item because I looked it up on IMDB and didn't really see much information on it, aside from the name of the director and three of the actors. The plot description was entirely generic, and I thought, "Maybe I'll play explorer and find out if there's some hidden quality in this thing."
Surprise, surprise-- the reason almost no one on the Net has written about this oddity is because there's nothing much to it, even in comparison to the daffy old chopsockies of the 1970s. The main plot does have something to do with reincarnation. A swordsman called "Sage of Sword" in the subtitles and "Gong" on IMDB (Bernard Sen Jun) has a chance encounter with Yue, a nutty young woman (played by an actress with the risible name of "Haha He") who can throw darts with deadly accuracy. She drugs Gong for some reason so that he's out of it when she's attacked by the henchmen of her father. Seems that august gentleman wants Yue to marry someone she doesn't love. Yue escapes her pursuers and gets separated from Gong for a bit, and then for no reason I can see, the two of them team up for various comic adventures that go no place fast. At some point, Gong divines that Yue-- whose martial skills are nowhere near as good as his-- is the reincarnation of his lost love-- I think. Then there's an end fight with the henchmen of the father and Yue dies.
The most interesting thing about this flick-- which admittedly is colorful and pleasant to look at, as long as one doesn't try to comprehend the plot-- is that it's a total fakeout with its allusions to the popular "Monkey King" narrative. Only a frame story, in which Monkey is suffering some sort of torments from some goddess, possibly Kuan Yin, alludes to the traditional story at all. I think someone tried to sell the movie by adding the notion that Monkey became incarnated in the body of the mortal Gong so that he could learn about love, or something. I think I need a dose of Brucesploitation to get this one out of my system.
PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* MYTHICITY: *poor* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* I've heard that some of the "Mexican westerns" of the 1950s had metaphenomenal elements, probably mostly of the uncanny kind, where evildoers dress up like ghosts. A lot of American B-westerns played around with similar elements, but few of them were very noteworthy. DEVILS OF TERROR feels like a close emulation of those old B's, but this time, the titular "devils" are just a bunch of criminals riding around in devil-costumes for purposes of terrorizing a small town's populace. I'm not sure what they get out of it except in one case: they kill off a local landholder to get his ranch. But the man's pretty daughter comes to town to claim her inheritance, so she becomes the riders' new target. Fortunately, a two-fisted government agent named Gaston (Gaston Santos) comes to town and sorts the evildoers out after about an hour of messing around. This was about as routine an oater as one could hope to find. About the only thing was that unlike most horror-thrillers of the period, this was in very brilliant color. Why the studio did so for such an ordinary product puzzles me. But from what I can tell, the lead actor made a couple of other horror-westerns in color around that time-- THE LIVING COFFIN, THE SWAMP OF THE MONSTERS-- so maybe the studio involved thought Santos was going to justify the extra expense.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* MYTHICITY: *fair* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological* Of the various posters I saw for the first part of this lavish Chinese fantasy-trilogy, I like the one above, since it shows the poster fairly bursting with an avalanche of characters-- which probably represents about a fifth of all the named personages in this extravaganza. I don't know a lot about Chinese culture, but I have over the years noticed, through reading two or three of their older novels and seeing a lot of cinematic works, that the Chinese people always think more characters are better than less.
CREATION adapts a voluminous 16th-century Chinese novel which focuses on the interaction of gods and demons with mortals during the Shang Dynasty, one of China's earliest periods. Wiki's translation of the novel's title as "Investiture of the Gods" may be more accurate than the word "creation" in the streaming title. The gods already exist in this world, though the subtitling of CREATION calls them "Immortals of Kunlun." But even the entities of Heaven apparently need some sort of process of renewal, and that's what makes all the entangling conflicts of the story significant in a cosmic sense. One such earthbound conflict, in which a vassal ruler rebels against the Shang Emperor, becomes the hub around which all the cosmic events revolve.
Although the forces of Shang, led by the Emperor's son Yin Shou (Fei Xiang), conquer those of the vassal, the outbreak of human violence releases an evil fox-spirit from confinement. At the same moment of the spirit's escape, the princess of the rebel lord takes her life to avoid capture by the enemy. The fox possesses the dead woman and allows Shang's forces to take her prisoner. If I understood the sometimes confusing continuity, she stage-manages the murder of the Emperor so that Yin Shou will take his place. In due time she becomes the new Emperor's concubine and begins bending Yin Shou to evil ways-- though I for one was never sure how much of Yin's evil was of his own will.
