THE MAN FROM UNCLE (2015)

 

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

When I saw MAN FROM UNCLE in a first-run theater, I must not have read any contemporaneous reviews of it. I tend to assume that many if not all reviews would have led with, "don't watch this movie if you want entertainment akin to that of the loopy 1960s superspy-teleseries." In addition to being bored, I seem to remember being astonished that director/co-writer Guy Ritchie-- best known for some crime films and two high-tech Sherlock Holmes movies-- had made almost no attempt to emulate the series, except for setting UNCLE's action in the same era of the swinging 1960s. Most of the time, big-screen adaptations of small-screen successes are if anything too reverential toward their source material.

Watching the same film years later with my amateur reviewers' hat on, I must admit that I could cite dozens if not hundreds of movies more boring than Ritchie's UNCLE. But this mostly mundane espionage-film, even with a few uncanny gimmicks thrown in to put some "super" in the spy-jinks, is still very pedestrian. In contrast to the series, in which Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were introduced as partners in crimefighting for the secret organization UNCLE. the movie insists on giving audiences a dreary account of "how they first met." The heroes' recruitment to UNCLE is brought in only at the story's end, as if to allow sentimental old-timers to imagine the film as a real-world prequel to the fantasy-series.

Since the Cold War was still at its most frigid in 1963, Solo (Henry Cavill) works for the CIA while Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) is some sort of an agent for the USSR. Because the CIA becomes aware of a plot by a Neo-Nazi organization-- loosely covalent with the TV show's "Thrush" group-- seeks to gain control of a nuclear weapon. This project, led by rich magnate Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki), has obtained the services of a major scientific talent with the telling name of Teller. With an eye to luring Teller away from the bad actors, Solo goes to East Berlin to engage the services of Teller's daughter (Alicia Vikander). Gaby accepts the mission, but during her extraction from East Germany, Solo has a eye-raising (and fender-crunching) encounter with Agent Kuryakin. As played by Hammer, this Kuryakin is a Samson-like powerhouse, though no particular explanation appears for his being able to grab a car by the bumper and hold the vehicle back. Despite this hostile first meeting, the Kremlin wants to eliminate a new nuclear threat as much as the CIA does, so Solo and Kuryakin are assigned to work together, still using Gaby as a means of entrance into the social circle of Victoria and her allies.

In addition to Kuryakin's strength and the THUNDERBALL-like plot of a private entity gaining control of an atom bomb, there's one moment where one agent uses a laser-device to cut through a wire fence, but that's it for the fantasy-content in UNCLE. The relationship of the two heroes is thoroughly predictable: they don't like each other and bait one another, though by the conclusion they've become bound as danger-buddies. Gaby is a little more interesting than either character, for she's in the position of a vital young woman who finds herself playing den-mother to two handsome hunks while also pretending to be the fiancee of Kuryakin's fake character. Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki are allowed to channel a bit of sixties glamor through their attire, and one late development gives Gaby a little semblance of a "Girl from UNCLE." But Ritchie's main focus follows the pattern of a mundane action-thriller, and there's nothing memorable on that score. The film flopped, barely making more than its original cost, so this movie stands as one of the least successful adaptations of a small-screen show.        

ULTRAVIOLET (2006)

 

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

Not only was ULTRAVIOLET a massive flop in 2006, the film seemed (according to Wiki) to inspire loathing in some critics. It's hard to see why. At worst, it's a derivative hyperkinetic thriller set in a fantasy-future, in which the titular heroine seeks to overthrow a corrupt regime. Just as star Milla Jovovich did in her successful RESIDENT EVIL movies, her superwoman mows down huge numbers of villainous minions in the approved video-game style. Writer-director Kurt Wimmer doesn't come up with any bold new directions, but his story isn't bereft of interesting elements either.

Evil government researchers-- one of whom is the movie's main villain-- sought to convert a dormant virus into the viral equivalent of a "super-soldier serum." Instead, those infected did become stronger and faster than ordinary humans, but with a much-reduced life expectancy. I don't know why that prevented the Evil Government from still using the virus to create short-lived super-soldiers, but that whole idea gets dropped. Instead the government, headed by "Vice Cardinal" Daxus (Nick Chinlund) decides to "disappear" all the afflicted people, called "hemophages" because they have fang-like teeth, though they are in no way dependent upon drinking blood. Some hemophages escape the draconian roundup and organize into resistance cells. One of the foremost agents of this resistance is Violet (Jovovich), and throughout the film she shows a marked penchant for breaking into heavily guarded installations, shooting it out with dozens of guards (unless she uses her katana-sword instead), and getting clean away. Her only backstory is that before being infected Violet was a young would-be mother, and she lost her child because of the disease the evil government unleashed.

 However, quicker than you can say "maternal surrogate" (which the script actually puts into words late in the film), Violet's raid on one installation saddles her with a young boy named Six. Violet acquired the boy in the belief that he was a test-subject whose blood might contain an antigen for the hemophage disease. However, when this proves not to be the case, the heroine's fellow hemophages decide to terminate the child. So kind-hearted Violet goes on the run with Six, despite the fact that Daxus himself appeals to her, telling Violet that Six is the fruit of his loins.         

Violet's problems mount as some of the hemophages ally themselves to Daxus, trying to swipe Six from her. There's no explicit reason why Violet should be all that much stronger and faster than her fellow victims, except that Wimmer seems to be in love with the sword-fu and gun-fu seen in John Woo's 1990s action-films. Violet has a handful of scenes trying to relate to the confused boy, but Wimmer's main concern with having the heroine fight her way to a final confrontation with Daxus, who has two "big reveals," neither all that interesting. On the plus side, all the violent battles are nicely choreographed, and Jovovich does her best to give her simple character some humanity.

ULTRAVIOLET's most interesting quality, though, may be its prescience. I never encountered very many sci-fi futures in which a tyranny was built upon the government's manipulation of an infectious disease, so I have the impression that Wimmer's story somewhat anticipates the real-life manipulations seen in the real world after the Covid pandemic. While I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I have no doubt that a lot of companies and government agencies profited from the chaos, and that's what ULTRAVIOLET shows, fourteen years before the consequences of a real-life "lab leak."       

