BEN 10 (2005-07)

 

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

Though I often survey serial cartoons by their seasons, here I've decided to combine all four seasons of the original BEN 10 show into the same review. The reason is simple: there's barely any difference between an episode from Season One and one from Season Four. There are a few two-part episodes, but no sweeping arcs, and the three significant characters-- ten-year-old Ben Tennyson, his same-age cousin Gwen, and their grandpa Max-- stay the same. In fact, all four seasons are supposed to take place in one summer, where the two kids join their grandpa in his RV and tour the country. 

The expedition turns out to be much more adventurous than Grandpa expected, for at the outset Ben finds a strange device of alien origin, and when he touches it. it binds itself around his wrist like a living watch. Then aliens attack, seeking the device, an "Omnitrix," and Ben learns that he can defend himself and others by transforming into super-powerful heroes, all derived from ET-DNA. After a short period of adjustment, Ben becomes enthralled with the prospect of being a superhero, despite the protests of his irritated cousin Gwen. Grandpa Max, for his part, turns out to have inside knowledge of alien incursions on Earth, and he's often able to render critical advice to Ben on "going alien."

Though Ben and his relations contend with various hostile ETs, the series follows the template of most superhero comics, in that as soon as the superhero debuts, a coterie of super-villains springs up to become the crusader's "rogues' gallery." The eccentric Earth-crooks-- the animal-obsessed Doctor Amimo, sorcerers Hex and his niece Charmcaster. the evil clown Zombozo-- are a lot more fun than the extraterrestrial menaces, and the writer-collective behind the series, "Man of Action," frequently features crossovers of the colorful criminals.

As a gesture toward girl-fans, Gwen soon gets a power-upgrade in that she becomes a talented sorceress in her own right, giving Ben a "sidekick" to help in the fight-scenes. The most frequent jokes arise from the quarrels between Ben and Gwen, with Max playing referee, and there's a certain sameness about all three of them, even given that serial TV characters usually don't change much from season to season. I suppose the predictability of the setup helped with the show's longevity in other iterations, but I for one never found any of the Tennysons even slightly nuanced. The most subtle episode has Ben and Gwen travel to the future, when both of them are thirty-something adults. Mature Ben, called "Ben 10,000" because of all the alien powers he's mastered, seems to live in some joyless funk for reasons never disclosed, and Mature Gwen has brought him into contact with his younger self to snap Mature Ben out of his depression. However, in the only other episode taking place in this future, Ben 10,000 has become a routine well-balanced hero, and even has his own ten-year-old kid-- meaning that the writers never meant to open up any complex avenues for this simple kids' adventure series.               

CROWN OF SHADOWS (2025)

 

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

On one hand, CROWN OF SHADOWS is just another micro-budget fantasy with the usual subpar CGI-FX. On the other, it's a missed opportunity, because it's over two hours of pseudo-Tolkienian nonsense, with even less concept of Tolkien than the awful IN THE NAME OF THE KING series. The writer and director-- who have no other IMDB credits-- act at all times as if they're serving up a grand history of the fantasy-world Aberon, when in truth it's less well-designed than even your basic D&D domain. The creators cover up their lack of design with booming Gregorian music. static shots of well-costumed characters reciting portentous dialogue, and implied connections to the Lovecraft mythos of "The Old Ones." (This is signaled by an opening quote from HPL's "Call of Cthulhu," though the cosmic pessimism of that author has nothing to do with Tolkienian dynastic struggles.) There is enough fighting to qualify the film for combative status, but the performers are not very good with either emoting or fake-fighting.

There was a little potential here, though, in that CROWN concerns family quarrels over power. The previous regime is overthrown by Ginnarra (Megan Tremethick), daughter of the previous king, who perishes in a military battle. The king's death means that his son Elderon (Andrew Gourlay) is next in line for the legitimate throne, but Ginnarra seems to hold all the power. Naturally there's no attention as to how Ginnarra gathered such great armies to oppose those of her late father; all we see is the queen and her high priests making obeisances to their evil gods. I think they may be responsible for the CGI dragons, though we don't see them in combat. Most of the action is low-level, as soldiers burn up time trying to corral Elderon, or Elderon interacting with weird mystical characters. The conflict between Ginnarra and her brother doesn't catch fire till near the end, when she captures him and plans to sacrifice him to her dark lords. But she pauses to torture him first with some magic spell, and this leads to her undoing. 

CROWN is also one of the few dynastic struggles in which the script doesn't make even minor attempts to justify Ginnarra's quest for power. Was she mistreated somehow? Did she resent Elderon being next in line for the throne? Late in the film, the script introduces Ginnarra's grown son, who ends up dueling against Elderon at the end. Who's his father, and under what circumstances was the son raised? The writer doesn't even think it's important. I suppose I've seen worse cheap fantasy flicks than CROWN, but even the cruder sword-and-sorcery flicks seem to have a better sense of what they're copying.    

MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981, 2009)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

MY BLOODY VALENTINE is definitely one of the most iconic eighties slashers, thanks to the memorable image of a killer garbed in mining-gear and wielding a pickaxe. This is a fair accomplishment, since VALENTINE appeared in theaters before Jason Voorhees made his first canonical appearance in FRIDAY 2, and before Michael Myers enjoyed his second outing. This means that the writers had a strong sense of one basic appeal of the slasher HALLOWEEN had established: that of the masked killer.

