AVENGERS ASSEMBLE, SEASON THREE (2016)

 

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

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

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

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

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

QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS (1947)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

            

IN THE NAME OF THE KING (2007)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

APE VS. MECHA-APE (2023)

 

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

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

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

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

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

   

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SEASON FIVE (2000-01)

 

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

Season Five and the following two seasons seem to undergo a subtle storytelling shift. Whereas the previous four seasons seemed to alternate between short story-arcs and mostly self-contained episodes, Five bears more resemblance to a traditional soap opera, with a lot of long arcs interspersed with short episodes loosely tied into the season's main continuity.

BUFFY VS. DRACULA (P)-- This half-baked story was probably cooked up as an attention-getter for the new season. For no real motivation, Dracula (Rudolf Martin doing a Lugosi) sets up shop in Sunnydale and goes out of his way to give Buffy a heads-up. In addition to being the only vampire in the show who can change into animals or into mist, he also manages to turn Xander into a Renfield and to enthrall Buffy, luring her closer to the Dark Side. Buffy defeats but does not kill the vamp, who apparently decides to pull up stakes (heh) and leave Sunnydale. The episode ends with the introduction of Buffy's little sister Dawn, who came into existence here due to various multiversal meddling.

REAL ME (F)-- It's soon apparent that everyone in Buffy's circle, from her mother to Spike and the Scoobies, think that Dawn has been around for the last fourteen years. Dawn's fully aware of Buffy's Slayer nature but the two sisters frequently snipe at one another and get on each other's nerves. While Spike has more or less receded into the background, his former girlfriend Harmony gathers some vampiric minions and attacks Buffy's house. After the owner of a magic shop is killed, Giles buys the store, which becomes the group's base of operations for a while. A real threat is suggested by an increase in the number of crazy people in Sunnydale.

THE REPLACEMENT (F)-- This Xander-centric episode is at least better conceived than "The Zeppo." Toth, a new demon in town, tries to magically split Buffy in two but strikes Xander instead. While Xander's confident side takes over his job and his relationship with Anya, his more insecure form thinks that his other half is a demonic impostor. Brendon comports himself well as the two Xanders. After the two are merged once more, Riley makes a private confession to United Xander: that Riley intuits that despite their ongoing relationship, Buffy doesn't really love him.

OUT OF MY MIND (F)-- Riley suffers the after-effects of the drugs he was given in the Initiative, but a government scientist is willing to cure him. Spike finds out about the surgeon, and he re-teams with Harmony to coerce the doctor into removing Spike's restraining chip. Buffy and Riley drive off the two vamps and Riley receives the medical care needed. Later in his crypt with Harmony, Spike dreams that he and Buffy give in to a mutual passion, and he awakes in horror.               

   

   NO PLACE LIKE HOME (F)-- Joyce begins suffering from an ailment later diagnosed as a brain tumor. She will seem to recover after surgery, but the soap-operatic handwriting is on the wall. Buffy accidentally stumbles across the being responsible for the epidemic of craziness: Glory (Clare Kramer), a being from another dimension who sucks brain-energy to build up her strength. Glory almost beats Buffy to a pulp, but the Slayer escapes with Glory's prisoner, a monk who, before he dies, tells Buffy of Glory's purpose. He informs the Slayer that Glory's come to Sunnydale looking for a dimensional "key." The monk and his fellows embodied the formless energy of the key into the new existence of Dawn, essentially rewriting reality so that everyone would accept Buffy's belated younger sister. 

FAMILY (F)-- It's suggested that Ben, one of the physicians at Joyce's hospital, has a mysterious connection to Glory. Glory sends some demon-minions after Buffy, guessing that the Slayer may have learned something about the key from the dead monk. At the same time, Tara's religiously repressive family show up at the magic shop, seeking to make Tara come back with them, much to Willow's displeasure. After the demons are killed, Spike proves unusually helpful in proving to the other Scoobies that the family has no just claim on Tara. This action marks a strong shift of Spike's sympathies toward the group, since he has no reason to care about Tara, whom he barely knows, and hasn't expressed any feeling toward Willow apart from once claiming he wanted to make a meal of her.

FOOL FOR LOVE (G)-- Buffy's continued worries about Joyce are exacerbated by losing her confidence in her own skills. She and Giles agree that she needs to know more about Slayer vulnerabilities, but the only being who can tell Buffy anything is Spike, who killed two Slayers in previous decades. Most of the episode is devoted to Spike gleefully telling his nemesis about his past ravages, though he omits some aspects of his "origin story," having been a pretentious amateur poet before being turned by Darla and Angelus. At the same time, Spike's own sudden passion for Buffy begins to manifest, and though the Slayer doesn't take his sexual metaphors seriously, she roundly rejects him. Spike's conflicting emotions run the gamut from hate to empathy here, setting up his future status once Riley departs.    