DRAGON PRINCESS (1976)

 

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

There's no good reason to have Sonny Chiba's name plastered on top of this movie when he's only in about ten minutes at the start. Real star Etsuko Shihomi had already starred in four excellent chopsockies in the SISTER STREET FIGHTER series (1974-5), any one of which outclasses this relatively feeble effort.

Though PRINCESS is, like the SISTER films, set in 1970s Asia, the plot feels like a period-piece, specifically LADY SNOWBLOOD, which concerned a woman trained since childhood to avenge the wrongs done to a parental figure. One small difference is that in this scenario, the female child witnesses the wrongdoing. Isshin (Chiba) is a karate master who's attacked by an ambitious rival, Nikaido (Bin Amatsu) and Nikaido's henchmen. One of the henchmen supplies the film's main metaphenomenal presence, as well as seeming to belong to a period-chopsocky: a white-haired man who, though blind, can hear well enough to fling darts with deadly accuracy. One such dart puts out one of Isshin's eyes, and when the assailants leave Isshin in his humiliated state, Isshin commands his little daughter Yumi to pull the dart from his eye-- one of the movie's few memorable scenes. Isshin then takes Yumi to the US, where he trains her in karate until she reaches young womanhood and is played by Shihomi. She spends most of her young life being trained to gain revenge on Nikaido. One other minor divergence from LADY SNOWBLOOD is that she protests the rigorous training in her youth, but for the rest of the movie seems to be okay with having been so constricted. She and her father spar a little in this sequence but eventually he gets sick and dies, after which Yumi travels to Japan for vengeance.

Shihomi looks great as she pursues Nikaido and the various henchmen, and she gains aid from another martial artist (Yasuaki Kurata) in her quest for revenge. However, though Shihomi had already proven herself a charismatic fake-fighter in the SISTER films, here the fights are sloppily coordinated and are hindered by pan-and-scan in the only available print. I note that the director only helmed eight other films, so maybe the producers got what they paid for. Some scenes are draggy and some move too fast to have any emotional impact. Only at the end, when Yumi and her buddy square off with the villains do things pick up. The film's other memorable scene, taking place in a field of wheat-stalks, shows a wounded Yumi finding a way to neutralize the blind killer's hearing-advantage, by attaching tiny bells to the wheat-stalks, so their jangling of these diabolical devices drives the killer to distraction. (One online review had the notion that the white-haired man was simply going berserk for no reason.) The henchman's hearing is still so acute that he manages to knock down the bells with his darts, but then Yumi attacks and kills him. She also duels Nikaido to the death, but this isn't nearly as impressive. PRINCESS looks like a rush job and has little to recommend it, even compared to many of the lesser HK chopsockies.        

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SEASON THREE (1998-99)

 

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

Season Three of BUFFY takes the franchise in some directions that proved fruitful, while others are more problematic. Season Two ended with the tragic heroine being forced to stab her beloved Angel and send him into a hell-dimension in order to save the world. However, when the credits for the first episode roll, David Boreanaz is still there, in addition to that of newbie Seth Green. In reaction to the death of Kendra in Two, new Slayer Faith joins the team but proves a new source of conflict in this and future seasons. The most problematic additions to the mythos are many inconsistent details about the hitherto-vague organization of the Watchers.

ANNE (F)-- Buffy, expelled from school and alienated from Joyce, takes a waitress-job in a neighboring city and tries to retreat from her old life. However, Chantarelle, a customer at the restaurant, recognizes the Slayer from when Buffy saved her and other vampire-groupies in "Lie to Me." This recognition gets Buffy dragged back into slaying, for the small burg plays host to a gang of other-dimensional demons who steal young people from Earth, work them to near-death in that otherworld, and send their aged forms back to the earth-plane to perish. Our heroine has a great end-battle with the demons, though they're nothing more than humanoids with freaky faces, and after Our Heroine liberates the demons' most recent victims, she makes the decision to return to Sunnydale.  

DEAD MAN'S PARTY (F)-- The strong psychological mythicity of this episode is undermined somewhat by a make-work menace about a Nigerian mask that brings zombies to life. All of Buffy's friends and family are elated when she returns, but at the same time they feel hurt by the way she cut them out of her life. Not wanting to lose her, they pussyfoot around Buffy, but that makes Buffy so displaced that she considers leaving again. The mini-zombie apocalypse gives everyone a chance to vent anger upon the undead, and things mostly go back to normal. The episode sports one of the series' best comedic conclusions, as Willow begins baiting Buffy with small jibes like "quitter" while Buffy responds with similar jabs like "witch"-- with which avocation, by the way, Willow begins to make progress.

FAITH, HOPE AND TRICK (F)-- Slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku) hits Sunnydale, and though she proves useful in the vampire slaying department, her aura of saucy coolness honks off Buffy. Faith claims to have been sent to Sunnydale by her Watcher, but Giles learns that the Watcher was killed by a demon, Kakistos, and that Faith was essentially running away. Kakistos shows up in Sunnydale pursuing Faith, and he brings along a vampire-henchman, Mister Trick, who ends up lasting much longer in the season than does the demon. Faith's background is muddled, given that she talks about slaying vampires even before she's been "activated," and she never does get a new Watcher. Very good fight-scenes for the Slayettes. Oh, and Angel comes back at episode's end; big surprise. 

BEAUTY AND THE BEASTS (F)-- Though other episodes have included more than one breed of monster, "Beauty" is the first story that feels like a monster-mash. Angel is in an animalistic mode when Buffy meets and defeats him, but she keeps him chained and under wraps because she doesn't know what Giles and the others will do to him. Oz is another secondary monster who goes wolfy during the full moon, but the new fiend on the block is Pete Clarney, a student who's come up with a potion to unleash his inner Mister Hyde. Good action all around, and in the end Buffy's proven correct not to killed Angel, who has somehow regained his soul.

HOMECOMING (F)-- This one tries to balance a "Most Dangerous Game" hunt for Slayers with a dominantly comic romp in which Buffy and Cordelia compete for the position of school homecoming queen. The hunters chase both of the contestants under the misapprehension that Cordelia is Faith-- which leads to one of Cordelia' s better scenes in the season.

