MAN ON THE SPYING TRAPEZE (1966)

 

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

This Eurospy cheapie has only two minor things going for it: a couple of familiar actors and a memorable if meaningless English-language title. FWIW, it seems to be the only English translation of a film by Spanish director Juan de Orduna.

American agent Jerry Land (Wayde Preston of the TV western COLT .45) gets to traipse around various Euro-locales seeking to find a missing microfilm and the spy ring that stole it. He has various punch-ups with enemy spies-- for once, independent operators rather than loyalists to particular nations-- and romances a pretty brunette played by Helga Sommerfeld. Preston's decent in the fight-scenes but doesn't project much cool, despite a colleague playfully calling him "James Bond."

The sole metaphenomenal content here appears when Land is captured by thugs led by Noe (DR SATAN AND BLACK MAGIC) Murayama, who attempts to make the agent talk by squeezing his head with metal rods.     

  

SMALLVILLE SEASON 3: 20-22 (2004)

 

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

"Talisman" provides a belated linkage back to the ancestral Kawache story of Naman and Sageeth, implicitly a good and an evil Kryptonian who came to Earth in primeval times. Kawache historian Willowbrook, first seen in "Skinwalker," believes not only that the two man-gods have been reborn in modern times, but also that Clark is the "good god" Naman. Yet Willowbrook keeps in contact with Lionel in order to monitor the cave-research, and one day the prof brings to the cave a student named Jeremiah, also a tribal scholar. Jeremiah uncovers a metal knife and touching it both gives the young man Kryptonian powers and the delusion that he is Naman, who is destined to slay Sageeth. 

Clark, aware that Jeremiah is likely to believe he should kill Lionel, draws the possessed man to the Kent farm, hoping to incapacitate the threat with kryptonite. But this time the rock has no effect on an Earthman, possibly because Jeremiah possesses the Kryptonian dagger, with which he stabs Clark. The heroic teen only survives because the Kents show up, and the power Jor-El instilled in Jonathan heals Clark. Recovering, both Clark and Lex show up on the scene when the fake Naman tries to slay Lionel. Neither Lionel or Lex behold Clark battle Jeremiah, but when Jeremiah loses both the knife and his powers (after which he's never seen again), both Luthors try to seize the weapon. But it dissolves, as was destined to occur if Sageeth touched the blade. Is one of these Earthmen "Naman's great enemy?"

"Forsaken" centers on a running subplot from the last few episodes: that of Lana deciding to study art in Paris. (Was she artistically inclined before this arc?) However, though Clark hopes to dissuade her from leaving Smallville by finally revealing his Big Secret, Emily Dinsmore gets to Lana first. While in Lionel's custody since the events of "Accelerate," the clone-girl has aged roughly nine years in eleven months, and she uses her speed-powers to escape captivity. She kills her scientist-"father" and imprisons Lana in the Talon in the belief that they can be best friends forever. Clark puts the skids on the super-speed girl with the clever use of a water tower, but the situation also causes Clark to change his mind about the revelation. The final season episode will make it doubtful that any of the regulars will return, but "Forsaken" has Pete Ross forsake Smallville a little earlier, only returning for one much later guest appearance in Season Seven.

   The title "Covenant" refers to the bargain Jonathan made with the AI: that, in exchange for empowering the farmer during "Exile," Jonathan would facilitate Clark returning to Jor-El, possibly to be molded into some sort of world-conqueror. "Covenant " focuses on the devil calling in his marker-- though Jor-El's methods are bizarre, given that "he" hasn't made an explicit demand of Jonathan. A "supergirl" named Kara shows up on the farm, claiming to be from Krypton and offering Clark the chance to be united with his birth mother, of whom he had a fragmentary recollection in "Memoria." The elder Kents don't buy Kara's tale, but Clark's been through the sturm-and-drang mill, and Kara contributes to the youth's desire for "exile" (AGAIN?) by making Lex seem a betrayer. Clark follows Kara to a rendezvous, but Jonathan shows up with evidence that Kara is either a dead Earth-girl revived by Jor-El or a simulation thereof. Still, a threat to Jonathan's life accomplishes the same end, and Clark enters the AI's dimensional doorway, while most of the rest of the cast lies in peril from the vengeance of Lionel Luthor. Who will return in Season Four? Stay tuned.       
          

SMALLVILLE SEASON 3: 17-19 (2004)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: (1) *good*, (2,3) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

Finally, in "Legacy," Season Three wanders back to the still-mysterious designs of the Jor-El AI, left unaddressed since "Exile." In a few previous episodes the writers suggested that Jonathan's health has suffered from Jor-El's "power boost," and Clark becomes concerned enough that he takes the Krypton-Key to the Kawache Caves, trying to draw out the AI for a heart-to-heart. But the key's only response is to send forth a ray that carves a new aperture in the wall with the Kryptonian symbols. Critically-ill Lionel, though, gets alerted by his agents re: Clark's cave-trespass, and somehow arrives in time to behold Clark and the "new keyhole," but not the key in Clark's possession.

