TYRANT OF LYDIA AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1963)

 

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

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

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

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

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

HARD ROCK ZOMBIES (1984)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                 

                  

THE NINJA VIXENS: THE FINAL CONSPIRACY (1991)

 

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

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

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

Avoid avoid avoid.   

 

THE NINJA VIXENS: VEIL OF ILLUSIONS (1990)

 

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

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

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

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

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

        

THE NINJA VIXENS: THE KAGERO SQUAD (1990)

 

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

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

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

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

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

             

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                

GENERAL INVINCIBLE (1983)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              

    
   

MEATBALLS 2 (1984), MEATBALLS 3 (1986)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                              

SPACE MONSTER WANGMAGWI (1967)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

        

MONSTER SEAFOOD WARS (2020)

 

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

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

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

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

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

WAR OF THE GOD MONSTERS (1985)

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

THE CHALLENGE OF THE LADY NINJA (1983)

 

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

Though CHALLENGE is one of the many "marvelous ninja" films, the creators don't just throw random powers out in all the scenes. Usually the titular lady ninja Wu (Elsa Yeung) fights with her enemies with hand-to-hand arts or with swords, while only occasionally resorting to abilities like illusion-casting. To be sure, there's a scene toward the end in which a rival ninja burrows through the ground like a mole. But for most ninja-flicks, that's restrained.

It's WWII, and the Japanese occupy large parts of China. Despite this state of affairs, Chinese national Wu has managed to live in Japan for 17 years, learning all the arts of the ninja from her master and a fairly small number of adherents. After Wu survives a rigorous baptism of fire, she wins her "ninja badge" and is subsequently informed that her father in China has been murdered. Worse, the murderer appears to have been Lee Tung, fiancee to Wu, who's become an agent for the Japanese and is rounding up Chinese dissidents. Wu doesn't spend much time emoting about losing her dad; in no time she's back in China, planning to execute her traitorous ex-fiancee.

She's not able to get past the guards of Lee Tung's compound, though, so she tells some friends that she's going to enlist a quartet of women-- all total strangers, by the way-- to help her pull off her assassination, arter she gives them a few days of ninja training. This is the weakest section of the film, but fortunately, the script doesn't expect the viewers to pay much attention to the four sidekicks, aside from an ex-prostitute who furnishes some sexual humor. Better, they're really just extra hands and don't detract from Elsa Yeung, the only martially skilled performer, getting most of the action. 

The sidekicks are merely necessary when Wu decides that the only way to get a shot at Lee is to knock off his highly-skilled bodyguards individually. These scenes are the film's highlights, particularly for a scene in which one guardian fights by flinging spider-webs (!) while another, a female wrestler (Yin Su-li, seen above at left), engages Wu in a fight within a watery basement. Wu is nothing if not prepared: she comes wearing a bathing-suit decorated by hand-imprints. What this is supposed to mean back in WWII China is anyone's guess.   

Once the bodyguards are eliminated, there's nothing much left but a big face-off between Wu and Lee-- though in contrast to most chopsockies, there is a twist ending that works pretty well. It's a low-budget ninja-flick with minor sexploitation elements, and for what it is, it's decent diversion.     

A SMOKY MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS (1986), UNLIKELY ANGEL (1996)

 

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

When Dolly Parton made these two made-for-TV fantasy movies, one ten years after the other, she certainly didn't need the money thanks to her consistent musical success over the years. But as I thought about it, Dolly's appearances on TV were probably more important to mainstreaming both her persona and her musical work than the big screen. Only three of her theatrical films scored big with audiences, and I'd argue that even with the best writers and directors available in Hollywood, her folksy nature wasn't the sort of thing Hollywood was good at channeling. TV, though, may also have offered Dolly and her people more control over her role in the projects. And aside from all the business considerations, Dolly *seems* to me like the sort of performer who genuinely enjoyed doing her thing, and TV has the advantage of being able to disseminate lots of material, very quickly.