Director George Mihalka and the writers, however, structure VALENTINE more like a mystery, complete with red herrings. The setup is efficiently established in the mining-town of Valentine Bluffs: twenty years ago, on the night of a popular Valentine's Day dance, five miners were buried by a cave-in thanks to the owners' negligence. One miner, Harry Warden, survived and murdered not only the owners, but other victims in order to set down an edict: that others will die if the city ever holds another Valentine's dance. And despite the fact that Warden is captured and sent away to an asylum, for twenty years there are no dances. Then the custom is re-instituted in 1981-- and people start dying. Did Warden escape captivity, just like Myers in HALLOWEEN?

Whereas Myers' mask does not hide his true identity, it's soon clear that Warden's not the culprit, just by the way other characters act suspiciously. However, the killer is just as much a victim of trauma as Warden, and so there's a loose continuity between the two. At the film's end the association is made stronger by the way the copycat disappears into the bowels of the mine, suggesting that even if his body is found, he'll be as much of a spectre of doom as his predecessor. Sadly, only the killer proves interesting, and all the other characters are ciphers. There are some decent gore scenes but nothing to stand with the best death-FX.

Released as a 3D movie, the VALENTINE remake, directed by Patrick Lussier, quite naturally does not try to sell the same mystery to consumers who probably already know the original's plot. Thus various names from the original movie are kept but the roles are changed and/or rearranged. Thus male lead Jensen Ackles takes his name, Tom, from the original but is mostly a different character. His father, now deceased, was one of the townsfolk victimized ten years ago by crazed Harry Warden, and Tom returns to the town (renamed "Harmony") purely to sell the mines to the highest bidder. 

I didn't care for a long sequence where Lussier shows the original killer knocking off various victims, but the director made up for it by a well-choreographed scene in which The New Killer picks on a couple who just had a motel hookup. I was very surprised to see an extended nude scene with a gorgeous female in a 21st-century film, since at the very least the whole scene would have to be cut for commercial TV prints.

Tom was formerly the boyfriend of Sarah, the lead of the first film, but now she's married to town sheriff Axel, whose character in that film was not romantically aligned with the lead female. In another original scene, Tom goes down into the mine and is attacked by The New Killer; he survives though another worker is slain.  Witnesses from Harry Warden's rampage attest that Warden was murdered vigilante-style, though they can't find the body where they buried it.

Since The Miner was not about to move into Freddy Kruger territory, we're left with a limited number of suspects for The New Killer, and tthe 2009 film fails at creating sufficient red herrings. But its greater failure is that the script doesn't exploit the strengths of the 1981 movie, with its anxieties over the potentially deadly occupation of mining, and the associations of Valentine's Day. Though I appreciate some of the kinetic scenes in the remake, its mythicity has less substance than one of its 3D effects.  

DORORO (1969)

 

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

Back in 2024, I wrote a review of the 2019 remake of the 1969 adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's DORORO. At the time I cross-compared the 2019 anime with some of the manga available to me, because I didn't think there was any possibility of the 1969 anime coming my way. But then thirteen episodes showed up on streaming, which led me to find the other 13 on YouTube.

My main takeaway is that the series is very episodic, while the animation is crude without being as charming as that of Tezuka's most famous TV-anime, ASTRO BOY. Like all versions, Hyakkimaru starts out as a paraplegic child, deprived of most of his major bodily organs by a spell sent by his evil father.  A genius gives the child mechanical enhancements and trains him to attack the demons who now possess the hero's stolen organs, for he can recover one organ for every demon killed. Hyakkimaru's joyless mission is given an injection of human feeling when war-orphan Dororo, perhaps eight years old, attaches herself to the crippled samurai and follows him throughout his twenty-six adventures.

Since I've seen most of the stories twice before, I can't help feeling most of them lack verve, much less concrescence. The overall theme is that in the same way that both mortal samurai and demons prey on ordinary people, and deserve to be extirpated, but there's no elaboration of this conceit. A lot of weird Japanese yokai appear here, but the animation can't really capture their grotesquerie, and Hyakkimaru's climactic encounter with his father is given no buildup.

The gender identity of Dororo is not referenced until the very last episode too, so that I wondered if the showrunners just decided to make Dororo a boy. In one episode, Dororo beats up five kids her own age, which I thought was quite a feat for a child with no real martial training, especially a female child. But in the last episode Hyakkimaru reveals that he always knew, throughout all their adventures, that Dororo was female-- which is not true of the original Tezuka manga. Indeed, there's even a scene in the cartoon where Dororo is bathing nude within Hyakkimaru's line of sight, and she does nothing more than facing the other direction to conceal her femininity.

I'm glad I got a chance to see these early B&W cartoons, but the best any of them get is just fair. The 2019 incarnation is superior in all respects.

                    

     

LADY FRANKENSTEIN (1971)

 

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

Despite the high-toned diction and philosophizing in Mary Shelley's most famous novel, FRANKENSTEIN is more than a little perverse in its psychology. The titular experimenter grows up with his adoptive sister Elizabeth (his cousin in the first edition) and they plan to marry when they come of age. Yet Frankenstein's ambivalence is reflected in a weird dream of his mother coming back to life. When he decides to create a patchwork man, guided by old alchemical texts, it's in defiance of his father's scorn for such a project. And when his creation gets loose-- largely because Frankenstein had no plan for what he'd do with his "offspring"-- the monster devotes himself to killing off most of the people in the scientist's orbit.

Going on the account of director Mel Welles, who said that he wrote it with fellow American Edward de Lorenzo-- LADY FRANKENSTEIN was conceived from the start as being a sleazier version of a Frankenstein film. Yet to some extent Welles gets closer to the core perversities of Shelley's novel than most movies about the erring scientist.