Lionel doesn't reference the Adam Knight failure, but clearly he ups his investigation of the Kents, even sending bogus FBI agents to the farm, because he seeks a reprieve. He also meets with Virgil Swann (Christopher Reeve in his final performance), and the enigmatic genius reveals nothing, though he lends Lionel some conditional aid. This motivates Clark to confront Swann, thus also providing the show's last encounter between "Superman" and "Superboy." Jonathan makes an effort to end Lionel's threat, and Clark must intervene. It's a solid "mythology" episode, though I suspect the many SMALLVILLE mysteries don't have a payoff much better than LOST.

"Truth" turns out better than its premise suggests. Demon journalist Chloe inhales an experimental gas and acquires the power to make almost anyone answer her questions with complete truthfulness. Clark alone can resist her power, but Chloe becomes drunk with her new abilities. Naturally most of the episode concerns characters managing to dance around the Big Reveal, though Chloe does play dice with the devil when she tries to blackmail Lionel.

"Memoria" puts aside one Luthor's obsession for another's, as Lionel's struggle to avert death takes a back seat to Lex's quest for his repressed Belle Reve memories. To that end, he accepts treatment by Doctor Garner, one of Smallville's many resident mad scientists, who stimulates buried memories via a machine powered by-- what else-- meteor rocks. Both Lionel and Clark don't want Lex's memories to return, but while Lionel just puts pressure on Garner, Clark beards the rogue researcher in his den. Garner sticks Clark in the memory-machine, offering the teen's memories to willing buyer Lionel, but even after kryptonite weakening Clark's body generates enough feedback to destroy the machine. Lex then arrives in time to save Clark's life without learning the Big Secret. Yet Garner's process does give Lex closure on a trauma dating back to the show's first season: the belief that he killed his baby brother Julian. It's a good payoff for a so-so story.

   

    

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)

 

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

REVENGE received a lot of brickbats in its day, with one critic calling it "incomprehensible"-- which I for one find incomprehensible. It's just a formulaic sequel seeking to keep its audience's attention with even more giant-robot action and silly humor than the previous film. And it's hard to see any other logical avenue for such "high concept" filmmakers. For me the biggest attraction of the 2007 film was to see how its craftsmen attempted to make a kids' cartoon into a general-audience feature film-- which was an act that could only be offered once.

So, the plot. Despite Sam Witwicky having saved the Earth by (temporarily) destroying Megatron, he's attempting to live an ordinary life by going off to college, even though this separates him from girlfriend Mikaela. However, his contact with a shard of the "All Spark" causes him to experience visions-- which, in a circuitous manner, will lead him and various allies to discover a new threat to Earth's survival. But before they can do so, Megaton is resurrected while the Autobots' noble leader Optimus Prime is slain. Yet once the audience learns that only a Prime can defeat "The Fallen," a world-destroying Decepticon who's constructed as an "Autobot Devil"-- can Optimus' revival be far behind? 

Most of REVENGE is comfortably predictable and nothing more. The most unlikely development in my view was that the writers brought back Seymour Simmons (John Turturro) from the 2007 film. I described the character as a "minor dick-villain," but here he's a more rounded (if still goony) character who adds some variety to the human allies of the Autobots.

       

 

LEGEND OF THE SEEKER, SEASON ONE (2008-09)

 

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

As I have only read the first of Terry Goodkind's "Seeker" books, WIZARD'S FIRST RULE, I can't speak to the overall quality of the series, or whether it was a crying shame that Sam Raimi's teleseries adaptation didn't get more than two seasons. But the first novel offers in part a theme opposed to most otherworldly Tolkienian fantasies. one that might boil down to, "Power of all kinds-- not just One-Ring power-- corrupts the good and the bad alike." The dramatic consequences of this theme are that even the three pure-hearted heroes are innately capable of harming one another, even with the best of intentions.

Though most of the 22 episodes of LEGEND's first season don't adapt incidents from the first book, the overall outlines remain the same. Large portions of Goodkind's unnamed fantasy-verse have been conquered by the military might of tyrannical Darken Rahl, whose long-range goal is to control all life through assorted sorcerous stratagems. However, it's been prophecized that a rare crusader for justice, the Seeker, is destined to kill Darken Rahl. Young Richard Cypher (Craig Horner) is raised without knowing that he is the Seeker, but soon he's drafted to fulfill his destiny by two other heroes. One is elderly wizard Zed (Bruce Spence), who arranged Richard's concealment from hostile forces. The other, Kahlan (Bridget Regan), belongs to a line of priestesses, the Mother Confessors, and she becomes vital to Richard's mission-- although she threatens it as well, as the two fall in love, causing distractions from their purpose.

Some storylines are definitely derived from Goodkind, as with an arc involving the heroes trying to keep Rahl from obtaining the Boxes of Orden, whose power can corrupt even the Seeker. Other episodes are built around "done in one" problems. Yet even the simpler episodes, despite comedy relief, often reflect grim realities about war and death. This may be a reason why LEGEND didn't catch on like Raimi's more famous fantasy-serials, HERCULES and XENA. 