The story of A SMOKY MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS is credited to Dolly (one of two TV-films whose scripts have her name on them) and to a journeyman writer of TV scripts, William Bleich, while the director was Henry "Fonzie" Winkler. While Dolly's public persona was that of a country girl who never deserted her roots, SMOKY begins with Dolly's character Lorna, also a country singer, being estranged from her roots-- for about five minutes. Lorna gets fed up with Hollywood and decides to take off for a cabin in the Smokies, just to get away from it all, She leaves so precipitately that her manager thinks she's been kidnapped-- which never becomes important to the story-- but a paparazzi named Harry knows the truth, and he tails Lorna, thinking to find some great story.

Well, there's a great story in SMOKY, but it's named "Snow White," which is what Dolly and Bleich were re-arranging for their Xmas effort. Shortly after Dolly gets stopped on the road by randy cop Jensen (Bo Hopkins), she goes on her way, and then Jensen is "pulled over" by a comely lady on a horse, one Jezebel (Anita Morris). Not only does their conversation establish that Jezebel is a bonafide Smoky Mountain witch, she also tips the writers' hands by asking Jensen "who's prettier?"

And in case that parallel doesn't sink in for some viewers, Dolly and her colleague throw the next folklore-motif right in the audience's face-- for who does Lorna meet at the cabin, but seven little people? Okay, they're seven orphans who escaped the orphanage, and most of them don't parallel the famous Disney versions. Except one kid, who alone doesn't welcome the lovely visitor to the cabin, who might as well be called "Grumpy." But he's overruled by the other children, who are happy to adopt Lorna as their makeshift momma, one complete with songbird talents. Lorna's motives in accepting the gig are more dubious. She wanted to get back to her roots so that she could create new songs, not an ersatz family. But her maternal instincts come to the fore, and eventually she finds herself defending "her" kids from the evils of child services. (Given Dolly's biography-- that she and ten other kids were raised in a one-room Tennessee cabin-- nostalgia for her early years was probably more important to her than any strong arc for Lorna's character.) 

She even finds a "prince" in the form of a mysterious recluse named "Mountain Dan," played by none other than Lee Majors. Dolly and Majors don't have any romantic chemistry, but the script is pretty much sticking the "Snow White and her Prince" on the backburner in favor of more kid-stuff.

Witch Jezebel offers more narrative interest, and director Winkler does his best visuals with the sorceress showing off her mountain-magic. Her motives too don't bear much examination either, Since Jensen doesn't keep pursuing Lorna, Jezebel's enmity is explained by her misperception that Lorna is a "White Witch." This eventually leads to Jezebel trying to put Lorna into a deep sleep with a magic pie (a little "Sleeping Beauty" dropped in), and though Lorna is saved from eternal rest, it isn't through her romance with her Prince. Anyway, the main thing is that Dolly smiles a lot and sings some forgettable songs, so there was a little fun to see the country girl face, and defeat, rural magic.

But there's not even a modicum of fun to be had with the ten-years-later UNLIKELY ANGEL. Oddly, it starts out with another version of Dolly, known this time as "Ruby," who initially sounds like she sleeps around quite a bit-- though the language is purposefully vague, in case any kids might be watching. Ruby dies in a car crash and finds herself at the Pearly Gates. She meets Saint Peter (Roddy MacDowall), who tells her she's not admissible to Heaven, unlike most of her family, because she was selfish and only did what she wanted in life. But she can redeem herself if she returns to Earth and brings together a widower and his estranged kids. However, she's not allowed to have any romantic relationships herself, because, after all, she's dead.

Th writers might have found some balance between Ruby's original selfishness and her intention to be a Good Samaritan to the widower and kids. But the script doesn't follow through on the imputation of selfishness. As soon as Ruby becomes housekeeper to the widower-- for whom she eventually has feelings, of course-- she turns into a super-cheery version of Mary Poppins. There's no clear villain this time, only the ticking clock of Heaven's whims-- and all the kid-stuff that was moderately diverting in SMOKY is just boring here. Again, Dolly smiles and Dolly sings, so for those things alone, ANGEL isn't a total loss. 