At this same time, the Immortals of Kunlun fear that because of some vague archaic "Curse," the stability of the universe will be imperiled unless the Emperor of China performs a ceremony of investiture for the gods. To this end, the Immortals must send one of their number down to Earth with a special scroll used for this installation ceremony. The price of descending to Earth is that the chosen Immortal reverts to mortality and loses his fantastic powers. Two or three of the gods volunteer for the mission, but "The Supreme One" chooses an Immortal who hasn't been meditating in Kunlun that long: Jiang Ziya (Huang Bo). Down to Earth goes Jiang with the scroll. Yet he's not totally on his own, for two other Immortals follow to grant him assistance with their super-powers-- so Jiang's not precisely on his own in the mortal world. After some minor adventures Jiang and his comrades get an audience with Yin Shou, and Jiang explains how the scroll stabilizes reality by interacting with human souls. However, an evil sorcerer-tempter named Gongbao persuade Yin to use the scroll for his own advancement. Jiang takes back his offer to give Yin the scroll and flees the forces of the enraged emperor.
While I'm not about to try accounting for all the side-characters in CREATION, the person who's been merely a viewpoint character up to this point, a young lord named Ji Fa, becomes more intimately entangled in Jiang's resolve to keep the scroll from Yin's hands. Initially, Ji is loyal to his king, but over time he's convinced that Yin has become a tyrant. This would have been a good central conflict for at least this first installment of the film-series to pursue. Unfortunately, the "embarrassment of character-riches" causes CREATION to divert to many other characters under Yin's sway-- Ji's father, Yin's queen, etc etc. I confess I didn't even try to follow them all, but I assume they all contribute something to what seems to be the dominant theme: the chaos that results from the abuse of the powers of Heaven and Earth.
I think CREATION is a serious attempt to plumb the meaning of China's archaic mythology, but since I've not read the source novel, I don't know how successful PART 1 is in its mission of adaptation. I recognize a lot of familiar tropes here, but I can't say I feel like it all comes together, though seeing the other two parts-- one of which has not debuted yet-- could make a difference. My biggest complaint is that I don't know whether any single character is the main one, or if CREATION is built around an ensemble that might at the very least include Yin Shou, Ji Fa and Jiang Ziya. Ji Fa kills Yin at the conclusion, but the Fox revives the evil ruler, so he may or may not function as part of a centric ensemble. Time, and the availability of streaming purchases, may tell.
PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* MYTHICITY: *fair* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* This naturalistic film, arguably the first in the subgenre of "sex-westerns," just barely qualifies for one of my ten tropes-- that of "bizarre crimes"-- and even then, the crime only takes up about three or four minutes of screen time and is more psychological than physical in nature.
I'd seen THE OUTLAW a couple of times before my recent rescreening. For several years, I've known a lot of little factoids about the movie. That it was filmed in 1941 but blocked by the Hays Code until 1943. That the cast consists of just four main characters and a tiny number of support-roles. That OUTLAW was the debut film for two of the actors, Jack Buetel and Jane Russell, both under exclusive contract to producer Howard Hughes for the next seven years. I've learned other bits and pieces since my re-watch, but as of this writing I don't know exactly how the project came about, or why it was important enough to Howard Hughes to assume directorial duties on OUTLAW, even though he'd only directed one other film thirteen years ago. But given the fact that Hughes had acquired partial ownership of the studio RKO by 1941, I think his main aim was to win fame with a big, money-making picture with lots of sex appeal, and that he probably outlined his list of story-preferences to screenwriter Jules Furthman and let Furthman figure out how to stitch everything together.
