WHITE PONGO (1945)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                                            There can be little doubt that I've wasted considerable time researching the genesis of this "girl and gorilla" potboiler, but once I learned that there had been two "white gorilla" movies that came out in 1945, I felt compelled to look into their possible relationships. Here's what I posted on Classic Horror Film Board after getting input from the scholarly folks thereabouts.                                                                                                                                     "So in August 1944 Sig Neufeld announces that because PRC's NABONGA is a success he's going to do a movie called "White Gorilla," directed like NABONGA by Sig's brother Sam. But apparently before PONGO gets made, Louis Weiss and Harry Fraser dust off some of the footage of 1927's silent PERILS OF THE JUNGLE (which Fraser wrote, and which appears to have had no white gorillas) and combine it with new footage, with Ray Corrigan of NABONGA playing both a hunter and a white ape, all of which I think hit theaters before Neufeld's WHITE PONGO. Contrary to my early impression, a squib on Wiki says that WHITE GORILLA did make money, Then PONGO comes out in October 1945, according to the Wiki writeup, with Corrigan playing Pongo (whose name almost rhymes with "Nabonga"). One online reviewer says that the same white gorilla suit was worn by Corrigan in both movies, though I don't know you'd prove that, and that it later showed up in Jerry Warren's MAN BEAST."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 After sorting all that out, though, what do we have in producer Neufeld's follow up to NABONGA, which I found moderately engaging even though it too was a potboiler?  Well, PONGO's not even a "trash classic," though it does have its share of oddball details.                                                                           

  The main deficit of PONGO is that even for a jungle-bungle flick, it's saddled with a thoroughly boring set of stock characters, with only the sole billed actress Maris Wrixton managing to put across a little strong emotion. Here's the setup, which I will relate chronologically instead of the piecemeal way director Sam Newfield tells it.  At some point prior to the action of the film, an anthropologist named Dierdorf sets up a station in the Belgian Congo, hoping to capture the fabled albino gorilla White Pongo, which Dierdorf thinks is the missing link between man and ape. Dierdorf captures Pongo but the ape breaks free and kills him, though Dierdorf's assistant Gerig escapes, only to be caught by a local tribe. (Weirdly, they're called "Negritos," which is a term that is probably verboten today but was formerly applied to tribes from Southeast Asia.) Gerig, whom the tribesmen don't seem in a hurry to execute, tells part of his story to a younger explorer, Gunderson, whom the natives do earmark for sacrifice. Gerig helps Gunderson escape with a diary containing Dierdorf's research. On his way out, Gunderson witnesses the Pongo himself as the gorilla assaults a Black couple who have a chimp on a leash. The Africans flee and we see Pongo take the leashed chimp away. One assumes the object of Pongo's intervention was anthropoid liberation, though since we never see the chimp again, he might have given up captivity to become a tasty morsel for a cannibal ape.                                                 

  Providentially, Gunderson makes it to a settlement but dies of fever, serving only to place the diary in the hands of a group of European explorers. An upper-crust Brit anthropologist, Sir Harry, decides to take his merry band and seek out Dierdorf's enclave in the hope of capturing the missing link-- though until the movie's end, no one in the film ever offers a reason as to why they believe an albino gorilla would be such a link. So, even though the expedition didn't necessarily come to Africa to hunt gorillas, off they go loaded for ape-- Sir Harry, his daughter Pam (Wrixton), his snooty secretary Clive, a German jungle-guide, a comedy relief, another convenient anthropologist, and a hired gun named Bishop (Richard Fraser), who would've been the male lead if the film wasn't primarily about Pongo. That said, Pam provides the only thing like dramatic tension as the group tediously treks toward its destination. Though she has apparently at least dated Clive somewhat, she becomes very smitten by Bishop, though he pretends not to reciprocate. Sir Harry makes clear that he doesn't approve of his daughter making up to a man of the lower class. Eventually the party crosses path with the same "Negritos" who are still holding Gerig prisoner, and Gerig tells them everything that he didn't already tell Gunderson.                                           

  Once the expedition reaches the deserted Dierdorf compound, they set a trap for Pongo. In one of the script's few good details, they're assured that Pongo will show up, because the late scientist planted some sort of rare gorilla-goody vegetation in the area. Pongo does show up and pokes around the compound while everyone's asleep, though he wakes Pam, who sees him and screams. Despite the fact that everyone there is counting on Pongo to show up, for some reason they all think she just imagined the critter. Slightly later, Pam makes an all-out play for Bishop, to which he finally surrenders, moments before Clive walks in and the two men fight, very briefly. However, a new threat manifests as the German guide, with Clive as his ally, takes everyone prisoner and ties them up, for he only went along with the expedition to make his way to a cache of jungle-gold. Clive and the guide take Pam as a hostage, but once they're gone Bishop gets free and reveals that he's a Rhodesian agent who's been trying to find the party guilty of some earlier murders. But Bishop doesn't get to square off with the two rotters. That's left up to Pongo, who kills the bad guys and makes off with Pam. She's spared from the fate worse than death by yet a regular-hued gorilla who apparently also wants some human nookie. The fight between the two apes-- the only fairly lively part of the movie-- ends with Pongo's victory, but he's apparently weakened enough by the fight that the explorers manage to overcome him with nothing more than a gunshot to the shoulder. Pongo is taken prisoner and presumably gets shipped back to Europe for study in the thoroughly anti-climactic ending.                                                                                                                                                                                                And then, in the final ten minutes of the film, someone advances that they've tested Pongo's intelligence (how?) and determined that he's smarter than your average ape, so that proves that he is the missing link to man. Or at least maybe a recapitulation of whatever freak of nature led to such an evolutionary leap in antiquity? Who knows? No one ever states that the gorilla is smarter because he has white hair, but it's impossible not to imagine some sort of rough correlation on the part of the writer. The trope of the dueling beasts, who loosely mirror the conflict of the contentious human males for the sole female, is a little more rewarding, but only a little. For what it's worth THE WHITE GORILLA, cut-and-paste job though it was, captured a little more pulp-poetry at its conclusion.  

DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS (1948)

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

In the late 1940s Great Britain was even less productive of horror films than the U.S. I wasn't expecting much from my first screening of DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS, particularly when I noted that director Lance Comfort didn't have a stellar resume. However, DAUGHTER is also the only film IMDB credits to the resume of Max Catto, a novelist and playwright of some repute. For this low-budget movie Catto adapted one of his plays from ten years previous, of which the only summation I've found online was as follows: "the story was... about a young woman who became murderous when she heard the Church organ play." I tend to credit Catto with DAUGHTER's unusually nuanced quality. Since Catto didn't do other film scripts, I hypothesize that the producers offered the writer the chance to adapt the story to his liking-- even though he apparently excised his own concept of the "perilous psycho" being triggered by anything.

Indeed, the viewer of DAUGHTER never has the slightest idea of what goes on in the head of Emmy Baudine (Siobhan McKenna), resident of a small Irish town. The audience knows nothing of Emmy except that once she turns twenty-something, all the men in town are said to be enthralled by her (though the viewer doesn't actually see this) and all the women are fiercely jealous of her. There's never any evidence that Emmy is either oversexed or flirtatious; she keeps to herself, playing the organ in the local church, but the Irish women insist that she's evil, and pressure the priest to send her away. Even more remarkably, just as there's no mention of any psychological failings Emmy may have, the locals don't resort to any standard rationales for evil. There are no mentions of family curses, or "blood taints," or stories of fairy changelings. 

