ACES GO PLACES (1982)

 

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

Though I'm far from being a great fan of Chinese comedy films, I enjoyed the zany slapstick of the ACES GO PLACES series, and the first film in the series did a good job of setting up the three principals, who I believe remained together for all five entries. The basic idea seems to be "what would have happened if the "Phantom" thief of PINK PANTHER joined forces with two eccentric HK cops in fighting crime.

Hong Kong super-thief King Kong (Sam Hui) rips off a diamond shipment and then finds out he's robbed the Mafia. The aggrieved crime-lords send various assassins to HK to avenge their honor, particularly a master burglar named "White Gloves." To apprehend Kong, the HK government calls in an American cop of Asian extraction, Albert Au (Karl Maka). He more or less takes the place of the wacky Inspector Clouseau of the PANTHER films, though his main physical characteristic is his total baldness, a testimony to the popularity of the KOJAK teleseries in Hong Kong. Albert's HK liaison is lady cop Nancy Ho (Sylvia Chang), who's constantly accused of being "mannish," and who does get the movie's best fight-scene.         

There are a number of nice comic stunts, though nothing particularly stands out, but the film has too many car chases and crash-ups. The finale contains the only metaphenomenal element, when King Kong counters a fleet of Mafia automobiles with a collection of tiny, remote-controlled toy cars, each loaded with explosives. I tend to doubt anyone in 1982 could actually create such vehicular weapons, but since the script believes that, I'll treat the little cars as uncanny devices.  

VAN HELSING (2023)

 

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

There's at least three other franchises named Van Helsing, and this one, by CGI-director BC Fourteen, may be the least of them.

I decided to sample this VH, though, because while researching XTERMINATOR for my review, I learned that the villainous robot made an appearance in VH, as well as (very briefly) the BC version of Bigfoot. But the great-grandson of Abraham Van Helsing, astronaut Jack Van Helsing, is the star here-- though he doesn't directly contend with either X or two other evil presences in the muddled story.

I made fun of the fact XTERMINATOR obviously swiped its basic plot from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, but VH might have been better with more story-theft. There's sort of an arc in that the script tells viewers that the Earth was turned into a wasteland in 2022, and by the end of VH, the hero returns to humankind's homeworld and sees that life has begun to thrive again. But this does not happen because of anything done by the hero or anyone else. VH is just a jumble of separate scenes that BC wanted to execute. Only in one way is VH better than its predecessor: VH has one decently executed fight-scene, where Jack in his spacesuit duels a similarly garbed  enemy while both are floating in space. But BC partly undermines his own scene by capriciously naming Jack's opponent after the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau for no good reason I can see.     

XTERMINATOR AND THE AI APOCALYPSE (2023)

 

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

I know nothing about the origins of this low-budget CGI oddity. But just as a guess, it looks and sounds as if writer/director/voice-actor "BC Fourteen" started out trying to make a fan-film about the armored adversary from George Lucas' prequel STAR WARS series, General Grievous. Then he reworked his CGI model into a more skull-faced humanoid and dubbed hm "Xterminator," but kept the raspy, acerbic voice-characterization.

The setting is some futuristic sparse-opera-- my new term for a space-opera so sparse in details that it might as well be a western. Almost all we see of humanity are various armored soldiers, under the command of one Grace Sherwood, and her raison d'etre as a commander of Earth-forces is to play "Thunderbolt Ross" to the robotic villain Xterminator. He calls himself "X" for short, but he's an apocalyptic AI who despises humans as much as humans despise him. So who does Sherwood call upon when her creator obliges her to rip off "Escape from New York" and send someone to Mars to rescue a missing diplomat? That's riiiight...

While X is on his Mars mission, motivated by both carrot and stick, Sherwood decides to hedge her bets by unleashing an intelligent shark-monster. Megalodon, to ambush X. Why does Megalodon exist in this sparse-opera? Same reason Sherwood confers with an intelligent Bigfoot: a director's silly in-joke. because he worked on an early CGI junk-flick, BIGFOOT VS MEGALODON. For good measure, Sherwood also arranges a Martian jailbreak to add to X's headaches.

Though XATAA is never more than a junk-flick, I might have been slightly entertained if Fourteen had been able to deliver on all the promised action. But just as was the case with all the SYFY big-beast fests, action costs too much money for cheapie CGI movies. There's just barely enough violence for XATAA to qualify in my combative mode category. Yet while I can't recommend the film, it did make me a bit curious about Fourteen's half-dozen "Bigfoot" junk-flicks.   