Meager as these TV-films are, they're probably Dolly's best offerings in metaphenomenal entertainment, when compared with her ill-advised guest appearance on an episode of Seth MacFarlane's wretched STAR TREK imitation THE ORVILLE. Despite her "larger-than-life" nature, Dolly was probably better suited for sassy but down-to-earth comedies and doleful melodramas. But given how many other gifts she had, it's too much to expect her to be good at *everything.*

                

DOUBLE AGENT 73 (1974)

 

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

I'll start by picking on the title of this infamous dog. Yes, everyone knows that that the "73" denotes the size of the knockers sported by star Chesty Morgan, and I suppose the "double" is thrown in to remind the intended audience that there were a whole *TWO* 73-inch breasts on display throughout much of this micro-budgeted production.

But the exploitative title provides more amusement than most of the script for AGENT, co-written by director Doris Wishman. A "double agent" is expressly a agent of one government who infiltrates another such agency, pretending to be loyal to the second group while actually funneling intel back to the agent's original employer. But that's not the case with Morgan's character Jane Tennay (IMDB claims it's Jean Genet, which I think must be someone's inside joke, but probably not Doris Wishman's). Jane is just an "agent." Her employers want to find out who's smuggling in drugs with aid from the Communists, so they give Jane a list of suspects. The entire plot involves Jane going from place to place and becoming acquainted with the suspects in order to suss out their criminal endeavors. In practice, though, Jane always fails to fool her targets, and there's some violence, with Jane managing to kill her opponents. Frankly, it would have made more sense if Jane's agency had just directed her to kill off all these crooked types, since she ends up playing the role of assassin anyway.

But if she was just an assassin, she wouldn't have need the gimmick that obliges Jane to expose her mammoth mammaries every 15 minutes. The agency somehow sticks a mini-camera into her boobs, and every time she kills or at least incapacitates a foe, she takes his picture with her tit-cam. Again, the info doesn't really seem to do the agency much good when they get it at picture's end, and certainly doesn't justify the bosses installing a self-destruct device in the camera, one that will destroy the evidence and keep Jane from falling into enemy hands. To be sure, Jane returns to her bosses before this happens, but she does not seem to resent the strategy in any way.

Wishman's gimmicks, by the way, were the only thing that interested me in reviewing this dull flick. Her tit-cam doesn't qualify as a diabolical device, but her cut-rate arsenal-- including am exploding lipstick and a spiked earring she can fling to kill an opponent, as with a shuriken-- certainly make the grade. She even has what appears to be an "acetylene ring," for when she's tied up in her last encounter with the main villain, she uses *something* to burn off her ropes. These weapons are the only things that mark Jane as a combative type, for there's no indication that Jane can fight. To be sure, no one else in the movie can fight either-- and that's probably because the exigencies of fight choreography would have strained the film's budget. (Jane does stun a guy by hitting him with a tit, though.) 

But there's no similar excuse for the banal dialogue, or for Wishman's over-reliance on extreme close-ups to cover for the fact that so little is happening. The sex scenes are brief and mediocre, as if Wishman was convinced that the near-constant display of the Size 73's was her film's only selling-point. She showed the same attitude in her only other film with Morgan, the earlier DEADLY WEAPONS, which I'll probably never review because it was even duller than AGENT, not to mention purely naturalistic. Of course, no one in the movie can act worth a damn, but since Morgan is the star, her deficiencies take center stage. Further, her sagging boobs aren't likely to inspire lust in any but the most breast-fixated. 

It's a shame that there were never that many female superspies in cinema, but Chesty Morgan adds nothing to their ranks. AGENT isn't amusing enough to be "so bad it's good," but I suppose it's interesting to wonder why Wishman undertook such a project. I still haven't fully evaluated her repertoire, but AGENT will probably add little luster to any such analysis.  