 BAND CANDY (F)-- Ethan Rayne returns to Sunnydale, and this time he collaborates with Mister Trick-- now in service to Sunnydale's weirdo mayor Wilkins-- to distribute enchanted candy to Sunnydale's adults. Somehow this is supposed to make it easier for Trick's vampire cohorts to steal babies to sacrifice to a serpent-demon. Yeah, it's one of the stupider plots in the series. But "Candy" is justifiably a favorite episode for fans, because the cursed candy causes adults, including Joyce, Giles and the principal-- to experience their "second teenhood." This of course grosses Buffy out no end, particularly when she witnesses her mother and her Watcher making out. 

REVELATIONS (P)-- There are some decent dramatics of Buffy's gang learning about Angel's return here, but again there's another poorly conceived villain dragging the good parts down. Gwendoline Post arrives on Giles' doorstep, claiming to have been sent by the Council in Old Blighty to become Faith's new Watcher. This might have proved workable, except that it turns out that Post has faked her way into Giles' graces to get hold of a demon-gauntlet. Angel has a few good scenes trying to prove himself. 

LOVERS' WALK (G)-- This one might be called "PASSION on the funny side." Though Angel has been exposed and Buffy's gang has more or less accepted his presence, Buffy now has a bigger problem. Every time she and Angel are near, they both want to be lovers rather than "just friends." Into this turbulence, Spike returns, wanting to find some magic spell to make the wayward Drusilla love him again. He abducts Willow and Xander to make that happen, and forces both Buffy and Angel to do his bidding. However, a gang of Spike's former vampire buddies intrudes, and good fights and frustrated passions are had by all. On a sidenote, Willow and Xander have been canoodling on the side, and they get found out by Oz and Cordelia.

THE WISH (F)-- Buffy Goes Multiversal! The vengeance demon Anya, a regular in later seasons, debuts, pretending to be a Sunnydale High student. She tricks Cordelia-- still filled with bloody if comical rage at having seen Xander betray her with Willow-- into making a wish that rewrites the town's history so that Buffy never came there. Thus the confused young woman finds herself stuck in a Sunnydale ravaged by vampires. On top of that, Xander and Willow are a permanent item now, but as an undead couple. Giles and Buffy barely know one another, and Buffy's never met Angel, whom Willow keeps imprisoned for torture-games. Though Cordelia doesn't survive the world she made, she passes on knowledge to Giles, who summons Anya and undoes her curse, and all goes back to what passes for normal.

AMENDS (G)-- Earlier episodes somewhat rushed past the process by which Angel not only returned to Earth but also regained his soul. Here it's suggested that a being called "The First Evil"-- who will become a "Big Bad" in future-- brought Angel back to increase his torments re his unworkable romance with Buffy. Thus, Christmas time rolls around and a demonic image of Jenny Calendar, whom only Angel can see, haunts the noble vampire with dreams of his past crimes. Worse, Buffy shares the dreams, often taking on the role of Angel's victims. Angel finally tries to kill himself, but Buffy insists on redemption.

GINGERBREAD (P)-- Here we have another make-work menace: a demon who assumes the form of a "Hansel and Gretel" pair of kids, who appear at various times in history to cajole communities into turning on their young. Joyce happens to be present when the demon creates the illusion that two innocent children were slain by occultists. Both Joyce and Willow's mother become obsessed with stamping out all things supernatural, including Buffy, Willow and Amy. It plays like an unsubtle Rod Serling script.

HELPLESS (P)-- For her 18th birthday, Buffy's father lets her down by crapping out on their usual celebration. But that's nothing next to what Giles does. I don't know what Josh Whedon had in mind for the Council down the road. But he apparently allowed the writer of this episode to come up with a cockamamie custom where the Watchers "test" Slayers on their eighteenth birthdays by suppressing their powers and pitting them against vampires-- and Giles goes along with this charade, doping Buffy at the risk of her life. This may be the single stupidest episode of all seven seasons, and although it ought to ruin the father-daughter relationship of Giles and Buffy, by the next episode everything's back to normal. The most I can say is that it puts Buffy in the position of feminine helplessness without her super-powers, and there might be some merit in this reversal, if everything else in the story wasn't stupid.

THE ZEPPO (P)-- While the rest of the gang deals with the Hellmouth opening, largely off to the side, Xander tries to assert his sense of masculine coolness. However, his walk on the wild side gets him mixed up with four teens who've mastered the power to return from the dead, non-vampirically. There are some decent Xander jokes but maybe too much of a decent thing. The most significant thing here is that Xander crosses the path of a hyped-up Faith, who promptly uses him for a quickie.

BAD GIRLS (G)-- Faith hasn't really been doing much in the series since her intro, but here she begins to seduce Buffy to her ethic of "live-fast-die-young." They bond somewhat in their mutual dislike of New Watcher Wesley, taking the place of Giles after his rebellion in "Helpless," and Buffy clearly enjoys kicking the asses of the minions of the new demon-in-town, Balthazar. However, when the fighting femmes are out staking vampires, a human gets in the way and Faith kills him. The viewer knows the guy was a flunky working with the Mayor Wilkins conspiracy, and thus not a good guy, but Buffy is horrified that Faith isn't bothered by the fatality. 

 CONSEQUENCES (G)-- After Buffy agonizes about her complicity in the murder Faith committed, she finally decides to come clean to Giles. Faith tries to accuse Buffy of the crime, but Giles sees through her lie and considers calling in the Council to exact penalties. Wesley overhears and brings in other Watchers to corral Faith, which does nothing for her sunny disposition since she simply breaks free. Xander, who misreads Faith's temporary itch-scratching with him, tries to reason with her, and she almost strangles him. Fortunately, Buffy has persuaded Angel to stage an intervention, which he does by clobbering Faith with a bat, and then chaining her in his abode in order to talk her out of her descent into evil. But by episode's end, Faith has offered her services to Mayor Wilkins in his plans for a demonic Ascension.