SHADOW (P)-- Though the title refers to a "shadow" on Joyce's CAT-scan, it could also refer to the shadow on the relationship of Buffy and Riley, as the Slayer slowly shuts the soldier out of her life. Riley encounters a female vampire at a bar, and though he later kills her, he lets the vamp bite him first, signaling his sense of lacking any emotional stimulus from Buffy. Glory transforms a cobra into a demon that can track down the Key. and it does find Dawn, who's not yet aware of her status. However, Buffy kills the creature before it can return to Glory.

LISTENING TO FEAR (P)-- An extraterrestrial demon descends to Earth on the day before Joyce is scheduled for her surgery. It's very much a filler episode.

INTO THE WOODS (F)-- It's finally time to bid Riley goodbye. The writers didn't do a good job of setting up this departure, for Riley suddenly becomes emotionally addicted to getting erotically bitten by vampires. The justification-- that he doesn't feel connected to Buffy-- seems strained at best. Spike exposes Riley's fetish but the overall sense is that in some sense Riley was Buffy's "second rebound guy." Riley gets a convenient offer from his military buddies to accept an assignment elsewhere and he takes it.

TRIANGLE (F)-- This is almost an Anya-centric episode, though it also concerns Willow's hostility towad the former demon. Willow accidentally conjures up Olaf, a former human whom the Demon Anyanka changed into a huge, hammer-wielding troll. The troll rampages for a while. Eventually, after lots of fights and male-female contention, Willow hurls the troll back to his own realm-- at least in theory-- but the troll leaves behind the hammer, to serve as a plot-point later.       

CHECKPOINT (P)-- In response to Giles' inquiries, the Watchers Council comes to America with information about Glory-- but the Watchers insist on putting Buffy and the Scoobies through a host of humiliating tests. Though there are few good moments as the Scoobies defend one another from this ill treatment, the Watchers' desire to get the Slayer under their thumb makes no sense given the high stakes involved with defeating Glory. I can only guess that Whedon's Watchers represented to him some form of unreasoning authority-figures.

BLOOD TIES (P)-- The only crumb of information the Watchers reveal is that Glory is not a demon, but "a god"-- though not until "Spiral" does anyone explain the distinction. Buffy, who up to this point has only revealed to Giles the truth of Dawn's existence, comes clean to the others as well. Unfortunately, Dawn overhears part of the conversation. She decides to launch her own investigation and talks Spike into helping her break into the magic shop. There Dawn gets the first inkling of the truth, which traumatizes her despite Buffy's attempt to convince her that the two of them are valid sisters. Later Dawn stumbles across Ben and accidentally learns that he shares a body with Glory-- also a point not expanded upon until much later. The Scoobies show up and fight Glory, and Willow manages to teleport Glory away. Despite some good moments, the overall plot is unwieldly.

CRUSH (G)-- Most of the really good episodes this season are Spike-centric. Drusilla returns to Sunnydale, and even though she resisted Spike's attempts to woo her months ago, she suddenly decides she wants him after all. With her psychic powers she nullifies the effects of the chip on Spike's brain-- though she may only be blocking his experience of the pain-- and the two of them slay a couple of innocent humans together, like old times. Dawn broaches to Buffy the fact that Spike's into her, which disgusts her. Later Drusilla and Spike set up a trap for Buffy, but Spike captures and binds both females, trying to work out his conflicted feelings for the two of them. However, Harmony, enraged at Spike's cavalier treatment of her, intervenes, making it possible for Buffy to break free. Drusilla and Harmony both withdraw and Buffy punches out Spike. 

I WAS MADE TO LOVE YOU (F)-- A little robot-maker named Warren-- later one of Buffy's major foes-- creates April, a robot girlfriend, and then tries to just leave her behind when he likes a human woman better. The script asks the viewer to accept that Warren doesn't just find some way to deactivate his robo-girl in order to save himself some trouble. All that saves the episode is the pathos of the artificial woman's inability to understand human fickleness, and the fact that Spike seeks to take advantage of Warren's expertise.

 THE BODY/FOREVER (F)-- These two linked episodes impressed many fans in showing the intrusion of ordinary mortality into the Slayer's fantasy-world. They provide a good change of pace for the series as a whole, though I'm less sanguine about how well they fit into the season as a whole. Spike, who genuinely liked Joyce, aids Dawn in seeking to restore Joyce to life, and then fades from the story as Dawn triggers a resurrection spell and Buffy seeks to intervene. Angel returns for a brief scene with Buffy.

