SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD (2011)

 

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

Robert Rodriguez's attempt to reboot the SPY KIDS franchise eight years later was not a box-office success, but it's the only one I mildly liked. It's not something I would have watched again except for purposes of review, but it does exemplify what I said in the previous SK review: that the writer-director finally did learn the difference between "stupid-wacky" and "clever-wacky."

The opening setup for SK4 alone is far more inventive than anything in the other films, suggesting to me that Rodriguez managed to improve his talent for the absurd in movies like ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO and the first SIN CITY movie. This time the mother of the eponymous kids-- specifically, "step-kids"-- gets equal time, as embodied by lady spy Marissa (Jessica Alba, reunited with the director after both SIN CITY and MACHETE). Marissa is the hitherto-unmentioned sister of Gregorio Cortez, and thus the aunt of Carmen and Juni (who both make minor crossover appearances to support the new franchise). And this time Marissa keeps her spy-dentity secret from both her husband (Joel McHale) and Rebecca and Cecil, his kids by his first (and deceased) wife. Marissa is first seen capturing a super-villain named "Tick Tock" even though she has to endure labor pains while driving a super-fast car and battling henchmen.

A year later, Marissa has stepped down from her duties in order to raise her toddler, as well as trying, not successfully, to bond with her stepchildren. Her hubby, just to add to the faux-irony, is a TV "spy-hunter," who of course has no idea he lives with a secret agent woman. Then time begins to run backward, albeit in slow increments. A new villain, The Timekeeper, has unleashed a secret doomsday weapon, though the genesis of the time-stopping device is muddled at best.  

The Timekeeper's forces attack Marissa's house for some doodad, and this provides the justification for Cecil and Rebecca to learn that they are "step-spy-kids." After various twists and turns, it's up to Marissa, her three kids and the original (now twenty-something) heroes to foil the Timekeeper. Oh, and they have a robot dog voiced by Ricky Gervais, and yes, Rodriguez works in another cameo for Danny Trejo. The director's design sense is no better than it ever was, and the two new kids are no better or worse than the originals. But both the humor and the pacing is better overall. Alexa Vega gets to fight in one scene, but Alba has more presence in her two scenes. The Timekeeper has a better than average motive for his destructive actions. though calling him the best villain in the series is faint praise.          

SPY KIDS 3D: GAME OVER (2003)

 

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

Robert Rodriguez meant this to be the final flick in the SPY KIDS series. I said before that he must have known he couldn't keep the franchise going as the two main actors aged out of their roles, but what he cobbled together for his finale was even less compelling than the first two films in the series.

I have dim memories of having seen part of this movie in a theater, sans 3D glasses-- and since I can't believe I would have paid even Dollar Movie prices to see this, I must have "theater-jumped," possibly to see what Sly Stallone was doing in a particularly- insipid kiddie flick. I mention this to say that I did not experience the movie's 3D effects, though I've read that they were not well-regarded.

This time Rodriguez discards all attempts to ground things even in "superspy reality." A super-villain named the Toymaker (Stallone) has been incarcerated in the real world, possibly thanks to the efforts of Valentin (Ricardo Montalban), grandfather of Carmen and Juni. But the evildoer has constructed a virtual game that has some capacity to take over everyone's 's minds, so the OSS sent Carmen Cortez's virtual self into the game to investigate. Carmen disappears, so the OSS appeals to her brother Juni-- who left the agency for contrived reasons-- to come back and find his sister, and to save the planet. After a handful of VR adventures, VR-Juni gets a lifeline to the real world for one assistant, and he calls up Valentin-- who, though wheelchair-bound in the real world, can become a virtual superhero in cyberspace. Then Juni and Valentin have various adventures, find Carmen halfway through the movie, and Valentin confronts the Toymaker. who is responsible for Valentin losing his legs. Will Grandpa take bloody vengeance upon the Toymaker? Yeah, rhetorical question.

The difficulty of all three of the original three movies is that Rodriguez thinks he's being "clever-wacky" when he's really being "stupid-wacky," and plainly he didn't know the difference. Since he made his film debut in 1992, he'd never done a full-fledged comedy, and his lack of ability to script a good one shows. He also was overly indulgent to performers he liked. While Stallone was nominated for a Razzie due to his mugging performance, actors like Sabara and Montalban were worse, delivering their dopey dialogue with no charm whatever. Gugino, Banderas, Marin and Trejo are barely in the movie. But at least Rodriguez could justify bringing them into the chaos, whereas it's obvious he just included other characters from the first two films because he liked them and/or the actors.

However, something good (in the view of this not-kid viewer) finally came of this tedious, cringe-worthy franchise-- as I'll address in the next review.  

    

SPY KIDS 2 (2002)

 

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

Robert Rodriguez didn't let any grass grow under his feet once the first SPY KIDS made bank: the next one came out the next year. Apart from striking while the iron was hot, the producer/director/writer faced a certain limitation as to how long his central characters could fill the role as "kids." 

Plot-wise ISLAND OF LOST DREAMS is more of the same as #1, even to sending Carmen and Juni Cortez to an island full of weird things. (In interviews Rodriguez cited Harryhausen as an inspiration, but Roidriguez would have to work much harder to come close to Harryhausen's unique charm.) I did think the visuals looked more vivid than they did in the first film, particularly in an opening carnival scene, and I assumed the director had spent more money. Instead, cost-conscious Robert made ISLAND for the same money but reached out to startup effects-houses. This resulted in the carnival-ride "The Juggler," a completely improbable device that throws its riders (encased within compartments) into the air like juggling-balls. I'll at least remember that visual better than all the CGI monsters on the lost-dream island.

ISLAND moves faster thanks to having dispensed with the superficial setup of the first film, and goes the extra mile by claiming that, in the space of a year, Carmen and Juni so impressed the OSS that now the agency not only employs other spy kids but have also instituted a "Spy Kid of the Year" tradition. Though this is even sillier than the Juggler-ride, it gives the mediocre kid-heroes a pair of age-appropriate professional opponents, Gary and Gerti Giggles-- though I deduct points for using the name "Giggles" for characters who are not specifically humorous. Gerti (Emily Osment) is a pre-teen like Juni, while Gary (Matt O'Leary) is in the middle-teen range of Carmen, and becomes her first crush as well as a professional rival. When it comes out that the two rival spy-kids are implicated in the world-conquest plans of their father (Mike Judge in an underwritten villain-role), Carmen has one funny line: "I think I can change him" (the boy, not his dad). But as performers I still found Vega and Sabara charmless.

This time, Vega is the only "fighting female" in the house-- albeit only briefly-- because her mom and dad, as played by Gugino and Banderas, are stuck in a tedious side-story, where the mother's parents (Holland Taylor and Ricardo Montalban) tag along and interfere with the parents' efforts to rescue their kids. Rodriguez had already shown in the first movie his tendency to load the series with performers just because he liked them (Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin), and as memory serves, the third flick in the series gets even worse in that department.          