    

THE BATMAN, SEASON FOUR (2006-07)

 

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

A MATTER OF FAMILY (F)-- Season Four launches a credible reprise of the Dick Grayson/Robin origin. The comic-book story was always weak on the motivation of the Zuccos, the crooks who kill off Robin's parents-- what self-respecting gangster would seek protection dough from a business as unstable as a circus? And the tale is not improved by positing that the Zuccos themselves are ex-circus folk-- too much like gilding the lily. But otherwise, "Family" hits the right emotional notes in forging the paternal relationship of Bruce, Alfred and Dick.    

TEAM PENGUIN (F)-- Batgirl, unofficial Bat-sidekick, gets frosted when she meets the official version. Nevertheless, though Batgirl gets sidelined in Season Five, the two teens have good chemistry here, though I prefer the older-younger vibe. It's Penguin's turn to catch a case of "team envy," as he brings together established heavy-hitters like Bane, Firefly, Rag Doll, and Killer Croc-- as well as a new goofball version of Killer Moth. Then, in the midst of assorted hero-villain fights, the Moth gets mutated into a monster. Silly fun.

CLAYFACES (G)-- The Ethan Bennett Clayface had a limited shelf-life since his good side outweighed the bad one-- and Bennett proves that here, capturing Joker and turning himself in. Bruce Wayne gets researchers working on a clay-cure, but the news comes to the attention of flop actor Basil Karlo. He doses himself on the clay-mutagen and finds himself glorying in the attention he gets as Clayface II. Bennett breaks jail and tracks down his successor for a major battle of clay-creeps. Batman dispenses a cure that seems to nullify both shape-changers, but maybe Karlo still retains some power. This Karlo combines the power of the 60s Clayface and the name and profession of the 40s version. That character was named for the two horror-stars of the 1939 movie SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff-- and oddly enough, that's what this Karlo is, the offspring of a monster.   

  THE EVERYWHERE MAN (F)-- Batman and Robin must battle a scientist who can be "everywhere" because he can generate countless duplicates of himself. Or is the scientist really the brain behind the masses? It starts as a mystery and resolves into a big fight-scene with a clever twist. The script resembles that of a 1950s WORLD'S FINEST tale, "The Duplicate Man," though that titular crook could only make a single self-duplicate.

THE BREAKOUT (F)-- Though the main foe is the skull-faced Black Mask, everything else feels like a mundane crime-thriller. Black Mask is confined to Gotham Jail, and his gang tries to break him out, which Batman, Robin and Batgirl must prevent.

STRANGE NEW WORLD (P)-- In the comics, Hugo Strange made monsters, but this tale has the BATMAN version upgrading his act, unleashing a zombie attack on Gotham. Or is he just stealing from the script of the BTAS episode "Dreams of Darkness?"  

ARTIFACTS (P)-- I guess this episode might be considered a condensation of the theme of BATMAN BEYOND: "There will always be a Batman." However, I found "Artifacts" poorly paced and uninvolving.

SECONDS (F)-- How can Batman cope with a time-manipulatitg crook who knows the hero's every move, since the thief can "reset" time and start things over again, to his advantage? Adequate but not interesting.

TWO OF A KIND (G)-- Paul Dini wrote this Harley Quinn reboot, which imagines Harleen as even more of a ditz than her original incarnation-- and this time, she's only a "doctor" courtesy of some online college. Joker spots HQ on daytime TV, dispensing bad psychological advice to her audience-- which leads to her losing her show. Joker professes himself to be her "number one fan," and the psycho-babbler thinks she can profit from his celebrity. Instead, the Monarch of Mirth unleashes her inner criminal-- though he also ends up leaving HQ in the lurch. She makes a few more support appearances in the series, and I suspect that the romantic angle of the first iteration gets played down as it does here.

RIDDLER'S REVENGE (G)-- Grimdark Riddler gets an origin, one that emphasizes some tragic aspects-- but before Batman learns that history, the two enemies have to escape a death-trap by working together. The episode's main strength is its focus upon the sustained illogic of riddles.

RUMORS (F)-- A new vigilante is collecting Gotham's supercrooks, and his name is Lockup-- oops, that was BTAS. This vigilante takes the peculiar cognomen of "Rumor," I suppose because he wears armor with invisibility gear. Rumor succeeds in imprisoning about twenty villains, so the Dynamic Ones must first defeat Rumor and then keep the vengeful villains from killing their jailer. The big battle is better than average, but Rumor's motivation is weak.

THE JOINING (F)-- The final episode of Season Four signals the direction of the fifth and last season, which uses copious DC guest-stars. Here the guest is the Martian Manhunter, who brings Batman news of an alien invasion by a force called "the Joining." The scenes with the invaders are far less compelling than the byplay between the two heroes, and the resolve of the Crusader's two sidekicks to prove their worth (since Batman's flirting with the idea of excluding them to spare their young lives).  The episode is OK if one can keep from wondering what the other DC heroes are doing during this worldwide invasion-- since at episode's end, Manhunter unveils plans for a Justice League. Four familiar figures appear at the finish, and Superman makes his BATMAN debut in Season Five's first episode-- yet somehow their presence does not weigh in the scales of the Joining's defeat.        