Only one episode merits a rating of high mythicity, and that is "Denna," a faithful adaptation of a long sequence from WIZARD'S FIRST RULE. In this sequence, Richard is captured by Denna (Jessica Marais), who attempts to break his will via torture. Like Kahlan, Denna belongs to an all-female priestesshood, but where Kahlan's order compels obedience through the emotion of love,  Denna's order uses pain. To some, this might sound like Goodkind importing the Marquise de Sade into a Tolkienian fantasy-setting. Yet because Goodkind structured his world so scrupulously, the concept is both dramatically and mythopoeically compelling. 

One additional point of merit is that the showrunners did contrive a "wrapup" in the final episode of Season One, in case they didn't get another order of episodes. This meant a lot of rewrites to make Season Two come about-- but, going on memory, the game was indubitably worth the candle.           

SMALLVILLE SEASON 3: 13-16 (2004)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: (1,4) *fair*, (2,3) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

The "middle episodes" of Season 3 continue to prove unimpressive.

"Velocity" turns out better than it should, given a horribly contrived script. Pete Ross suddenly acquires a jones for illegal drag-racing, and he receives sponsorship from Smallville hoodlum Jason Dante, whose name is certainly disproportionate to his significance as a character. Dante pressures Pete to lose a race for purposes of putting in a fix, and when Pete wins instead, Dante threatens Pete's family. To end Dante's menace without violence, squeaky-clean Clark must use his powers to steal from Lex, his other best bud, to come up with a "purse" that Dante will accept in a racing challenge, the goal being to cancel Pete's debt. Clark plans to fry Dante's engine during the race, but Dante is able to stuff the hero in his trunk because the hood's car runs on-- meteor rocks! Still, Clark and Pete survive the race while Dante dies in a blazing "inferno"-- though Clark resents Pete's rash actions. Welling and Jones have their best dramatic interaction here, somewhat making up for the banality of the B-plot, in which Lex gets involved in the Frankenstein experiment of Adam Knight.

OBSESSION-- Clark is forced to reveal his powers in front of a stranger, but because Alicia Baker is a meteor-freak, she assumes his powers stem from the same source. Clark, not dating anyone even though Lana's rejected Adam, becomes interested in Alicia, but she turns out to be, as Chloe puts it, the "Fatal Attraction" type. Aside from hinting at Clark's libido more than do most episodes, and an irrelevant subplot about Alicia injuring her father for unclear reasons, this one's a wash, though a final scene reveals that Lionel is responsible for the experiment involving Adam Knight. Alicia appears next season as a Belle Reve patient. 

 RESURRECTION-- The A-story's awful, concerning an aggrieved fellow who takes the Smallville hospital hostage using a "human bomb" laced with kryptonite. The episode's more worthwhile in having Lex discover that Adam has actually been revived from death by a project under the control of Lionel. The Kents know that the revival serum was made from a sample of Clark's blood, and it's also revealed that Lionel sent Adam to Smallville High to spy on Clark.

CRISIS-- Thanks to a "time anomaly," this time Clark gets to work backwards to figure when and where Lana's life will fall into jeopardy (again). This culminates the Adam Knight plotline given that he dies menacing Lana (who still needs saving though she does perform a couple of martial stunts). The episode is stronger for yet another joust between Lex and Lionel as Lex tries to use his job at Luthorcorp to ferret out the nature of the revival experiment. Lionel's motive this time involves his own mortality, though since he remains in the show for four more seasons, the elder Luthor is in no danger here.           

                  

TRANSFORMERS (2007)

 

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

Though I've never quit watching TV cartoons no matter how old I got, certain shows just never got on my radar, and the many iterations of TRANSFORMERS, as well as their imitators, are among them. And yet, looking at a list of the top ten highest-grossing films for 2007, the Michael Bay TRANSFORMERS kicks the ass of all others on the list (mostly sequels of one sort or another), except 300-- and I don't usually feel any great desire to rewatch 300. 

I'm not a huge fan of Bay, though I think his critical drubbings are unjustified and overdone. As for the writing-team on the first two TRANSFORMERS movies, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, their track record ranges from mediocre to the tone-deaf awfulness of the TREK films of the same era. Yet somehow these talents took a very simple kids' cartoon of the 1970s and gave it tons of Spielbergian brio. In fact, the 2007 TRANSFORMERS is a better Spielberg movie than most Spielberg films of the period.

Further, the actors playing the young leads-- Shia LeBeouf as Sam Witwicky and Megan Fox as Mikaela Banes-- turned in lively performances far more appealing than their usual "flavor of the month" offerings. Together they comprise the venerable trope "Nerdy guy impresses hot girl," but their cutesy romance works because it's kept peripheral to the central mystery: who are these shape-changing robot ETs and why are they are hiding on Earth in the forms of trucks and planes?