LEGEND OF THE SEEKER, SEASON TWO (2009-10)

 

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

The first season dealt with the relatively mundane threat of warlord Darken Rahl's dominion of the SEEKER fantasy-realm. Season Two, however, concerns a more cosmic threat. The three heroes-- Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd-- managed to kill Rahl, but in so doing they open a rift between the living world and the world of the dead. The Keeper, malefic ruler of the death-realm, uses this opportunity to seek the world's destruction, unleashing zombie-like beings called "banelings" and installing the ghost of Darken Rahl as his lieutenant. The heroes must find a mystic artifact, the Stone of Tears, in order to seal the gap between the worlds.

This time, though, the three heroes get a fourth ally. drawn from the ranks of the Mord-Sith, the priestesses of pain and torture who normally serve the head of the Rahl bloodline. Early in the second season it's revealed that the father of Darken Rahl wished to spawn a second son who would overthrow the first one, and that second son was Richard. Cara Mason (Tabrett Bethel) decides that as a Mord-Sith formerly loyal to the previous Rahl, she now must follow Richard's band as they seek the talisman that can save the world. Her decision is aided by the discovery that the priestesses who recruited Cara betrayed her-- but even more so, her choice to walk the heroes' road represents a desire to reaquire her lost humanity. That said, though the trio of Richard, Zedd and Kahlan worked well, Cara adds a refreshing new element, as her ruthlessness and acerbic attitude add considerable "edge" to the proceedings.

As in the first season, the showrunners alternate between simple, "done in one" predicaments and the more "cosmic" events. The Mord-Sith Denna returns to cause the Seeker-group more trouble, and a new group of enemies, the Sisters of the Dark, are prominent in Season Two; they seek to control the magic of the Rahl line that Richard has inherited. The vague mythology behind the fantasy-verse is established as a duality: the female Creator engendered the world, but her consort envied her love for humans and sought to destroy her children. In the best tradition of the Miltonic deity, the Creator exiled her consort to the afterlife, so that he became the Keeper. Toward the end of the season, Darken Rahl is able to come back to life, playing a lone hand against both his infernal master and his half-brother Richard.

The most mythically complex episodes all congregate toward the end of the season, such as--

"Bound"-- This story exemplifies the "Wizard's Second Rule:" the greatest harm can result from the best of intentions. Nicci, the most formidable of the Dark-Sisters, casts a spell that imperils Kahlan's life. The spell can only be broken if Kahlan contacts the spirit of her long-dead mother, but this necessitates making contact with Kahlan's long-estranged father. Kahlan's father Frederick tyrannized his two daughters after their Confessor-mother passed away-- but he too was the victim of tyranny, as he was forced to love, marry and procreate with Kahlan's mother. The dispelling of ghosts from the past proves more effective than the cancellation of Nicci's magic.

"Desecrated"-- a magician, Cormac, abducts Cara and Kahlan to force Richard to dispense justice upon the leaders of a village that sinned against him. A ticking clock inheres in the fact that the two heroines are confined in a tomb where the air is running out. Cara and Kahlan, despite often competing with one another, now compete to see which of them can sacrifice her life for the other, resulting in a hand-to-hand battle.

"Extinction"-- Rahl has returned to the living world, and because he knows his brother needs the help of the fairy-like Night Wisps, he orders the delicate creatures massacred. Kahlan finds and saves one pregnant Night Wisp and charges Cara with getting the fairy to a spawning-ground, which makes for more scenes both amusing and touching as the hard-bitten warrior-woman has to call upon her softer side to keep the fragile entity alive.

"Eternity"-- the Seeker-group encounters a Mord-Sith named Dahlia. She claims that Cara spawned a son with Darken Rahl during her service to him, and then Rahl now wants to use him as a pawn. Cara won't agree to let this matter distract from their mission to use the Stone of Tears to save the world, but the others are more humanitarian in nature. It's a trick, of course, for Dahlia, despite having had intimate relations with Cara in the past, is working for Rahl. Cara is captured and subjected to new tortures to restore her allegiance, and at the end of the episode, Cara seems to have been turned.