SPY KIDS (2001)

 

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

I'm going to try reviewing all four films in this franchise, but they're going to be short reviews because this series is SO not aimed at me. In fact, I can't say that it would have been my kind of thing had I been born a Millennial. I'm sure I liked a fair amount of ephemeral junk in my pre-adolescent years, and on the whole I like movies about superspies better than movies about real, mundane spies. And I can just barely tolerate flicks starring high-schoolers as covert operatives. But somehow I think that even when I myself was a middle-schooler, middle-school spies would have been a bridge too far.

The biggest flaw of the first SPY KIDS is that, even though writer-director Robert Rodriguez was going for what he described as a blend of James Bond and Willy Wonka, the first half of the first KIDS takes too much time trying to lend verisimilitude to the goofy concept. Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez are retired superspies who seem to have a flawless life, except for the fact that their middle-schoolers don't know anything of their heroic pasts. But I found that during the setup I thought adult actors Banderas and Gugino had far better chemistry than the two destined "spy kids," Carmen (Alexa Vega, 13) and Juni (Daryl Sabara, 9). The kid-performers weren't terrible, but they also weren't overly charismatic.

The plot is routine. Gregorio and Ingrid come out of retirement to face a threat of a kids' show performer who has invented hordes of killer robots, mostly with the faces of famous children-- as well as both Carmen and Juni, for some reason. The wacky Wonka-esque inventor Floop (a mug-happy Alan Cumming) is really more thoughtless than fiendish, so Rodriguez has to introduce three more villainous types to compensate, played by Robert Patrick, Teri Hatcher and Tony Shahloub. The action is routine too, and the only time the two adult spies get to fight, Rodriquez cuts away from the action--even though he revels in a long sequence of the two kids battling their robot doubles. 

Obviously, the film was successful, so it reached its target audience. I can only say that despite the director's passion for children's films, I've yet to see one I thought really good. Said passion does make me wonder what sort of kid-vids he liked as a youngling, though.         

KUNG FU PANDA 3 (2016)

 

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

Not surprisingly, the simple PANDA formula began to show some cracks in its facade by the third film. No #3 is still a reasonably entertaining variation on that simple theme, but it helps not to look too hard at some things.

This time the main villain is tied not to Po or to Shifu but the turtle Oogwai, who in the first film named Po as the Dragon Warrior and then ascended to another spiritual plane. In PANDA 3 we learn that all is not peaceful on that higher plane, for Oogwai encounters an old enemy, General Kai (a yak), whom Oogwai consigned to the spirit world for his crimes. (I guess for small tyke-viewers, "sent to the spirit world" sounds less grievous than "killed.") Kai was exiled because he'd learned the technique of stealing "chi" from other masters. But living in the spirit-world has done nothing to cool Kai's conquering temperament, and he's already stolen a lot of chi from other ascended masters when he crosses paths with Oogwai. Kai defeats Oogwai and steals enough chi to re-enter the mortal world-- though Oogwai predicts that the Dragon Warrior shall defeat Kai's evil.

By total coincidence, Shifu decides to retire from teaching martial arts, and he appoints Po as the new teacher to students who know more than Po does. Hijinks ensue, and for good measure Shifu also informs the panda that having achieved inner peace (in the second film) is not enough; that his next step must be mastering the power of chi-manipulation. 

On top of that, Po finally meets Li, the birth-father he never knew, and Ping, who regards himself as Po's real father, seethes with jealousy of Po's new dad. Po also has an excuse to hang out with Li in that Li claims that he and his panda-tribe are masters of chi, so they can complete the next stage of Po's training. However, Li actually doesn't possess the skill, and his excuse for lying stands as one of the most cockamamie in cinematic history-- not least because he knows that General Kai will eventually cross chi-swords with Po, which could result in the death of Li's cherished son.

Perhaps worse than all this plotting-by-convenience is that none of the pandas Po meets are slightly memorable as characters, including Li. The pandas were all tiresome and made me wish for more scenes devoted to the Furious Five, who were simple comedy-types that still had some individuality. The evil Kai is the least interesting villain of the first three movies, and even his primary gimmick-- being able to change his enemies into obedient "jade zombies"-- adds no luster to the film. The climactic face-off between Kai and Po is decently staged, but getting there is not half the fun one might expect it to be.

             

KUNG FU PANDA 2 (2011)

 

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

Once the first PANDA hit big, the filmmakers stuck close to what worked for both the second and third films: raucous cartoon chopsocky violence with a side-dish of Eastern wisdom. 

In the first film, the story arc of Po the Panda (Jack Black) concerned his efforts to become a kung-fu fighter, though fate-- and the will of the turtle-oracle Oogwai-- threw Po into the deep end of the pool, by promoting him as the destined "Dragon Warrior." In choosing this destiny, Po forswears dedicating himself to the noodle-shop run by his adoptive father Ping (a goose who never informs Po as to his non-goose heritage). But Ping is not the source of conflict: the "heavy father" figure is supplied by Shifu, who puts Po through many rigors before finally conceding that Po deserves his status. Shifu is also, like Ping, an adoptive father, but his "son" became a menace, whom Po must defeat. In essence the first film completes Shifu's arc and he's only of modest importance in the second and third films.

The good news re: No #2 is that while the writers might have chosen to make Po's second "big bad" another kung-fu bully-boy, they crafted a much more ingenious villain this time, one linked to the circumstances that orphaned Po. Having the villain of an anthropomorphic kung-fu flick be a peacock, a delicate-looking bird, might seem counter-intuitive. But the writers shift the conflict to one of weaponry rather than hand-to-hand conflict. Villainous Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) seeks power by weaponizing his clan's discovery of gunpowder into destructive cannons, with which he plans to conquer all of Cartoon-China. But a prophecy about his being defeated by "black and white" leads him to massacre a tribe of black-and-white pandas, leading to the circumstance wherein Baby Po is adopted by Ping the Goose. As it happens, Po and his fellow martial-arts cops encounter Shen's threat at precisely the same time Po experiences existential doubts about his being the only black-and-white panda that anyone's seen in his neck of the woods.

Despite all these doubts, Po's teacher has informed him that the solution is "inner peace"-- and this is what eventually gives the warrior-panda the moxie he needs to defeat the seemingly-unbeatable cannons. The film frames the idea of spiritual transcendence as something as simple as a fortune-cookie maxim, but the movie delivers what the viewer wants: a hissable villain, who relies not on brute force but upon skills with knives (hidden within Shen's wings) and an inventive conclusion in which martial arts trumps, at least in cartoons, martial arms.

A coda establishes that Po's father is still alive after all, setting up the events of the third film.                  