TRANSFORMERS also benefits from a canny juggling of patriotism (the movie came out six years after 9-11) and skepticism. An early scene depicts American airplanes forcing a mysterious helicopter to land on their military base-- only to have the 'copter transform into a mammoth Decepticon robot who trashes the military's best weapons like a pocket Godzilla. At the same time, only one data analyst, one Maggie, is able to figure out that the attacker isn't the spawn of Russia or China, while everyone else runs around without a clue. A super-secret military organization is shown to be responsible for salting away the Whatsit that both the noble Autobots and base Deccepticons seek, and I admired that late in the movie the script introduced a minor dick-villain for Sam and Mikaela to humiliate.     

Conversely, the script is ingenious in finding ways to make the Autobots likeable without over-explaining their goodness, as I think the cartoon did. The writers accomplished this by channeling Disney's LOVE BUG, having the Autobot Bumblebee morph into a car for Sam. Bumblebee does this to learn information from Sam that will lead the hero-robots to their goal. But the teen and the alien robot bond, partly through Bumblebee's inability to speak articulately, making him seem more like a faltering child than a spying ET. Later, Autobot leader Optimus Prime will provide all the needed exposition in the honeyed tones of Peter Cullen, but Bumblebee's more basic appeal sets the pace.

There are comedic bits that don't work, but they're fewer than the ones that do. Moreover, even though I was never a TRANSFORMERS fan, I appreciate that Bay and his team treated the adventure-theme straight, and one line from Sam to Mikaela speaks to the youthful need to trespass boundaries:

"Fifty years from now, don't you wanna be able to say you had the guts to get in the car?"  

            

DAUGHTER OF DON Q (1946)

 

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

Without getting into my phenomenality-categories first this time, the greatest significance of this well-wrought Republic chapterplay is that it's the last of a half dozen sound serials to star, or co-star, a female with combative abilities. This leaves out assorted works in which female support-characters may be able to shoot a little, or one later serial that substantially re-uses most of its action-sequences from one of the earlier six. 

DAUGHTER's title was probably a toss-off reference to the Douglas Fairbanks Sr silent movie DON Q SON OF ZORRO, but only because the two narratives share adventurous content, not any story elements-- and both may have been distantly indebted to Cervantes' DON QUIXOTE, even though that story was all about invalidating tales of derring-do. Story-wise, DAUGHTER sounds like some of the silent serials in which some evildoer sought to deprive a rightful heiress of her inheritance. I don't know how many of those old serials showed the heiress fighting off thugs with jui-jitsu, though.

In contrast to the majority of serials, the primary evildoer, one Manning, exists just to get the ball rolling. He learns of the existence of a land grant that was bequeathed to assorted parties, but Manning's the only one who knows of it. Thus, if he hires a gang of thugs to kill off the other heirs, while making the deaths look accidental, Manning claims all the property. However, the lion's share of villainy falls to the hired killers, led by Roy Barcroft of PURPLE MONSTER fame. The murderers succeed in knocking off one or two heirs, but their scheme goes awry when they go after the judo-skilled Dolores Quintero (Adrian Booth). One might think that Manning's plan to make all the deaths look accidental is ruined as soon as Dolores and her reporter-pal Cliff (Kirk Alyn) tell the cops of the organized attempt(s) on Dolores' life. But maybe Barcroft's just one of those guys who never read his Santayana.

 Alyn and Booth (the latter under the former billing Lorna Gray) already had assorted serial roles under their belts, with Gray/Booth still renowned as lead villain Vultura in PERILS OF NYOKA, while Alyn's big roles as Superman and Blackhawk were yet to come. But the leads play off one another well and are given good dialogue and bracing action-scenes. The uncanny phenomenality only appears in two of the assassins' attempts to "covertly" knock off Dolores. In one chapter, the thugs take the captured heroine to a closed fishing-shop and set Dolores up to get impaled by a harpoon-- supposedly the contrivance of the Mafia or something. In another chapter, one of the thugs dons a museum's suit-of-armor and attacks Cliff-- and the armored crook is somehow able to defy Cliff's pistol, though in real life medieval armor could not repel bullets. In both of these peculiar stratagems-- which are weird enough to fall into the uncanny domain-- the villains don't create their own odd weapons, but just "find" them. Still, there are some serials in which costumed villains steal their only super-weapons from good-hearted inventors and put those powers to evil usage-- and if I'm going to credit those malcontents with possession of a death-ray as part of their repertoire, then I guess I can also credit Manning's mooks as having bulletproof armor in their arsenal. 

CREEPING DEATH (1972)

 

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

CREEPING DEATH is certainly a better title for this unwieldy mix of spaghetti western and giallo than KILL THE POKER PLAYER. The odd thing about this failed fusion is that many of the more violent spaghettis sometimes show elements in common with equally violent giallos. However, westerns in general have a harder time dealing with "slow burn suspense"-- and despite DEATH's quota of saloon brawls, that seems to have been the intent of director/co-writer Mario Bianci, a prolific filmmaker though most of his works have not been translated into English.