DOPPELGANGLAND (G)-- There wasn't much Nicholas Brendon could do to improve his Xander-centric episode. But Alyson Hannigan gets much better material with her Willow-centric tale-- or rather, "Willows-centric." Thanks to more meddling by Anya, former demon reduced to a humiliating mortality, Vampire Willow is yanked out of her own alternate world. She immediately gathers a vampire crew to create some pocket dominion. The evil doppelganger comes along at the same time when Good Willow is getting tired, in her sweet-natured way, of being treated like a doormat. The Buffy gang has some bad moments thinking that Willow has died and been turned into a demon, but when apprised of the truth, they lay plans to liberate the evildoer's hostages. Vampire Willow inadvertently helps them when she comes to the school trying to capture Good Willow for magical help. Instead, the vamp is captured, and Good Willow has to get her skank on to masquerade as her evil self. Though Faith is barely in the episode, even her short scenes are on-target, as she forges a strange daughter-father relationship with Mayor Wilkins.

ENEMIES (G)-- Finally, the Scooby Gang (so dubbed by Faith here) learns of the alliance between Faith and the Mayor. The latter launches a plan to deprive Angel of his soul once more in order to create Angelus once more, and for a time the villains' plan seems to have worked. But for once the heroes outsmart the villains. Faith makes her first move on Angel, whom she clearly fancied in earlier episodes, and so her attempt to turn him into her lover is her way of one-upping Buffy, "the good girl." And though Buffy knows that Angel is acting a part, even the appearance of his loving another female strikes her to the heart.          

 EARSHOT (F)-- Xander wanted to cast a love-spell on Cordelia but instead manage to ensorcel all the other girls in Sunnydale. After the encounter with Faith, Buffy wants to know the inner thoughts of her ever-reticent lover Angel. What she gets, thanks to exposure to demon's blood, is the ability to telepathically eavesdrop on everyone except Angel. The minuses of mind-reading far outweigh the pluses, but it does result in the Slayer finding out about a plot to kill all the students at her high school. However, there are some good reversals here, as well as a rare example of Xander solving the real problem. And there's another killer joke at the end.

CHOICES (F)-- Acting on the Mayor's orders, Faith liberates the mystic Box of Gavrok from a courier. Buffy witnesses the act and with Angel's help steals the box to use against the Mayor. However, Faith captures Willow and the Scoobies are forced to trade the box for Willow's safety. One of the best scenes shows Willow tongue-lashing Faith for her betrayals and her essential emptiness before Faith predictably punches her out. But Willow is also instrumental in gaining new information about the Mayor's plans for Ascension, which include his transformation into a gigantic demon.

THE PROM (F)-- Despite the impending perils, Buffy is resolved to protect Sunnydale's senior prom, even though she knows she can't attend with her true love. On top of that, Angel at last states that because of his curse, he and Buffy can never truly be together, so he plans to leave Sunnydale even if the Mayor can be defeated. The gang learns that an aggrieved student has trained hellhounds to attack the prom, and Buffy successfully defeats them, after which she receives a special acclamation from her classmates. Anya, despite having had negative encounters with the Scoobies in "The Wish" and "Doppelgangland," asks Xander to prom and he accepts, which development gives her a minor role to play in the two-part conclusion.

GRADUATION DAY PTS 1-2 (G)-- Once more Joss Whedon writes and directs the two-part season finale, and this time he excels, though I still find problematic his characterization of the Watcher Council as congenital buttheads. Faith's slaying of a Mayor-flunky probably didn't occasion much bad reaction from fans. But by this time she's clearly become addicted to murder, having come close to strangling Xander and having bullied Willow. This time, to protect her quasi-father Wilkins, Faith brutally slays an innocent scholar whose knowledge threatens the Mayor. The Scoobies are able to access some clues from the scholar's research, while Anya adds to the heroes' info by revealing that she witnessed a previous Ascension. Then Faith, acting with the help of Wilkins, shoots Angel with an arrow daubed with a vampire-killing poison. Buffy learns that only drinking the blood of a Slayer can cure the poison, so she tracks down and attacks Faith, intending to force her to yield her blood to Angel even if it costs Faith's life. The two Slayers have a terrific battle, but Faith, wounded by her own knife, escapes. In PART 2, Buffy takes the only avenue left to healing Angel: offering him her own blood. She provokes his vampiric persona and he drinks deeply of her blood, though at the last he manages to keep from killing her. Angel takes Buffy to the hospital for a blood transfusion, which saves her life. At the same place of healing, the wounded Faith, now in a coma, also resides, and Mayor Wilkins is just as distraught over his quasi-daughter as Angel is over Buffy. Later the Scoobies figure out that they can use Wilkins' affection for Faith to lay a trap for him when he undergoes his demonic transformation at the Sunnydale High graduation. The demon-Mayor and his allies are defeated by the resolve of Sunnydale's youth, but the finale also marks several alterations. Cordelia departs the BUFFY show but will later join the ANGEL spinoff. (Here I'll add that this spinoff does not constitute a crossover, because there are no textual signs in the three seasons that Angel was always intended to be spun-off.) Season Four will begin with Buffy and Willow attending a Sunnydale college while continuing to fight evil with Xander, Oz and Giles.                                            

NINJA WARS (1982)

 

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

It's rather rare to have a film be both delirious and dull, but Kosei Saito's NINJA WARS managed it.

Based on a Japanese novel, WARS' thoroughly weird content feels undermined by Saito's pokey direction, though I must admit the English dubbing probably did the movie no favors. This is one of the few films I've seen in which Hiroyuki Sanada plays the lead role, as I've most often seen him in support-roles.

   

The viewer's forced to assimilate a whole lot of crazy in the first thirty minutes. The shogun's daughter Ukyo (Noriko Watanabe) is married to one of the local lords, but rival lord Danjo wants to make her his wife, at least partly because of her royal status. Evil wizard Kashin, leader of at least four other "devil monks," shows up on Danjo's doorstep and reveals how to do the dirty deed. Ukyo can be made to fall in love with Danjo if she drinks an aphrodisiac made from her own tears-- or, failing that, those of the twin sister that even Ukyo doesn't know about. According to Kashin, Ukyo and her sister Kagaribi (also Watanabe) were the result of a liaison between a Japanese father and a Christian (non-Japanese?) mother. Apparently, a different lord decides to adopt Ukyo but doesn't want a matched set, discarding Kagaribi in the wilds. To her good fortune (and sort-of that of the villains), a ninja clan finds and adopts the castoff, raising her as a ninja-- so that as an adult she finds love with fellow ninja Jotaro (Sanada).