"Tears"-- The final episode of Season Two starts with Zedd having rewritten the past to restore Cara to normal. Then it's a race to reach the site where the Stone can used to seal the rift, so of course Richard gets separated from his allies. This separation prefigures other shifts in loyalty, with the sorceress Nicci enslaving Kahlan and the Keeper taking over the body of a young boy whom Richard trusts. Unfortunately the final season does end with some dangling plot-threads, as both Rahl and Nicci remain at large once the world's been saved, and Richard and Kahlan still can't consummate their love for Various Reasons. I said earlier that SEEKER may have been a little too much a "straight" magical fantasy to be as successful as XENA and HERCULES, and that still seems like the most likely reason for its brief shelf-life.

             

SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY (2026)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

The substantial improvement of the third and fourth MCU/Sony SPIDER-MAN films, in comparison to the "meh" first and second films in the series, moves me to posit a symmetry between NO WAY HOME and BRAND NEW DAY.

HOME is about how the hero responds ethically to villains.

DAY is about how the hero responds ethically to monsters.

I'm sure I could be cooking up this symmetry out of my on preoccupations. Still, all four of these MCU/Sony spider-projects have shared in common two writers-- Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers-- so that's one real-world symmetry. And until the fourth in the series, Jon Watts directed them all, only to be replaced by Destin Daniel Cretton. But even if none of the previous raconteurs had returned, whoever worked on DAY would have been obliged to deal with the dangling plotline from HOME: the mind-wiping spell that restored the secrecy to Spider-Man's secret identity but also caused his two best friends to forget they'd ever known Peter Parker.

Now while NO WAY HOME probably owes some debt to the 2007 comics-story ONE MORE DAY, BRAND NEW DAY movie bears little resemblance to the 2008 comic of the same name. DAY's script forces Peter Parker (Tom Holland) to revert to a status not unlike that of the 1962 comics-Parker: an antisocial loner. Having been cut off from his boon friends MJ and Ned (Zendaya, Jacob Batalon), Parker chooses not to seek new acquaintances, but to devote all of his time to being Spider-Man. Even his confidante on the NY police force, Jean DeWolff, intuits that the hero is burning the candle at both ends. But there's a new menace in town, and this time it's not a familiar face from the Spidey rogues' gallery, but a monster-- albeit a monster with a hero's name.

I belabor this point because audiences don't respond to monsters the same way they respond to villains. Some reviewers were understandably ticked off to learn that the mystery menace-- a psychic able to remotely possess and control innocent people-- is named after the classic X-MEN character Jean Grey. This Jean Grey shares none of the history of other Jean-iterations, so while I wasn't crazy about the usage of the name, I wasn't as scandalized as those other reviewers. I will castigate the writers for making Grey *seem* to be a diabolical villain for the movie's first two acts, when they show her executing some mysterious grudge against the government agency Damage Control. Then the writers shift gears in the third act, making Grey a monster obsessed by the wrongs done her by the agency, more "sinned against" than embracing the life of sin, as do proper villains.

Yet I cut McKenna and Sommers a small break on the storytelling problems of DAY. I admire how the relatively new concept of Jean Grey's monomania against Damage Control-- for reasons I'll skip over-- acts as a mirror to the hero's obsession. This Spider-Man didn't lose his Uncle Ben, but "with great power there comes great responsibility" remains his watchword. But just as Grey loses herself in her obsession-- so much so that it never occurs to her to tell Spidey why she has a mad on for Damage Control-- Parker in effect neglects his "responsibility" to himself. The spider-DNA within his system begins to mutate the hero, at least partly due to his emotional trauma. This makes it tough for him to cope with the many pawns Grey sends against him, as well dealing with more unscrupulous crusaders, like the Punisher, making his debut in a live-action Spider-movie.

I'd find it easy to believe that the main reason McKenna and Sommers only name-dropped Jean Grey because some higher-up demanded some X-reference in DAY, just because the impending DOOMDSAY movie will reboot the MCU Universe to include the X-Men and other "Disney acquisitions." This possibility should seem probable to any viewer who suffered through ABC's godawful attempt to shoehorn The Inhumans into the AGENTS OF SHIELD universe. But the film's other major crossover proves far less problematic. After Spider-Man experiences his own "Hulk-out" moment due to his mutations, he has a smidgen of good fortune when Bruce Banner lectures at a Big Apple college, allowing Parker to get some advice about controlling one's inner monster. Unfortunately, this also puts the power of the Hulk into Jean Grey's clutches.