ARROW: SEASON TWO (2013-14)

 

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

It's been some time since I visited the ARROW series, possibly because I still remember how terrible the later seasons became. However, on re-watching Season Two, I think this season, more than Season One, earned the show the reputation on which those terrible late seasons coasted.

Admittedly one thing never changed about ARROW in any season: the melodramatic characterization was always cranked up to eleven. One big plotline continued from One was that Oliver Queen's mother Moira was tried for her complicity in Malcolm Merlyn's scheme to destroy an entire neighborhood. This caused erratic mood swings in both her adult children, Oliver and Thea, who varied between adoring and despising Moira, though never both in one mood at the same time. Naturally, whereas such a major trial would have taken a year or more in the real world, in the Arrow-verse it's wrapped in a few weeks, Moira is exonerated and even runs for mayor of Starling City.

A somewhat more consequential subplot involves the revelation that Thea unlike Oliver was not the natural daughter of Moira's husband but rather was conceived between Moira and Malcolm Merlyn. In the latter half of the season, Malcolm returns and successfully claims Thea as her true father, even though her initial reaction is to shoot him. The writers also devote a fair amount of time into developing a romantic arc between Oliver and his slightly wacky assistant Felicity.  But though the soap operatics are generally entertaining in the first few seasons, I'd have to say that they never got quite as good as producer Berlanti's debut superhero series, SMALLVILLE. That show also may have had more low points in its first few seasons, but I tend to prefer a show that has a greater variety of the high and low, as opposed to playing things straight down the middle.

Another positive development is that Season Two wraps up many, though maybe not all, of the "island-adventure" plotlines. These flashbacks consumed much time in Season One, showing how Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) got stuck on a not-so-deserted island, dealing with madmen in search of a scientific weapon and other castaways seeking to avoid being victimized. However, as a result of those struggles, Oliver incurs the enmity of former ally Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett), who trained the playboy in archery. Wilson, aka "Deathstroke," returns to Starling City with vengeance in mind, monomaniacally fixated on destroying everything his former pupil loves. That includes the new addition to the cast, Sara Lance (Caity Lotz), who survived her apparent death at sea to become one of the League of Assassins. She incidentally becomes the program's incarnation of the comics' Black Canary, albeit called only "the Canary," and the actress is decent in the role, in marked contrast to her later acting-history.

The various shout-outs to DC characters proves at least as attractive as the well-done action-scenes. There might not be total agreement between the original characters and ARROW's reworked versions of Professor Ivo, Cyrus Gold, William Tockman and Sebastian Blood. But the reworked characters here are generally efficient at putting across good superhero melodrama. (An additional note is that Barry Allen, prior to undergoing his flashy transformation in his own show, appears in a couple of Season Two episodes, as do two of the support-characters from the proposed program.) But Manu Bennett's formidable performance as Deathstroke is Season Two's greatest asset, as is his plan to use the aforementioned super-weapon-- a drug that can make humans into super-soldiers, roughly on the Captain America level-- to make vicious killers into his shock troops against Starling City.  Given TV's budgetary limits, the showrunners made this scenario far more bracing than many higher-budgeted feature films.

My memory is that Season Three still remains decent entertainment, particularly when the Flash starts interacting with the Arrow-verse. I hope to verify that within at least the next year.            

THE TOUCHABLES (1968)

 

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

Though THE TOUCHABLES contains no explicit Fellini quotes, I feel that his shadow looms large over this movie and similar surrealistic takes on "swinging London," not least the contemporaneous quasi-giallo DEADLY SWEET. Fellini showed aspiring cinema-craftsmen that they could shoot a lot of footage in which actors could reel off reams of pretentious dialogue, and some viewers out there would take meretriciousness as a commentary on meretriciousness.

That seems to be all director Robert Freeman (best known for photographing the Beatles for their album-covers) and his writers have on their minds. Film a lot of wild scenes in exotic locales and feature a lot of gorgeous actors reciting blather about Aristotle moments before they start singing TV jingles for breakfast cereal. Our four guides to this trippy world are all upper-class Brit women: Sadie, Melanie, Samson and Busbee (Judy Huxtable, Esther Anderson, Kathy Simmons, and Marilyn Rickard-- of whom only the first two made much of a career in acting). The audience never knows any of them as individuals with specific backgrounds: from the first they're just seen hanging out at trendy clubs, watching the British version of TV wrestling (which reminded me of American wrestling of the eighties). They break into a wax museum and steal a statue of Michael Caine, but the owner reclaims it. Nothing daunted, the girls decide they'll abduct popular rock star Christian (David Anthony). The take him to an odd hideout; a geodesic dome which, in real life, a famous architect constructed in the Surrey countryside.

At the time all this transpires, Christian has become totally bored with the rigors of being a famous rock star, so at first, he's only bemused at having been kidnapped for four leggy beauties. Early on, he breaks free of his bonds and overpowers one of the girls. A jump-cut later, he's joining in all of their goofy games, clearly regarding his kidnapping as a fun vacation. He implicitly sleeps with most or all of them, though there were no sex-scenes in the version I saw. Eventually Christian chafes at captivity and tries to flee via a stolen motorboat. However, one of his captors has access to a rifle, and she shoots him. Incredibly, she only grazes his temple, and the ladies are able to haul the singer out of the water and nurse him back to health, so that he's no worse for wear.

The film easily could have ended with Christian's death (which might have lent some symbolic resonance to the singer's given name). Instead, some London criminals learn that a valuable celebrity is being held in durance-not-too-vile, so they congregate at the dome and take everyone prisoners. The crooks can't convince Christian's manager to believe their ransom demands on the phone, so they send Samson to convince the manager, with warnings not to contact the cops. No cops intervene, but the gangsters are defeated because Samson does come back with the manager and a couple of the wrestlers in her circle, and the wrestlers stomp the heck out of the criminals (and manage to destroy the stately pleasure-dome too). Christian doesn't bid his cute kidnappers farewell but simply leaves with his manager to go back to the lesser travails of being a big star. The ending implies that nothing will happen to the wacky girls, perhaps because they're upper class, though nothing is said of specific connections.

Putting aside the maybe-Felliniesque playfulness, TOUCHABLES bears a loose relation to the sort of "femme formidable" movies being made at the time. Still, in terms of content, Freeman's flick is pretty vapid next to even lightweight fare like Losey's MODESTY BLAISE, to say nothing of FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! Before TOUCHABLES, the only non-marvelous film that involved "feminine rapine" might be the Ed Wood-scripted VIOLENT YEARS, but the four "good time girls" aren't very representative even of negative feminism. Aside from the incident where Christian gets shot-- where it's not clear how much skill the rifle-girl has-- only two other scenes suggest formidability. The kidnap-scene at the opening shows two of the ladies (dressed as nuns!) overpowering Christian with the help of chloroform, and in the concluding fight, Samson repels an attacker by jamming him in the ribs with her elbow. But the fact that the ladies need big strong men to rescue them reduces most if not all of the movie's potential claims to feminine empowerment.                   