Like many spaghettis DEATH begins with a double cross and centers upon a hunt for hidden riches. However, two-fisted federal agent John Pinkerton (Robert Woods) lacks the usual cynical motive of the spaghetti fortune-seeker. He seeks to locate a cache of bank money stolen by three outlaws, one of whom kills the other two. Pinkerton centers his investigation on a particular town where one or two persons have been killed by poisonous snakes. The same town plays host to a herpetologist, suggesting that some malcontent in the populace decided to weaponize the reptiles to eliminate witnesses.

The snakes, and the "bizarre crimes" for which they're used, aren't all that important to the story until the climax, and Pinkerton's detective work seems at best random. DEATH is generally boring and wastes the lovely Nieves Navarro in a purely decorative role. A better meld of western and murder-mystery appears in 1974's A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES.   

      

THE SHADOW (1994)

 

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

Back in 1994 B.I. (Before Internet), I disliked THE SHADOW because I assumed screenwriter David Koepp had been overly influenced by Howard Chaykin's 1986 graphic novel BLOOD AND JUDGMENT. I assumed this simply because the Chaykin work was the first time the moldy-oldie pulp hero had made a tidy profit since the heyday of his magazine and radio show. Of course I knew that the major influence upon the Shadow's revival was the mega-success of the 1989 BATMAN, though in fairness, raconteurs like Sam Raimi attempted to adapt the pulp avenger a few years prior to the Burton film. Still, Koepp was hired to produce a new script in 1990, so Burton's achievement probably did light a fire under the Universal rights-holders.

If Koepp read the Chaykin comic, the only influence would have been indirect. Chaykin took the violent but righteous crusader and made him into a 1980s dickhead. Koepp first shows the hero as a 1930s dickhead but has him get somewhat more righteous over time, which is certainly an improvement. Thirty-something Caucasian-American Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin) somehow becomes a druglord in Tibet, but despite his many crimes, a spiritual teacher, Tulku, decides that Cranston can be rather forcefully redeemed into becoming a champion of justice back in his own country. Koepp's script conveniently vaults past the difficult process of turning a hardened gangster into a fighter against evil-- hence, one who "knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men"-- and in no time, Cranston is back in the States, posing as a worthless playboy while battling crime as The Shadow, armed with twin automatics and "the power to cloud men's minds." 

However, just as Cranston stuck his nose into Asia, an Asian villain follows the hero to New York and decides to challenge the Shadow on his own ground. Shiwan Khan (John Lone) was a later pupil of Tulku, so Khan has all of The Shadow's psychic powers, plus a small army of armored Asians who believe Khan the descendant of the Mongol conqueror Genghis. Khan has decided to conquer the US, albeit in a more devious manner than his ancestor, and he courteously invites Cranston, whose previous villainy Khan admired, to join Khan's new jeremiad. Naturally the hero refuses, so battle lines are drawn.

Though SHADOW never delivers the thrill-ride Koepp promises, he arguably improves on one element of the hero's mythology. I've had little direct experience with the support character Margo Lane, either in radio plays or in magazine stories, but she seems to vary between being either a nuisance or a hard-bitten professional. Koepp makes Margo (Penelope Ann Miller) a socialite who just happens to possess natural psychic gifts, and who eventually twigs to the fact that Lamont Cranston has a shadowy secret. She also gets involved with Khan's plot in that the evildoers seeks to suborn her father's scientific services.

Koepp's script is a little pokey at times, and Russell Mulcahy's direction is never more than adequate, so SHADOW didn't score with 1994 audiences. Miller's fun whenever she's on screen, and John Lone renders his unscrupulous Mongol warlord with such a light touch, it's hard to imagine any 1990s filmgoer being offended by the "Asian Invasion" trope. Baldwin looks decent in costume, but he never masters "the Shadow Laugh," and Koepp doesn't make Cranstone's dedication to the side of virtue compelling, leaving the actor little to work with. Tim Curry has a pleasant support-role, but Jerry Goldsmith's imitation of Danny Elfman is too bombastic by half. Still, many fans still like this iteration of the Master of Darkness, so that's no small achievement.

              

       

FLYER AND MAGIC SWORD (1970)

 

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

When I only saw one online description of this Hong Kong-Thailand co-production, and said summary said it involves rival clans fighting over a salt mine, I suspected that the title was a fantasy-fakeout. And yes, there's no magic sword and no one even does "trampoline flying."