THE BATMAN, SEASON THREE (2005-06)

 

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

Ellen Yin gets dethroned from her tenuous position as Batman's sidekick, making room for his costumed counterpart-- Batgirl? Well, I suppose it's a twist on the standard routine, and I could imagine a scenario in which this more "human" Batman gets softened up by this distaff imitator, making him more amenable to adopting Dick Grayson. I'm not sure the showrunners gave the matter that much thought, because this version of Batgirl has no gravitas. She's like a kid sister tagging after her older brother, and not much beyond that.  

BATGIRL BEGINS, PTS 1-2 (P)-- I'm not crazy about a teenaged Batgirl, but I like even less a Poison Ivy who looks like an anime lolicon. Further, there's no payoff to making them classmates who get involved in sabotaging some pollution-making company, except that the plot-device helps the writers condense the origins of both characters. Ivy's botanical mutation comes about when she hires an earthquake-themed evildoer, Temblor, to create havoc. Ivy uses her powers to enthrall Batman, so Barbara Gordon uses her kung fu skills and a distaff costume to become Batgirl, though she's forced to fight her would-be mentor briefly. Once Ivy is corralled, Batman thanks Batgirl but refuses to take her on as sidekick.    

A DARK KNIGHT TO REMEMBER (G)-- This may be THE BATMAN's best single episode, since it's predicated on the series' notion that this Batman is as much Bruce Wayne as his alter ego. In battle with Penguin, the hero sustains a head-blow, and upon resuming his regular ID, forgets that he ever was Batman. In essence, Wayne begins acting in line with the public perception of his identity, and that includes running away when threatened by a super-crook like Penguin. Slowly, Wayne's own altruism re-asserts itself, and Alfred helps him recover his full memories-- but it's a laborious process, the obverse of the crimefighter's unshakeable sense of self in the BTAS episode "Perchance to Dream." On a sidenote, it's a pleasure to see a Penguin who can really fight: he's like a cross between Quasimodo and Sammo Hung.

A FISTFUL OF FELT (F)-- Hugo Strange still seems to be no more than an eccentric analyst, and his newest gambit is to purge the Ventriloquist of his criminal tendencies by giving the demented fellow a wacky felt puppet with no hostile personality. Of course there's no more Ventriloquist stories if he's cured, but this tale includes an epic "battle of the hand-puppets" worth seeing. 

RPM (F)-- Here's a Batmobile-centric tale for a change, and it's arguably a level up from the car just being swiped by Penguin. New villain Gearhead has some bionic abilities and can interface with a car's computer systems to usurp control. Batman loses one Batmobile but builds another to grind the evildoer's gears.

BRAWN (P)-- This is probably the series nadir. Joker gets hold of Bane's super strength chemical and becomes Super-Joker. Batman creates a power suit with which to fight the fiend, and dimwit Batgirl horns in on the action. Grueling.

THE LAUGHING CATS (F)-- Batgirl has her first throw-down with Catwoman, but both the Cat and the two Bats must make an alliance to thwart Joker's latest larceny. Batman doesn't have any response to Catwoman's overtures, aside from not trying too hard to jail her.

FLEURS DU MAL (F)-- "Makin' copies" (old SNL catchphrase) becomes Poison Ivy's new gig, as she starts replacing city officials with her version of "pod people"-- which makes a lot more sense than most of her gambits. Batgirl is understandably torqued when her father is one of Ivy's victims. The title stems (heh) from the name of a poem-collection by Baudelaire, whose own name gets worked into the story.

CASH FOR TOYS (P)-- Batman contends with a poor man's Toyman, name of Krank-- appropriately named, since the episode seems "cranked out."

THE APPRENTICE (F)-- Joker gets a case of "sidekick envy" due to Batman's mentorship of Batgirl. And though I've often liked seeing Joker as a devilish tempter, his selection of a dorky teenager seems counter-intuitive.

  THUNDER (F)-- In the comics, Maxie Zeus seems underwhelming. But BTAS did one exemplary episode with this megalomaniac and his fetish for Greek culture. The producers of THE BATMAN should have avoided Zeus for that very reason, but instead they churned out a routine programmer with no distinguishing virtues.

THE ICY DEPTHS (F)-- Alfred gets some backstory as he's obliged to cope with an obnoxious former schoolmate who drags the butler into a treasure-hunt. However, both Penguin and Mister Freeze seek the same bounty.