KUNG FU PANDA (2008)

 

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

It's entirely appropriate that Dreamworks landed Jackie Chan to essay one of the voices in KUNG FU PANDA. The core idea of this comic kung-fu cartoon is that the heroic panda Xiao Po can only bumble his way through the rigid disciplines of kung fu until he finds his own unique (and funny) way to kick booty. Chan made this sort of comedy-fu his specialty, but even if a viewer never saw a Chan movie, he will probably be able to guess the way Panda Po will succeed not in spite of his faults, but because of them. 

In this case, though, predictability isn't all bad. The script's simple structure makes it possible to keep feeding the audience with a steady stream of slapstick gags, balanced by a healthy sense of respect for the imagined traditions of fantasy kung-fu-- a discipline practiced in a China populated entirely by anthropomorphic animals. Po (Jack Black), a panda adopted in infancy by a goose who runs a noodle shop, conceives a passion for kung fu. He wishes he could fight with the elect masters, the Furious Five (voiced by Chan and a host of other celebrities), and to be trained by the great master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). To his surprise, Po is selected to become the Dragon Warrior, the supreme warrior who will protect China from all threats-- even though the panda can barely muster the most basic fighting-skill.

One of the film's best conceits is its villain, the snow leopard Tai Lung, because Tai, like Po, was adopted by a parent of a different species. But Po's adoptive father tried to get him to be devoted to noodle-making, he accepted the panda's decision to choose his own path. Tai was raised the red panda Shifu to inherit the Dragon Warrior status, and to judge by the crap Shifu dumps on Po, Shifu was probably a very demanding parental figure, which results in Tai becoming a dangerous criminal. The film's best scene is not one of Po's many goofups, but a climactic battle between Tai and Shifu, in which Shifu is defeated but feels more pain for having been a bad dad.    

Naturally the drama doesn't last too long, and Po cobbles together an eleventh-hour mastery of his own unique discipline so as to defeat Tai Lung. I have not seen the other movies in the series, but the initial outing shows more promise than most cartoon franchises.  

        

TYRANT OF LYDIA AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1963)

 

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

TYRANT OF LYDIA, a TV-title, was actually the third peplum-film centered upon a hero named "Goliath," though none of the films were related to one another. But while it's true that there's no Hercules, or any son thereof, in this mundane historical flick, the Italian title isn't much better. First, not all markets kept the name "Goliath," since some christened Gordon Scott's hero with the name "Gordian," as in "the Gordian knot" solved by Alexander in a famous story. Second, it's not clear who "the rebel slave" is. One or two reviews thought it was female lead Princess Cori (Ombretta Colli). However, as her name indicates Cori is royalty, and though she's sometimes treated as a bone over which two national "dogs" are fighting, there's only a small part of the movie during which Cori is captured and sold in a slave market-- none of which action is important to the main plot.

The aforementioned "dogs" are Greece and Persia, who are at odds under the respective commands of Alexander and Darius. Both nations impinge upon the smaller kingdom of Lydia, typically an ally to Greece. The heroic Lydian soldier Gordian favors Greece, but Lydia's tyrant king (Massimo Serato) and his queen Zoe (Gloria Milland) plan to hand over the kingdom to the Persians for profit.

The setup could have made for some decent political intrigue, but TYRANT is slackly written, with lots of talking-heads who don't say much of anything, with occasional bouts of action whenever Gordian gets into a fight for some reason. There are no metaphenomenal elements, and even Gordian seems just slightly stronger than average, despite all his associations with myth-figures. There's a slightly interesting bit of stunt-casting in that Gordian receives a little aid from a Black muscleman, played by Serge Nubret, a bodybuilding competitor of some note in the day. Ombrella Colli holds up her end by looking stunning all the time, but the villains don't do anything all that dastardly. Really, Milland's Zoe doesn't do anything more than listen to the evil king's plots, so it's a bit surprising near the end when she's gratuitously speared to death during a battle-scene. TYRANT is a pretty ordinary peplum in every way, and only worth seeing for completists.

Incidentally, my dubbed copy came with a German title, "Goliath vs Hercules," but if Gordian was Goliath, I have no idea who some marketer thought Hercules might have been.       

HARD ROCK ZOMBIES (1984)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS 

I don't know how I never stumbled across HARD ROCK ZOMBIES. I certainly didn't avoid it because it had a bad rep; I've seen many worse flicks, including those in the "heavy metal horror" subgenre. I only sought it out now when I noted that it had "monster mash" elements, but I still wasn't expecting much. To my (mild) surprise, ZOMBIES-- directed and co-written by one Krishna Shah-- is one of those oddball movies that deserves the label "so bad it's good." That's not to endow it with any sort of profundity, for it's still a stupid movie that appears made up on the fly. But it's never dull, like a lot of lesser dreck. 

Shah does at least set up some of his horror with an attention to detail. Before we meet the rockers who will be our viewpoint characters, sexy blonde hitchhiker Elsa (Lisa Toothman) cadges a ride from a couple of young males on a country highway. She guides them to a pond and persuades the guys to do some skinny-dipping. However, in the nearby bushes are a tuxedo-clad guy with a camera, along with two dwarves, one of whom wears a gargoyle mask. The full-size fellow takes photos while Elsa drowns both guys by holding them under the waters, apparently by main strength. Then Elsa and her buddy cut a hand off one of the victims.

After that, we meet the four rockers, but no one should worry about their names, since only the leader Jessie (E.J. Cursio) is more than a placeholder. From the band's conversation with their manager, we learn that the musicians are due to play in some California town at a rock concert named Grand Guignol, and that they hope to impress some record-company bigwig who's supposed to attend. The manager then gets some publicity photos as a bunch of fan-girls fawn over the players-- all except for Jessie, who excuses himself. Stepping outside, he runs into a lone fangirl, Cassie (Jennifer Coe). She tells Jessie not to attend the concert, because certain elements in town don't want the band there, including Cassie's father. All of which sounds a little like the previous year's hit FLASHDANCE, except that in FLASHDANCE, the local girl who warned away the musicians was not fourteen-year-old jailbait. Also, Cassie's warning begs the question: if powerful elements didn't want a rock concert in town, how did anyone get the permits required to stage one? 

En route to the concert in a van, Jessie experiments, riffing on a tune he found in an "old book." No one in the band notices that every time Jessie plays the tune, a fly, despite having been squashed by the manager, keeps coming back to life. Then the van stops for a hitchhiker-- guess who-- and the toothsome blonde invites the guys to reside at her family's mansion. We see again the photographer, the two dwarves, a wheelchair-bound granny and a grandfather who-- okay, I'm just gonna say it. Grandpa is a ninety-something Adolf Hitler in disguise, while Grandma is Eva Braun. Oh, and Grandma turns into a werewolf at one point, so I guess she was one of those "werewolf commandos" one hears about.