In LADY, Baron Frankenstein (Joseph Cotten) has been experimenting on transplant surgery for twenty years since he was expelled from the medical academy for his radical ideas. Only his slightly younger colleague Dr. Marshall (Paul Muller) knows that for the past three years, while Frankenstein's daughter Tania is away at medical school, he and the Baron have been working on assembling and rejuvenating a patchwork man. They use a corpse-thief named Lynch to provide them with body parts, and once he provides them with the fresh brain of a hanged man, they're ready to proceed. However, the same day they plan to bring the dead form to life, daughter Tania (Rosalba Neri) returns to Castle Frankenstein.

Initially Tania seems nothing more than a loving daughter, one who spied on her father's early experiments and who has emulated him by finishing her training as a surgeon. There's no sense of improper emotions between Tania and her father, though Marshall, who nurtures a concealed affection for Tania, might be viewed as a father-surrogate, though actor Marshall was only about ten years older than actress Neri. We know nothing about Tania's sexual history, but the first hint of her perverse nature is slightly suggested by her lingering interaction with studly stable-boy Thomas (Peter Whiteman), though he can barely speak coherently due to a past bout with fever. 

On the night of the experiment, Marshall warns Frankenstein that damage to the creation's brain could make it dangerous. Tania learns about the experiment and wants to assist. Initially Frankenstein doesn't want her to risk getting in trouble with the law, and then he changes his mind for no stated reason. Frankenstein and Marshall revice the body with lightning, but as Marshall feared, the resulting Monster is a mindless berserker and kills Frankenstein without provocation. The deformed creature then stalks off into the countryside and begins knocking off nearly everyone he meets-- though he does forego mudering a young boy after killing his parents. How the unthinking beast-man knows to hide itself after getting the local constabulary on his tail, the film does not say. The creature also kills Lynch and other corpse-thieves but does not seem to know them.

Tania formulates the idea that the only way to take vengeance on the superhuman ravager is to make a second monster to fight it. Prior to Lynch's killing, Tania approaches the reprobate for new body-parts, but he will only accept sexual payment. Though Tania declines, the encounter possibly gives her the idea to use her beauty to make a monster in a different manner. Aware of Marshall's suppressed passion for her, she tells him that she loves his mind but must have a beautiful male body to love as well-- and proposes that the two of them murder the hunky Thomas and swap out Marshall's brilliant brain for Thomas's impaired consciousness.

                        

Tania then lures Thomas to her bed and seduces him, so that Marshall can smother him to death with a pillow. Tania makes some mention of giving Thomas the chance to be a "whole being," but it's pretty clear that she wants to indulge her desire for father-substitute Marshall, but within a youthful body like her own. Significantly, she does marry and bed Marhsall before they kill the stable-boy, so if all she wanted was sex with an older man, that inclination would have been voided. But making a new "child" to kill the creation of her father-- her symbolic "brother," if one goes by the logic of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN-- seems to be the means of both avenging and surpassing her father. So Tania completes the experiment and births her second monster. "New Monster" is not deformed like the first one and could pass for an ordinary man. But since all the story-pieces are now in place, the "Old Monster" wanders back to the castle for no particular reason, and soon the two super-strong beings duke it out. As monster-fights it's just adequate, and the Old Monster seems the more powerful until both Tania and "Charles" stab him to death. Then some convenient villagers burn the castle down, and Tania and "Charles" have sex amid the flames. Yet "Charles" decides that it isn't a Frankenstein film without a monster turning on its creator, so he strangles her before the flames get him.

By assigning high psychological mythicity to LADY FRANKENSTEIN, I'm not saying any character is psychologically complex, even on the level of Robert Bloch's PSYCHO. It's only the total pattern formed by all the characters that has a certain complexity that taps some of the original Shelley perversity. Also, while I often class mad scientists as being just as monstrous as their creations, here I felt Tania had more of the "villain" vibe.          

THE FINAL SACRIFICE (1990)

 

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

Now THIS-- unlike that boring MERLIN'S SHOP OF MYSTICAL WONDERS I recently reviewed-- is the sort of "bad penny" that MST3K was great at turning up. The hosts had a lot of fun tearing it down, BUT-- SACRIFICE had its own dippy lack of logic that made it entertaining (in a pathetic sense) in its own right. It's a very low-budget horror film shot mostly out in the wilds of Canada by film-students, with actors who gave lackluster performances, but its redeeming merit is that the director/co-writer clearly had no grasp of what story-elements he needed even for basic drive-in fare.

I tick off the oddball points of interest:

Out in the forest, a well-dressed man (later named Satoris) supervises the killing of a man by his hooded henchmen. Then the scene cuts to a farmhouse where a young man, Troy, lives with his aunt. After we watch him thumb through a book with some vague occult illustrations, his dialogue with his aunt establishes that his father is deceased.

Then an intertitle declares that it's seven years later, though nothing much changes. Troy is still at the farmhouse, though the aunt is not seen, but somehow the hooded henchmen know he's doing something they don't like, so they invade the house. Troy escapes on a bike, but because the hoods have a car, he later hides in a stranger's truck to get away.

The stranger, with the weird name of "Rowsdower," finds Troy but lets him hitch to whatever his destination may be. However, the cult-members somehow track Troy in this new vehicle and give chase. Troy and Rowsdower elude them, but Rowsdower suddenly reveals that he knows exactly who the cultists are and what their aim is. They're the surviving members of an archaic cult whose power was destroyed by a vengeful god, but if they can make a "final sacrifice" to some idol, their long-lost city of evil will be reborn. And Rowsdower knows this because-- he used to be a member of the cult! Holy Crazy Coincidence!

The two fugitives hide in another farmhouse, and though the cultists search the house, they fail to find their quarry. Then the duo run into the house's owner, a garrulous old man (whom the MSTies compare to Yosemite Sam) -- and guess what? He ALSO knows all about the cultists, thus providing more exposition.