INTERVENTION (G)-- Spike succeeds in having Robo-Buffy pleasure him, with the robot programmed to act as if Spike is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Meanwhile, Buffy once more feels the need to learn more about her heritage, so Giles sets her up to get an ambiguous oracle from the First Slayer, one that doesn't pay off until the season finale. Back in Sunnydale the Scoobies are horrified to catch sight of the Buffster bumping uglies with Spike, and they think Buffy's had a breakdown connected with her mother's death. However, the minions of Glory also observe the union of Spike and the Slayer, so the minions haul Spike before Glory in the belief he's the key. Glory knows this isn't true, but she still  tortures Spike for information While Spike refuses to rat out Dawn, the Scoobies beard Glory in her den, planning if necessary to kill Spike so that he can't divulge Dawn's secret. The Buffy-bot is destroyed in the chaos but everyone else escapes Glory's wrath. In a compelling culmination, Buffy pretends to be the robot in order to find out from Spike what he told Glory, and she makes a heartfelt gesture when he proves that he protected Dawn.

TOUGH LOVE (G)-- Though the Willow-Tara relationship has been all puppies and kittens up to this point, they quarrel; when Willow becomes oversensitive to Tara's suggestion that her occult studies are moving too fast. Glory, however, has decided to start ambushing the Scoobies individually to find out what each of them knows, and she brain-drains Tara. Tara becomes a babbling idiot, and Willow swears vengeance. Buffy thinks she's talked Willow out of retaliation, but Spike asks the Slayer what she would do had Glory killed Dawn, and Buff rushes to go help her friend. Willow and Glory engage in a major magical battle, but Willow's almost killed until Buffy intervenes. However, Glory then attacks the Scoobies at Buffy's house and finally learns the identity of the key. Willow's fantastic abilities will become even more important in Season Six.

  SPIRAL (F)-- The Knights of Byzantium, an ancient order opposed to Glory's return to power, were briefly introduced in "Checkpoint." Here they become a new impediment. Though Glory's attack on the Scoobies is partly foiled by the influence of her body-partner Ben, Buffy and her friends elect to flee Sunnydale to preserve Dawn. The Knights chase the heroes down, intent on killing Dawn so that Glory cannot use her. Buffy and friends take refuge in an abandoned building out in the desert, while the Knights, appropriately, "lay siege." The Scoobies capture one of the Knights' commanders, and he supplies the long-overdue exposition as to how Glory was exiled from her "hellgod" dimension and was imprisoned in the body of a mortal man.to rein her in. She plans to sacrifice the key, which will open the way back to her own world, but in addition to killing Dawn, most if not all of the ordered universes will be destroyed as well. I don't think the delay of this Big Reveal provides much emotional resonance to the story and only creates a ramshackle story with too many holes in it. The overcomplicated story also depends on Buffy being able to summon Ben to aid her group, and when Glory takes over the Ben-body, she kills all the Knights and abducts Dawn.

THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD (F)-- After Glory escapes with Dawn, Buffy falls into an unresponsive state, weighed down by the enormous guilt she feels over losing her sister, as well as having the responsibility of saving the world. Willow must use a spell to enter Buffy's mind and suss out what's causing the Slayer's catatonia. The psychological tropes in this dream-quest seemed a bit too cut-and-dried for my taste.

THE GIFT (F)-- And here's the big finale, which is also the writers' opportunity to unpack all of the plot-points they've been caching for this story. Glory and her minions retreat to a sacrificial site they apparently whipped up for Dawn's sacrifice, but the Scoobies get a clue as to the villains' location because Crazy Tara has a psychic bond to Glory. There's a certain amount of time-wasting as Glory taunts Dawn for a while, and the heroes catalogue all the items they acquired in previous episodes that they'll use against their enemy, particularly the big troll-hammer. Giles brings up the possibility that they might have to kill Dawn to thwart Glory's opening of the dimensional doors. However, Buffy finally gets hip to the meaning of the ambiguous Slayer-oracle and sacrifices herself, while Giles confines his killing to Glory's mortal self. I suppose in many ways the finale delivers on what the plot promised, but there's not a lot of dramatic payoff. Though Clare Kramer infuses Glory with a lot of energy, she's a fairly one-dimensional villain and the whole "vulnerability in her mortal body" thing seems predictable. Season Six then must figure out how to bring back the star of a successful show after killing her off-- which also sounds like a fair number of daytime soap operas.        

  

DRAGONBALL: THE MAGIC BEGINS (1991)

 

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

This Taiwanese-Philippine production, the second live-action adaptation of the DRAGONBALL franchise, seem party patterned on the first anime film, CURSE OF THE BLOOD PEARLS, at least in terms of giving the main hero a more formidable first foe. Further, the tyrant looking for the wish-granting Dragon Balls, a bull-man named "King Horn," seems based on the folkloric Chinese figure sometimes translated as "Bull Devil King," whom I don't recall ever seeing in the manga from which the franchise arose.