GOTHAM'S ULTIMATE CRIMINAL MASTERMIND (F)-- Hugo Strange finally crosses the line, creating a self-aware computer program, DAVE, that believes itself to be the ultimate super-villain. Unlike the comics' Hugo Strange, the mad scientist here seems to be something of a "villain-fanboy," even impressing the program with his own engrams. Thus DAVE is in the grand tradition of all Frankensteinian creations who act out their creators' desires. Once DAVE whips up a robot body for itself, Batman is hard pressed to best the AI on any level, except for that most Socratic necessity-- that of "knowing yourself." And so Strange ends up in his own funny farm, vowing vengeance in some future encounter.     

SPECTERS (1987), MAYA (1989)

 

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

Having been thoroughly disgusted with this inferior "demons on the loose" flick from Lucio Fulci, I promptly watched a couple more by a director I'd never heard of, Marcello Avallone. Neither was very good, but cumulatively they did cleanse my palate.

SPECTERS had nothing going for it except that all its thoroughly routine characters are at least consistent in the ways they act and react, in contrast to DEMONIA. Donald Pleasance is the only "name" actor, and he's just playing a standard "archeologist who unearths a demon from an old sepulchre." The archeological dig takes place near Rome, but Avallone and his co-writers couldn't be bothered to name the evil entity that starts knocking off cookie-cutter victims. The one slightly memorable thing about SPECTERS occurs when Avallone shamelessly rips off a scene from a Freddy Kruger film.

The flattery of imitation served Avallone better in MAYA, his second and last horror movie. This too is also a "demon on the loose" flick, but this time he's doling out gore-scenes worthy of Fulci, whom I suspect he studied before doing this film.

This time Avallone leads off with a Carlos Castaneda quote, a Mexican setting, and a demon whose name, Xibalba, is taken from the cognomen of the Mayan land of death. William Berger-- who's the Big Name this time, at least in the Euro-market-- dies early in MAYA, when his meddling unleashes Xibalba-- not a pure demon, but a once-mortal Mayan ruler who crossed over to the land of death to escape an enemy tribe. Now that he's loose, Xibalba wants to kill pretty much all the descendants of his enemies.

This dollop of mythology has no purpose save to give context to the multiple gore-killings, but that's a good in itself, given how little context appeared in both SPECTERS and DEMONIA. Further, MAYA offers two relatively memorable POV characters: Lisa, who comes to Mexico to learn how her father (Berger) was slain, and Peter, who helps Lisa because he hopes to get into her pants. Avallone also works in three other hot girls, all of whom get horribly killed by Xibalba, and even the non-gore scenes are much more vivid than anything in SPECTERS. MAYA suggests that Avallone might have been able to do at least more passable horror-thrillers-- but the movie flopped, and Avallone turned to other genres thereafter.

            
 

   

DEMONIA (1990)

 

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

Wow. I suppose Lucio Fulci may have done worse films than this one, but it's the worst Fulci movie I remember seeing.

We see a prologue set in the 15th-century, depicting a mob slaying five nuns accused of witchcraft. Then we shuttle back to 20th century Toronto, where our viewpoint character Liza (Meg Register) participates in a seance with some friends. She suffers a vision of the nuns and collapses. Evans (Brett Halsey), Liza's professor from archaeology class, upbraids her for monkeying around with such outdated notions of the supernatural, particularly since they're scheduled to travel with an expedition to Greece for a dig. When Evans asks Liza why she fools around with such things, she has no explanation whatever.

Liza's a pretty good ringer for Fulci himself. Despite being the director and co-writer of this movie, he's not invested in any of the story's narrative action, except (maybe) for setting up a few of the gore-scenarios that his eighties fans came to expect of him. Once Liza and Evans are in Greece, along with a team of archaeological redshirts, the most immediate threat seems to be that of the Greek islanders. All of them make clear that they don't approve of grave-robbing scientists, though the locals don't seem aware of any legends about demon-worshipping nuns from the 15th century. One local corners Liza when she's alone in one of the forbidden sepulchers and mentions that he's a "butcher"-- by which he means the legal kind, though he's menacing enough to suggest the serial-killer variety.

DEMONIA jerks from one stupid horror-scene to another, and I suppose the main reason Evans doesn't close up shop is his skepticism about the supernatural, meaning that he blames the deaths of his colleagues on the locals. Liza has no such excuse, given how often she begins experiencing more visions of evil nuns. The fact that she doesn't even consider hopping the first flight back to Toronto underlines the vapidity of her non-character. Since neither Evans nor Liza can think worth a damn, Fulci sticks in some nothing characters to interact with them and suggest dire fates ahead-- a police inspector for Evans (one played by Fulci himself) and a medium for Liza (played by Carla Cassoli, who contributes the only half-decent performance).

The Satanic nuns are real of course, but they have no more depth than their victims. Sometimes they kill the redshirts directly, and sometimes they lure the victims into booby-traps, but their lack of motive made me miss the complex subtleties of SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS. Near-total waste of time.                   