It all wraps up with the cult trying to execute Troy before the idol. There's a dull, skill-less fight between Satoris and Rowsdower. Satoris is defeated, the cultists scatter, the idol falls -- and the evil city is born anyway. But nothing happens as the film just peters out, having shown utter incompetence at creating suspense-- and yet, being entertaining because of that incompetence.    

          

 

DETECTIVE DEE: DEMON CURSE (2022)

 

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

Long ago I read a handful of the mystery novels of Robert Van Gulik, who brought the exploits of medieval Chinese magistrate Judge Dee to Western audiences. I've also seen one of Tsui Hark's high-ticket "Detective Dee" films, and this later film follows Hark's pattern of stressing supernatural adventure over mystery. The Dee here is younger than in the traditional tales Van Gulik used as his template, and so is known only as "Detective Dee."

The Empress of China is due to arrive at a particular city, but as there have been strange murders therein, Detective Dee (Benny Chan) and his aide come to town to sort things out. Dee does not believe in ghosts or demons, but despite his acumen and martial skills, he can't keep others from being killed. What he eventually finds is a cult of humans planning to sacrifice the Empress for an "ascension rite," and though they're not demons, they do seem to command some sort of ill-defined magic.

Though the settings and costumes are sumptuous the script seems rushed, and I wondered if it had been done for TV. The action-scenes looked as if the photographers had "undercranked" the film-speed to make it look as if the actors were moving faster than in real life. I can't say I followed all of the details of the story, partly because the voices used for the dubbing were rather peculiar. This isn't actively bad, just underwhelming, so it probably shouldn't be anyone's first Detective Dee film.  

THE NAKED WITCH (1964)

 

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

Initially I meant to give NAKED WITCH a quickie review, because it was a chore to watch director/co-writer Larry Buchanan pad the already short film with enervating tracking shots of the Texas wilderness. But upon re-examination, I must admit that the script is probably the best original writing by Buchanan, eclipsing even the risibly titled MARS NEEDS WOMEN.

To be sure, Buchanan gives off mixed signals. The main script centers upon a witch who comes back to life to take vengeance on those who maltreated her in life. Yet Buchanan begins the film with a tedious prologue-- a voiceover lecture accompanied by illustrations from Bosch-- talking about the long history of evil witches making compacts with Satan-- even though the Naked Witch is never said to have made any such pact. Padding is the usual suspect here too.

An unnamed student goes to Luckenback Texas to research the folklore of witches. Most of the German-descended townsfolk won't talk to him, but a pretty young blonde, Kirska, takes him to the house she occupies with her grandfather. She gives the student a guest bed, in which an unnamed witch of the 19th century, referenced only as "The Widow," slept a century ago. The fellow opines that all witches were just scapegoats for societal troubles, so Kirska also offers to loan him a book on local folklore. He's not overly flirty toward Kirska, but he pays her a compliment, so when she returns with the book, she wears a sexy black nightgown. The student, perhaps feeling out of his depth, declines to make a pass, so she leaves him to his reading.

The book chronicles more real history than a latter-day writer could have possibly known. Sometime in the 1800s, the Widow (Libby Hall), an unmarried and unpopular woman in Luckenbach, sleeps with a rich married man, one Schoennig, with the idea that he means to divorce his wife and marry her. Schoennig-- who is also Kirska's ancestor--  not only reneges on promises, he accuses her as a witch to get her out of his hair. The community duly executes the Widow via burning (not shown) and then nails down her corpse in a grave with a metal stake. The execution's imagery slightly resembles the one in Bava's 1960 BLACK SUNDAY, but since that film wasn't released to the US until 1961, Buchanan might not have seen SUNDAY before completing the film in the same year, only to have it sit on a shelf until 1964.

Night falls, and the student goes chasing after the Widow's grave. He unearths it with ease, finds the corpse nailed down by the stake, and pulls out the stake, his voiceover telling us he has some idea of exhibiting it. He wanders back to his lodgings-- it's still not entirely sure that he hasn't been under a spell-- and falls asleep. Behind him, the Naked Witch resuscitates, though her film-nudity is confined to side-boobs. She follows the student to the house and takes the stake from him while he sleeps. Then, to save Buchanan the trouble of more angled shots, she seeks out Kirska's room, rips the black nightgown right off the girl's body and flees. Clothed now, she goes after the few surviving descendants of her seducer, killing two men by using the stake as a dagger.

Since the Witch never has dialogue-- not even being quoted within a voiceover, as occurs with the Widow in the book-flashback-- there's no explanation as to where she got her supernatural powers. During the flashback the Widow prays to be avenged on her accuser's family, but she does not pray to Satan, so for all the audience knows, she was granted her powers by a vengeful Heaven. The student tracks her to a pool, where she mesmerizes him and has sex with him. Then she goes after Kirska, also using remote hypnotism to pull her out of her house. The student recovers his wits and intervenes, though his "struggle" with the Witch is so desultory, it's obvious to the viewer that the actress intentionally falls down so as to be killed by the stake, this time for good.

One source claimed that WITCH was the first cinematic use of a recrudescent witch anywhere. Obviously BLACK SUNDAY puts the lie to this claim, though offhand I don't know of any American feature films in which a dead witch comes back to malefic life.

This is a clansgressive film with respect to both the sex and violence that the Witch doles out to 20th-century persons born outside her natural timespan.              

MERLIN'S SHOP OF MYSTICAL WONDERS (1996)

 

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

The above VHS cover is a total lie as to the content of MYSTICAL WONDERS, but it might be the best thing to come from this misbegotten pile of crap. It didn't even yield a very good episode of MST3K, which is the only way I would have ever screened it.