Emmy doesn't abide in Ireland much longer, but before she leaves, she has an encounter that determines the downward path of her fate. A carnival visits her small burg, and Emmy accepts a casual date with Dan, who performs fixed boxing fights as one of the carnival's attractions. He gets handsy with Emmy, so she scratches Dan's face-- hard enough to leave gouge-like scars we see later-- and escapes. That same night, the priest reveals that he's written to an English friend, Tallent, who runs a chicken farm, and that he's arranged for Emmy to become a serving-maid there, in order to pacify the Irish biddies.

However, fate works against Emmy here as well, for though the English farm is owned by a widower named Tallent, women, as much as in the Irish village, control the farm. The two women in control are the patriarch's daughter Julie (Honor Blackman in an early film-role) and Bess Stanforth (Anne Crawford). I frankly didn't catch any clue as to Bess's status. She always acts as if she's part of the family, despite the different last name. A cousin, perhaps. In any case, Julie doesn't have any problems with Emmy when she arrives to begin her new job. But Bess instantly picks up on those "evil vibes," though with zero justification for her dislike.

After a week or two, Emmy does transgress, somewhat. When Julie's boyfriend gets a little flirty with Emmy, the Irish colleen neither strongly encourages nor discourages him. Julie and Bess catch the boyfriend in the act, so he takes most of the heat, and Emmy's life is otherwise uneventful.

Then a carnival comes to the Tallents' English town-- and yes, it's the same one of which Dan's still a member. The Tallent family actually insists that Emmy attend the carnival with them, and of course she gets separated from them and cornered by Dan. He introduces her to his pet Alsatian, who immediately likes Emmy no better than most women. Then Dan gets the girl in a quiet place and attempts to rape her. Later, the dog guides locals to the body of the murdered boxer-- though oddly there's never one word about how Dan was killed.

Now, while the script does not quite take issue with a woman having defended herself from assault, there's a rough implication that the act of murder becomes an obsession for the Irish girl. On one hand, some unknown personage breaks into the local church at night and plays the organ, as if seeking absolution from God. On the other hand, Emmy befriends a perfectly nice chap and apparently kills him as well, since his body ends up in the rafters of the Tallents' barn, which Emmy also sets on fire. This seems less like an attempt to cover up the murder than a confession of her iniquity. And through it all, the Alsatian, having escaped the carnival, roams the area, looking for the slayer of its master.

Bess finally gives Emmy her walking papers, and Emmy reacts by playing up to Julie's naive younger brother. The next day, he's dead from some unspecified cause too, and Emmy's on the run. Bess finds her in the church playing the organ, but Emmy never actually admits her deeds, or even complains about provocation. Bess lets her go, but only because she suspects that Emmy's nemesis is at least ready to strike. After Emmy perishes, director Comfort's final shot is to pan past the periphery of the Church and its decorations, as if to affirm that some demon has been cast out and that normalcy can return.

Catto never states Emmy's motives outright, but the pattern of her killings suggests something like that of the 1940 LODGER script, in which a psychotic man becomes a serial killer to recapture the thrill of his first, more or less unintentional murder. More impressively, DAUGHTER is the earliest gynocentric British film I've encountered. Much like the American "weepies," where all the action revolves around women and the men are just pawns on the female chessboard, DAUGHTER is only concerned with the strange, instinctual world of women, and at times the story seems to validate the feminine ability to suss out, if not outright evil, the bad luck of a perilous, jonah-like individual. 

Both the identity of the organ-player and the canine's eerie quest for justice are given a strong uncanny vibe.     

 

THE JUNGLE PRINCESS (1936)

 

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

There's not much doubt that THE JUNGLE PRINCESS was an attempt to emulate the success of 1932's TARZAN THE APE MAN, since one of the credited writers, Cyril Hume, had worked on two of the MGM Tarzans before contributing to PRINCESS. As an interesting sidebar, director William Thiele went on to helm two MGM ape-man adventures after this film. All that said, PRINCESS is intended to be a romantic drama first and foremost.

Jungle-girl Ulah (Dorothy Lamour in her feature film debut, which "typed" her as a sarong-girl) isn't precisely raised by animals in her rather vague origin. When she's a small girl she's apparently living in the Malaysian jungle with her father, and the father is killed by a tiger (presumably a female) even as the tiger is shot to death. Ulah then just lives in the jungle for the next fifteen or so years alongside the tiger's cub, who ends up looking pretty healthy for a fifteen-year-old tiger. Ulah apparently has some rapport with the local monkey population, who hang out with her despite her tiger companion, though she's never said to wield any literal power over animals.

A group of white hunters come looking for zoo animals, and their party includes Chris Powell (Ray Milland) and his fiancee Ava (Molly Lamont). They're warned by natives of a legend of a "laughing tiger," but this is a superstition that's grown from the locals having heard Ulah's girlish laugh when her tiger friend was roaming about.

Chris ventures into the jungle, where he's attacked by Ulah's tiger, but Ulah appears and orders the tiger to leave him. Ulah takes Chris to her cave to care for him, and almost immediately falls for him. She can only speak what Chris calls "baby-talk Malay," but this common ground gives the hunter the chance to teach Ulah some English. Though it's unlikely that Ulah knows what human sex entails, her body language suggests an intense desire for propinquity at the very least.

Once Chris returns to his camp with Ulah in tow, everyone's glad to see him, but Ava's not the least glad to see Ulah. Ava conceals her hostility, but when Chris invites Ulah to eat with the group at a European-style dinner table, Ava sees an opportunity to make Ulah look bad. She tries to take advantage of the sarong-clad beauty's ignorance by dressing her in foolish clothes. But in a moment that probably gratified female viewers in 1936, Ulah senses what's going on, dumps the bad clothes and cobbles together an impressive outfit that makes Chris appreciate her even more. To his credit, he realizes he's fallen out of love with Ava and tries to be honest with her, though she doesn't want to hear it. 

The natives, still fired by superstition, cage Ulah's tiger and plan to kill it, believing it a demon. They nurture the same plans for Ulah, and when the whites get in the Malaysians' way they're scheduled for sacrifice too. But somehow Ulah's monkey friends (one of which is prominently an African chimp) find out about her peril and come to her rescue, swarming into the Malaysian village and causing havoc. Thanks to the distraction the white hunters are able to escape with Ulah, and later she and Chris are implicitly united, with Ava being a belated good sport about it.

Dorothy Lamour, a former New Orleans beauty queen, enhances her formidable looks with a light, enticing personality. The sarong-look is almost certainly derived from stories about South Sea Island vahines, and though it's hard to tell from the black and white print, it looks to me like the makeup people might have darkened Lamour's skin for the role. In theory Ulah might be at least partly Malaysian, since nothing is said about her mother, and Ulah patently learned her pidgin-Malay from someone. But the broad implication is that Ulah is white, though it's also hard to judge even the father's ethnicity from his brief appearance. As with Tarzan, Ulah is a figure that potentially allowed audiences to flirt with breaking racial codes, in that the character is technically white but suggests the possibility of dallying with someone from the other side of the ethnic tracks.