EXTREME MOVIE (2008)

 

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

I don't want to devote much time to this toss-off comedy, mostly a collection of blackout sketches, though a few segments are devoted to the experiences of a high-schooler named Mike as he pursues the girl of his dreams. It has a couple of skits devoted to time-travel and to a "Weird Science" situation, but neither the fantastic nor naturalistic elements are memorable enough to merit analysis. Yet I will admit that I found EXTREME more diverting than the average bad comedy, possibly just because though the producers mostly used unknown actors, they brought in a lot of hot women to justify their sex-spoofs. Also, I noted that one online reviewer with the site FILM CRITICS UNITED felt much as I did:

The good thing for this movie, despite the fact it’s not really all that funny is that it is still funnier than those Friedberg / Seltzer theatrical disasters ‘Date Movie’, ‘Epic Movie’, ‘Meet the Spartans’ and I think there’s one more that I made a conscious effort to avoid seeing.

The only thing I'll add is though the EXTREME jokes aren't as tiresome as those of the F/S "movie" series, they have the same problem: being too flaccid to generate anything like an inventive twist. One quick example: a young guy strikes up a chatroom-conversation with a woman and wants to meet with her. Though she hasn't laid eyes on him, she thinks it would be cool for him to come to her apartment pretending to be a masked rapist, who will then ravish her. Anyone watching will know that the young horndog will not be getting any, and the scripters take the most obvious route: through exigent circumstances the masked "rapist" shows up at the wrong apartment and menaces the wrong woman, who's terrified despite his fumbling approach. But there's no twist to conclude the skit and provide even fleeting satisfaction. Maybe it might have worked if the wrong woman subdued the guy, tied him up, and began indulging in some sort of "Misery" fantasy instead of the way the actual skit just petered out.

The script here was written and directed by a team best known for the theatrical release NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE, which I have not re-watched for over twenty years. But I remember liking it mildly in the theater, and to my knowledge it may be the best spoof of teenage sex comedies. But then, ANOTHER was also a more high-ticket production, with a cast of solid B-level performers. So it looks like it didn't take long for the duo to slide into mediocrity-- along with most of the comedy-makers for the next twenty years.

            

FINAL CURTAIN (1957)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

“I know that I must find that object, even though I don't know what it is I must seek. I also know I fear that I will find that object. This night the calling is stronger than it had ever been before. This night was to be the night I had looked forward to with fear, knowing all the time that it had to come sooner or later and there was nothing that I could do to heed that call. This was to be the night. This, the last night of our play. This night when all of the others had gone home.”

I'm as surprised as anyone else might be, knowing of Ed Wood's notorious artistic failings, to find that anything he did registers as "good." And FINAL CURTAIN boasts many of the same failings as Wood's full-length movies. But judging CURTAIN only by its symbolic discourse, it is good on those terms. This 22-minute item is like a massively clumsy version of Edgar Allan Poe-- and though I can't prove it, I suspect Poe was one of Wood's inspirations for his sometimes-rambling confessional narratives.

Long ago, SF critic Algis Budrys wrote an essay on HP Lovecraft for some SF-magazine, archly claiming that Lovecraft mastered a POV Budrys called "first person hysterical." The comment wasn't true of Lovecraft at his best, but it was true of a lot of the works of HPL's literary idol Edgar Allan Poe, whether Poe's frenzied narrators dealt with physical danger (the torture-victim of "Pit and the Pendulum") or with internal upheavals (the protagonist of "Tell-Tale Heart"). And "first-person hysterical" certainly fits the unnamed protagonist of CURTAIN, as attested by the snatch of dialogue printed above, from the very beginning of the story.

So, backstory to the project. Prior to August 1956-- the time when Bela Lugosi, the most bankable actor Wood ever worked with, passed away-- Wood had written various spec-scripts, whether original or adaptations of Wood's own prose stories, as potential vehicles for Lugosi. FINAL CURTAIN would have clearly drawn upon Lugosi's iconic Dracula image, by having Lugosi play a stage actor who had just finished starring in a play about vampires, and who remained, throughout the narrative, clad in a tuxedo because that's what his stage-character had been wearing for the play's final performance that day. (Had Lugosi played the part, an audience would have assumed that the actor had essayed the part of Dracula, though the script never says so.) After Lugosi died, Wood managed in 1957 to shoot two pilot episodes for a proposed anthology teleseries, PORTRAITS IN TERROR-- one being FINAL CURTAIN (which came about because Wood secured permission to shoot his film in an empty theater) while the other was entitled THE NIGHT THE BANSHEE CRIED. When no network bought the project, Wood subsequently re-used footage from both in his 1959 feature NIGHT OF THE GHOULS. Ironically this movie also failed to receive commercial exposure until being discovered for the home video market in 1984. Then a copy of FINAL CURTAIN was found and released to said market in 2012. 