 The devil monks kidnap Kagaribi and transport her to Danjo's castle. They plan to force the girl ninja to weep in a way that gives them all some jollies: to serially rape her. However, Kagaribi happens to have mastered the ability to conjure up a scythe of light, and with it, she decapitates herself. Nothing daunted, the monks take one of Danjo's courtesans, behead her, switch the heads of the two bodies, and then bring both back to life with their magic. If they could do that, why not just plant Kabarigi's back on her own body? Details, details. Then they rape the courtesan-body with the Kabarigi-head, so that they can siphon off her tears for the potion, which they brew in a special magic kettle. The Kabarigi-Head body then turns evil, and one of the villains dubs her "Lady Hellfire." The body with the head of the courtesan Chidori goes mad and runs off, whereon Jotaro comes across her when he's seeking Kagaribi. He naturally doesn't recognize her old body with a new head, though he's somewhat bemused by the fact that she wears a Christian cross like Kabarigi did. He fights with the devil monks and steals their magic kettle from them, which means they can't brew their love-potion.

The plot wanders to and fro, punctuated with some various listless swordfights, and at some point Jotaro encounters the married noblewoman Ukyo. By this time I believe he knows she's not his Kabarigi, but her resemblance to his true love causes him considerable disquiet. If I'm not mistaken Ukyo falls for Jotaro, showing that at heart she shares the romantic tastes of her sister. At some point Lady Hellfire suggests to her fellow villains that they don't need the love-potion. Because she shares Ukyo's face, the Lady can simply sleep with Ukyo's husband, set him up to be knocked off, and then remarry Danjo. At some point, though, Danjo does try to use the potion on Real Ukyo, but Jotaro intervenes.

Neither the metaphysical nor the psychological aspects of the movie are well-executed, and I suspect that a subbed version of WARS would have been no easier to follow. Sonny Chiba appears unbilled, and according to IMDB the semi-legendary sword-maker Hattori Hanzo was supposed to be in the story. I never heard the name but I will consider NINJA WARS a provisional crossover on that basis. But there's no "fighting femmes" here because the only lady ninja in the movie just uses her weapon to kill herself.  

I        

GLADIATOR OF ROME (1962)

 

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

Until I saw the above poster, with Gordon Scott's heroic Marcus on one cross and flanked on either side by two hot crossed babes (sorry, couldn't resist), I didn't notice that the same scene in the film had been intended to crudely replicate the familiar Christian scene of Jesus between the two thieves. I'm not saying that director Mario Costa was using the visual allusion for anything in particular. Although there's some plot-elements in which the good guys are being persecuted by Emperor Caracalls for being Christians, there's almost no Christian or anti-pagan polemic in GLADIATOR. And as other reviewers have noted, there's not even much gladiator-action either.

  If anything, GLADIATOR is a little more of an anti-slavery thing. Two Silicians, Marcus and his princess Nisa (blonde Wandisa Guida) are taken to Rome as slaves, with the former being trained for the arena and the latter becoming a house-slave. It's also in Rome, though, that both of them, who are not romantically involved, pick up romantic partners. Marcus becomes infatuated with a barmaid named Aglae (brunette Ombretta Colli), while a Roman noble, Valerio, becomes enchanted with Nisa. There are a lot of talking-head scenes in which the slaves plot to gain their freedom, with occasional interruptions by Gordon Scott beating up Roman soldiers. Before getting put up on a cross, Marcus is threatened with having his eyes burned out so I guess that's a little more exotic than the usual tortures.     

So, are there no bad women in this particular peplum? Female villainy does get representation from a tertiary character, Tullia (Eleanora Vargas) wife of Anno, both of whom join in tyrannizing over slaves, though I'm not even sure they cared about persecuting Christians. Actress Vargas appears to be significantly older than the other two female performers, though I don't have access to her birthdate. I heard, but did copy down, one line in which she seems to be disapproving of the younger Valerio wasting himself with a commoner female. There are no Mrs. Robinson moments as such though. In a fair number of peplum in this period, I have seen oppositions between good young women and bad older woman, so the writers of this otherwise unremarkable movie may have been playing around with that familiar trope, but not really doing much with it. Anno ends up getting killed in an end-battle that liberates Marcus and the hot crossed babes, Tullia ends up mourning him, and all the good people are freed by the auspices of a brand-new Emperor in town.     

THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK (1958)

 

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

Everyone knows that the novel FRANKENSTEIN was written by a female creator. But of the dozens and dozens of cinema-raconteurs who have worked behind-the-scenes on either (1) adaptations, strong or loose, of the original story, or (2) original stories built around the book's tropes-- how many of those raconteurs were female? 

Of course, even when one comes across one such female important to the forging of a given cinema-story, the odds are that she was probably collaborating with men. In the case of THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK, producer William Alland-- a very well-traveled name in 1950s SF-films-- arranged a deal with Paramount to deliver two inexpensive features, COLOSSUS and THE SPACE CHILDREN. Alland presumably hired director Eugene Lourie on the strength of his money-making 1953 effort THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS-- Lourie's only SF-work up to to that time. The original story-idea for COLOSSUS was supplied by one Willis Goldbeck, who had been writing for the movies since the 1920s, but who in that time had only completed scripts on two metaphenomenal films: 1924's PETER PAN and 1932's FREAKS. Any or all of them might have supplied the basic idea for a modern Frankenstein in the form of a cyborg with a brain-transfer. However, I tend to think the main credit for the finished form of COLOSSUS should go to Thelma Schnee, nee Moss, the screenwriter of record.