The film takes a break from THE OLD DARK HOUSE to dispose of its FLASHDANCE emulation in a town council meeting that shows the locals to be both petty and perverse, though it's not clear if most of the townfolk know that the occupants of the mansion are Nazi maniacs. But soon enough, we're back to Fuhrer-fear. While the band's rehearsing on their electric guitars, Elsa or someone nearly electrocutes them all, but they survive to perish individually. 

Jessie doesn't twig to the band's peril, but he does figure out that his new musical riff can bring dead things back to life. He suspects bad things on the rise, so he records his ditty on a cassette for insurance. Sure enough, one rocker's killed by Elsa in a shower (with copious PSYCHO references), and another by Were-Granny. But before Jessie's meets a humiliating death by a weed-whacker, he passes his cassette to Cassie. After the rockers are dead and buried in a local grave, Cassie plays the song-- and the rockers arise to take vengeance on the Nazi maniacs. However, for some reason I didn't follow, the power of the resurrection music spreads and brings the Nazis back to life too, even though I don't believe anyone's continuously playing the music at the time. The undead rockers don't hang around town after killing the Nazis but drive their van to the not-yet-opened concert site. No one's there except the record-company rep and Cassie, the latter having followed the rockers, and the two of them give ear to a song Jessie wrote for Cassie with the significant line, "For you it's new; there's so much that I've been through." Director Shah even provides a romantic slo-mo video showing Jessie and Cassie together-- their only clinch-scene in the movie, which may or may not be something imagined by undead Jessie.   

The imperiled townfolk are played for laughs. One guy gets the idea that because zombies (he calls them "ghouls") are anti-intellectual, they'll be repelled if faced with the images of heads. So the citizens try to drive off the zombies with big pictures of celebrities-- which seem to work, until they don't. Then another fellow gets the idea that they can drive the zombies back to the graves by setting out a virgin for the zombies to both defile and devour-- and to her misfortune, Cassie flees the concert and runs back to town, just in time to find herself elected for the position. By this time, the undead rockers, having finished the set they wanted to play in life, have gone back to the graves. However, the band's manager passionately exhorts the musicians to arise and play their resurrection-song, which diverts the Nazi zombies from Cassie, allowing the manager to save her.

And the big conclusion? Well, before Hitler gets killed, he explains to a flunky his plan to take over the US using gas-weapons that he stores in a cave outside town. By the way, said gasses are stored in "ovens," sort of a belated acknowledgement of the Holocaust in a junk-flick about undead Nazi freaks. The band's music forces the evil zombies into the cave, where the gas destroys them. Why? Well, it's not just because of poetic justice, because the four rockers join the Nazis in the gas chamber, thus rendering all the undead dead again. However, a coda suggests that death itself may not impede the Cassie-Jessie romance.

Since there was no substantive reason in the script that Cassie could not have been a totally legal romantic interest, either Shah went in a forbidden direction because (a) he was indulging a private fetish, or because (b) he was making some point, however badly. The script of ZOMBIES does not offer firm support for either position, but I could argue a bit more for the latter just because all the ZOMBIES characters are pretty perverse. Had the Jessie-Cassie romance been more normative age-wise, they would have been the only normal characters in a morass of weirdness. As it is, no character condemns the relationship-- even Cassie's father only objects to all the musicians because they're rock-and-rollers-- so *possibly* Shah is counting on the audience to see the irony implicit in playing the romance straight. All that said, the movie's biggest source of perversity is certainly the Nazi maniacs, so they get the nod as being the "starring monsters" of the story.

                 

                  

THE NINJA VIXENS: THE FINAL CONSPIRACY (1991)

 

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

Forget: "final conspiracy"-- it's finally the end of this awful series, at least for me. I've watched a shit-ton of subtitled Japanese movies and TV shows, and I've never seen such a complete lack of storytelling talent as I behold in the NINJA VIXENS series. The writers and directors of this series of TV-films seem to be positively in love with talking-head scenes that essentially SAY NOTHING. The actors for that matter communicate the same indifference to their material, and the series doesn't even succeed as simple sex-and-violence offerings.

There are two scenes that engaged me a little, though they seem to be unrelated to the rest of the film, which is again just a lot of blah court intrigue. One of the lady ninjas-- Gincho I believe-- has two encounters with a demonic-seeming fellow who can perform two marvelous-seeming feats. First, he can project his head off his body, so that the head can attack victims with biting teeth. Second, the fellow can send a pair of separate arms burrowing through the topsoil, holding a sword in the hands-- possibly a variation on the "burrowing ninja" seen in some earlier flicks. But though these scenes are technically better than anything else in all three telefilms, they're no explanation as to whether the magician-guy has real powers or is faking his stunts. So even the two scenes that are a little arresting also manage to be disappointing. So based on the mediocrity of the authors, I'm gonna guess there was some BS "uncanny" explanation for these miracles.

Avoid avoid avoid.   

 

THE NINJA VIXENS: VEIL OF ILLUSIONS (1990)

 

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

In my review of the previous NINJA VIXENS installment, I scoffed at Kagero's power to call up cartoon butterflies. However, VEIL could have used them, or something comparable, to keep from being even duller than SQUAD. The phenomenality here just barely enters the uncanny domain, through one ninja girl's use of a thrown needle to kill someone and the not-quite-Edo-period outfits the Vixens wear.

This time they're investigating a smuggling operation on behalf of their shogunate patron, However, as in the previous story the ladies are also acting to avenge some criminal deed against one or more private citizens, just so the Squad doesn't seem like cops. This time the older male ninja of the team doesn't appear often, and some of his screen time may've gone to a hot new female member, name of Gincho. The added femininity, though, doesn't mark any improvement in the underwhelming fight-scenes, while the seduction sections are just as vanilla as in the previous TV-film. Cast info is spotty online, so I'll guess that the names "Misa Shimizu" and "Kaori Yuki" might go with the actresses playing Gincho and Akane, but then, they might belong to two other actresses. Both actor-names do appear in the IMDB credits for the third movie, though.

Once again, the makers spotlight lots of lame talking heads and very little sex or violence, and the villains are even duller this time. There is one henchman of the bad guys who wears white makeup and whips a captive ninja-girl briefly, but he's quickly offed.

Possibly someone somewhere made an exciting film about the crime of smuggling, but this isn't one. Avoid.

        

THE NINJA VIXENS: THE KAGERO SQUAD (1990)

 

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

There may be as many as nine films in this cheapie series of TV-films, but only three are currently streaming. KAGERO SQUAD, named for the leader of the ninja-team, might be the first in the series, but if so, its creators didn't feel any impulse to provide an origin.