I'll be brief because the project is so pedestrian, it's not even worth ranting over. The shop of the title is actually a little shop of two horrors, in which unwitting victims are brought into contact with cursed items thanks to a modern-day venue run by the magician Merlin and some fat chick.

First story concerns the fate of a hot-shot newspaper columnist (the "demihero" of my subject line) who acts obnoxiously toward the greybeard proprietor. In retaliation the sorcerer gives the unbeliever a book of magic to eff around with. The guy almost kills his wife but a magic spell from the book backfires on him. There's no particular "ironic justice" to his fate though the actors are competent.

The second story is a cut-down version of the director's feature film THE DEVIL'S GIFT, about a cursed cymbal-playing monkey (the "monster" in my subject line). I saw GIFT many years ago and though it was nothing special, at least it was an adequate cursed-object horror flick. But it becomes lame thanks to being cut down for time and interpolated into the frame story of Merlin's shop. The original film had an unhappy ending, but here Merlin saves the imperiled victims. 

The only MST3K joke I remember was a line about DENNIS THE MENACE's Mister Wilson exposing himself while watering his lawn, or something like that.   
    

  

THE WAR OF THE NINJA MONSTERS: JARON VS. GOURA (2024)

 

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

At the end of my review for GOD REIGA VS KING OHGA, I wrote:

Happily, there have been no sequels to this embarrassment, and IMDB claims that writer-director Hayashiya is now working on a project with two new monsters. I'd like to think it could only be an improvement, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

Well, this 2024 movie must be the one alluded to, and it is a small improvement, though one has to parse out what screenwriter Shinpei Hayashiya had in mind. It helped me that I think he borrowed, in a roundabout way, from the 2016 film COLOSSAL, about a young American woman who finds that she has the ability to control a giant kaiju-like creature.

First, in the Japanese town of Chichibu, we meet two young guys who work for a gym, though they're only at the gym for a few minutes. At the same time they're listening to their manager complain, a Shinto priestess goes on a local TV show and proclaims that Chichibu is in danger from an archaic ninja cult, the Jirai.

The two guys-- unnamed according to the subtitles-- wander out into the nearby forest. They enter a cave and faint-- and the next thing they know, both of them are gigantic versions of themselves, looming over Chichibu. However, the locals don't see two giant humans: they see two reptilian monsters, one looking like Godzilla and the other a four-footed critter loosely like Gamera. An additional curiosity: when newspeople try to take video or photographs of the creatures, they don't appear visible in any form. Yet the two "monsters" have tangible effects on the buildings they hit, though there's very little building-bashing, since that would have been overly expensive.

There are some comic scenes of receptionists at the Self-Defense Public Relations office, who don't know what to make of calls about monsters. However, one female supervisor seems to know what's going on, for she references the Jirai, just as the priestess did.

Soon, it's evident that a Jirai ninja, a bald guy with an eyepatch, is controlling the monsters, hoping to unleash chaos for some vague purpose. His control may be lacking, because a couple of times "Jaron" and "Goura" attack each other, which would seem to be counter-intuitive. But Supervisor Girl turns into Ninja Girl and goes into the forest, where she finds Bald Guy and a few other ninjas. She defeats all of them, and around the same time, some citizens come across the same cave the two guys entered. They find the two guys comatose, but they become conscious when the evil ninjas are beaten. The huge monsters disappear, and all's right with the world.

There are many comic bits that probably play much better in Japanese, but they're not overly painful, as they were in GOD RAIGA. This is a curiosity among monster mashup because this time the giant monsters are not the focal icons, and though all the characters are flimsy, I suppose the main menace here is really "the Jirai" as a whole, since they unleash the kaiju, and the good ninja is too routine to be the star.

  

     

    

HOUSE OF THE WOLF MAN (2009)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

**SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS**

HOUSE, as many others have observed before me, must have been a labor of love for writer-director Eben McGarr. Clearly no one would seek to duplicate the look of the 1940s Universal monster-mashes without having an abiding affection for the material. At the same time, McGarr-- who to date only has a smattering of credits on IMDB-- wasn't doing a "straight" version of a Universal monster-mash, nor was he doing a spoof-horror, like ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN and at least three different films titled MONSTER MASH. I'd guess that he hoped to appeal to the enthusiasts of "so bad they're good" films, but with a calculated irony that would have been foreign to guys like Ed Wood and Jerry Warren.

The setup: five individuals are summoned to a mysterious castle for an inheritance. None of the five-- athletic Reed, his scientist-sister Mary, antiquarian Sully, "loose woman" Elamira, and big game hunter Whitlock-- think that they're all related to their summoner, Bela Reinhardt (Ron Chaney, grandson of Lon Chaney Jr). But they're all willing to check things out in case there's a big payoff. 

All five are meant to be sendups of familiar Hollywood "types," and though the first four recall similar POV characters from "old dark house" mysteries, the big game hunter Archibald Whitlock seems to have been imported from an imitation MOST DANGEROUS GAME. McGarr's script doesn't expand the other four beyond the stereotypes they represent, but the writer lavishes more attention on Whitlock. He shares the Nietzschean worldview of GAME's Count Zaroff, and travels with three African bearers just in case he decides he wants to hunt something. In a mild shot at 20th-century racism, Whitlock knows the lead African's real name but calls him "Leopold" for his amusement, while he's never learned the names of the other two. That said, he's equally arrogant toward White people, since in the film's best line, he says to Reed, "I shall call you Azrael because the name Reed displeases me." I'm probably in the minority, but I think all five actors did well with their deliberately artificial dialogue, whether the dialogue hits or misses-- and there are possibly more misses than hits. All five performers make Ron Chaney look worse, because there can be little doubt that he was hired just for the value of his familial connections.