Despite the overall cheap look of the production, the film tries to channel the "Star Wars" look at the opening. King Horn, who already possesses two of the legendary Dragon Balls, uses a giant spaceship and an army of costumed minions to ravage the countryside. For some reason he thinks the other five can be found in the same general area, which happens to be the case (largely for the convenience of the narrative). Despite all the sci-fi trappings, Horn's future antagonist, young Son Goku (Chi-Chiang Chen), seems to dwell in a bucolic fantasy-world with his kung-fu teacher, which reflects the fairy-tale atmosphere of the early manga stories. Goku has fantastic fighting-abilities and a magical battle-staff, though in the dubbed version I watched, he's called "Monkey Boy" but there are no obvious references to the manga's concept that the hero's a monkey-like ET who was adopted by a human teacher. 

Other familiar characters from the manga, such as Bulma and Yamcha, get such new names as "Seetoo" and "Westwood," which may have some relevance to the licensing status of the movie. Seetoo is a feisty young woman who owns one of the dragon balls and seeks to find others, though for less villainous motives than King Horn. In the manga Bulma and Yamcha hook up, but the hour-and-a-half film can only touch on this romantic subplot. Seetoo's main function here is to get Goku out of his rural rut so that he's ready to oppose evil when King Horn comes calling. A few other characters appear-- Piggy, a pig-demon, and "Turtle Man," another kung-fu teacher-- but they're probably there largely to appeal to the DRAGONBALL fan base. There's another character, possibly derived from BLOOD PEARLS, and she wants the Dragonballs to revive all the people of her village, whom King Horn slew. There aren't that many more characters here than in the anime movie, but in the live-action movie, the support-characters seem to be tripping over one another.

If one can overlook some really bad FX work (Seetoo uses a bazooka to blow up an enemy, who's clearly a dummy being blasted). BEGINS is at least a watchable mediocrity, at least for the lively though not distinctive fight-scenes. Chen's naive young hero has a certain amount of charm, but he too seems to get lost in the overburdened plot. Still, I can't imagine why anyone would want to watch this version than one of the Japanese cartoon-movies.             

APE VS. MONSTER (2021)

 

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

APE VS MONSTER is an Asylum mockbuster of the same year's big-budget GODZILLA VS. KONG. Surprisingly, it's not that bad, particularly in comparison to most of the studio's output.

Now, it goes without saying that a cheap-ass monster-mockup can't compete with its big-budget model in terms of convincing FX-battles between brobdingnagian behemoths. If one wants such conflicts, one goes to the high-profile Hollywood productions. The limited FX of APE must be evaluated next to true losers like KOMODO VS. COBRA. With that in mind, though the ape of the title is underwhelming, the giant gila-- which looks a lot like the 1998 Godzilla-- isn't bad, and the climactic battle of the mammal and the reptile isn't bad, as cheap-ass monster mockups go. All the stuff that alters two Earth-animals into colossi is unremarkable, and not worth summarizing.

 But that backstory is worth mentioning for the support-cast of humans who witness the creatures' rampage. I mentioned in my review of GODZILLA VS KONG that its human characters were "bare functions of the plot," but that's not the case in APE. American scientist Linda (Arianna Scott) was loosely involved when a joint American-Russian space project launched a chimpanzee test subject into the Great Beyond. Linda had strong maternal feelings for the chimp, name of Abraham, and resented that her father, the rather-cleverly named Noah, used Abraham in the project. The two of them remained estranged for the thirteen years before the space capsule returned to Earth. Over time Linda figures out that aliens messed with the capsule-- ironically, sent forth on some vague "first contact" mission-- and arranged for the vessel to return to Earth, with Abraham infected so as to become an Amazing Colossal Ape. It's not clear if the ETs-- who remain hovering the atmosphere during all this gorilla-megilla-- think that one big ape is going to soften up the planet for conquest. It seems to be a coincidence that some of the enlarging-juice leaks out of the capsule and makes a lowly gila monster into a Giant Gila.

"Big-name" Eric Roberts has a nothing role spouting exposition, but Linda gets ample support from Eva (Katie Sereika), a Russian exchange student Linda knew in college, but who's now a Russian commando seeking to protect her country's interests in the space program. There's also a gung-ho general who wants to kill both giant creatures, even the benign Abraham, which adds a little extra tension. For once, the teaming of two efficient females in a monster-movie doesn't seem like a nod to political correctness, and Linda is given a simple but efficient character-arc, nicely portrayed by Arianna Scott. This is one area where I'm glad the filmmakers did not emulate GODZILLA VS KONG.          