The result was an overbaked melodrama that a number of modern viewers have called "campy" or "so bad it's good," though these assessments don't quite capture the nature of OUTLAW. For one thing, Furthman finds some inventive ways to bring together the four essential characters: Billy the Kid (Buetel), Rio McDonald (Russell), famed gunslinger Doc Holiday (Walter Huston), and Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell), sheriff to the New Mexico town of Lincoln. All of the film's action takes place either in Lincoln or in the wilderness surrounding it. Garrett and Rio have both lived in town for an unspecified amount of time, while Billy and Holiday converge on the town for separate but related reasons. However, Holiday has been in Lincoln before. At the film's opening he's on foot and chasing down a man who stole his horse, so he comes to Lincoln because unnamed witnesses told him they saw the horse and its rider heading for the town. But Holiday explicitly mentions that he hopes to encounter his old pal there in Lincoln. Holiday is surprised to learn that Garrett has recently become a lawman, and there's a strong suggestion that the two of them may once have been involved in extra-legal activities. Holiday also knows that Rio and her aunt "recently" moved to Lincoln, suggesting that he knew the younger woman-- whom he calls "his girl"-- in her previous residence in Socorro (probably meant to be identical with the town of that name in New Mexico). Given Holiday's greater age, it's not impossible that he set up Rio, apparently more a "mistress" than a girlfriend, on her Lincoln chicken-ranch, though there's no way to prove this speculation.
Holiday finds his horse in the possession of Billy, who claims he bought the roan from a stranger. Holiday seems not the least bit interested in Billy's excuse, and Garrett prepares to arrest the alleged horse thief before Holiday can gun Billy down. But Holiday is amused by Billy's nerviness, and when the young man decks Garrett in mid-arrest, this also amuses the older gunfighter. But Garrett is enraged at having been one-upped in front of his old comrade, and he orders both men to leave town by sundown. Before either can do so, that night Billy is attacked in the barn where he stables his horse by a gun-wielding would-be killer. He wrestles down the assailant and finds that it's the lovely Rio. He's never met her, but when she gives her last name and the name of the town she formerly occupied, he realizes that she's the sister of a man Billy killed in self-defense, when the two men quarreled over a woman. While holding Rio down Billy comments on her comeliness. Rio responds by faking Billy out and trying to stab him with a pitchfork. Again Billy restrains her, and they roll in the hay some more, concluding with what might be a scene of Billy raping the nubile Rio in deep shadows-- though clearly Hughes wanted to keep things ambiguous.
The next day Holiday and Billy have not left town, and an ambitious would-be deputy challenges Billy and gets gunned down. When Garrett seeks to arrest Billy, Holiday sides with the youth, increasing Garrett's sense of betrayal. Billy gets wounded, so Holiday tries to hide him at Rio's ranch, and then leaves to decoy pursuers away from Billy. Rio cooperates but never makes the slightest reference to Billy having ravished her-- again, Hughes playing it as safe as he could in the Hays era. For the month that Billy in in Rio's care, Rio falls in love with Billy, and even her aunt confesses his charms. Billy, who has expressed sentiments about the treachery of women, doesn't reciprocate. Indeed, both Holiday and Billy insult the young woman by implying that their quarrel over the roan takes priority over their rivalry for Rio.
Most of the rest of the film's events take place in the wilderness, as Garrett relentlessly pursues the two fugitives. Though Rio stays behind at the ranch, she ensures her future participation by peevishly filling the canteens of both men with sand. Later a vengeful Billy returns to the ranch and utters threats that sound like those of ravishment. But what he actually does is to drag Rio out into the desert and tie her up, so she can suffer the rays of the sun as Billy and Doc did. Garrett and his captive Holiday find Rio, and Garrett, anticipating that Billy will change his mind and return to free the girl, sets a trap. Billy is captured. Yet if he thought Rio's ordeal would "tame" her, he's proved wrong by an incident in which she nearly drowns Billy.
I won't specify the exact way that the conflicts between Billy, Holiday and Garrett shake out at the climax, except that Rio's role in the story becomes an indirect one. In later years, the three-way male conflict led to many critics divining a homoerotic vibe between the trio. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility, but I would have to see evidence that either Hughes (at least in his capacity as producer) or Furthman had a habit of working such material into a lot of other, ostensibly mainstream movies. However, one of Holiday's last speeches about the precarious friendships between males-- particularly two powerful males-- could have been just as easily written for any number of less risible westerns. Even Garrett's animosity, hating Billy for his having made the sheriff look bad in front of an esteemed friend, could have appeared in a lot of the mainstream movies Furthman had been writing since the 1910s. Also common to a lot of westerns was the idea that sooner or later the roving gunfighter needs to settle down and make babies with a likely spouse. There's more than a little of the "war between men and women" going on throughout the picture, but the conflict between Billy and Rio is resolved as it is in almost every other Hollywood romance-- whereas only death, not sex, resolves the conflict between the three men. There are some campy-sounding lines in OUTLAW, particularly all the odd remarks about how much Billy and Holiday love their little horse. But despite the excessive nature of Jane Russell's feminine assets-- which were more responsible for selling the movie than any of the conflicts of the males-- I tend to think that excess serves the cause of heterosexuality.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* MYTHICITY: *poor* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* I'm glad Wiki told me that the working title of director/co-writer Matthew Vaughn's prequel to his two KINGSMAN films was "Kingsman: the Great Game." The "Great Game" phrase appeared in Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel KIM, and Vaughan stated that his prequel had been inspired by the 1975 film THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING-- itself derived from another Kipling work. Thus, it's fair to assume that the director wanted to ground the origins of the fictional "Kingsman" spy-service in real history and sociopolitics, just as KIM dealt with the "game" of espionage unfolding between the superpowers Russia and Great Britain in the early part of the 20th century.