CURTAIN's protagonist is an unnamed actor (Duke Moore) who starred in a vampire-play for "months," and now that the play's run is over, he remains in the now-empty theater because he has some unexplained intuition about finding some "unseen object." The Actor (as he's billed in the credits) never speaks out loud, but a voiceover-- the only words spoken in the episode-- purports to be the Actor's inner thoughts, though the often-frenzied mental dialogue was recorded by another Wood player, Dudley Manlove. The Actor never devotes so much as a stray thought to his past, his profession, or anything but the vague unease haunting him. He starts at every cat's yowl, every creaking board.

After ten minutes of these ruminations, the actor heads upstairs, still unusually apprehensive about everything he sees and feels in the theater. He enters the prop room and sees what he momentarily mistakes for a woman with long blonde hair. When the apparition does not move, he remembers that it's the dummy of a vampire that was used in the play. The actor fingers the dummy's dress and her long hair, and he seems to have fallen in a little in love with the image, much the way Poe's protagonists conceived sudden amours. He starts to leave the room, takes one look back-- and suddenly the "dummy" (Jeannie Stevens) smiles and beckons to him. The terrified thespian manages to blunder his way out of the room, and once he's in the corridor outside, he simply goes back downstairs. Since "the Vampire" (as Stevens is billed) does not appear again, the Actor is able to dismiss the experience. 

After more ruminations, the Actor enters the "last room" in the theater. There he discovers a coffin-- though all the audience sees is a boxy shape, like an overturned cabinet. The Actor opens the "lid" of the "coffin," which he decides is the "object" he's anticipated, and he crawls in and shuts the lid, whereon the film ends with the implication that he smothers himself to death with a figurative Premature Burial.

Frankly, I went back and forth a little regarding the phenomenality of this short tale, with respect to "the Vampire." Ed Wood certainly didn't care about making things clear, so any conclusion I make might be my personal preference alone. I wouldn't have put it past Wood to have imagined (a) a real female vampire who just happens to be the spitting image of a prop dummy used in a play, and (b) who decides to stop by the theater in which the Actor's roaming around, as she's been called to him by his "half in love with easeful death" train of thought. Indeed, the plotline of NIGHT OF THE GHOULS-- the movie into which Wood inserted scenes taken from CURTAIN-- revolves around the notion that a phony spiritualist accidentally summons real ghosts. But at least the ghosts of GHOULS actually DO something, forcing the crooked medium into a coffin, where the swindler dies just as the Actor does.

Yet, even granting Wood's capricious plotting, it might be a bit more likely that the Actor simply imagines the prop dummy coming to life and beckoning to him-- which is, incidentally, the only really scary scene I've ever seen in a Wood movie. And the scene works because, in large part, viewers half expect it. And I'm not talking about expecting the Big Reveal because any viewer can see that the "dummy" is breathing. I'm saying that, because the Actor strokes the dummy's hair and clothes as if he's thinking about making out with the mannequin, it's the perfect "revenge of the feminine" for the dummy to come to life and say, "Sure, come on, big boy" with her gestures. Therefore, the Actor conjures up his own punishment, much as the narrator of "Tell-Tale Heart" imagines that he can hear the beating heart of the man he murdered. The Vampire-scene is also a turnaround-- probably unintentional-- on the end scene from Wood's GLEN OR GLENDA, where cross-dresser Glen's wife willingly permits him to share her clothing.

The Vampire-scene also mirrors the episode's final moments, in that first we see an unliving object seem to come to life, after which a living man makes himself unliving. One online review claimed that the Actor is really dead from the first, but I think this interpretation robs the character of any empathy. Wood might not have understood how to make the Actor sympathetic to an audience, but he WANTS viewers to feel for the thespian's inner turmoil. The Actor has played a living dead man for "months," and there's the broad implication that he's been seduced by the idea of death. The setup is not unlike that of the actor-protagonist of 1947's A DOUBLE LIFE, who becomes overly invested in playing Othello, to the extent that the performer begins thinking that he is Othello, with deadly consequences. 

                    

Does Wood come close to tapping Poe's unique exploration of the dark side of human psychology? No, but I think Wood, even though he made this pilot when he was still in his thirties, showed a penchant for death-haunted characters throughout most of his cinematic career. Whatever TV-network might've watched Wood's pilot-episodes would have been entirely justifying on rejecting them as having no prime-time potential. But in some ways, the short CURTAIN does a better job than the full-length features at translating Wood's anxieties into a "personal myth"-- one with at least a little more universality than the director's passion for angora sweaters.