The hero is Wai Chin (billed as "Nai Mi," possibly to obscur,e the actor's Thai heritage), and since childhood he's been in love with Lan Choo (Fan Ling), daughter of Tien-Long (Dean Shek of ENTER THE DRAGON fame). I don't know why Tien-Long won't let them marry, but he seems totally preoccupied with the aforementioned salt mine. His rival for the mine-- which is barely seen-- is called "Wu Tang" in the streaming dub. But while Wu Tang is a bastard, Tien-Long might be worse. The film's opening scene-- and it's the film's best scene-- starts with Wu Tang and his soldiers attacking Tien-long's house. Outnumbered, Tien-Long, Lan Choo, and their retainers flee to a bolt-hole, but Wu Tang sets the house afire, so that the bolt-hole fills with smoke. Three retainers try to escape, and Tien-Long kills them-- moments before the patriarch changes his mind and allows the rest of his coterie to get out.

After that, FLYER is just a melange of combat-scenes and wistful romantic interludes between Chin and Choo. Only one "magical" implement appears, in that one of Chin's opponents wields a "boomerang claw-weapon." Most of the fighting is sword-fu, with Choo getting in hers only in the first scene, but nothing's memorable in that department. One might call this a reversal of ROMEO AND JULIET, where the two lovers survive and the patriarchal clans (no mothers are seen) destroy one another.      

KONG: RETURN TO THE JUNGLE (2007)

 

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

Wow, what a shame that the makers of KONG THE ANIMATED SERIES didn't just hang things up with the first of their two DTV movies, KONG: KING OF ATLANTIS. That big-monkey flick was merely mediocre, but RETURN seems a betrayal of even the small coterie of fans that the show might have garnered.

RETURN, a CGI animation, was produced a couple of years after 2004's THE POLAR EXPRESS, and RETURN shows a similar problem with making living creatures seem alive. All the regular characters I summarized in the KING review look like super-streamlined facsimiles of their hand-drawn counterparts. Kong and his human handlers go through their usual routines, but they have little sense of physical continuity.

The one element that a KTAS fan might like about RETURN is that, unlike KING, the main villain here is the one who appeared in the majority of the half-hour episodes. In most episodes, Professor Ramon de la Porta would seek some evil goal, the Kong group would intervene, and Porta would use stolen tech to create some colossal animal-human hybrid to fight Kong. Porta's career reaches some closure in RETURN, though he has to share the fiend-stage with a new villain, a big game hunter who'd like to put Kong's head on a wall.

The CGI animation also takes away from the big-monster action, and as if the writers got tired of the hybrid-schtick, this time the anthropoid crusader only fights a T-Rex. Maybe someone thought of this opponent as a callback to the 1933 KONG, but I may be giving the producers too much credit. The series and the first movie are at best blips in the history of TV animation, but RETURN doesn't even deserve blip-status.

                

X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME FIVE (1996-97)

 

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

Season Four was supposed to be the final one for the 90s X-MEN, but ten more episodes were ordered, albeit without giving the production company much money. So some of the episodes were done in-house to save money-- and oddly, I like some of these better than any from the previous seasons.

I said in my first review of the series that I could never celebrate the show because it wasn't "my" X-Men. But I also wasn't crazy about the series' concentration on action-- even well-mounted action-- at the expense of characterization. (Admittedly the cartoon arguably did the soap-opera thing better than did the live-action movie series.) In any case, the last 14 episodes on Volume 4-- which of course mingles stories from both Seasons 4 and 5-- sometimes show a greater emotional tonality than I've observed before. For instance:

Most of the episodes are so action-heavy that there's no time for romance. But the two-part "Storm Front" posits a (non-canonical) hookup between Storm and the extradimensional tyrant Arkon. Here I appreciated some scenes that lingered on the bodies of the two principals, playing up their mutual visceral attraction before any sweet nothings were uttered.

"Old Soldiers" explores Wolverine's early (pre-clawed) years in WWII, when he undertakes a special mission alongside Captain America. Nice interplay between the very different characters without resorting to a hero-fight.

Another tale feels like Claremont in his more playful phases, with Jubilee entertaining some kids with a fairytale-fantasy in which unreasonable facsimiles of the X's appear.

 "Bloodlines," a follow-up to Nightcrawler's previous guest appearance, stands as the best story of all five seasons, being a very accurate translation of his abandonment by his mutant-villain mother Mystique. This version of the hero is a moody religious fellow rather than the daredevil type from the comics, but the contrast between Nightcrawler's faith and Mystique's nihilism is well handled.

Finally, the real final episode, "Graduation Day," present the heroic mutants with the strong possibility that they may have to carry on without Professor X, A last minute contrivance saves the Prof, but he's still obliged to leave Earth, and so the sense of a dramatic transition remains.            

   

  

STATIC SHOCK, SEASON TWO (2002)

 

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

My review of Season One was fairly long, purely because I was recapitulating some of the basics of the series' concept. But given that hardly anything changes between Seasons One and Two, this time there's hardly anything to say about this overly vanilla show.

The writers introduce a smattering of new, entirely routine villains, and one of the "independent" villains, Hotstreak, joins the gang masterminded by shadowy evildoer Ebon. Virgil's buddy Richie gets superpowers briefly, and there's an episode that amounts to an "anti-gun" PSA, which would be fine with me if I thought it had any persuasive power. I suppose the standout episode involved the villain Rubberband Man trying to become a good guy and coming into conflict with his brother, the aforementioned Ebon.