In addition to the animals' rapport with the sarong-girl, the legend that grows up about "the laughing tiger" fits my category of the phantasmal figuration, even though in this case it arises from a social misapprehension.

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977)

 

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

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, one of a handful of films directed by actor/stuntman John "Bud" Cardos, is just another eco-horror film with a strong structural similarity to JAWS.

Cattle and other animals begin dying in Verde Valley, Arizona, causing local veterinarian Rack Hansen (William Shatner) considerable stress. After he sends samples of a dead calf's blood to the local university, the university sends arachnologist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) to investigate. She finds that the animals were slain by extraordinary quantities of tarantula venom, far more than ordinary spiders can normally generate.

However, there's no literal science-fictional explanation for the behavior of the local tarantula population. Human pesticides designed to protect crops have eliminated most of the normal creatures on which the spiders feed, and so the arachnids began preying on larger targets-- though in truth one never sees them eating their victims, probably because that would have presented too many problems for the crew's "spider wranglers."

Rack and Diane, despite some initial animosity, become allies in trying to convince local authorities to counter the tarantulas with natural predators. Instead, the mayor orders the use of extreme poisons against the spiders. However, the spiders seem to have acquired the military organization of ants, for when the poison-laden crop duster takes off, several of the arachnids stow away and cause the pilot to crash the plane.

Cardos keeps the film moving with a steady stream of incidents and some decent performances by Shatner, Bolling, and Woody Strode. (Shatner even looks like he may still have some or all of his original hair.) The spiders step up their attacks on the human community, leading to many creepy-crawly scenes as they penetrate houses and attack people. Due to the fact that real tarantulas are difficult to wrangle, some scenes depend greatly on the actors selling the illusion of being spider-attacked. The climax, in which the tarantulas prove that they can also spin webs in much greater profusion than any real animals, is evocative despite making no scientific sense.

Rack is the only character given a character subplot, though it doesn't come to much. His brother died in Vietnam, though both the brother's wife Terry (Marcy Lafferty) and his little daughter Linda still live in Verde Valley. Both Rack and Terry have a minor thing for one another, but the shadow of the late sibling keeps them apart-- and then the conflict is never resolved, after the spiders kill Terry. I guess that bit of drama was just present to give Shatner a little extra business to do, but it proves distracting instead.

BEN (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

I stated in my review of the 1971 WILLARD that the real star of the movie was the unhinged fellow of the title, who befriended a pack of rats living in his house and trained them to kill for him. However, I don't think the rat-master of WILLARD's sole sequel is nearly as strong a character, and for that reason it's the titular alpha-rat Ben and his rodent-buddies who provide the central menace.

Naturally the rats still require a sympathetic human to give them sanctuary, particularly since the story of BEN takes place immediately after the death of Willard. Thus the cops (led by Joseph Campanella) and the animal control officials are aware of a rat infestation in a suburban neighborhood. Ben and his kindred are given shelter this time by another outsider, this time Danny Garrison (Lee Montgomery), a little boy with a chancy heart condition. Danny's more vulnerable to discovery than was Willard, because the youngster lives in a house with both his sister (Meredith Baxter) and his mother (Rosemary Murphy), but somehow the young child does manage to conceal a rat-pack in his basement. The two women even think Danny's prattling about Ben just indicates an imaginary friend.

One dramatic problem with BEN is that someone-- probably not returning writer Gilbert Ralston or new director Phil Karlson-- made the decision to make the rat-wrangler a more sympathetic figure. In WILLARD one knows that the protagonist is so put-upon that he's bound to commit retaliatory violence sooner or later, and the script provides a very suspenseful buildup to that conclusion. But although there's one incident when Danny turns his rat-friends against a bully, Danny isn't angry at anyone. The rats are the main source of the menace because of their prolificity. (At one point a character mentions that there are more rats in the world than people.) As the cops and other officials begin to ferret out the rodents' lairs, the beasts respond with more mass-attacks on humans. And though the rats are never precisely sympathetic, the script allows Ben to escape the humans' extermination efforts, leaving matters open for a sequel that (fortunately) never came to pass.

The downside of having a less obsessed rat-master is that the pace of BEN is slower than that of the first film, so that I for one was more aware of how much this theatrical film looked like a TV production. It's certainly not a bad film, but I doubt that BEN carries much cachet these days, beyond the factoid that a young Michael Jackson warbled the movie's theme song.

URSUS IN THE VALLEY OF LIONS (1961)

 

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

A note on two of the tropes mentioned here: the only thing that's uncanny about the titular lions in this flick is that they manage to raise a human baby to become a big strapping muscleman, who, unlike the lions, wears clothes before he ever meets people. The "bizarre crime" referenced is that old peplum favorite the "tug-o-war" between a muscleman and some incredible opponent. Sometimes I subsume these under "diabolical devices," as when the hero's being pulled into a wall of spikes. Here the villain forces a bunch of ordinary people to play a tug-o-war with a brace of elephants trying to drag the people into a blazing inferno. Crime yes, device no.

At any rate this fourth outing gave Ursus an origin of sorts, though the writers weren't really making any attempt at a "continuity" for the character. For one thing, the hero of the first film seems to be a peasant who's extremely strong for no particular reason. VALLEY makes Baby Ursus the last surviving member of a royal line overthrown by a pretender named Ajak (Alberto Lupo). The baby survives Ajak's usurpation and through various contrivances ends up in the care of a pride of lions. Twenty-something years later, Ursus (Ed Fury) dwells in the pride's valley, having no contact with other humans until a slave-caravan breaks down. This scene provides the film's only humor, as the aggrieved master of the caravan complains about his ill fortune that has prevented him selling his slaves in the nearest big city-- also the city where Ajak reigns. But the most important thing is that among the female slaves are the movie's Good Girl and Bad Girl, Annia (Mariangela Giordano) and Diar (Moira Orfei). There's just enough to establish that Diar nurses a deep resentment for Annia before Ursus takes a fancy to Annia and whisks her away to his lair to become his mate. (No sexy scenes here of course: all Annia is seen to do is cook for the big guy.)

Diar is sold to Ajak's court, but in dealing with the slave-master Ajak beholds a medallion the slaver got from Ursus. Ajak realizes that it's an emblem of the royal family he deposed, so he's anxious to wipe out the last trace of any rivals. Diar, ambitious to rise above her station, volunteers to help the evil ruler find Ursus.

The main hero gets a smattering of fight-scenes here, particularly when he has to employ his strength against that brace of elephants, but as a character he's a cipher. The dramatic meat of this opus is between the two females, particularly when Diar, a slave all her life, reveals that her resentment stems from knowing that Annia was a royal at some time in the past. Diar's resentment, though, blinds her to Ajak's treachery and she meets the usual bad end, though only after she's been of help to the hero.

The "Tarzan" borrowings don't do anything to make VALLEY more than a thoroughly average peplum, distinguished only by the hotness of Orfei and Giordano.

THE CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

The Italian title of this film, "Seven Shawls of Yellow Silk," emphasizes the very word that made the giallo ("yellow") film-subgenre infamous. Yet in one way the English title is more on point, for CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT includes the name of the same animal referenced in Dario Argento's crime-thriller of the previous year, CAT O'NINE TAILS.