  

But if anything's weaker than Chaney's performance, is McGarr's conception of Reinhardt, who occupies the position of the "main menace," but who is more poorly conceived than the most threadbare Monogram mad scientist. Here are the big reveals: Reinhardt is the offspring of Peter Frankenstein, son of Wolf in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, and the never-mentioned sister of Bela the Gypsy from WOLF MAN. Therefore, even though his real surname is Frankenstein, his "house" has inherited the werewolf curse-- though maybe it doesn't pass through paternal genes, since none of his offspring have lycanthropic qualities. And who are his offspring? All of the supposed heirs (though one may be adopted, that part was hard to follow) are half-siblings because Reinhardt had sex with at least four mothers. This leads to a little recrimination when Mary realizes she's been vamping half-bro Whitlock, though like most Universal horror-flicks, no inappropriate genes were mixed in the scripting of this movie.

And what is Reinhardt's endgame, given that he's due to "wolf out" soon? Well, he has some hazy "survival of the fittest" notion, in that he wants to test his children in bloody battle. Somehow this will help him suss out whether his lycanthropy is some biological mutation, rather than a magical curse. It makes no sense, and most if not all the "heirs" get killed by Reinhardt's rampage. Whitlock and the bearers at least put up a fight, but they're slaughtered too. However, a certain "abandoned experiment" escapes confinement, and once again, the Frankenstein Monster Meets (a) Wolf Man. The fight's one of the better things about HOUSE, being livelier (though no longer) than the one from the 1943 movie. 

One more visitor arrives during the fight, and yes, it's Dracula, decked out in full Lugosi regalia, and he either finishes off the last victim or makes her a vampire. Oddly, though Dracula and the Monster are the only characters who make this a crossover, both of them are irrelevant to the movie-- which would have been improved if there had been SOME reason for Reinhardt's family-killing madness.

       

              

BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON RESURRECTION (2025)

 

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

"Mother of mercy-- can this be the end of Bigfoot?"

Probably not; there's some other BCF opus called MEGA TRUMP not currently on streaming, which spares me from yet more exposure to the director's lame "satire."

For some goddamn reason the god Ra, who's popped up a few times, resurrects Megalodon, and sends the shark-man to Earth to dominate the humans. This seems unnecessary, since humans are already under the thrall of mechanical overlords, but whatever.

Bigfoot-- back to looking like a Sasquatch again-- hears of his enemy's rebirth and goes to fight him. He has a new female commander, a robot named Coila, though previous installments didn't mention intelligent robots at all. There's also a small robot, X-Max, who somehow knows that his name sounds like a stool-softening Earth-product from thousands of years ago.

Bigfoot makes sex overtures to Coila even though she has no imitation genitalia, curses a lot, and finally ends up on Earth to fight Megalodon. I guess Ra causes them both to grow to kaiju-size, because they throw down amidst skyscrapers. The fight's a little longer than the last one, but only adequate. Megalodon is defeated but nothing is said about the fate of the humans under robot dominion. I can't say that there's anything resembling a "high point" in this dopey series, but RESURRECTION would be a good place to stop anyway.      

 

BIGFOOT GOES TO HELL (2023)

 

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

In my review of BIGFOOT VS MEGALODON 2, I said it gave a slight "ray of hope" in that the movie delivered at least on a couple of its tenuous subplots. But I didn't really believe BC Fourteen would get even as good at storytelling as Ed Wood. Sure enough, BIGFOOT GOES TO HELL, the next flick in this hypothetical "series," defaults back to jibber-jabber.

In his wheelchair at the end of time, Lucifer gets all wrong up at the pestilence of humanity, whom he considers sycophantic (the soundtrack saus "psycho-phantic") to the will of a non-existent Heaven and its non-existent God. So he sends another demon, Baphomet, to rain nuclear death on Earth-- which I thought was already devastated. Either before or after Baphomet does this, he runs into Bigfoot (back to looking like a fanged monkey) in another spaceship. The two ships exchange fire, and Bigfoot is killed. His spirit shows up in Lucifer's hell, where he exchanges witless dialogue with the Devil. Then when Lucifer has had enough, an angel, looking like a standard Cupid, pops in, and apparently everything Lucifer did is unwritten. A living Bigfoot shows up at the Allies' base and thinks he's had a weird dream.

Toward the beginning someone claims Princess Kali died in a previous installment. I'm not going back to check though. It's not a combative adventure but it is a monster-mash. If I didn't consider Baphomet and Lucifer monsters, there's also a crocodile-man who's the reincarnation of Anton Sandor LaVey.     

BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON 2 (2023)

 

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

I don't plan to visit any more BC Fourteen projects after I finish all those relevant to my "monster mashup" project. Yet BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON 2 provides a small ray of hope, for after three of his animated crapfests in which the director just screwed around, BVM2 actually delivered something it promised. 

First, we get an assemblage of monsters attacking the Allies, which seems to be a callback to a subplot about a "beast world." Two of the monsters have already received ample screen-time in the series: the shark-humanoid Megalodon and Tickles the Clown. The other two appeared in very brief scenes before: a werewolf named Crosscoe and a big bulky monster named Bartholomew. The latter will later be revealed to be the Frankenstein Monster, and this revelation sets up another subplot in which his creator Doctor Frankenstein is also somehow wandering around the Fourteen-verse.