                                  

        

BRIDE OF THE MONSTER (1955)

 

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

Though BRIDE OF THE MONSTER is surely the second best-known Ed Wood movie to general audiences, it can't hold a candle to the lunacy of the champion, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, or other runners-up for the Weird-Wood Awards. like GLEN OR GLENDA and even NIGHT OF THE GHOULS. A possible reason for this lack of terminal bizarreness is that Wood collaborated on the script with Alex Gordon, who may have kept the narrative a little more linear than most solo Wood scripts. In many ways, BRIDE feels like an update of a 1942 programmer like THE MAD MONSTER, which also involved a mad scientist seeking to create superhumans to win armed conflicts between nations.

That doesn't mean that the Gordon-Wood script doesn't have some glaring goof-ups. Mad scientist Doctor Eric Vornoff (Bela Lugosi) has set up his monster-making shop in an old house near a swamp, and he apparently mutates an octopus that hangs out in the swamp and helps Vornoff clean up the leftovers of his failed experiments. Two hunters, fleeing a violent storm, try to take shelter in Vornoff's house, only to have the scientist turn them away, with the aid of Vornoff's huge bald henchman Lobo (wrestler Tor Johnson). The hunters flee, but one is seized and killed by the octopus. Lobo apprehends the other hunter and drags him back to Vornoff's laboratory, where Vornoff tries to transform the guy into an "atomic superman," but only succeeds in killing his subject-- whom he also feeds to the octopus.

This provides the first absurdity of the script: if Vornoff's perpetually on the lookout for people on whom to experiment, why wouldn't he invite the hunters into his house, and then let Lobo subdue the men, so that Vornoff would have two subjects for experimentation? I don't plan to go looking for the original Gordon script, so I'm okay with not knowing if Gordon or Wood jumped the gun by introducing the octopus before he was needed. True, the first failed experiment is all the viewer needs to see to get Vornoff's modus operandi, so the underwhelming "death by octopus" (in which footage of a real octopus is loosely juxtaposed with the hunter's underwater struggles) was clearly just a means of first providing the exposition and then getting rid of both interlocutors. 

Soon the audience learns, from police captain Robbins, that there have been ten previous victims, but it's only now that the captain decides to assign a cop to the case, young Dick Craig (Tony McCoy, whose father helped Wood finance the film). In addition, Dick's fiancee, reporter Janet (Loretta King), plans to launch her own investigation, starting with the house of Vornoff. Robbins also tells Craig to talk to a visiting scientist, Strowski, who has some observations about Famous Monsters He Has Known. But after the scientist dispenses some double-talk about Loch Ness for some reason, Strowski like Janet heads out to the Vornoff house on his own.

Janet's car goes off the road and Lobo finds her, taking her back to the lab while falling in love with her basic cuteness. Vornoff decides Janet will be his next experiment and he hypnotizes her into compliance. Strowski shows up and reveals to the audience that he's an agent from the country of Vornoff's origin. Vornoff was exiled because his government thought he was crazy, but evidently Strowski pursued Vornoff's course as he went around to various places (including Loch Ness) breeding some sort of monsters. Strowski is willing to take Vornoff back home by force-- probably a signal that it's a Communist-bloc country-- but Lobo intervenes and Strowski ends up as octo-pie.

Robbins, Craig and comical Kelton the Cop converge on the house, but for some reason I forget, only Craig breaks into Vornoff's lab just as the scientist's seeking to transform Janet into an atomic superwoman. This imo might have been more entertaining than what does transpire. Lobo kayos Craig, but decides that he doesn't want Janet to become "the bride of the atom." He frees her, Vornoff shoots the hulking henchman, and despite his wound Lobo subjects the mad scientist to his own process. Vornoff (played by a stunt man) arises, for some reason becoming a superman despite the earlier failures. Super-Vornoff flees the lab, while Lobo perishes in a fire (supposedly). Craig and Janet escape, and when the other cops arrive but can't harm Vornoff with gunfire, Craig rolls a boulder down on the scientist, casting him into the swamp. The octopus attacks Vornoff and I think they both blow up either from an atomic explosion or from a lightning-strike, depending on who you ask.

BRIDE is one of those films that's pretty much used-up the first time you see it. Like PLAN 9, BRIIDE has loads of directing mistakes, plot inconsistencies, and daffy, poorly defined characters. But once I'd seen them-- they had nothing more to offer. That's why I say Gordon may have kept the project a little too conventional, though there's no way to be sure.

And of course, one can like BRIDE sentimentally, as the last feature-film to give Bela Lugosi a substantial role before his passing. It's not a great Lugosi performance because of the limitations of the role, but he gives it his all, something that can't be said of the other, mostly undertalented performers. The script might have had some fun with the "atom-mania" prevailing in the fifties, but all one gets on that score is a brief though weird correlation between atomic fallout and juvenile delinquency. BRIDE is required viewing for anyone interested in Ed Wood. But I haven't found that it rewards repeat viewings.    