The main similarity between the two films is that just as a mystery killer begins his (or her) rampage, a blind amateur detective overhears a suspicious conversation and thus becomes involved in tracking down the murderer. In CRIMES the investigator is sightless composer Peter Oliver (Anthony Steffen), and the killer's first victim is a woman with whom Peter was romantically linked. The slain woman was a beautiful fashion model, and Peter begins asking questions at the salon where the victim worked. Through the protagonist and his aides (Peter's butler, the victim's female roommate) the audience becomes acquainted with other models at the salon and with the place's dysfunctional owners, Victor, who sleeps with many of the employees, and Francoise, who's obviously jealous of Victor's activities. 

Pastore does a creditable job of creating a number of weird red herrings, even though anyone who's seen BLOOD AND BLACK LACE will probably have a pretty good idea as to the killer's ID. Though CRIMES was Pastore's only giallo film, he provides a healthy quantity of weirdos and perverts as red herrings. The principal method of death-dealing makes the Hound of the Baskervilles sound mundane. The killer sends his/her targets shawls of yellow silk treated with a special chemical, and then also sends along a container with a cat in it. The cat, whose claws are coated with poison, then goes berserk upon smelling the shawl and scratches the victim with its fatal claws. But just for special occasions, the killer is also capable of dressing up in dark clothes and then offing his/her enemies with edged weapons. A particular eye-opener includes a razor-attack on a showering woman.

Pastore did not manage to emulate any of the memorable character moments of even the so-so Argento films, so none of the characters come alive, least of all the blind man with the two first names. Additionally, for all the baroque quality of the murders, they do not really reflect the murderer's particular movie-psychosis. But, given that CAT O'NINE TAILS remained fairly mundane in its murder-methods, Pastore does at least excel the previous film in that department. 

SHAOLIN INVINCIBLES (1977)

 

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

Within the corpus of kung-fu fans who love their chosen genre at its nuttiest, SHAOLIN INVINCIBLES is best known as "the one where the hot girls fight the gorillas." Being of that elect group myself, I'll happily admit that the "girls vs. gorillas" scenes are indeed the movie's highlight. However, from the standpoint of determining the film's phenomenality, the gorillas, like all the other uncanny elements, play second fiddle to one marvelous lunatic conceit: that the unnamed masters of the gorillas can "give tongue" like nobody's business.

I've used the term "uncanny" for a lot of bizarre body-effects in martial arts films because I felt that the core idea of these effects was that of bending, rather than breaking, the laws of causality. So I've stated that when martial artists "harden" their bodies to be immune to blows, that's "bending" rather than "breaking." I even made the same determination for a warrior who could stretch his limbs a few feet, in MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE. But hey, if you can stretch your damn tongue several feet out of your mouth, you're not just a martial artist with some extraordinary body-extension ability-- you're a bloody demon, or the offspring of one. INVINCIBLES never offers one word of explanation for these glossal abnormalities, probably because some FX-guy thought it up and the writers just quick-worked it into the script.

The conflict is straightforward so as to not get in the way of the fights and effects: a tyrannical emperor has a whole family killed for a minor offense. A kindly Shaolin priest saves two girls from that family, Lu Sziu (Chia Ling) and Lu Yu (Lung Chung-erh), and raises them to avenge their families with their kung-fu skills and their swordsmanship. (So, not one of the more peace-minded Shaolin priests.) The sisters separate for a bit and kill a few of the Emperor's minions, which serves to put the villain on his guard so that he can start sending killers after them. Then the girls get back together, and for some unknown reason, one of them starts dressing like a man for a while. On top of that, the obliging Shaolin priest sends two other kung-fu warriors (Carter Wong, Dorian Tan) to help the ladies out. This naturally makes for a very episodic flick, but INVINCIBLES succeeds more than many similar films at capturing the "anything goes" vibe.

Aside from the tongue-trainers and their gorillas-- who not only fight with kung fu but also can resist sword-blades-- other menaces include a castle with traps like poison gas and flamethrowers, a guy who fights with a gourd-on-a-chain (which can also snare a sword-blade), and a fighter in a fright-mask who reveals himself as a traitor to the girls' vengeance-quest. I've graded the mythicity as poor but it's still great fun, and both Chia Ling and Lung Chung-erh look great, though Chia's character gets more attention. (They meet a peasant on the road, and he raves about Lu Sziu while saying nothing about Sister #2.) 

WILLARD (1971)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

WILLARD may be seen as a bridge between the psycho-killer flicks of the sixties and the "nature gone wild" movies of the seventies. In most of the later films, like 1972's FROGS, it's the capricious critters who are the stars. But to the credit of director Daniel Mann and screenplay-author Gilbert Ralston, the character of the titular Willard carries the film. (As I remember the human viewpoint character of the sequel BEN does not fare so well and is overshadowed by his rodent comrades.)

Willard Stiles (Bruce Davison) is a repressed twenty-something who works at a shipping company. At one point Willard's late father owned the company, but the father's partner Al Martin (Ernest Borgnine) has somehow taken over the company. Martin constantly finds fault with Willard, claiming that only a promise to Willard's widowed mother Henrietta binds Martin to keep the young man employed. But Martin's real motive is to keep Willard intimidated, so that he'll work nights and weekends without any adjustments to his salary. Over the course of the film it will become obvious that Martin is the sort of grifter who's not satisfied with bilking his partner of his company: he has to continue tormenting the late partner's son to make himself feel powerful. Further, the crumbling old house in which Willard and Henrietta reside becomes another target for Willard's greed.

Henrietta (Elsa Lanchester) has become something of a smother-mother by dint of her illness and her total dependence on her son. Willard lives in a bubble, defined by his work and his mother's needs. Yet the antiquated house also becomes the source of Willard's only friends: a nest of rats that take up residence there. Willard, starved for a real connection, befriends the rats and makes a home for them in the basement, all without the knowledge of his rat-hating mother.

The 1971 film develops its narrative slowly but deliberately, depending less on violence than on mounting frustration and the occasional shocks from the squirming rodents. When Willard does take action against his nasty boss, it's on the level of a prank, letting loose his ratty allies in a party hosted by Martin. However, Henrietta dies the next day, and Willard finds himself swamped in debt, not least to pay for the upkeep of the burgeoning rat colony. Not even a little romantic attention from Joan, a sweet young temp at the shipping company, can reduce Willard's troubles.

Willard takes the next logical step: employing his rat army to help him rip off one of Martin's clients. But Willard makes the mistake of taking one of his friends to work, for Martin sees the rat and squashes it. This pushes Willard to full metal psycho, bringing about the movie's key scene, with Martin suffering the death of a thousand bites. However, Willard then tries to divest himself of his former buddies, particularly the one called Ben, who for some reason becomes the pack's new alpha-- and the biter gets bit, literally. I've not seen the 2003 remake, but it will have to go the extra mile to beat out Davison's subdued psycho-rat-wrangler.