I'm not giving away much in divulging that the only cure for Peter Parker's malady is a return to the status quo from just before the worldwide revelation of Spidey's identity. I'm still not in love with these iterations of Parker's besties, but Zendaya and Batalon acquit themselves well-- though it goes without saying that all the support-cast proves secondary to Holland's performance as the wall-crawling bad-luck boy. DAY has its share of good character moments, but the movie wouldn't have become such a box-office phenomenon if it were not also, to invoke Martin Scorcese's terms, an entertaining roller-coaster ride. The biggest downside to this DAY is that Tom Holland probably doesn't have many more years to play the web-slinger, even though the character's finally been purged of all the extraneous MCU elements of the first two films.

                             

      

          

SUPERMANSION SEASON THREE (2018-9)

 

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

The final episode of Season Two set up the gimmick for Season Three. Titanium Lex defied her adoptive father Doctor Devizo by saving Rex from death, but Devizo turned the situation to his advantage. Because Devizo and the Injustice Club helped repel the Subtopian invasion, the government gives the Club permission to move into the Mansion and join the League.

HOME IS WHERE THE SHART IS-- Hijinks ensue as the League and the Club attempt to share living space. Lex acts as liaison since she's been a member of both groups, and her loyalties are still divided. Though she saved Rex's life, she didn't tell him that Devizo betrayed him-- apparently because she still has feelings for her adoptive father. Groaner tries to break things off with Black Saturn but then becomes jealous as Saturn spends more time with his sidekick Ringler (aka Portia's former bf Courtney).

MASTERS OF LEX-- For the first time, Lex treats both Rex and Devizo as her fathers, by trying to provoke them into getting angry/protective when she dates a promiscuous vigilante, Max Penalizer. Robobot starts telling white lies to make life easier and ends up creating a death cult.

MY COUSIN KITTY-- A flashback reveals how Cooch was transformed from a regular cat into a cat-humanoid and how Rex took her into the League. Now Cooch's original owner sues to get back Cooch (and for $1 million damages), so Robobot becomes a lawyer by downloading countless David E Kelley TV shows. Groaner, irritated at having been eclipsed by Ringler, plans to expose Saturn's most humiliating secret. Lex is perturbed that aside from Penalizer, no men seem to want to approach her, and even Saturn, the ex she deemed far beneath her, ignores her entirely.  

ILIGA THEIR OWN-- Although Rex manages to get Devizo's team moved to a new location, the villains steal furniture from the Mansion, forcing the heroes to go shopping at the superstore Iliga (parody of Ikea). The man in charge is the League's foe Ivan Whiff, and in addition to selling shoddy furniture he plans to take over the world with Swedish supervillains. One of these villains, Bugula, has a hate for Black Saturn and nearly breaks his back. This is doubly significant because in an earlier episode Saturn pretended to be a Bane-like villain named Mange -- but here the doofus hero gets the treatment the comics-Batman got when Bane busted Batman's spine. In other news, Lex learns from Robobot that her insect-DNA has been emitting pheromones, so that she repels human males. (Again, no mention yet of her bisexuality since Season One.)

BROKEBACK SATURN (G)-- In a first-class spoof of the Batman-Bane comics-storyline, Saturn remains bedridden at the Mansion when a new menace arises. To cope with the menace, the government enlists Ringler to don a suit of super-armor and to become Saturn's replacement-- thus forming a parallel to Brokeback Batman being briefly being replaced by an armored "new Batman." Saturn is aghast to see citizens liking the new Saturn better, and showing more nerve than sense, leaves his sickbed and assumes the Mange ID, the better to trick Ringler into surrendering the armor. As for the threat, at first it looks as if Cooch's purely imaginary tormentors, Irish leprechauns, are real. But the 'chauns (as Cooch calls them) are part of a greater supernatural evil that has possessed Portia Jones, with which the League must grapple in the ensuing episode.