FLY ME (1973)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*   

The only real significance of FLY ME is that it's among the first exploitation films directed by Filipino filmmaker Cirio H. Santiago that was apparently filmed in English and thus marketed in English-language markets. Though FLY attempted to play off earlier sex-flicks about swinging stewardesses, very little of the film concerns the three girls' duties-- or infractions-- on their planes. 

 Since I spotlighted the names of the actresses playing the three girls above, I'm not going to bother typing the character-names as I lay out each of their plot-threads. The one that gets the most attention is Pat Anderson's, in which she tries to get it on with a handsome doctor but keeps getting ****-blocked by her conservative nother. Then there's a plot about Lillah Torena getting herself and her friends involved with a white slavery ring. Lastly, the only plot that has much potential is the one that doesn't track at all: that Lenore Kasdorf has some evil kung-fu people after her, for no reason ever brought forth. Kasdorf, though not the world's worst fake-fighter, has to amateurishly fend off three separate kung-fu killers, as well as getting wounded by a dart from a fourth enemy. Oh, and the enemy is apparently posing as a blind guy with a cane, and he shoots the dart from his cane-- which is the only thing that makes FLY a metaphenomenal film.       

Though FLY does end with a big fight between the white slavers and some good law agents (I think), the three stews don't participate in that fight, not even the semi-skilled Kasdorf. Therefore this one can stay off my list of combative films within any phenomenality. Oh, and one other minor significance is that FLY ME would also be the first English-language flick with a kung-fu femme by the director of such later works as SILK 2, THE SISTERHOOD, and TNT JACKSON and its two remakes.   

RAIDERS OF THE SUN (1992)

 

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

Yawn. Here we have yet another apocaflick from Filipino filmmaker Cirio H. Santiago. Prior to 1992 he'd directed half a dozen movies on this theme, and this one is just as desultory and low-impact as most of the others. (I need to rewatch WHEELS OF FIRE, which I recall being a little better.)

  The movie's three writers stuck pretty closely to the George Miller template, though this time, the prized commodity is not gasoline but gunpowder. Heroic Brodie (Richard Norton, who'd made one previous apocaflick with Santiago) belongs to the Alpha League, a beneficent political group seeking to bring back democracy to the wasteland. One of the League's own officers, a fellow named Clay, deserted to found a gang of raiders. This backstory proves pretty inconsequential, because the raiders' secondary commander Hoghead (Rick Dean) gets a lot more screen time being evil. Hoghead (and yes, he wears a replica of a hog's-head for a hat) abducts the cute wife of Brodie's fellow commando Talbot. Talbot goes undercover so that he can infiltrate the raiders as a new member to their ranks, and he gets the best scene in the movie: swiping a hundred-dollar bill from beneath the nose of a poisonous snake.

As for Brodie, he supplies the Miller-trope where the hero encounters a tribe of Edenic primitives. This time the tribe has access to a potassium mine, meaning that they possess the makings for the prized gunpowder. The primitives--most of whom are dwarfs, except for a full-sized Asian beauty who becomes Brodie's romantic partner-- just want to be left out of all the fighting, but of course Brodie persuades them that they should join his side out of self-defense. Speaking of fighting, Norton really executes more gun-fu than kung-fu. And though I didn't keep count of kung-fu scenes, it seemed to me that Norton's character had fewer than did the character of Vera, nicely executed by American actress Brigitta Stenberg. Her handful of fight-scenes were the only ones that stood out; everything else was from hunger.              

BTW, for a change the title actually means something. The village of the Potassium Primitives is named "Porto del Sol," which Brodie translates as "Gate of the Sun." 

HARLEY QUINN-- SEASON 3 (2022)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* 

In my review of Season One, I left things open as to whether the writer-producers of HARLEY QUINN really believed all of their rants about White Patriarchy, and by extension, all other such cant, such as the un-ironic use of the term "cisgender" in Season Two. It was at least possible that these raconteurs were simply trying to make a buck by playing to an audience that wanted an ultraliberal version of SOUTH PARK, with loads of naughty language and hardcore violence. But if Season 3 of this show demonstrated anything, it's that only true believers could pen a line like this one:

Harley Quinn (speaking to another female): "Congrats on freeing yourself from the chains of hetero hell!"

The showrunners make other dubious decisions-- the Riddler is gay, and Catwoman had a lesbian encounter with Poison Ivy but can barely tolerate the "hetero hell" of an ongoing relationship with boring billionaire Bruce Wayne). All these things demonstrate that the producers have goneg full tilt boogie into a trope I'll call, "Gay Always Good, Straight Always Bad." Before this, the scripts focused almost entirely on celebrating one particular lesbian hookup: the written-in-the-stars romance of BFFs Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. Season 2 particularly burns up a lot of episode-time leading up to the inevitable union. But the apparent success of the HBO series evidently made the showrunners convinced that they could get away with anything-- just like SOUTH PARK, but with absolutely no wit or style.