THE SON OF TARZAN (1920)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

Serials in the sound era weren’t known for fidelity to their sources, but a few silent chapterplays hit closer to the mark. SON OF TARZAN may have been following the lead of the 1918 TARZAN OF THE APES, a feature-length film which faithfully adapts the first half of the first Tarzan novel. Further, whenever SON departs from the 1915 Burroughs novel, it’s generally an improvement.

I wrote that the novel that gave us “Korak Son of Tarzan” didn’t manage to create a hero equal to his famed sire, and the serial is also little more than a variation on the jungle-man theme. But though some silent serials ate just assemblages of perilous situations, sometimes lacking the celebrated “cliffhangers,” the various vicissitudes of SON OF TARZAN are more artfully crafted. Like the perils of the novel, all the conflicts serve to give hero Korak and heroine Meriem their “baptism of fire” until the happy ending.

One huge improvement on the novel is the serial’s main villain. In the book Paulvitch, the fiend who is indirectly responsible for sending the son of Tarzan to the jungle, is killed right away. But in the film, he survives his first encounter with the young hero and pursues the youth to Africa as a means of seeking vengeance on Tarzan. Since the novel’s villains are weak and narrowly conceived, Paulvitch, played by Eugene Burr, provides a more obsessed and hiss-worthy enemy.

As in the book, Korak and Meriem starts as children, mature during their very chaste time together in the jungle, and then are played by different actors in their teen years. Rather surprisingly, the serial even preserves the novel’s idea that Meriem initially thinks of Korak only as a “big brother,” but slowly gains an awareness than she doesn’t want a brother’s affection from him. As a displacement for those burgeoning sexual feelings, the serial adds a detail absent in the novel: a scene in which Meriem goes bathing in a river and has to be rescued from a beast by Korak. Whether or not the makers of the 1932 TARZAN THE APE MAN were aware of this earlier adventure in jungle-nudity is anyone’s guess.

As in the novel, Tarzan and Jane play supporting roles, kept in the background as they tirelessly search for their lost offspring. However, someone in production must have decided that the audience wanted some real ape-man action, for the serial introduces a subplot in which thugs attack Tarzan and get their asses handed to them by jungle savagery.

HILLBILLIES IN A HAUNTED HOUSE (1967)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny // marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


Like MURDER BY DECREE, there's only a touch of the marvelous in this "phony ghost" story. It's far from being the first such film to toss a real spook into the mix, though HILLBILLIES may be the first I've reviewed here.

While you could probably get some sociological mileage out of exposing real hillbillies to hokey haunts, the title's inaccurate in that the film's three protagonists are all clean-cut Southerners. Two of them-- Woody (Ferlin Husky) and Boots (Joi Lansing)-- are country music performers, while the third, Jeepers, serves as both the musicians' manager and the movie's comedy relief. Like many sojourners before them, they're driving out in the wilds when they they need shelter, and the only place available is a deserted old plantation-house, complete with Confederate trappings and the legend of some sort of curse (though the protagonists aren't told about this).

The supposedly deserted mansion, however, plays host to four spies hanging around and waiting to get a secret formula sent to them. To emphasize the spies' indebtedness to Red China, the leader is Madame Wong (Linda Ho), while her subordinates are all played by actors from classic horror films (John Carradine, Basil Rathbone, and Lon Chaney Jr.) While  the spies aren't expected company in the deserted house, they've nevertheless brought all sorts of things to scare away the curious: floating sheets that are supposed to resemble ghosts, a werewolf mask, a pet gorilla and an iron maiden.

For most of the picture, the country guys and girl run around from these faux menaces, but an American agent intervenes to help them out a bit-- as does the ghost of a Confederate general whose family once occupied the house.  The comedy's far from funny, but there's some mild pleasure to be had from watching the old pros at work again, even in this oddball scenario. (When John Carradine gets crushed to death by the gorilla, it must've seemed like old Universal home week.) I paid no attention to the music, but Joi Lansing gave the dreary visuals some oomph.

THE RAWHIDE TERROR (1934), THE VANISHING RIDERS (1935), WILD HORSE PHANTOM (1944)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Here are three "weird westerns," all of which appeared together in a DVD collection, but are otherwise unrelated. All three are also combative adventures, for what that's worth.

THE RAWHIDE TERROR, the weirdest and most incoherent of the three, may be the only B-western of which the "monster" is the star. In a prologue, a wagon with a father, mother, and two kids is waylaid by a dozen white men masquerading as Indians. The bandits kill the mother and father but unaccountably leave both male children alive. The older brother wanders off laughing madly, and the younger is left alone.

Some fifteen years later, the former bandits have become pillars of the community in a small town called Red Dog. However, a mysterious killer, "the Rawhide Killer," begins strangling all of the men one by one. The mad murderer is a lanky fellow wearing a slouch hat, vest, and a rawhide strip over his face. Since no one knows who he is without this "mask," the strip doesn't serve any real purpose, particularly when it's strongly hinted that the Killer is the maddened survivor of the wagon-murders.

The short film, originally projected as a segment of a western serial, was retooled into a B-feature when the serial-plan fell through. Thus it's hard to tell who the story's "hero" is, a wandering cowboy, who has a fairly decent fight with Rawhide-guy, or Red Dog's sheriff. The latter character gets more attention in the film's jumbled latter half, concluding with the tossed-off revelation that the sheriff is actually the other orphaned kid. But the Killer, though played with gusto by William Barrymore, gets most of the narrative attention.

THE VANISHING RIDERS turns around the usual tendency of weird westerns to have the villains create the illusion of phony ghosts. Good guy Bill Jones (played by an actor whose real name was, oddly enough, the same as the real moniker of "Buffalo Bill") wants to bring a gang of outlaws to justice. To this end Bill and his kid sidekick Tim decide to play on the superstitious fears of the outlaws (this is, interestingly, four years before the debut of Batman). The crusader and his youthful partner dress themselves and their horses up in skeletal outfits and drive the outlaws crazy for a while, until it's time for the hero and his helpers to beat down the villains with an extended fight-scene.

This B-western is at least tolerable compared to the zaniness of RAWHIDE TERROR, but the only real entertainment shows up when an old fellow (who has "comedy relief" written all over him) unknowingly insults the leader of the outlaws to his face, only to be spared by the leader's sense of humor.

WILD HORSE PHANTOM, a cheap modern-day western from the PRC filmmakers, gives RAWHIDE TERROR a run for the "most incoherent" prize, even though on the whole PHANTOM has (slightly) better direction and production values. The title is the most off-putting aspect, since none of the horses in the story are important to the story. Even the steed owned by series-hero Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe) isn't significant, though the beast gets second-billing. There are a couple of candidates for "phantoms" in the story, but neither have anything to do with anyone's horse.

Carson works with the warden of a prison to let outlaw-leader Link Daggett escape prison with his gang in the hope that the crooks will go looking for their cached loot. Carson is involved because the money was stolen from the bank of a certain town, and if the money isn't returned, a bunch of farmers will lose their farms. I have serious doubts as to whether any real authorities would release a whole gang to achieve this end, and indeed, the crooks murder another ex-con. This scene takes place so that the con's comic-relief buddy Fuzzy will be motivated to attach himself to Carson's attempt to follow and eventually re-capture the gang. That said, the needless murder of an innocent is clearly OK as long as those salt-of-the-earth farmers don't lose their lands.