After the monsters attack the Allies (in spaceships), the Allies' new commander Grace Sherwood (also seen only in space-armor) asks Bigfoot, monster that he is, to infiltrate the ranks of the beast-people. It doesn't work, since the evil monsters don't buy the defection for a moment. But the plot works to bring about what the title promises: a climactic throwdown between Bigfoot (now looking more like a sasquatch than a big fanged monkey) and Megalodon. The fight lasts less than five minutes, and it's nothing special, but at least one promise finally was lived up to.

Van Helsing and Kali are gone without explanation, though possibly they're on maternity leave. I didn't miss them, though Sherwood and her boyfriend Holmes are no better.        

BIGFOOT VS KRAMPUS (2021)

 

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

In this flick it's Christmastime, which might mean that the creator conceived or issued his effort around that time in the real world. But if KRAMPUS is BC Fourteen's idea of a gift, I'm glad not to be on his Xmas list.

This one, like TICKLES, is just a lot of witless talking-heads scenes with no real action. I hoped in an earlier review that maybe this version of Krampus wouldn't have any dialogue, but he did, as do two other monsters. the Cucuy (also called the Boogieman) and some pumpkin-headed fellow called "Jack Pumpkinhead" and thus probably ripped off from one of L. Frank Baum's OZ books. Hey, what's more Christmassy than petty theft?

Bigfoot jabbers a little about finding the missing Jack Van Helsing clone, though everyone else seems to think he's dead-- including his lady friend Kali, who's apparently become pregnant by the lookalike clone of the original clone. Krampus, despite being summoned into being by Lucifer, doesn't do much of anything, much less fight Bigfoot. Fourteen didn't come back to his crap-universe again until 2023, when he released two films I've already reviewed-- VAN HELSING and XTERMINATOR-- and then finally condescended to deliver the second part of BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON.          

TICKLES THE CLOWN (2021)

 

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

Had it not been for one IMDB reviewer, I would not have guessed that this flick, with a title suggesting a routine "evil clown" horror flick, was an installment in BC Fourteen's nutty space-opus. I'm not sure whether or not this was a good thing, though. 

TICKLES plays like its author had binge-watched all of the "Hannibal Lecter" films, for half of the film is wasted as Princess Kali makes three trips to a futuristic prison to converse with an inmate dressed like a grotesque clown, Tickles. He appears to be purely mortal, though the script says nothing about what crimes he committed or why the guards allow him to remain dressed as a clown. Kali's mission: Doctor Jekyll thinks that Tickles is the only living being possessed of a "sociopath gene." Jekyll thinks that if the Allies can harvest this genetic material from Tickles, they can weaponize it against the Illuminati and end the Allies' long war with the evil aliens. But the good guys can't just beat up Tickles and take his genes, because supposedly anesthetizing the subject will mess up the experiment. So for half the film Fourteen gives viewers stupid talking-heads scenes in which Kali talks with Tickles, who keeps sexualizing her even though she's in a heavy space suit.

Other parts of the film consist of romantic drivelings between Kali and her lover Van Helsing, or of unimaginative cussing by Bigfoot. Toward the last half-hour of the flick, Fourteen somehow breaks out of prison and pilots his way into deep space. There he crosses paths with Van Helsing and blasts him to smithereens. Oh, no, will the poor princess be deprived of her lover? Ah, it's ok: Jekyll knows how to clone the deceased clone, and in no time it's back to status quo, except that Tickles makes contact with the Illuminati through their agent Crowley.

Other points of (meager) interest: so far it's the first film in the series that contains so little action that it's subcombative. Fourteen tosses in a Nietzsche quote at the movie's opening, which might be a little impressive if it wasn't the SAME EFFING QUOTE that EVERYTHING ELSE USES. There's a brief convo between Bigfoot and a werewolf that suggests a possible uprising of a "beast world," and that sounds more interesting than anything in this total dud. 

                  

BIGFOOT VS. MEGALODON (2021)

 

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

The "Bigfoot in Space" series was only two installments old when the writer-director managed to produce what might be the worst in the series.

True, BVM is just more plotless blather with explicit sexual language added. But this time, BC Fourteen introduces the mutated shark Megalodon, and even troubles to give him an origin of sorts-- but does not actually trouble to produce a face-off, much less a battle, between the two monsters. Possibly I'll see one in BVM 2, though that didn't get foisted upon the streaming public until 2023. 

The next installment for 2021 took Bigfoot down a Yuletide pathway, BIGFOOT VS. KRAMPUS. If I'm lucky, maybe Krampus will not be capable of speech, and I'll be spared more of Fourteen's rotten dialogue.    

BIGFOOT VS. THE ILLUMINATI (2020)

 

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

Given that this film shares the same date as TRUMP VS THE ILLUMINATI, the creator probably never meant to follow up his lame "satire" directly. Thus BIGFOOT VS THE ILLUMINATI stands as a soft reboot of the other film, with no references to the Trump-Clone or his climactic confrontation with Lucifer. All of the other regular characters are in place: Van Helsing (now said to be the clone of a Jack Van Helsing, who as far as I know never appeared anywhere), his suit-clad paramour Kali, the Allies, the Illuminati (whose foot soldiers are now called "Archons"), and the occultist Aleister Crowley, who's been incarnated in the body of a Bad Grey alien. Bigfoot appeared briefly in TRUMP but did almost nothing, so that may have been the director monetizing the animation-work he did in advance of this flick. BVTI may also be the first appearance of "Xterminator," who gets his own feature in 2023, and his appearance in the same film as Bigfoot makes the movie a very minor monster mashup.