From a very limited POV, Season 3 doesn't suffer from exactly the same crippling inevitability as Season 2. Once all the sexy pyrotechnics have been executed, Harley and Ivy have to deal with the pressures of an ongoing relationship. I don't mean to imply that the scripts show any logical progression of even very limited melodramatic characters; I'm only saying that the change of pace COULD have been allowed for better stories than those of Season 2. One big change comes from Ivy, who for two seasons of this show, put aside her forceful personality from other iterations and became a "shrinking violet," the better to play "femme" to Harley's "butch." Now, in order to play up the very different personalities of the lovers, Ivy starts to return to her eco-terrorist mode. Harley initially approves-- anything to make her leafy lover happy-- but at some point, even the empty-headed maniac realizes that Ivy's obsession is too extreme, even for her.

Season Two broadly implied that the main reason Harley launched a murderous campaign to take down most of Gotham's other villains was because she had no good lovin' in her life, and had never had even when she cohabited with the Joker, because well, "hetero equals hell." But once she's bumping nasties with Ivy, Harley conveniently forgets about her queenpin-ambitions and even starts making noises like a hero, which includes keeping Ivy from massacring large quantities of Gothamites. Of course, in the world of the fanatic, it doesn't matter than Harley herself has quite a few murders on her rap sheet, and not just villains-- unless we're supposed to believe that her attack on Earth with the forces of Darkseid conveniently cost no innocent lives. Being gay makes everything okay.

But in one sense Harley's dream of becoming a queenpin comes true, for in order for her to rise, the Big Bat must fall. Yes, the previous two seasons repetitively dragged Commissioner Gordon through the mud for a laugh, and other heroes were mocked, but the fanatics mostly left Batman alone. However, to him he's a straight white male hero, so he must be removed to make way for a gay (but also white) female villain with heroic aspirations. To be fair, in the comics Harley does undergo a psychological change that puts her mostly on the side of the angels. But the showrunners here have no interest in psychology except in the form of tedious bromides. "Batman has a savior complex. Bruce Wayne turns off Catwoman because his parental issues make him clingy." But in addition to all the factors that make the Big Bat a weak-ass white guy, he also belongs to the "one percent," and for that crime he must be punished, so that Killer Harley can take his place and check more boxes.

I confess I laughed at one joke that involved the Riddler running a danger room. However, the scripters lost that one point and more by making the Prince of Puzzlers gay for no reason but to create more pink representation. For TV animation, HQ is competent, particularly with respect to the violent fight-scenes. I'm aware there are two other seasons and another on the way, so I guess someone likes it. I won't be in any great hurry to review more of these turd-productions.                          

ANGEL, SEASON ONE (1999-2000)

 

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

The success of Joss Whedons BUFFY series allowed his company to spin off the supporting character of Angel (David Boreanaz) into his own series, running concurrently with BUFFY's Season Four. ANGEL's first season recapitulates some of the problems seen in the first season for the Vampire Slayer: a fair number of make-work menaces who are meant primarily to provide conflict for the starring ensemble. That said, ANGEL had two advantages over its companion show. The new program benefited from being able to draw upon appearances from characters in the Buffyverse, and the new setting of Los Angeles arguably allowed for a greater variety of monsters than ever seemed entirely probably in the smaller venue of Sunnydale. Arguably the character of Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) had much more room to grow in her role of secretary to Angel's detective agency-- essentially a front for the heroic vampire's quest to save others and seek redemption for past crimes. New character Doyle (Glenn Quinn) provided Angel with a psychic hotline to the machinations of Los Angeles' many evildoers, at least for the first nine episodes.

CITY OF (F) -- Angel comes to Los Angeles and sets up Angel Investigations as a cover for his noble activities. During this time, he meets Doyle, a half-demon who claims his psychic forecasts are sent to him by the mysterious "Powers That Be," beneficent beings seeking to guide Angel in his quest. Angel also has two brushes with Cordelia, leading her to more or less designate herself his secretary because she needs a paying job. In his first case, Angel fails to save the life of a young woman menaced by a rich old vampire, though Angel subsequently slays the evildoer. This action incurs the hostility of the diabolical law agency Wolfram and Hatt, who will be Angel's recurring opponents throughout the series.

LONELY HEART (F)-- A demon takes advantage of all the lonely people in LA by hopping from one body to another, leaving each of his hosts dead. Prior to destroying the creature, Angel makes the acquaintance of police detective Kate Locksley, who makes incidental appearances during the show's first two seasons.