Kagero (Hiromi Takagawa) has on her team just two other ninjas, a female named Akane and an older man who sometimes wears a puppet on one hand. The trio receives word of a plot by an Evil Clan (not sure of the name) to usurp power in a particular domain of the shogunate, so the squad informs their superior, a woman highly placed at court. The squad then initiates attacks on the Evil Clan for the rest of the movie.

The court-intrigue story is very talky, and the action scenes are poorly staged. There's no strong villain-- just an enforcer-guy with a neck-brace and a redbearded foreigner who practices black magic. Speaking of magic, Kagero has one of the goofiest ninja-powers of all time: she can sic big yellow butterflies (crudely animated) on her enemies.

The Land of the Rising Sun has produced lots of junk, but usually it's at least lively junk. Avoid.

             

HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL ("THE MONSTER ON MOON RIDGE," 1959)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

It's no great tragic thing to remain a child. Theirs is the best age. Their world is mysterious, wonderful, half real, half make-believe. Mr Bella, the world we live in is not always so pleasant. -- Paladin, "Monster of Moon Ridge"

 

HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL stands at the pinnacle of a small category that might be called "intellectual westerns." Most if not all of the half-hour episodes were framed as dramatic exercises, in which the cultured gunfighter Paladin (Richard Boone) accepted troubleshooting missions on behalf of his clients. Rather than passively doing what his clients wanted, Paladin applied his own strong ethical principles to suss out who among the parties he met were or were not meritorious. TRAVEL's writers wore their intellectual credentials on their sleeves, as Paladin seemed to have a literary quote for every occasion. So those scribes clearly understood how to frame moral problems on the didactic level-- but for my purposes, did any of them succeed on the corresponding mythopoeic level of meaning?      

The script for "Monster on Moon Ridge" might have been compromised by the length of the episode, making it impossible to shake out some of the fuzzy spots. From his base in San Francisco Paladin is summoned to Moon Ridge, Colorado, but even before he leaves, there's a newspaper item alleging that weird events have happened in the town, centering upon one Emily Bella. Paladin's client is rancher Dan Bella, who wants to get to the bottom of the rumors about his daughter and some sort of "monster" dwelling in the barren mountains. At least the yahoos in town believe there is one, claiming to have seen tracks that are neither animal nor human.

Paladin meets Emily Bella and finds that she acts like a child in a grown woman's body. Dan explains that ten years ago an "epidemic" ravaged the area, and that its legacy was that some of the afflicted became mentally childlike (thus prompting Paladin's remark above). Dan too has seen the mysterious tracks. and though he doesn't believe in monsters he knows that Emily wandered off for a week earlier, and he suspects she's been beguiled by something in the mountains.

Once Paladin ventures into the mystery area, he's exposed first to a hideous witch, and then to a hairy beast that overwhelms him. The gunhawk awakes to find himself chained to a wall in a cave, not far from a black bear, similarly chained. The witch appears and uses flash powders to make it look like the bear transforms him to a man. But Paladin has gone beyond the make believe of childhood, and though he's a little thrown for a bit, he quickly recognizes that the witch wears a mask and has been counterfeiting the monster-tracks, while the "were-bear" is her grown son, who like Emily was mentally impaired by the epidemic. The trickster, one Maria, was forced to leave the town because the yahoos tormented her retarded son. But as she had no money, she set up a cabin on the mountain and tried to scare away the yahoos with her witch-act.

One detail omitted from the rushed script: why did Emily leave her father's house for long periods of time? Surely Maria would not want to encourage that behavior, given that it resulted in more publicity than she would want. The narrative's broad implication is that somehow Emily befriended Maria's similarly limited son Clairy, for they're seen laughing and playing with Maria's trained bear. Still, the script rushes past those details-- including the whole utility of Maria's deceptions-- to put together a happy ending, in which Dan takes a shine to Maria, implying that he will extend his male protection to her and her son, making feminine trickery unnecessary.             

"Monster" was one of 24 TRAVEL scripts written by Gene Roddenberry, who in my estimation is one of the few toilers in the TV medium who succeeded at making mythopoeic scripts, mostly in the series STAR TREK. "Monster" is not as good in the myth-department as the best TREK scripts (which Roddnberry reportedly always rewrote, no matter who was the credited writer of each episode). However, underneath the routine contrivances of "the rational Gothic" pattern followed by the episode, Roddenberry invokes a folkloric motif that I'll term "the demon lover." In some iterations, the motif takes the form of some demon or devil luring innocent girls-- who may or may not be "special" in some way-- into assignations. Maria admits that she patterned her witch-act on MACBETH, but in the symbolic sense Emily's the true witch-woman. Because she's a child in a woman's body, she suggests the possibility of sexual transgression-- which here could be one involving intimacy with a man-child. Maria's trickery can't keep that from happening, but a strong father like Dan Bella can. Together Dan and Maria can not only keep away the bothersome town yahoos, they can also ensure that Emily and Clairy are never more to one another than de facto brother and sister, and so never produce any "monsters."

A minor point: though Paladin does not dispense justice this time using either his fists or guns, he does so on many other occasions. Therefore the episode is a combative drama because so many others in the series have been in the combative mode.

                

GENERAL INVINCIBLE (1983)

 

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

I'd never seen GENERAL INVINCIBLE before, nor did I know that it was one of the last movies to feature the Chinese kung-fu diva Chang Ling. To my surprise, I only found one substantial review of INVINCIBLE: this detailed post by the late Todd Stadtman. I was very intrigued by Stadtman's assertion that this film was pretty much the "final star turn" for the Taiwanese actress.

For me the greater question, though, was whether it was either (a) a fun but somewhat ephemeral chopwacky, like WOLF DEVIL WOMAN,  (b) a dull formula outing like DARK LADY OF KUNG FU, or (c) that rarest of rarities, a mythopoeic Asian kung fu film, like MIRACULOUS FLOWER. 

Well, INVINCIBLE is not another MIRACULOUS FLOWER-- though there are a few times where it feels like that's what it's trying to be. It's definitely not just a chopwacky, because such martial movies always seem the results of harried writers pulling anything and everything out of their asses in order to keep the audience entertained. One vague reference suggested that the movie might have been an adaptation of some other work, so that *might* explain why INVINCIBLE seems to be shooting for some metaphysical truth that the film's scripter couldn't articulate.

That metaphysical truth, in this fictional context, feels like someone trying to adapt the complex confluence of Chinese faiths and folklore regarding "the search for enlightenment," which in this fictional universe can also lead one to become a peerless martial artist. There's also a slight suggestion of a familiar western homily that might be phrased as, "What shall it profit a woman to win the martial arts world, if she loses her only shot at romantic love."

It's ancient China again, and a new emperor has just succeeded his late father. The new ruler gets wind of an assassination conspiracy directed at him by an unscrupulous Chief Justice, one Lu Ruh-Ti (Tien Feng). The emperor sends for the four dukes of his empire to serve as his protectors, but Ruh-Ti just compensates by putting out hits on the dukes. Only one, "Duke Philip," concerns us, for he's the father of our heroine.  