THE LONG CHAUN-- This follow-to "Brokeback Saturn" is the closest thing to a poor episode yet, as the League journeys to the god-realm, occupied by Zenith's people, the leprechauns and assorted fantasy-creatures. Such scenes as Zenith fighting her evil uncle Ridan and Robobot turning human are under-developed, and the only bit that works involves a big finish to Cooch's antipathy to leprechauns.

SUMMER VACATION SPECIAL (G)-- The third special is the best of the five, delivering a fine spoof of Hawaiian vacation stories. Rex meets a retired Barack Obama, Ranger tries to impress a USO audience with corny old routines, Robobot endures a timeshare, and Black Saturn holds a secret that may allow a shark-man to conquer the surface.

BACK IN BLACK TO THE FUTURE (G)-- A coda to "Black to the Future" posited that even though the League prevented the birth of Gamora, a future version of American Ranger will become just as much of a tyrant. At the end of "Long Chaun," the heroes are flung out of the god-realm into the Tyrant-Ranger. Saturn's dim brain finally realizes that his future self is married to Future Groaner, and Cooch meets "the Bureaucat," a button-down version of herself. But this time the Future-Tyrant isn't what "he" appears to be, for *she* is actually futuristic Titanium Lex, whose insect-DNA has mutated her into a soulless monster. When the League returns to its own time, Lex must figure out how to restrain her evil nature.

OPTIMO REX-- While the League is gone, Sgt Agony uses Rex's DNA to make a Rex clone, Optimo Rex, who's as even-tempered as Rex is cranky. Moreover, Devizo's team has taken over the Mansion, forcing the original League to move into the Club's rundown hovel. Rex takes the downgrade badly and becomes a near-supervillain when he makes a Devizo clone to get even. 

SYMPATHY FOR BLACK SATURN (G)-- Cooch protects the rock-monster Liplor from Devizo, and Robobot tries to help Lex control her transformations. But the A-plot concentrates on two clans of monsters. one of vampires and one of werewolves, seeking to convert Saturn to their cause, in a clever spoof of UNDERWORLD. Courtney gets turned into a vampiric valet. 

 

COMICARNAGE-- The League attends a comics convention, where Rex runs into his previous team, "Da League," who are even lamer than his current heroes. Geek jokes abound, with an odd subplot devoted to David "American Werewolf" Naughton turning into a real wolf-monster.

JUNGLE ALL THE WAY // DEBBIE DOES DEVIZO-- Agony talks the League into playing "Expendables" for a rescue mission on a tropical island. The heroes soon learn that it's a prison for international supervillains, and that one of the prisoners has devised metal gauntlets which harness the powers of numerous criminals. The gauntleted villain is Debbie Devizo, formerly Doctor Devizo's wife, who committed adultery with Rex. For revenge Devizo lured her to the island so that she became part of the prisoner population, becoming tough and embittered. She hates both Rex and Devizo but will leave Rex alone if he allows her to murder Devizo. Lex for her part fears that the only way to stop Devizo is to transform into her mantid self. When she does so, Debbie gets defeated and returned to the island-- but Lex's return to normalcy is only temporary.  

A PRAYER FOR MISTER T-- It's SUPERMANSION's Thanksgiving special. Devizo invites the League to the Mansion, resuming a tradition in which Rex and the Doctor competed to see who could produce the best turkey dinner-- though Rex always cheated by having the Mansion's maid Margery do the cooking. This time Devizo gives Margery the week off, and so Rex overcompensates by injecting his turkey, the titular "Mister T," with steroids, creating a turkey monster that promptly lays a bunch of monster-eggs. In other news, Black Saturn gets dissed by his family when he tries to horn in on their holiday, and Margery makes her first on-screen appearance. 

RUN, RANGER, RUN-- After Lex defeats Debbie Deviso, she goes into hiding to master her insect nature, and Saturn has to cope with Groaner's new girlfriend Harley Qu-- er, Patty Mime. But the A-tale concerns the Russian super-soldier Soviet Slayer to challenge Ranger to a ROCKY IV-like boxing match. Ranger is initially spooked by the Slayer's great power, but during the match he rallies, winning the fight but reaching a "detente" with the Russian. At episode's end, it's revealed that Robobot and Devizo secretly have Lex caged in the basement.