The season's "big event," as well as the opening episode, is STATIC playing host to Batman, Robin and The Joker. Though the voice-talents of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill remain excellent, the story is ordinary in every way.          

STATIC SHOCK, SEASON ONE (2000-01)

 

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

Full disclosure: I've never read a single issue of the STATIC comic book, and only a smattering of other titles in the 1990s DC/Milestone line that spawned the Static character. Therefore I don't know in what particulars the TV show differs from its source material. However, given that the show STATIC SHOCK was trying to play to a kid-audience above all else, one can certainly countenance a lot of changes for the sake of that target-group. However, a lot of kid-vid adventure-shows have been capable of being entertaining even if they had to "work clean"-- and so there's some irony that a cartoon about a hip 14-year-old superhero should be one of the most vanilla shows in this category I've ever encountered.

In the fictional city of Dakota, a chemical weapon is unleashed, resulting in an event called "the Big Bang." What's created is a sub-universe within the greater domain of WB Animation; a city inhabited by instant mutants called "Bang Babies." Most of these individuals-- replete with the usual range of super-powers (freezing, flying, stretching) -- become menaces, so that they're ripe to become the rogues' gallery of the titular hero. Static-- originally high-schooler Virgil Hawkins-- gains an assortment of electrically-related powers, and being a stand-up guy, he becomes Dakota's defender, and (says Wiki) the first African-American hero to star in his own solo cartoon series. Only Richie, Virgil's white buddy at school, knows his secret; both Virgil's strict father and sarcastic sister remain clueless.

All that said, everything in STATIC SHOCK remains incredibly pedestrian in terms of plot and characterization. Of Season One's 13 episodes, only one, "Sons of the Fathers," deserves some comment. It's an "anti-racism" episode, but without the righteous virulence seen in many cartoons 20 years later. (I'm looking at you, PROUD FAMILY.) Virgil decides he wants to meet Richie's family and wangles an invitation to Richie's house. Richie's dad, however, makes no secret of disliking Black people, so Virgil takes his leave. Richie runs away from home and is captured by a gang of super-villains. But before Static can come to the rescue, Richie's father grudgingly accepts the help of Virgil's dad to find the lost kid. Given the many ways the story might have gone in depicting any character who doesn't automatically like Black people, I appreciate the meliorist approach, showing that Richie's dad is an Archie Bunker type who resents cultural/societal change. But that one episode, and various decently animated fight-scenes, don't add up to much.

 

          

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (2007)

 

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

Given my poor rating for DEAD MAN'S CHEST-- which film was shot back-to-back with AT WORLD'S END-- I wasn't expecting to rate END highly. In fact, I remember watching the film in a theater in 2007 and being exasperated by its meandering plot, its over-indulgence in trump cards and double crosses, and its make-work mythology. However, watching END back-to-back with CHEST, I accrued a greater appreciation for some of the consistent myth-motifs in the 2007 production, even if they were surrounded by a lot of chaos. CHEST now appears to be a padded middle act that introduces a lot of connective tissue necessary for a stronger third act-- which, to be sure, does have a lot of messy stuff as well. 

END, after all, is noteworthy for providing a pleasing if poignant ending to the story-arc of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley), who share the spotlight with capricious captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). The 2017 DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES added a coda to the Will-Elizabeth arc, but the conclusion of END still works as one of two major myth-motifs: that of "lovers tragically separated over long intervals," like "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl." This motif was probably derived from one of the ancillary versions of the Flying Dutchman, where the cursed captain was able to visit the human world from time to time, seeking true romance. The other major myth-motif-- that of a curse that is passed on from one victim to another-- may be extraneous to the major expressions of the Dutchman story, but END uses the motif to provide a reason why Will is forced to loosely duplicate his father's career as an absentee husband and father.

CHEST's strongest moment appeared toward the movie's conclusion, when the good-hearted Elizabeth unleashes her "inner pirate" and so betrays Jack Sparrow, so that he's consigned to the afterlife ruled by the predacious Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). CHEST also concluded with the mercenary Beckett, representative of the East India trading company, gaining the heart of Davy Jones. With this talisman, Beckett forces Jones and his Dutchman crew to serve as his enforcers in a campaign to eradicate all piracy. Here the script builds upon the first film's suggestion that piracy can be a counter-agent to the compromises of respectable society, and so END opens with a series of grotesque executions of everyone even suspected of associating with pirates. This one sequence might be the best scene ever directed by Gore Verbinski.

Will and Elizabeth, along with former enemy Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), plan to rescue Jack from perdition, in part to overthrow Beckett's tyranny. To accomplish this, the trio engage the help of a pirate brotherhood. These "pirate lords" add a fair amount of narrative confusion, but they seem necessary to expound on just how former human Davy Jones was transformed into a soul-collector by the goddess Calypso. The brotherhood also somehow forced the goddess to become human, though they don't know which human, and indeed one of the lords thinks Elizabeth is Calypso's reincarnation. Indeed, Calypso and Jones were lovers in antiquity, making them the precursors of the pattern that will consume Will and Elizabeth.         