The main reason I'm glad to have learned this datum is that it clarifies why KING'S MAN is such a mishmash, with elements of Kipling, Mark Millar, Movie James Bond, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and the entire 1930s Hollywood trope of "Rule Brittania" movies. The two previous movies were one with the Mark Millar source material that generated the franchise: all superficial popcorn fare, built on the tropes of "Movie James Bond," with lots of goofy sci-fi gadgets and references to pop culture. KING'S MAN departs from the formula to tap into a modified "Rule Brittania" vibe, and its only "pop culture" references were exaggerated hat-tips to familiar historical figures like Mata Hari and Rasputin. Perhaps audiences learned that this was only a "name only" part of the Kingsman franchise and stayed away, with the result that the movie bombed.
I might validate Vaughan's attempt to do something different, but I suspect that he labored too long in the vineyards of escapism-- not only KINGSMAN but X-MEN and KICK-ASS-- to know how to approach real history and sociopolitical discourse. Instead, Vaughan begins by loosely describing how the spy-service was founded by the English lord Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) in the early 20th century and then presenting the fledgling service with a great conspiracy to manipulate the outcome of World War One. As in many James Bond movies, the source of the conspiracy is a rogue operator, a mystery man called the Shepherd, who wants to destroy Great Britain in the war by keeping Russia and America out of the conflict. Oxford and his circle of allies, including his Black African factotum Shola (Djimon Hounsou), attempt to foil the conspiracy, though Oxford tries to keep his grown son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) on the sidelines.
The problem with Vaughan's project is that despite grounding his story in real history, the script shows no more sociopolitical smarts than your average comic book. Additionally, Vaughan knew that he had no shot with a big audience if he didn't include the big RAIDERS-style fight-scenes, but with almost none of the marvelous technology seen in the diegetically-later films. One such battle involves Shola and the two Oxfords seeking to assassinate the Shepherd's Russian agent Rasputin, thus rewriting the real history of the priest's murder by a group of his enemies. Another is a lively swordfight between Oxford and the Shepherd at the climax. But I for one didn't engage with any of Vaughan's characters, so I didn't become invested even on the escapist level.
Whereas the old Hollywood movies celebrated the British Empire as a source of order in a chaotic world, KING'S MAN is obliged to apologize for imperialism-- before celebrating how an English spy-agency saves the world. There are a number of grim, downbeat moments here, but they don't mesh with the escapist scenes, and their presence leads me to wonder if Vaughan wasn't trying his hand at more mature fare, even if he chose a bad showcase for that ambition. Despite the suggestion that the younger Oxford will become the central character once he goes through a rite of passage, Fiennes' Orlando remains the focal icon from start to finish. The performances are all strong, which is one improvement over the acting in the two earlier movies, but grim moments alone do not convey a sense of naturalism. There's not much here to connect KING'S MAN with the wild fantasies of the franchise, though in one scene Rasputin does seem to be demonstrating real psychic powers, hence I peg the phenomenality here as "marvelous."
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* MYTHICITY: *good* FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure* CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological* SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS THE TITANS-- given the spoofy title MY SON THE HERO in an American release-- isn't representative of what the Italian peplum-subgenre was, but I sure wish it had been. Duccio Tessari hit this one out of the park in his first directorial outing, though to be sure he had scripted or co-scripted about a dozen historical-adventure movies before TITANS. Possibly he decided he was going to throw his best efforts with respect to action, comedy and pageantry into this film, which ended up being his last real contribution to the subgenre. It's possible that Tessari's collaboration with long-time writer Ennio de Concini, who'd also labored in peplum-fields, resulted in the superior script. (They'd also collaborated, along with several other authors, on the above average GOLIATH AND THE DRAGON in 1960, but IMDB lists only De Concini and Tessari as co-writers for TITANS.)