 Oddly, though Chang's character Sparrow is the star of the show, first we see the love-interest she's doomed to lose, "Mean Red" (Adam Cheng). Red is seen washing out of a martial-arts test given an imperturbable teacher, "The Old Master," and after being kicked out of the Master's school, Red seems more than a little perturbed.

Then Duke Philip's killed, and Sparrow-- who passed her tests with the Old Master (but evidently never met Red) -- is called upon by her retainers to go after her father's killer. But even though the courtiers call Sparrow "general"-- a title that really means nothing to the plot-action-- she's a retiring type who doesn't like politics. She's also prone to epileptic fits, though this only comes up three times in the movie and never has much importance either. Still, one of the courtiers embarrasses Sparrow by taking his own life to force her to act. So she takes her mute slave (called only "slave") and seeks to find the one-armed killer of her father. (FUGITIVE jokes are taken as a given.)

She does eventually kill the killer, who puts her on the trail of the evil Chief Justice. But Sparrow's more significant encounter is with Mean Red. She pretends indifference to Red's flirtations, but she allows him to join her quest once she learns that Red used to be a student of the Old Master. He, however, despised the Old Master's high-flown devotion to transcendence of human emotions and his utter lack of compassion. (Maybe that's why Red is "mean?") However, if I followed the choppy script, Red is also a servant of Ruh-Ti, and ALSO may or may not also go by the name of Swift Thunder. 

So yeah, this is one of those chopsockies where new character-names are thrown out with wild abandon, and the English translators don't manage to follow it all. Early in the film Ruh-Ti references some mysterious ally named "Red Sow" and the dubbing says it's a "she." But when the character appears late in the film, it's a male-- and by any name, the character's not important to the movie. (Possibly this was some book-character shoehorned into the crowded story.) The Stadtman review asserts that a female martial artist named Ruh Yuh (played by Lin Dang) is one of the Chief Justice's allies. However, she spends most of the film trying to persuade Mean Red to join her in her own domain, so I felt she might've been intended as an independent player. Certainly she's tries her utmost to seduce Red away from Sparrow, and, to my surprise, she wins the romance contest.

The film's greatest appeal is that the credited author (who has just four IMDB credits) seems, in a very confused way, to filter a lot of real Chinese metaphysical concepts into this opus. The Old Master appears in a lot of flashbacks, uttering weird pithy observations like "nothingness leaves the door of transcending." And after the defeat of Ruh-Ti, the Master shows up to engage Sparrow in mystical combat, apparently just because he really wants to be sure Sparrow's fit to succeed him-- somehow, I never quite figured out what he wanted her to do. There's a flashy power-battle, the Master loses. Yet he doesn't die, but just walks away with a strange downbeat conclusion. Ruh-Ti, by the way, wasn't just content to knock off the emperor and his supporters. He's conspiring with Persian scientists (!) to create crystal knives which are somehow going to help him conquer the world. 

The upshot is that though INVINCIBLE seems like an issue of DOCTOR STRANGE that Stan Lee wrote for Chinese investors while dropping acid, at least the movie's never dull. It ends with Sparrow, sitting in lotus position with a rainbow in the sky, and that's not the worst image with which Chang Ling could (more or less) conclude her diva-career.

              

    
   

MEATBALLS 2 (1984), MEATBALLS 3 (1986)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: (1) *poor*, (2) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I've only seen all three MEATBALLS films once before, but I decided to revisit 2 and 3 simply because both, unlike the first film, boasted a little metaphenomenal content.

The writers followed the same "battling kids' camps" as the first film, but with two new camps that share the same lake and a more overt concentration on absurd farce. Richard Mulligan runs a more or less normal camp, while Hamilton Camp administers a bizarre "military youth" camp. The two have been contending for years in an annual boxing match, and Mulligan invites a tough street-kid named Flash to be the camp's champion. Flash is uninterested until he catches sight of a pretty young thing (Kim Richards), whom he hopes to impress. There's really not as much sex as one might expect of this sort of cheesy sequel. The other camp-girls, borrowing from 1981's PORKY'S, lay plans to expose the innocent girl to her first sight of a "pinky." Also, a couple of randy camp counselors keep trying to hook up, with the female counselor played by Misty "HEE HAW" Rowe. Other thesps include Paul Reubens in four separate "blink-and-miss-him" roles and John Larouquette as a swishy soldier.

The sole fantasy-element is an extremely lame ET swipe, where the kid-alien enters the camp's activities at his parents' behest and bonds with all the younger kids, who are only too happy to have their own ET mascot. The alien, dubbed "Meathead," does a few unimpressive telekinetic tricks and is played by Felix Silla.

By comparison MEATBALLS 3, though also an absurd farce, benefits from jettisoning the whole camp-competition schtick. It starts with porn-star Roxy Dujour (Sally Kellerman, getting a rare shot at a main character since her career took a downward turn). Roxy is apparently having real sex on one of her flicks, and it's so good she bites the big one. She ends up at St. Peter's Gate, where the official there says Heaven doesn't have a problem with sex workers. But still Ms. Dujour (named for the 1967 Bunuel film BELLE DUJOUR?) has to prove herself-- and for some reason, sex-friendly Heaven wants Roxy to help a nerd named Rudy get laid. If Roxy can't do so by a certain time, it's off to the hot place for her.

Rudy (Patrick Dempsey) is seen bidding farewell to his clingy mother as he departs for a new job at a lakeside camp. All the camp's customers are teenagers or older, and one other employee is a girl, Wendy (Isabelle Mejias), who's a nerd like Rudy but whose affection Rudy cannot perceive. Rudy is relentlessly teased by hot girls and guys, though oddly enough, he does NOT make one particular same-age enemy, which happens in most teen sex comedies. Instead, Rudy's enemy is an older guy, a boisterous, middle-aged biker named Mean Gene (George Buza), though this opposition isn't immediately evident. Mean Gene bullies Rudy a little and allows other customers to bully the low-level employee. But everyone at the camp steers clear of Mean Gene, He's noteworthy for keeping a woman-- presumably his wife-- confined in a upstairs room in Mean Gene's domicile, and for going ballistic on anyone who even looks at "The Love Goddess" (Shannon Tweed) longer than Gene thinks appropriate.

 It doesn't take Roxy long to convince Rudy that she's a real ghost, and that she's come into his life to help him score. Roxy's willing to let Rudy do her, but since she's insubstantial, that's not an option. So she gets Rudy to clean up his look and act less like a nerd, and at first she's doing her best to get the youth laid any way she can. But the longer she's in Rudy's orbit, the more Roxy starts to care about him, and to notice that the age-appropriate Wendy would be the best match. So she uses her power of telekinesis to cock-block the boy when he tries to get it on with another age-appropriate girl (but one with a loose attitude) and also with an older female. Rudy gets tired of her interference and tells her she's just like his mother, which pisses Roxy off. She gets summoned back to Heaven for a reminder of the fate that awaits her if Rudy doesn't get his cherry popped.