This time, Van Helsing goes looking for Bigfoot to help out against the Illuminati, going on the memory that the real VH was acquainted with the hairy monster as a buddy. Their meeting is complicated by the fact that VH is a clone, but Bigfoot eventually gets over his reluctance and joins the space-war effort. Fourteen's sloppy script more or less implies that Bigfoot is a thousands-years-old survivor of the devastated Earth, but how he came to live in the galactic empire is never related. Bigfoot talks tough and uses lots of foul language, but he does very little and most of the combative action here is just spaceships, fighting with the most minor CGI-FX.

Once again, it's a lot of plotless jibber-jabber with a few esoteric references to Crowley's occultism thrown in for no good reason. Oh, and there's also no explanation as to whether Kali's ship-physician "Doctor Jekyll" has anything to do with the original Victorian experimenter. As I work my way through this sludge, I think an explanation is unlikely to appear, so if anyone's a crossover-icon here. Jekyll's probably not one.  

  

TRUMP VS. THE ILLUMINATI (2020)

 

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

I've reviewed a couple of the low-budget, made-for-streaming cartoon movies made by writer/director BC Fourteen, and both were pretty dull. I have to assume that Fourteen, whose career is dominantly in CGI animation, keeps getting work because streaming services are willing to buy kilotons of animated flicks. This would make sense if all of Fourteen's movies were designed to keep the kiddies entertained. Instead, the guy has a whole science-fiction series which uses foul language, meaning that someone thinks there are consumers, adolescent or older, who might be beguiled by such films. I doubt that most streaming-consumers are even aware of Fourteen's efforts, and the only reason I decided to explore them further is because I'm deeply into both (a) crossovers and (b) monster-mashes.

TRUMP VS. THE ILLUMINATI seems to be the first of Fourteen's SF-series, also involving such featured characters as Bigfoot, Xterminator, and Jack Van Helsing, a clone of the descendant of the DRACULA slayer, appearing here three years before he gets his own film. In the time of the historical Donald Trump, Earth is wiped by aliens called "Illuminati," who look like the popular image of alien abductors, "The Greys." However, the Chinese clone Trump, and Clone-Trump escapes Earth before it's destroyed. He lands on Mars and lives there, with another lost astronaut, for a thousand years.

At the end of that millennium, the Illuminati face opposition from another band of aliens, called the Allies, who somehow form the idea that only Clone-Trump can destroy the Illuminati, and their devilish master Lucifer. To that end, the Allies' queen Varuna (named for a male Hindu god and claiming to be an "Atlantean") journeys to Mars. Clone-Trump refuses her invitation to battle her enemies, but then Illuminati foot-soldiers, aware of a prediction that the reborn 45th President can destroy them, also show up on Clone-Trump's doorstep. Surprisingly he beats them up, and when reinforcements arrive, Varuna teleports the clone into her ship, where he reluctantly agrees to join them.

Varuna's subordinate Princess Kali may be the one who gathered at least two other clones of Earth-entities: Doctor Jekyll and Bigfoot. Fourteen devotes no time to explaining either one, though he would later use Bigfoot in half a dozen other similar productions. Van Helsing, though, is the only clone with whom Kali is sleeping. Kali may not be a Grey, since she and Van Helsing, like Clone-Trump, are never seen outside of a heavy spacesuit-- which suggests that the director knew his CGI couldn't make credible human beings. Yet another historical figure is apparently reincarnated as a Grey: the 20th-century occultist Aleister Crowley, who communes with the Egyptian god Anubis but serves the unseen Illuminati lord Lucifer.

All of this folderol does align BC Fourteen with other bad-movie makers, such as Ed Wood and Jerry Warren with respect to erratically raiding history and pop culture to buttress their grab-bag universes. Fourteen's version of Donald Trump is as stupidly executed as all his other borrowings, with all the usual Liberal triggers included, so it seems a given that he only used Trump's name as a means of getting attention. From what I can tell, this was Clone-Trump's only appearance in the Fourteen-verse, and most of the installments that followed would focus upon his not-much-less-stupid iteration of Bigfoot. FWIW, I judge Clone-Trump to fit the persona of "monster," since in his confrontation with Lucifer, he's more of an unleashed force of nature than a hero.              

SWAMP THING (1991)

 

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

By 1991, both Alan Moore and Rick Veitch (and artist collaborators) had turned the SWAMP THING into an opus dedicated to metaphysical and psychological speculations. But as far as other media were concerned, there'd never been any Swamp Thing but the two live-action movies, loosely based upon the original 1970s comic series. 

The 1990 live-action teleseries, budget-restricted though it was, at least stayed in tune with the dramatic feel of the first movie. This cartoon series-- consisting of just five "tryout" episodes-- sometimes resembles the overtly comedic RETURN OF SWAMP THING, but without enough jokes for the cartoon to register as a comedy. So I have to deem the 1991 show an "adventure" series, since the emphasis is on turning plant-mutated scientist Alec Holland into a swamp-dwelling crusader, complete with a bunch of crime-fighting gadgets (some of which certainly must have made it into the SWAMP THING toy line).

This swamp-hero also has a small coterie of friends: a couple of kids, a young woman named Abigail (with no romantic angle attached), and two diverse but still bland adult action-guys, Tomahawk (Native American) and Bayou Jack (Black). I think the animators could have switched the dialogue-tracks for the two guys and no one would have noticed any difference. Since the two movies featured mad scientist Arcane as the Thing's only opponent, he appears in all five episodes as Swampy's regular enemy, complete with a gang of mutated henchmen, one of whom is named "Weedkiller." The voice-actor for Arcane gets the short serial's one good line: observing the fall of a radioactive satellite into the swamp, Arcane says, "I love radiation-- it's so INTENSE."