In my peplum-reviews I've often picked at movies that jumbled mythological motifs. However, TITANS messes with a lot of archaic stories but produces a story that's logical on its own terms. In Greek mythology, Cadmus is a culture hero who founds the city of Thebes, and he marries Harmonia, a female occasionally given associations with ill luck. In TITANS, we first see Cadmo, King of Crete (Pedro Armendariz) and Ermione (Antonella Lualdi) in a subterranean cavern filled with mists. This is apparently the legendary Cave of the Sibyl. The two newly married royals have brought along two others: the dead body of Cadmo's previous wife and the infant daughter she birthed before Cadmo murdered the mother. The Sibyl knows exactly what the sinful couple have done and asserts that the gods of Olympus will destroy them. Further, the Sibyl claims that when the king's daughter Antiope grows to womanhood, her lover will slay Cadmo. Also, the king will die if he kills his daughter, so he, like the villains of the Jason and Perseus myths, must allow the seed of destruction to grow-- though Cadmo plans to keep Antiope cloistered so that she cannot meet men. (Parenthetically, in some variations Antiope is the name of Cadmus's mother.) And to block the possibility of immediate vengeance from Jove on high, Cadmo and Ermione bathe in the waters of the subterranean cave, becoming invulnerable to harm, as Achilles was rendered by the waters of the River Styx. (Incidentally, a minor character in TITANS is named Achilles.)
Though Cadmo compounds his crime of murder by setting himself up as the God of Crete, Jove in his heavens tolerates this impiety for the next twenty years, until the babe Antiope grows into a nubile princess (Jacqueline Sassard). At this point Jove decides to liberate one of the heroic Titans whom he Jove condemned to Tartarus. Said hero is the youngest and cleverest Titan, Krios (Guiliano Gemma), though he isn't told that he's supposed to fall in love with Antiope.
To get close to Cadmo for the purpose of wreaking holy vengeance, Krios becomes one of the king's gladiators. This allows him the chance to "meet cute" with Antiope. The young Titan wins the court's favor by overcoming a boulder-shouldered Black African combatant named Rator, but the generous hero also asks the King to spare Rator's life. But then Evil Cadmo decides he wants to stage his own version of "The Most Dangerous Game" with Rator as the quarry, and though Krios seeks to temporize, Cadmo's pursuit finally corners Rator near a cliffside. At this point Krios has to reveal his mission to condemn the king to Hades. Ermione shows up with reinforcements, and since Krios' sword just breaks on the flesh of the invulnerable king, the Titan and his new buddy are forced to jump off the cliff to escape, seven years before Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did the same. (By an odd coincidence Gemma and Tessari collaborated that same year on a western comedy, and an American marketer retitled it "Sundance Cassidy and Butch the Kid.")
Since Krios has taken his best shot at doing things the mortal way, he then starts seeking to use supernatural weapons. From Tartarus he acquires an invisibility helmet and infiltrates Cadmo's castle, but his main mission is to find Antiope. Krios learns that his love has been moved to an island guarded by a Gorgon, complete with petrifying gaze, so Krios has got to do a Perseus to get past her. Krios rescues his princess, but Cadmo and Ermione get the upper hand again. Krios prays to Jove for help, calling Jove his "father" (maybe metaphorically?), and Jove releases the other eight male Titans from Tartarus to render aid. The big confrontation returns to the Sibyl's Cave, as Cadmo mounts one last defense, and Krios essentially performs the function of Jove by sending the evildoer to Greek Hell. Before watching TITANS, which I only saw once before some thirty years ago, I would have said Tessari's 1975 ZORRO was his best work. But now TITANS is my fave Tessari work, my favorite peplum, and will henceforth appear on my list of the hundred best magical-fantasy films, if I ever compile one. (Addendum: I included the category "clansgression" for this movie because of a line in which Antiope claims to be "consecrated" to her father the God of Crete, but this doesn't imply any incestuous intent on Cadmo's part, as I don't even think Cadmo and Antiope even have scenes together.)