Independent of Rudy, a bunch of raucous teens learn that Mean Gene's going to be away for a time, so they make a huge party out of inviting a famous "stud" to seduce the Love Goddess. Rudy, fed up with Mean Gene's bullying, attempts to take the stud's place. This leads to a goofy fight when the biker comes back, though I'll give away one schtick: the Love Goddess is not Gene's wife but his married sister, and so he's simply an overprotective brother. The Goddess intervenes on behalf of Rudy by conking Gene with a baseball bat, though of course she doesn't have sex with Rudy either.

In the end, Roxy does return to Earth to help Rudy hook up with the still-willing Wendy. Apparently, even though Rudy does not get laid by movie's end, apparently Heaven lets Roxy off the hook, since she does get into the Pearly Gates and everyone's happy. Though it's a dopey teen comedy, I did feel the main characters played Kellerman and Dempsey had good chemistry and made the movie more fun than it would've been without those actors. 

                              

SPACE MONSTER WANGMAGWI (1967)

 

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

I term the dominant function of WANGMAGWI "sociological" simply because the main plot involves aliens sending a giant monster down to 1960s Earth to kill all the humans and leave Earth free for colonization. While such a plot was a perfectly serviceable excuse for a giant-monster rampage, the writers seem confused about how to properly go about defenestrating the populace of a planet.

At the outset of the film, the unnamed aliens seem utterly confident that the Earth-people can do nothing to save themselves from the solitary, skyscraper-high creature-- presumably named "Wangmagwi," though I never heard the name used. The creature proceeds to rampage through Seoul, though its model-streets have been largely been cleared of people. So it's not clear how the aliens expect Wangwagwi to extinguish humanity. Keep stomping through cities and crushing people until, decades later, all the humans are dead?

Jets assault Wangmagwi's scaly hide with no effect, so the monster does have a Godzilla-like level of invulnerability. Yet when we hear Korean military men discussing the situation, they're reluctant to employ a nuclear bomb against the monster due to collateral damage. But if the monster succeeded in killing all the people in Seoul, then the Koreans could bomb him, right? Not until the climax does the subtitling for the aliens *seem* to indicate that Wangmagwi actually CANNOT survive a nuclear attack. Indeed, when the giant finally wanders out into the Korean countryside, the military makes one last jet-attack while planning a nuclear strike. At that point, the aliens just throw in the towel and remotely cause Wangmagwi to self-destruct. What? Was this the aliens' first defenestration? If not, clearly they suck at it. 

There's just enough combative action to keep the film in that domain, though the Koreans weren't able to make Wangmagwi's rampage as effective as even the lesser Japanese efforts. The humans are pretty forgettable-- a couple of clowns who bounce routines off one another while fleeing the chaos, and a young couple whose wedding is interrupted by the big critter. In fact, Wangmagwi channels his inner Kong by kidnapping the bride-- though technically the aliens are controlling the monster remotely, so her kidnapping makes even less sense than if the giant did it of his own will. The only human who has a good arc is an urchin who somehow clambers onto the giant's body, manages to work his way into the creature's ear and wound he inner ear with a knife. He also detaches the device with which the ETs control the monster, though this doesn't have much effect on the outcome. A heroic pilot rescues the boy and the bride before Wangmagwi destructs.

This kaiju flick was lost for a long time. In terms of film history, I'm glad a copy was found, but it's pretty small beer.

        

MONSTER SEAFOOD WARS (2020)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

Japan turns out so many hyperactive comedies than it's almost a surprise when one of them-- namely, MONSTER SEAFOOD WARS-- takes the opposite approach. Here the premise is loony but all of the performers treat the proceedings in a restrained, deadpan manner.

Amateur scientist Takuma, who works for his parents' seafood restaurant, invents a chemical that can enlarge small animals into giants. I think he does so with the idea of being able to create big creatures to supply the restaurant, but he's not responsible for unleashing his "food of the gods" upon urban Japan. A rival, Hikomi, steals the chemical and dumps it in the sea, where it creates three gigantic kaiju: a squid (Irkalla), a crab (Kanilla), and an octopus (Tokalla). There are a few scenes where the big beasts display ancillary powers, and of course there's no explanation for these.

The main joke is that when Japan's defense forces can't stop the goony giants, the government creates a special department SMAT, Seafood Monster Attack Team. (Nice of them to use English for their acronym even though the film is subtitled.) For some reason Hikomi is part of this team despite his having created the crisis, and so is Nana, Takuma's childhood sweetheart. Takuma joins the team too, and they strive to find ways to thwart the monsters, with weapons like vinegar-blasters and a giant chef robot who, at the climax, turns the creatures into sashimi.

The movie's best joke is that while the defense forces battle the kaiju, small parts of the sea-monsters' bodies get sliced off, and somehow these get marketed so as to become great dining delicacies. So the movie is not just "The Monsters That Ate Tokyo," but "The Monsters Tokyo Ate." Though Takuma and his romance with Nana is mild fun, the monsters are the stars as they provide the narrative vector.   

WAR OF THE GOD MONSTERS (1985)

 

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

Though a fair number of American giant-monster movies are subcombative-- not least the one that started the deluge in the 1950s-- Asian kaiju flicks tend to be combative, following the GODZILLA model in one way or another. But such is not the case with this ultra-obscure Korean monster-flick-- though the reason for this development is less aesthetic than budgtary.

In short, none of the giant monsters in WAR were created for the film but were derived from clips taken from tokasatsu TV shows, mostly from one ULTRAMAN serial or another. Of course none of the various Ultramen appear, so all the clips just show five monsters-- none of whom appear together-- appearing to menace cityscapes or refineries and getting shot at by jet fighters. This ephemeral activity doesn't move the movie into the combative realm, and at movie's end the monsters just go away, since the main characters of WAR have no budget with which to get rid of the invading beasties.

Yet I enjoyed WAR for the three central characters-- Doctor Kim, a widower whose scientific reputation was ruined for predicting monsters would be spawned by climate change, his little daughter Sohee, and Kang, a young female reporter who infiltrates Kim's house for a news story by pretending to be a housekeeper. The climate change idea is silly and not supported by even horror-movie logic, but the human story-- that of father and daughter mourning the loss of Kim's late wife-- kept me interested because of the skill of the three actors involved.

Though I've not seen all the films directed by Jeong-yong Kim, the sensitivity and light humor he contributes to the setup could not be more different from my impression of him as a maker of chopwacky kung-fu films, like BRUCE LEE'S WAYS OF KUNG FU. I still can't rate the mythicity highly, but the human drama is at least passable.