IN THE DARK (F)-- Angel's first crossover with BUFFY is marked by both a hero and a villain. Following up on events in "The Harsh Light of Day," Willow's boyfriend Oz delivers the mystic ring of Amara to Angel, since said ring can make a vampire invulnerable to any of his normal banes. Somehow Spike, who had possession of the ring before Buffy took it from him, finds out that Angel will become the recipient and so he seeks to recover the bauble for himself. (Presumably Spike doesn't know how the ring's being delivered, since it would've been far easier to steal the ring from Oz than from Angel.) In the end, Angel both defeats Spike and destroys the ring to prevent it from falling into evil hands--including his own, should he revert someday to Angelus.

I FALL TO PIECES (F)-- It's stalker-slaying time again, as a vulnerable young female is harried by an obsessed neurosurgeon. The evil doctor also has the power to separate parts of his body to go on errands for him, which doesn't have much utility beyond expanding the episode's creepiness factor.

RM W/A VU (F)-- The show's first Cordelia-centric episode gets off with a bang, as Angel and Doyle help their ally find a new apartment. Trouble is, it's haunted by two ghosts, a mother and the son she more or less smothered. Carpenter gets a rich variety of emotional states here, credibly going from simply unnerved by the haunting, to outright terrified, to filled with rage at the invasive spirits.

SENSE AND SENSITIVITY (F)-- In one of the least believable make-work concepts, a mobster seeking to escape police custody pays a shaman to unleash on LA "sensitivity training" that will make them unable to resist said mobster's breakout. Strong dramatic tension saves the episode, ranging from Detective Locksley's covert interest in Angel to her issues with her emotionally stunted cop father, who will appear again in later episodes.

THE BACHELOR PARTY (P)-- There's some good potential to build up the backstory for Doyle, as his estranged wife comes to town, requiring Doyle to sign divorce papers so that she can get married to another man-- who, like Doyle, is part-demon. It's all very civilized, until someone almost loses a head.

I WILL REMEMBER YOU (G)-- Following the events of "Pangs," Buffy travels to LA, ostensibly to call out Angel for having covertly spied on her. But thanks to a chance demonic encounter, Angel becomes mortal again, which should mean that he and Buffy at last can be together, at least for the rest of their mortal lives. But since ANGEL can't be a show without a hero-vampire, the noble protagonist must find some way back to undead status. The excuse is that Angel feels he may be needed against a future demonic threat, though one might think that a mortal Angel would also end the potential threat of Angelus and thus would be a pretty good trade-off. Still, it's another strong example of the Whedon shows messing about with multiversal possibilities.        

HERO (F)-- The main menace is forgettable, but the episode allows Doyle to go out with a bang, so that he can transfer his psychic hotline to Cordelia. I speculate that the writers realized that they couldn't expand much on Doyle's character in concert with Angel and Cordelia, and so he's out.

PARTING GIFTS (F)-- As with the previous episode, the menace is a weak one, but it garners a fair rating for the way it brings former Watcher Wesley onto the Angel Team. This doesn't just make possible more Stuffy Brit jokes, but also plays into Wesley's more idealistic psychology, even if that outlook takes a beating in "Five by Five."

SOMNAMBULIST (F)-- At least this time the one-off menace has personal ties to Angel's past, as he's a vamp Angel sired, committing various serial crimes. The title refers to Angel's fear that he might be committing the deeds in sleep. The big reveal here is that Kate learns Angel's bloodsucking nature.

EXPECTING (P)-- "What should you expect when you're expecting a bad episode?" Cordelia is faux-impregnated by a demon. Charisma Carpenter gets a lot of comic scenes. 

SHE (F)-- This one's an okay change of pace. Jhiera (Bai Ling) is an other-dimensional freedom fighters who comes to LA and starts involving Earth-people in her activities. In addition to saving people, Angel is somewhat attracted to this exotic arrival, though nothing comes of it.

I'VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN (F)-- This one's an efficient demon-possession yarn, with some good tension between the possessed boy and his aggrieved parents. 

THE PRODIGAL (G)-- Good dramatic parallels here. At the same time that we see flashbacks involving 18th-century Angel's tormented relationship with his father, even as Kate's father starts messing with demons. He dies, after which Kate's attitude toward Angel cools.

THE RING (F)-- Angel is kidnapped and forced to be a contestant in a death-match ring, battling other demons. Cordy and Wesley come to his rescue in reasonably clever ways.

ETERNITY (F)-- Angel agrees to become the bodyguard to Rebecca, a former TV star, but in the course of their association, she finds out his true nature, and thinks she wants the eternal youthfulness of vampirism. Unfortunately, she tries a ploy that ends up unleashing the persona of Angelus.