ADDENDUM: I'll modify my opening statement about the script's use of the octopus somewhat. It's true that there's no good reason, internally, for Vornoff to send away the two hunters, when he could use both of them as experiment fodder. But in terms of the overall scheme of the narrative, it is important for the audience to know that the octopus isn't confined to Vornoff's basement, and that the creature has access to the swamp outside-- because it has to be in the swamp at the climax, where both Vornoff and the octopus are mutually destroyed by something or other. So the scene in which one of the hunters is crossing a bridge in the swamp when he's killed by the menacing mollusc does serve to set up the film's conclusion.   

           

                                 

DOUBLE CROSSBONES (1951)

 

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

My justification for reviewing this pleasant if lightweight pirate spoof is similar to the one I gave for including the nominally serious CAPTAIN KIDD AND THE SLAVE GIRL: because the story touches on the unusual idea of a "pirate brotherhood." Oddly, though both movies cite assorted famous pirates who belong to the organization, both name the same three pirates that I find to be "legendary" due to their frequent use in fictional iterations: Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, and Anne Bonney (played respectively in CROSSBONES by Alan Napier, Louis Bacigalupi, and the rather bulky Hope Emerson). As a very small film-fan bonus, Glenn Strange of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is reunited with the director of that film, Charles Barton, though Strange only has one line-- the same as when he played the Monster.

CROSSBONES' plot is tighter than some of the other genre-spoofs of the period, possibly borrowing elements from the 1942 BLACK SWAN. Davey Crandall (Donald O'Connor) is a shopkeeper's assistant in Charleston of the 1700s, a harbor city often plagued by the pirates of the Caribbean. Davey's in love with Sylvia (Helena Carter), ward of the well-heeled governor of South Carolina, and she seems to return his feelings. But Governor Elden is a traitor, who sends the pirate brotherhood information about treasure-laden ships bound for Charleston and then fences the pirates' stolen goods for them. Elden first reveals himself as a rotter by proposing marriage to Sylvia, who emphatically rejects the older man. He suspects that she nurtures affection for the age-appropriate Davey, and when Elden stands in danger of having his treason revealed, he frames Davey and his buddy Tom (Will Geer) for the crime of fencing stolen goods.

Davey and Tom go on the run, shipping out on a vessel whose captain is another pirate. By some clever shenanigans, Davey and Tom trick the whole crew into deserting the ship. The guys encounter a sailing-ship on which Elden is traveling with Sylvia. To keep themselves from being taken prisoner, Tom and Davey first create the illusion of a full crew aboard ship and then tell everyone aboard that Davey is actually a pirate captain, "Bloodthirsty Dave," who only masqueraded as a shopkeeper's boy to suss out the defenses of Charleston. Davey and Tom pull off the deception, but Sylvia, outraged by her betrayal, swears to marry her guardian at the earliest opportunity.

Back on the pirate ship, Davey and Tom gain allies by releasing from captivity some men being transported to serve prison sentences abroad, but all aboard are still wanted men with no safe place to go. "Bloodthirsty Dave" decides to seek out Tortuga, haven of the pirate brotherhood, purely to find a sanctuary. Once there, Davey has to swordfight Blackbeard to prove his mettle, after which he arouses the interest of Anne Bonney. (As if to mirror the transgression of Elden, one pirate accuses Bonney of cradle-robbing, but she never makes a sexual pass at Davey. and ends up marrying Tom in the end.) Davey figures out that Elden is the anonymous benefactor of the pirates and tries to convince them to assault Charleston with their fleet to bring down Elden for continually cheating them. However, only Bonney votes to follow Captain Davey's plan, so he and Tom are back to square one.

In one of CROSSBONES' most amusing scenes, Davey sneaks into Charleston and crashes Sylvia's wedding party to dissuade her from marrying Elden. O'Connor is almost unrecognizable made up as an effete English lord, but he's able to convince Sylvia of his innocence, though he's captured anyway. Despite all the setbacks, Davey's pirate buddies come to his rescue after all, resulting in a big sword-battle between them and Elden's henchmen (though Bonny only uses her fists, not a cutlass), and Davey battling Elden for the hand of lovely Sylvia. An amusing end-scene has all of the pirates get pardons for exposing the crooked governor, but they just can't resist pirating and go back to their sinful ways-- except for Davey, who's guided to domesticity by Sylvia. 

O'Connor is extremely likable but only does one dance-routine, aside from various comic duels. He and Helena Carter have good chemistry, and Barton keeps the action rolling along. much more ably than most of the pirate-movies of the fifties. There is one "fallacious figment" that the audience isn't meant to take seriously: when Davey looks through a telescope, it comically elongates to mirror his surprise.