TEACHER AND THE GOOF-- TV executives want to get rid of the titular hosts of a long-running children's education show, so they hire Cooch and Liplor as new additions to the program, whom the executives hope to use to edge out Teach and Goof. But Teach is a fanatic who has got rid of all previous co-hosts, so Rex and Robobot intervene. In a dovetailing plotline, Ranger meets a son he begat back in the forties, meaning that Ranger is faced with a eighty-year-old man.

BACK TO THE ISLAND-- Rex finds out that Devizo and Robobot are seeking to cure Lex, but their only hope is to obtain a "power retardant" invented by Debbie-- whom the Doctor returned back to the prison-island. Cooch and Liplor take over hosting the kids' show, with "Meta-Zenith," a fusion of Zenith and Portia, as a guest. Saturn wangles a position as casting director, so he uses his new authority to invite both Groaner and Patty Mime to audition for the same role. hoping to break them up. When Rex and Devizo reach the island, Debbie-- now an ordinary woman-- removes their powers with the retardant. The three of them ramble down memory lane, revisiting the way Debbie, in her superhero ID of Heartshine, fell in love with Devizo, but also sought love with Rex. But this time, Debbie reveals that her Heartshine-power sapped love from Devizo, so he's not entirely responsible for his villainous career. Nevertheless, Rex booby-traps Debbie and obtains the retardant. However, Agony finds out about Lex's threat, forcing Lex and Robobot to go on the run.

BUG HUNT-- While Robobot and Lex go looking for a cure, the artificial man begins to harbor feelings for Rex's daughter. Rex calls the League together to locate the fugitives, while back at the Mansion Debbie, confined to a cell, seeks to get into Devizo's head. The fugitives find an eccentric horse breeder, whose son has access to the DNA of Lex's dead mother. Lex acquires the DNA but transforms into her monster-self, after which she and Robobot must flee again from Agony's forces. The League shows up, chaos ensues, and all the heroes but Saturn are imprisoned.

SATURN'S SIX-- Agony's forces chase Lex, but she managed to conceal her mother's DNA in Robobot's body, thus putting a potential cure in Devizo's hands. Saturn, seeking to free the League, tries to recruit a team of six liberators, but only gets three others: vampire Courtney, his butler Bunsen, and Commissioner Gomez. Saturn dons the Black Saturn armor, but he's still unable to beat Optimo Rex-- though surprisingly Saturn's overall plan works, freeing the League from prison and Courtney from his vampire status. But Agony and his people launch a killing attack on Lex, causing her to morph into a mantis-monster.

BAD LEX-- While Lex slaughters most of the Agony team, Devizo finishes his "gene ripper," though he's not sure it will save Lex or kill her. Lex's mutation gives her the power to resurrect her victims as "drones," and now Bad Lex plans to extinguish humanity with nuclear bombs. Rex refuses to take the gene ripper with them, but Devizo arranges things so that Debbie follows the League with the weapon. Rex keeps Debbie from shooting Lex, but amid the chaos Debbie's own plan coalesces, forcing Devizo to give up his humanity to save his adoptive daughter. The villains return to normal and leave with Devizo, now in total Luthor-mode, and though Lex is at least dominantly normal, the League mourns its fallen member, Robobot.

WORLD WAR TREE-- SUPERMANSION's last outing, an "Earth Day special produced about half a year after the series finale, has the League (including a conveniently rebuilt Robobot) show at an Earth Day celebration. However, eco-terrorist scientists bring a device that turns three sequoia trees into rampaging monsters, and the trees escape with Cooch. Rex seeks out his old "Da League" member Planetessa because she's a "Captain Planet" refugee and can talk to trees. Instead, Planetessa puts Rex and Lex in contact with Mother Earth, and so Planet Earth is saved, even though the League manages to set the sequoia forest aflame.