 Thelma Schnee seems to have been loosely involved in the Actors' Studio in the 1940s when she met and married Paul Finder Moss, who had a very small number of writing and producing credits until that point. Thelma Moss herself had a similar limited career writing and acting in the 1950s, but her husband died of cancer in 1954, leaving her alone with a small daughter. This personal history would be reflected in the script for COLOSSUS, though I'm sure Moss was also indebted to other examples of greater sophistication in science-fiction scripts during that decade.

COLOSSUS, for instance, shares with many other 1950s SF-films a strong but subtle attention to layering the relationships of the six principal characters. Three characters provide a picture of domestic bliss: renowned scientist Jerry Spenser (Ross Martin), his loving wife Anne (Mala Powers), and his little son Billy (Charles Herbert). Looking on are Jerry's scientist-father William (Otto Kruger), his brother Henry (John Baragrey), and John (Robert Hutton), a fourth scientist who's really just there for other people to talk at. Moss's script swiftly establishes that for Father William, Jerry hung the moon, while Brother Henry envies Jerry's great fame, gained from aiding humanitarian causes with science. Ironically, though, Jerry's love for his son Billy spells the scientist's doom. While trying to retrieve a lost toy of Billy's, Jerry inadvertently steps in front of a truck and instantly dies.

 But death is no impediment to Father William, desperate to bring back his pride and joy. Before his descent into monster-making, William outlines to John his conviction that the brain alone is the measure of man, while John (in the actor's only scene of consequence) argues that the human spirit is the true measure. So William harvests Dead Jerry's brain. Then he pressures Henry-- who's started cozying up to Anne, mere months after her husband's death-- to build a robot body in which to house Jerry's brain. William wants Jerry to go on creating scientific miracles for the good of mankind-- and for the ego of his proud papa. Some critics have wondered why the body of the Colossus is so butt-ugly. But William, being focused on the brain, doesn't care what the cyborg looks like-- while Henry of the Envy has every reason to want to make the new version of his brother look like a freak. Henry also installs a shut-off switch beneath one of the Colossus's armpits, which seems an odd place-- though even that choice comes in handy at the film's conclusion.   

For some time, the Colossus is too staggered by his new existence to do anything but do what Papa tells him. A further complication is that with his brain separated from his body, the Colossus develops a variety of psychic powers. He foretells the collision of two ships at sea, and both William and Henry are astounded when the event takes place. Eventually he defies his father and leaves the laboratory, making his way to the graveyard where his body lies buried (which I guess must be just next door). By chance Anne and Billy are at the gravesite too, and the Colossus speaks alone with Billy, convincing the boy that he's a "good giant." Anne sees the "good giant" from afar and panics, not realizing that the Colossus dwells beneath her family home. 

 Unfortunately for Henry, the Colossus is watching when Henry makes another move on Anne. This leads the not-so-good giant to develop new powers out of his suppressed rage. First, the Colossus mentally dominates his father, forcing Willaim to betray Henry. Then, when he tracks down Henry, the Colossus zaps him with some sort of irradiating gaze-- probably patterned by Alland after the disintegration-gaze shown in 1951's THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Moss's script does not explain this killer look, though since the victims of the gaze do NOT disintegrate when stricken, possibly Moss just meant to suggest that the monster was causing the targets' bodies to shut down, since we never see the death-rays used on anything non-living.           

In due time, Anne learns the truth about the caped monster, not least because the Colossus tells Billy to call him "daddy." But by that time, the Colossus has renounced all of his past desires for humanitarian effort, thus justifying John's warnings about brains divorced from human spirit/feeling. When the family of the late Jerry Spenser attends an event at the UN, the Colossus shows up, demonstrating his total lack for social control by killing several people. But Billy thinks he can help his friend the good giant and runs to him. This selfless action shocks the Colossus back to his senses, and he realizes he must die again. He tells his son to switch him off and the boy innocently does so, thus completing the cycle in which he indirectly brought about his father's original demise.

On a minor note, Moss only worked on one other industry credit before seeking a new career, gaining a PHD in psychology and becoming an advocate of parapsychology in the 1970s. Her interest may or may not have been kindled by her husband's demise in 1954, but one may fairly say that by the time she completed the screenplay for COLOSSUS, her interest had become more than minor. Ironically, though most psychic studies emphasize how such ESP powers reveal the hidden capacities of human beings, COLOSSUS makes the point that they can be the devil's instruments if used without the grace of a human spirit.                 

    

 

CHIN SHA YEN (1977)

 

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

"Bring me the head of Chin Sha Yen" (or something very like that) cries some gang-leader halfway through this dumbass Chinese blend of kung-fu and hardboiled-detective genres. I listened to this dopey movie twice and that's the only time I heard the proper name that forms the movie's title. I only know, thanks to the HKMDB, that the character is played by the actor Wang Kuan-Hsiung, who would get a much better acting opportunity in the following year's LADY CONSTABLES. But I don't think the English translation is totally at fault for CHIN's problems. This is the sort of bumptious movie where characters walk around proclaiming themselves to be "The Just Man" or "The Wanderer from the North," just to make it seem like something dramatic is going on.

 So in this case, a martial maiden named Hsiao (Polly Shang Kuan) gets to be the hardboiled dick of the story. After her uncle is slain by a gold-masked man, Hsiao ranges from town to town, looking for the criminal, who may or may not be identical with a legendary kung-fu master, The Golden Bird. Clearly "Golden Bird" would have made a better title, since that's the person Hsiao keeps seeking. Her inquiries cause the killer to send some hired thugs after her. A stranger who calls himself The Wanderer intervenes to protect Hsiao, slaying one hireling with, of all things, a scroll that elongates so as to somehow cut the hireling's throat. Despite this rescue, Hsiao immediately suspects that the Wanderer may actually be the Golden Bird, so she rejects his aid. Yet he keeps showing up to help her, and so do two other kung-fu dudes, the aforementioned Just Man and some guy whose name I didn't hear. They're all in an inn when some gang-leader calls for the head of Chin Sha Yen, and I swear I never heard the name repeated. Hsiao keeps blundering about, so eventually the Golden Bird himself shows up. But is it the original, or an impostor? I doubt even the audiences in 1977 really cared. The script keeps a fair quantity of marvels-- an umbrella that can be used as a shield against swords, combatants that can run up the sides of trees-- and that was probably all anyone expected. Shang Kuan is definitely the starring character here, despite the flatness of the character, and on top of that, the fights are pretty desultory. This is a little odd, since the director started as a stunt guy. I didn't recognize any of the movies on which he served as a director, except 1979's ONE FOOT CRANE, an equally bland offering, but with Lily Li in the martial maiden role.      