The gang seeks out an "old dark mine," but Daggett can't remember just where the loot is, which provides an excuse for both the heroes and the villains to wander around in the caves for long stretches. A few times a macabre laugh rings out, but this isn't much of a "phantom," for it's just a neighboring rancher trying to scare the intruders away from the loot he's discovered. A far more justifiable phantom is an oversized bat-- allegedly recycled from PRC's horror-cheapie DEVIL BAT-- which attacks Fuzzy, leading to some comical moments. There's no attempt to explain the bat's provenance, though much later Fuzzy finds a much smaller bat hiding in his clothes, which is possibly a present from the big one. The antics of Al "Fuzzy" St. John are the only fun part of the overly complicated story, since even Crabbe's riding and fistfights come off as dull this time.

THE WHITE GORILLA (1945)

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


"We have no right to the jungle-- it belongs to the natives, the birds, and the animals who have been here since time began"-- Collins, the huntsman who kills the titular ape.

THE WHITE GORILLA, though indisputably a bad film, has a curious place in the admittedly limited history of American jungle films. GORILLA's recycling of silent-film footage from over 15 years previous made it easy for the casual viewer to get a look at scenes from the obscure 1927 serial PERILS OF THE JUNGLE, starring Frank (TARZAN THE TIGER) Merrill. Purportedly the whole serial survives in the UCLA Archives, but that's not exactly a commercial venue. From the material excerpted, I can't even be sure that PERILS qualifies as a metaphenomenal film. though there is a white jungle boy who's seen commanding his pet elephant in a couple of scenes. (The narrator says he has "mystic powers," but I tend to doubt it.) Merrill's character Bradford was almost certainly the central hero of PERILS, though here he's demoted to the status of "support character" by the 1945 frame-story about the White Gorilla.

H.L Fraser wrote but did not direct PERILS, and years later, he cannibalized the silent serial into a new feature, both written and directed by him. He directed a lot of B-films, mostly westerns, over the years, but probably most are not recognizable, even to modern B-film fans. His credits as a writer are a little more distinguished, as he contributed to the scripts of the 1943 BATMAN  and the 1944 CAPTAIN AMERICA.

Even in 1945 audiences probably would've reviled a B-film interspersed with grainy, undercranked footage, so it seems unlikely that Fraser and his fellow producers were doing anything but whipping out a quickie product that didn't cost them very much. The new scenes compensate for the silent footage by assigning an omniscient-narrator function to Collins (Ray "Crash" Corrigan), who's first seen arriving at a trading-post in some part of the African jungle. He's survived a lot of harrowing incidents, some of which relate to scenes from PERILS, including a tribe of sacrifice-happy natives who dress like tigers and obey the commands of Cyclopean idols that are rigged to move according to their priestess' commands. But these take second place to Collins' encounter with the fabled White Gorilla. By the emphasis Fraser places upon the albino ape, it implicitly becomes the new focus of the whole narrative, to which all of the other actions are subordinated. Collins is certainly not a strong enough character for any viewer to invest any interest, though some modern fans have been amused that the same actor playing Corrigan also portrays, at least in some scenes, the White Gorilla.

We're told that the white beast is an outcast from its gorilla-tribe by virtue of its unusual coloration, but no one in the frame-story seems to comment on this assertion. However, just to give the White One something to do, a big black gorilla shows up from time to time and has desultory fights with the albino. Fraser seems to be building up to a major combat between the animals. Yet in the end he changes horses in mid-stream, having the brute try to make time with a lissome human girl, at which point Collins shoots the outcast dead. Then, as a further odd touch, his black-furred enemy mourns the fallen ape and tries to "bury" him with branches.

As shown by the film's closing lines, Fraser does try to evoke the mysteries of the jungle, albeit in very predictable ways. Still, how often do you get a B-level jungle-film in which the narrator claims that the jungle ought to belong to its original owners?
                                                                                                              ADDENDUM: I later saw a claim that WHITE GORILLA did good business, just as did the PRC release from the previous year, NABONGA, so I guess my above comment over-estimated the tastes of the 1945 viewing public. And I have to admit that as far as GORILLA keeping up a steady flow of incidents on screen, it does do better than a lot of comparable jungle-bungles.    

BRAM STOKER'S BURIAL OF THE RATS (1995)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

Speaking as a critic who makes no apologies for masculine-oriented entertainment-- which often means anything that parades around lots of sexy women-- BURIAL OF THE RATS, a Showtime cable-movie made under the rubric of "Roger Corman Presents" is an embarrassment to lovers of exploitation cinema.

Thanks to the success of 1992's BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, the Irish author's name also appeared on a few low-budget adaptations of his work. The short story "Burial of the Rats" concerns a young man in Paris who runs into a bunch of scruffy beggars and witnesses a metaphorical "burial" in which a dead body is consumed by a swarm of rodents. It's pretty thin material, even for a cable flick, so it's not surprising that Corman stuffs his adaptation with all sorts of anachronistic elements.

In BURIAL, the unnamed young man in Paris is Bram Stoker himself, who tells his patrician father that he wants to be a writer some day. He's then separated from his doting dad by a gang of thong-clad raiders, all women in thongs and bikini-tops, sometimes referred to as "the Rat Women." Bram is taken to their secret lair, where he meets "The Queen" (Adrienne Barbeau). The Queen relates her feminist agenda, possibly derived from the classical myths of the Amazons, in that the Queen brings together women misused by brothels, bad husbands, and other tools of the patriarchy. (Barbeau's character alludes to having been abused by some paternal figure in her past.) Her agenda becomes a bit suspect when the viewer sees that all of these Parisian Amazons are hot model-types, but she does have the requisite man-hatred. Bram is only saved when a sympathetic "Ratbabe" named Madeleine (Maria Ford) suggests that maybe they can use Bram to spread their legend to all of Paris, and perhaps make it easier to prey on Parisian targets. However, another Ratbabe, name of Anna (Olga Kabo), secretly has lesbian designs on Madeleine, and doesn't like seeing the blooming romance between her and Bram. Oh, and there are some rats hanging around the hideout of the Rat Women, but as in the short story, they play a minimal role until the climax, where they're responsible for devouring a body with the speed of a piranha-school.

The Rat Women-- all of whom are skilled swordswomen, though nothing explains how they became so-- do get a couple of opportunities to vent their spleen on nasty men. Yet the romance between Bram and Madeleine takes priority, and effectively spells doom to this 19th-century incarnation of the Lesbian Nation. Parisian police restore the status quo by invading the Rat Women's redoubt and dueling them all to death in a series of uninspired sword-fights, and only Bram "am escaped to tell" his contemporaries of his strange if banal adventure.

Corman has shown a proclivity for soft sexploitation for decades, running from the 1956 SWAMP WOMEN to the BLACK SCORPION telefilms that also appeared in the Showtime package. But both of the Scorpion and the Swamp Women, however risible, display a certain degree of power as well as sexiness. The Rat Women, in contrast, are never more than the sum of their exploitative parts.