FIVE BY FIVE (G)-- Following directly on the heels of "Who Are You," Faith wanders to LA after her disastrous attempt to usurp Buffy's life. She accepts an offer from Wolfram and Hart to kill Angel, but Faith's true purpose is to get Angel to kill her. This is largely the culmination of Faith's long arc, in which she tried to ignore all the rules of society and thus found herself corrupted. In fact, her concern with her own mental breakdown seems to have made her forget that Angel was one of the people who brought down her quasi-father Mayor Wilkins, who's never again mentioned by her. To provoke Angel to murder, Faith catches and tortures Wesley, who loses a lot of his idealism. The final battle between Angel and Faith is one of the best-choreographed fights in the history of serial television.

SANCTUARY (G)-- Angel gives Faith sanctuary because she's wanted by the police. Unfortunately Buffy's been informed that Faith meant to kill Angel, so she comes to Angel's offices while he's in Faith's company. Despite Buffy's breakup with the noble vampire, she's deeply jealous, as well as already being torqued at Faith for sleeping with Riley while in Buffy's body. It might've been interesting to see all of these alpha-characters work things out, but some nasty killers intrude on their psychodrama and give them other people to beat up. Faith ends finding a degree of redemption.

WAR ZONE (P)-- This unremarkable episode involves the Angel Team helping out some anti-vampire ghetto warriors. Notable only for introducing the character of Gunn, who later becomes a series regular.

BLIND DATE (F)-- Angel must stop a blind female warrior, out to kill a bunch of kids. Good action scenes. Notable for the first time the character Lindsey-- one of the lawyers working for the corrupt law firm-- finds that killing kids is a bridge too far. He helps the Angel Team prevent the assassination, which includes a good fight scene. In the end Lindsey returns to the side of the devilish lawyers for most of the series, though his relationship to the Angel Team remains marked by ambivalence.

TO SHANSHU IN LA (F)-- The made-up word means "to live and die," so the episode-title is a spoof on the old movie title "To Live and Die in LA." Wesley finds a prophecy that seems to indicate that Angel is fated to die, but in the end this turns out to be an ambivalent oracle that plays out over the course of the series. Once more the heroes must face an apocalypse-cult, but the villain Vocah visits a particularly nasty fate on Cordelia, causing her to experience massive visions that almost drive her insane. Angel and Wesley save her, but the episode ends on a cliffhanger involving the woman who originally sired Angel.        

    

           

  

        

    

FAIREST OF THEM ALL (2025)

 

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

I clicked on this TUBI item just because I thought it was some new take on the Snow White story, albeit mixed together with some MAD-magazine style of satire on THE HUNGER GAMES. I had no idea that (a) the overall concept was torture-porn a la the SAW films, or (b) that this was a film from the production company made infamous for doing gory horror-movie takes on established properties that had allegedly fallen into public domain, such as Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh. But once I got going with FAIREST, I thought I might as well stick it out for the sake of my ongoing examination of crossovers, 

Apparently the writer for this little pustule, one Harry Boxley, wrote a bunch of these things, so I would assume he's a mover-and-shaker in the company. The plot IYCCIT (if you can call it that), involves the Mad Hatter enslaving Alice to his will and then going on a brutal slay-fest as he abducts other famous princesses and brings them back to (I suppose) Wonderland. Most have traditional names like Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Snow White, Cinderella, and Tinkerbelle (naturally played by a full-grown female), though in a couple of cases the studio may not have been sure of being able to avoid being sued for use of trademarked names. Thus the Little Mermaid is named "Georgia" instead of using the Disney "Ariel" (though the latter appears in the credits), and Sleeping Beauty is called "Rosetta" rather than "Aurora." What does the very Mad Hatter want with all these princesses? Why, he wants them to fight it out for the honor of being "fairest of them all," and thus the Hatter's destined bride.

I have no automatic disgust toward satirical travesties of familiar icons, even those often assigned to kids' fiction. But it's very rare that anyone comes up with some internal logic for the transformation. Sometimes MAD magazine did it well, and in film the first example that comes to mind is Troma's 1996 TROMEO AND JULIET, written in part by James Gunn. But Boxley's thin script is made worse by his tossing out any old notion that occurs to him. Did any version of Cinderella have on her a curse that forced her to murder? Bet not. Boxley's only consideration in this film was to come up with one gore-scene after another. Thus the fights between those princesses who go along with Hatter's scheme are more likely to bite and stab one another rather than fistfight, and I judge FAIREST to be (happily) outside the bounds of the combative mode.

I think the whole cast is British going by the accents, but in addition to everyone acting badly, all the women look skanky, and one even looks rather like a dude in drag. I guess that puts The Asylum ahead of this company, for though most Asylum flicks are deadly dull, at least most of their performers are reasonably attractive.