GAMERA THE BRAVE (2006)

 

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

I mentioned in my review of the 1990s GAMERA series that I'd seen but did not like the 2006 follow-up GAMERA THE BRAVE. Nevertheless, in the name of Totalicus, the God of Completism, I decided to revisit BRAVE once more.

There are still aspects of this kaiju flick-- the last feature-film in the Gamera series-- that still suck. The "Muppetization" of the giant turtle's standard design remains awful, and the effect would have been even worse if that appearance had successfully appeared in a Godzilla/Gamera crossover that had been in discussion between the owning studios previous to BRAVE's production. Apparently the re-design came about because some children had reacted badly to the intense events of the third 1990s film, and the studio wanted to make the big terrapin more cuddly-looking.

 As if to disavow the profitable trilogy, the studio kept the trilogy's idea that Gamera was a being more or less "programmed" to defend Earth-people against other kaiju. Yet twenty years before the events of BRAVE, the then-current Gamera is unable to best a flock of Gyaos-birds, and so blows himself up to kill them, as well as himself. A young boy named Kousuke witnesses the event, and twenty years later he's sired a grade-schooler son, Toru (Ryo Tomioka), though the boy's mother has passed away. Toru and his friends find a mysterious egg with a red stone attached to the shell, and in due time, it hatches a small turtle with strange powers. I'm not sure why neither Toru nor his friends make the connection to the deceased Gamera. One would think that even if you've never seen such a creature before, the fact that one sacrificed itself for the well-being of Japan would make a pretty big cultural impression.

The very elementary plot resorts to some cornball humor to pad out the time until the little turtle starts getting really big, and there's some slightly better drama in that protective father Kousuke doesn't want his only son getting near any destructive giant monsters, even those with protective intentions. Fortuitously, a hostile dragon-like kaiju named Zedus starts trashing Toru's town just as Baby Gamera has matured into his king-size form. The battles of New Gamera and Zedus keep the movie from being totally without suspense, but it takes a long time for the central dramatic point to manifest: that Kousuke must allow Toru to render aid to Gamera in order to stop Zedus. Said aid involves the previously mentioned red stone, though the script doesn't really explain why the deceased Gamera, who implicitly left the egg behind, also included some sort of power-stone in the mix.

The sixties Gamera films are rightfully mocked for playing to children too often, though this tendency may have lent those films a lively wackiness, thus distinguishing the big turtle's series from the competing Godzilla films of the same period. But despite a winning performance from Tomioka, who shoulders most of the movie's dramatic burden, BRAVE offers neither engaging wackiness nor the heavy seriousness of the 1990s movies. Thus BRAVE failed at the box office and essentially killed the franchise. Nineteen years later, the future doesn't look rosy for the continuing adventures of the iconic flying, flame-breathing turtle-monster.              

THE WILD WILD PLANET (1966)

 

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

"I'm a person, not a collection of hunks of meat."            

I've already reviewed the second and third releases in Antonio Margheriti's "Gamma One" tetralogy, WAR OF THE PLANETS and PLANET ON THE PROWL. I've not had the opportunity to re-screen SNOW DEVILS, the one that was fourth to be released to theaters (that is, irrespective of the order of actual filming, given that all four movies were generated within the same year). But I have no hesitation in proclaiming the first-released, THE WILD,WlLD PLANET, to be the best in this short-lived series. And in contrast to many other Italian space-operas, PLANET has more to it than just the usual "so bad it's good" elements-- though I admit some of those elements are present. 

Take the line I quoted above. Following a few shots establishing that PLANET takes place on a far-future Earth that has colonized other planets, the line is spoken by Mike Halstead (Tony Russel), commander of a space-station orbiting Earth, as he has a testy exchange with Doctor Nurmi (Massimo Serato). Nurmi has been allowed to set up a lab on the station due to the influence of certain planetside "corporations," where he conducts experiments with skin grafts and "miniature organs" (not explained). Halstead makes clear that he doesn't approve of all this monkeying around with piecing together people out of "hunks of flesh," while Nurmi clearly has some agenda involving the eugenic production of "perfect people." Nevertheless, Halstead has to offer Nurmi hospitality aboard the station, and invites him to dinner that evening, where, as Nurmi notes, they will be eating "hunks of meat." Clearly, if one can trust the English translation, writers Ivan Reiner and Renato Moretti were having some fun with the standard tropes of space opera-- although all their other film-work seems to be nothing but undistinguished sci-fi time-fillers. 

              

Halstead's futuristic paradise also gets some trouble from his current girlfriend Connie (Lisa Gastoni), who serves on the space-station under Halstead's authority. Connie's first seen in a gym, drilling male and female officers in judo moves. But even though she twice drops Halstead's officer-buddy Jake (Franco Nero) on his ass with her own skills, don't mistake Connie for a modern girlboss. In this scene and the one at dinner, she makes it clear to Nurmi that she doesn't appreciate her boyfriend treating her like "one of the boys." In a way she's as traditionally minded as Halstead, and that includes the tradition of accepting an invitation from smooth talker Nurmi to pay a visit to his experimental center on the space station (or planet?) Delphus.    

                                                                       

But some mysterious agents of Delphus come to Earth long before Connie goes anywhere. It appears these agents have been operating on Earth for some time, causing mysterious disappearances of scientists, but what we first see of them is eight women and one man, a tall guy with dark glasses and a dark cloak. Whenever one of the girls and Glasses Guy approach a solitary victim, Glasses Guy spreads his cloak over the victim, who just disappears. Even when I saw PLANET in my youth, I knew that this was a cost-cutting effect. Yet the way Margheriti films these disappearance-scenes, they're much creepier than the use of some optical image. In one of the attack-scenes, Glasses Guy botches things somehow, and the victim escapes, though he's been weirdly shrunken, causing him to fall into a coma. The woman with Glasses Guy then makes him disappear, though she doesn't have a cloak to bring off the effect. 