SNOWBEAST (1977), ANTS (1977)

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


SNOWBEAST is more or less "Jaws at a ski-resort." A Bigfoot starts picking off skiers at a resort which is celebrating its long history with a winter carnival. Writer Joseph Stefano, famed for his work on the 1960 PSYCHO and on the teleseries "Outer Limits," tries mightily to keep resort-owner Sylvia Sidney and her grandson from sounding too much like the mayor in JAWS. It helps somewhat that the grandson, the first person to spot the snowbeast, describes something much more fantastic than a shark, so that the owner's decision not to warn everyone has a different context to it.

Since it's a TV-movie done on a budget, the director avoids showing the Bigfoot on-camera as much as possible. This results in some amusing "creature-eye" POV scenes. As in JAWS, a loose association of people come together in order to combat the menace, but they're all fairly unremarkable stereotypes: the grandson, the local sheriff, a female journalist who just happens to have done stories on Bigfeet, and her husband Gar. Gar (Bo Svenson) is, apart from the snow-creature, the focal character here. He's a Gold Medal skier who has rested on his laurels for a little too long, and most of the minor subplots concern threats to his masculine ego, such as his wife's wandering affections, but none of his conflicts are especially interesting. Gar gets the honor of slaying the beast, whose nature Stefano's script never explores, except to call it a "mutant."

As dull as SNOWBEAST is, ANTS, another telefilm-shocker from the same year, is duller by far. In place of ripping off JAWS, the inspiration here seems to be 1972's FROGS, in which natural creatures revolt against human incursions. The ants, like the creatures in FROGS, are framed as ordinary insects provoked to uncanny wrath. This prompts them to attack a hotel, which like SNOWBEAST's ski-resort, suffers some economic straits. However, this time the proprietor of the business-concern (another Hollywood luminary, Myrna Loy) is a sympathetic type who doesn't do anything to impede others from realizing their mutual danger.

Though various innocents are killed by the invading ants, the script's real targets are an evil developer (Gerald Gordon) and his mistress (Suzanne Somers), because they plan to bilk the hotel's owners out of their property in order to build a casino. Though Somers's character really doesn't do anything but go along with her associate, the film seems to take particular pleasure in having her ravaged by ant-swarms. This may the reason, as Svengoolie reported on his program, that managers of videocassette stories in the 1970s and 1980s reported a high loss-rate of rental copies. I'm not sure if that means that the people swiping the cassettes were fans or Suzanne Somers, or that they really just liked the idea of seeing "Chrissy of THREE'S COMPANY" meet a horrible death.

THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF (2001)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, cosmological*


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS


Anyone who ignores my spoilers will have only himself to blame when he reads my assertion that BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF is at base an update of Conan Doyle's HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES.

Once again, we have a menacing animal set loose on a rural community. Doyle's fiendish hound is based on a legend that Doyle makes up, but in the film, director/co-writer Christopher Gans and his writing partner Stephane Cabel invent a fictional take on the 18th-century story of the Beast of Gevaudan. The mystery of this storied beast was never solved, but Gans and Cabel come up with a semi-rational explanation for their creature, thus moving the film into the uncanny domain of the "phantasmal figuration."

In HOUND, there's a schemer using the devil-dog for the purpose of profit. In WOLF, it's a mysterious "brotherhood" which, much more implausibly, uses a living beast to create the illusion of a hellish wolf preying upon the residents of Gevaudan Province. The fact that the rural citizens begin complaining to the King of France is also part of the brotherhood's plans, though I for one never saw what the beast's rampages were supposed to accomplish.

King Louis XV, though plagued with political concerns related to the impending French Revolution, responds by sending soldiers to hunt the alleged wolf. He also sends the royal naturalist to preserve the beast's body when it's killed: one Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan). Gregoire is no retiring taxidermist a la Norman Bates, though, but a well-traveled knight who's adept at fighting with weapons and bare hands. At Fronsac's side is his Iroquois blood-brother Mani (Mark Dacascos), who's no less adept a fighter, though his kung fu high-kicks certainly don't make one think of Native American fighting-styles. Fronsac is intrigued with the reports of the gargantuan wolf, especially since he's traveled in many lands and seen many exotic animals; at the same time, he incarnates the rationalistic scientific spirit of the times. In contrast, Mani, the last of a tribe wiped out by the British, is a priest with unique medicinal skills and an apparent sensitivity to other forms of life. He is of course the first Native American seen by the locals of Gevaudan, but the character's appeal extends to the audience as well: whenever Dacascos is on the screen with Le Bihan, the former steals some if not all of the scenes from the latter.

Gregoire also becomes embroiled in sussing out the local aristocracy and royal hangers-on, even before he's actively looking for a human agency behind the wolf-creature. He's also more than a little fascinated with a young woman, Marianne, daughter of the local Count. Though for the most part peasants are the ones being killed, and Gregoire is their ally against the brotherhood, the film spends an awful lot of time with Gregoire associating with the moneyed classes.

The script isn't so much opposed to capital, though, as to religion. One of WOLF's most striking scenes begins in HOUND-esque fashion, with a helpless peasant-woman being pursued across a field by an unseen pursuer. She tries to climb up onto a large boulder, and the camera tightens its focus on her as she's seized by the beast, still off-camera. As she's flung about in the creature's jaws, her body causes her arms to flail so that briefly she resembles the figure of the crucified Christ-- and just to make sure no one misses the comparison, director Gans superimposes the image of a crucified Christ-icon over the scene. This sort of visual trope takes on new significance when it's eventually revealed that the Brotherhood is a crypto-religious organization. That said, the script is less than engaging on its implied philosophical issues.

At base, WOLF is designed to compete with American-style action-movies, and it's one of the few French commercial films to successfully duplicate the feverish fight-scenes of that idiom, as long as one can invest in the concept of kung-fu Indians. There's also a minor use of a drug able to simulate death, so that the film also manifests an "outre devices" trope, and an "astounding animal" trope that pertains to the nature of the beast. There's also an even more minor subplot in which one sibling pursues another, which I guess was meant to add to the mix of stimulating elements. WOLF is a decent thriller, most engaging in the first half but becoming less well organized in the latter scenes. But its take on Revolution-era politics leaves a lot to be desired.

TERROR OUT OF THE SKY (1978), TARANTULAS; THE DEADLY CARGO (1977)

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

From my records I know that I watched TERROR OUT OF THE SKY when it made its TV-movie debut, but I remembered nothing about it except that it was just another "killer bee" movie. I also didn't remember that it was a sequel to 1976's THE SAVAGE BEES, which had a different director and an almost completely different cast, even though TERROR reprises the characters from SAVAGE.

TERROR's director Lee H. Katzin worked on television productions almost exclusively. and most of his shows, like the dismal 1979 SAMURAI, are unexceptional. But he seems to have warmed to his "bee-movie" theme, because he uses a couple of good storytelling tricks to compensate for a low budget and a lot of talking-head scenes. Not long after the credits-- which appear superimposed over a close-up on a single bee, buzzing in a menacing manner the whole time-- Katzin shows one of the main characters, entomologist Jeannie (Tovah Feldshuh), dreaming of her previous encounter with the savage insects. (Reportedly this was a reprise of a scene from the preceding film, refilmed with actress Feldshuh.) For me at least, this worked pretty well to make me more invested in her peril.

The other main characters are Jeannie's boyfriend Nick (Dan Haggerty) and her former professor David (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) David's in charge of the local Bee Institute, and the original "savage bees" got loose on his watch. Naturally, he's less than pleased when another blunder unleashes deadly African bees on the community. Thus Jeannie and David must collaborate on containing the threat again, with Nick somewhat unwillingly dragged along. There's a touch of tension in that David, who was apparently married in the first film and lost his wife in the interim, reveals that he has a thing for Jeannie. She in turn reveals that she crushed on him hard during her days as his student. This minor subplot doesn't have a heavy impact on the plot. Yet the simplicity of the older man-younger woman interaction proves more effective than most of the character-arcs one finds within this film-genre, arcs which tend toward being both overwrought and laughable.

I rate the mythicity at least fair because the bee-busters manage to keep up a good running scientific description of the infernal insects' habits and propensities. This leads to a good suspenseful scene in which Jeannie accidentally duplicates the enclosed horror of her earlier dream. When the bees attack a community carnival, Jeannie and a bunch of Boy Scouts take refuge in a sealed-up bus, and Jeannie can only save the other attendees by slamming on the bus-horn, knowing the bees, hating noise, will swarm toward the bus. The ultimate defeat of the little stingers is also well handled, with a nice dramatic turn for David's character.

In contrast, TARANTULAS THE DEADLY CARGO is absolutely ordinary in every way. There are some minor cosmological touches, as the script informs the viewer that these are a special type of tarantula, and that they have a prey-predator relationship to wasps, which factoid leads to their destruction when they infest another small town. But the script doesn't make the tarantulas interesting as a phenomenon of nature, and they're just barely imposing enough to register as "astounding animals." The human characters are thoroughly forgettable, though Claude Akins stands out as the one practical man who figures out how to stop the arachnids.

The telefilm's only point of interest might be termed "sympathy for the Mayor Murray Hamilton." Innumerable killer-animal movies have followed the pattern set by 1975's JAWS, where the nature of the menace is concealed from the public by some politician bent on keeping the trains running on time. Here the small town's commerce depends on a crop of oranges, and the spiders decide to nest amidst the produce in the local warehouse. The townsfolk must figure out how to squelch the spiders without destroying the crop on which their economy depends. In the end Akins' character does manage to kill the spider and preserve the oranges-- though I tend to think the town would have dubious success selling produce if anyone found out poisonous spiders had been swarming all over the fruits.

THE WHITE BUFFALO (1977)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*


For someone who's usually associated with naturalistic Charles Bronson "toughguy movies," it's surprising to note that director J. Lee Thompson has a substantial number of metaphenomenal films on his resume. In fact, his second project with Bronson was this 1977 film, which was also his second "uncanny western," preceded by 1969's MACKENNA'S GOLD.

This Bronson vehicle film is a lot less laborious to watch than the earlier film, but-- to immediately dispose of the "buffalo in the room"-- WHITE BUFFALO is often bogged down by the titular creature. Wikipedia notes that this film was also the second collaboration between producer Dino de Laurentiis and FX-maker Carlo Rambaldi, who had enjoyed some degree of box-office success with 1976's KING KONG. Though I know nothing about the backstage production politics of BUFFALO, I can't help but suspect that the film came about because de Laurentiis saw dollar-signs in a return to animatronic entertainment. I'd further speculate that since the novel by long-time pulp writer Richard Sale had just seen publication in 1975, someone must have thought that its subject matter would provide a match made in heaven.  Unfortunately, there's not a single scene when the monstrous mammal is on camera that it doesn't look an artificial construct confined to motorized tracks.

A bad special effect is certainly not enough to sink the whole film, of course, and WHITE BUFFALO has garnered some fans since its inglorious failure at the 1977 box office. At that time Bronson's star was riding high thanks to the success of the 1974 DEATH WISH film, and the cast was sprinkled with other familiar thespian faces like Kim Novak, Clint Walker, John Carradine, and Jack Warden. However, only Warden and Native American actor Will Sampson have substantial roles complementing that of Bronson.

The plot is simple: during the last years of his life gunfighter Wild Bill Hickock (Bronson) begins having strange dreams about a menacing white buffalo; dreams that urge him to journey to the snowbound Black Hills of South Dakota, so that he can kill the haunting spectre-- a daunting goal, since everyone he talks to believes that the last albino "buff" was slain years ago. At the same time that Hickock makes this voyage, the story shifts to show viewers the monster's reality as it attacks the village of Sioux warrior Crazy Horse (Sampson). The buffalo slays Crazy Horse's child and other tribespeople before running off, after which the whole tribe gets pissed at Crazy Horse for the incident. Given the humiliating name "worm," the proud chief is exiled until such time as he can track down the vicious beast and slay it.

On his way to the Black Hills Hickock allies himself with Jack Warden's character, the grizzled trapper Zane (perhaps named for Zane Grey, who had become famed for his westerns by the time Richard Sale was growing up). Both Zane and Hickock have had bloody encounters with the Sioux and other aboriginals, so Zane is mightily puzzled when they come across a solitary Indian named "Worm" defending himself from a trio of antagonists, and Hickock helps Worm fight off his enemies. Thanks to this encounter, Hickock gains an ally who will eventually help him slay the monstrous snow-hued menace.

In contemporary culture it's almost impossible to think of human hunters tracking a big white creature without managing to invoke Melville's classic MOBY DICK. However, though Richard Sale- who wrote the film's screenplay from his own novel-- was surely aware of his cetacean forerunner, the resemblance seems no more than cosmetic. One online review asserts that Sale's film-script follows the novel closely, and if this is so then the only thing Sale borrowed from Melville was the notion that an albino animal would seem more unearthly. Otherwise none of the complex mythological concerns of MOBY DICK find their way into WHITE BUFFALO.

The filmmakers are principally concerned with rendering a simpler American myth: the union of white man and red man in a common cause-- which perhaps puts them closer to Fenimore Cooper than to Melville.  However, though Hickcock's almost-but-not-quite premonitory dreams help to give his actions a sense of destiny, they also deprive him of any mundane motive for hunting the beast. True, Thompson and Bronson seek to give the character a melancholy air, as if he were seeking to kill the phantom creature in order to stave off his approaching death. Still, the script isn't quite skillful enough to articulate anything like this. As an aboriginal, Crazy Horse has less need to justify going on a hunt for a creature that seems strangely godlike--but here too, the nature of Crazy Horse's personal quest lacks any deeper symbolic resonance. Interestingly, Crazy Horse gets to deliver the death-blow, which does allow the Native American character the honor of the climactic kill, whereas most western films would have given that privilege to the white leading-man.

The encounters between Bronson and Sampson are the film's best scenes, even when they're sharing screen-time with the unthreatening ungulate. Their mutual victory is bittersweet when it becomes obvious that their opposed cultures prevent them from sharing any prolonged brotherhood-- and perhaps these scenes are the reason the film has earned a minor cult status, because I can't believe anyone likes that damn "track 29" terror.

Ironically, de Laurentiis famously told TIME magazine of his KING KONG, ""No one cry when Jaws die. But when the monkey die, people gonna cry." 
 I'm sure the producer didn't expect anyone to cry for his big white critter as he thought they'd cry for Kong. Still, WHITE BUFFALO might have benefited from taking a leaf from the JAWS playbook, as the monster could only have been more imposing the less viewers saw of him.