I'm not sure how it happens that Halstead, commander of a space station, gets assigned to investigate missing scientists, though in one scene he and his agents certainly act like they have police-powers. At one point, Glasses Guy (or a clone thereof) is sighted in a future-car, and agents give chase. The car cracks up and the driver disappears, but Halstead makes the scene in time to see that the car contains doll-sized, miniature people held in stasis within a suitcase. In addition, slightly later the authorities find the dead body of a Glasses-Guy, and discover that he has four arms, the result of skin grafts. The call goes out to find Doctor Nurmi.

 Somehow Halstead and two other officers track down two of the female Delphus agents and their leader (Moha Tahi). This confrontation scene is in equal measure both risible and symbolically significant, for the three girls show themselves to be judo-mistresses and hand the three guys a pretty tough battle. While the spies are being taken into custody, Connie arrives on Delphus and begins to encounter some weird phenomena, including an oddball doctor who tells her "your other half will soon be here." Back on Earth, Halstead tries to choke the truth out of Nurmi, but Halstead's superior reins him in. Nothing daunted, Halstead takes a contingent of men to Delphus to rescue Connie and destroy Nurmi's mad scheme, whatever it is. Nurmi gets to Delphus before Halstead and informs Connie that, in addition to somehow conquering Earth with his clones and his shrink-tech, he plans to be joined with Connie in a manner more surgical than sexual. In other words, when Nurmi isn't playing Frankenstein, he's a Moreau who works on himself, and he wants Connie's body only to create a perfect male-female hybrid. If you credit Nurmi with nothing else, he certainly has the courage of his convictions, for even though Halstead brings down his operation Nurmi does his best to take the space-soldier with him into oblivion.

I don't know which of the "Gamma Ones" was written first, but PLANET is the most detailed and feels most like the authors projecting their societal concerns upon a future-scape. The writers did this by creating two sets of oppositions. Halstead may sound as conservative as a Hebrew patriarch out of Leviticus when he rails against skin grafts as a threat to bodily autonomy. But Nurmi is entirely blasphemous in creating a race of perfect humans to people the universe, suggesting a god-complex-- though he might be the first such mad scientist who wanted to become "god and goddess in one body." And though Nurmi's female servants may be judo-trained marvels, none of them have any individuality-- which Connie, even in her rejection of ultra-feminism, certainly possesses. I'm not saying that it's entirely wrong to laugh at some of the movie's missteps, like the soldiers using acetylene torches to suggest ray-guns. But Margheriti, who had completed two Gothic horrors before PLANET, puts a lot of social content into this space-opera, as well as undermining a lot of the gosh-wow sci-fi nicknacks with uncanny, and sometimes apocalyptic, imagery. One might not want to think of PLANET, with its "wild" space-babes and square-jawed heroes, as quality sci-fi. But it's much more imaginative than most space-operas from any decade or nation.      

            

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (2011)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I can understand why a lot of horror-fans like CABIN IN THE WOODS. It's written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, and the latter, in addition to being CABIN's director, wrote scripts for Whedon's signature TV shows BUFFY and ANGEL. On the face of things, CABIN looks like a lot of the 21st century's neo-slashers, focusing on the sufferings of five college-age youths in a lonely "cabin in the woods." Yet even a brief summary of the plot reveals that Whedon and Goddard are trying to undermine the usual setup of such ultraviolent scenarios, and Goddard publicly stated that he was trying to do something more than the "torture porn" seen in some modern horror films. The question, though, is whether or not they succeeded.

         

Cabin-bound are two females, Jules and Dana, and three males, Marty, Holden, and Curt (the latter played by Chris Hemsworth in the same year he first essayed Thor). The five youths are given reasonably lively characterizations, but not much more depth than the bare stereotypes one sees in any FRIDAY THE 13TH movie. Now the usual script in cabin-horror movies is that the cabin-mates all get besieged by some menace local to the vicinity: a ghost, a witch, a book filled with Sumerian demons. And the youths are indeed menaced by one particular set of menaces: a family of zombies. However, this time the menaces are just one potential peril that gets chosen, all but arbitrarily, by a secret cabal of conspirators far beneath the earth of the cabin.

  Whedon's BUFFY may have been one of the first TV shows to play around with the idea of a secret installation that collected and confined monsters, possibly influenced by 1968's DESTROY ALL MONSTERS. Usually the mission of such organizations is to study monsters to nullify and/or control them. However, the men and women of this installation-- under the control of a mysterious "Director" (Sigourney Weaver) -- are actually using caged monsters to assail campers as sacrificial victims. These sacrifices of young people are meant to placate ancient Lovecraftian entities by exposing the victims to the murderous rampages of all sorts of boogiemen and boogiewomen-- killer clowns, mermen, werewolves, witches and even a giant snake.

This could have been a damn good idea for a monster-mash, a way of establishing that all the lesser, more-or-less human-sized horrors somehow owe their existence to some colossal, super-monstrous evil gods. Whedon and Goddard, though, don't exploit this idea for its full impact, because their script is too busy hauling out one joke after another, both from the collegians and from the employees of the secret installation. The collegian Marty, in fact, sounds a warmed-over Xander Harris, whom I've often suspected to be Whedon's identification-figure in BUFFY. When the writers try to sell the idea that these sacrifices are for no good reason patterned after American slasher movies, using tropes like "the virgin is the Final Girl," it's clear that the metaphor escaped the control of Whedon and Goddard, and that they just started piling on things they thought funny. 

I still rate the mythicity of CABIN as "fair" for trying something different. But most of the symbolic discourse, like the personalities of the protagonists and their enemies, is shallow. I might consider Weaver's Director (who gets into a hand-to-hand with Xander, I mean Marty) to be the main menace, since she's apparently the source of the whole project-- even though the actress is only in the movie for five minutes.