                

Actually, because the script concentrates so much on the Will-Elizabeth arc-- and some minor ones involving Will's father and Elizabeth's former fiancee Norrington-- Jack Sparrow doesn't have that much to do. Indeed, one of the best scenes toward the big finish has Captain Barbossa marry Will and Elizabeth while all three of them are engaged in mortal combat. Davy Jones too gets closure to his arc, while END shows Jack and Barbossa still engaged in their perfidious but harmless pirate games-- as they still will be in the fourth installment. END has no end of flaws. But as far as putting across the message that we all need to embrace our inner pirates, this is the best of the Caribbean franchise.     

X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME FOUR (1995-96)

 

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

One odd note about Volume 4 is that although it doesn't contain all the episodes attributed to "Season 4," at least this time every episode on the discs came FROM Season 4. That said, a few had already appeared on the Volume Three collection, and there's at least one Season 4 tale that I assume will show up on Volume Five.

That said, the selections for Four are the same mixed bag seen in earlier volumes. "Proteus" is, despite cast-changes, one of the show's closest emulations of a Claremont-Byrne story, and it even succeeds in putting across some of that tale's horrific tonality.  One, "Sanctuary," was based on a story I'd not read, but it was tolerable, while "Lotus and Steel" is a complete reworking of the history of Wolverine's occasional opponent Silver Samurai, with mediocre results.

 An event of sorts takes place in that Cyclops and Marvel Girl are finally married, with less folderol than in the comics. That said, the wedding gets lost in yet another of the time-wasting time-travel stories to which the showrunners seemed addicted. Cable, Bishop, Apocalypse and Mister Sinister get four episodes devoted to a forgettable outing. The storyline was intended to conclude the series, but if nothing else, the fifth season deprived this mediocrity of that distinction.  

Strangely, the showrunners devote just one episode to disclosing Magneto's paternity of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. While I don't fault the adaptors for not translating the many continuity-nuggets from "The Yesterday Quest," at this point the show had only briefly introduced Quicksilver in one episode, as a member of an off-brand version of X-Factor. Then suddenly everyone in the story knows both Quicksilver and his sister Scarlet Witch, and Wolverine provides the X-hero connection while the two siblings encounter both Daddy Magneto and a fanatical version of the High Evolutionary. Niggles aside, it's still a better story than most of those on Volume Four.

       

PIRATES OF DARK WATER (1991-93)

 

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

Since I've always liked both pirate films and high fantasy, the combination of the two in Hanna-Barbera's PIRATES OF DARK WATER excited my admiration back in the day. At the time I knew that PIRATES was very different in tone from the 1980s product of H-B. With the exception of the Scooby Doo franchise, most of H-B's offerings seemed starved for fresh ideas. I didn't know that a producer named David Kirchner had assumed CEO duties for the company, taking over from William Hanna. Kirchner's reign only lasted from 1989 to 1992, when Fred Siebert took over as CEO. Overall Siebert seems to have done better helming the company in its final years (1992-96) of making serial cartoon shows for television. But even if one views PIRATES as the sole accomplishment of Kirschner's brief reign, it was ineluctably that breath of fresh air many viewers wanted, to judge from the persistence of nostalgic fandom for the series.

Some of that nostalgia, though, stems from the fact that Kirchner treated PIRATES like any other open-ended show. Thus, despite introducing the series with a world-threatening peril, the story ended without even a partial resolution. PIRATES takes place in a fantasy-domain with no connection to Earth: the world of Mer, wherein all land-masses are island-sized, not unlike LeGun's Earthsea novels. Mer lies under the existential threat of "Dark Water," a mysterious, poisonous sludge that infests the seawaters and that boils up from the earth's center. Later, main hero Ren learns that a malefic force lies behind Dark Water, but when the viewer meets the 17-year-old, he doesn't even know that he's a child of high estate, son of King Primus of the decayed kingdom Octopon. Ren also learns that for most of his young life, Primus has been the prisoner of the pirate-lord Bloth. The loose implication is that Ren was raised as a commoner because Bloth killed all of Primus' other relations. Primus escapes, finds Ren, tells him that Mer's peril can only be averted if Ren gathers "the Thirteen Treasures of Rule," and then suffers an ambiguous fate, maybe or maybe not dead.

Ren does have one bequest from his father: a compass that will guide Ren to each of the treasures in turn. Because Bloth also covets the treasure, Ren needs a ship with which to sail Mer's seas, and a crew as well. He gets them all in short order: Ioz, an older male pirate hungry for treasure, Tula, an athletic woman with mystic "ecomancer" skills, and Niddler, a comical "monkey-bird." All three initially have selfish reasons for following Ren, though it doesn't take long for them to be swayed by Ren's altruism, not to mention  their need to escape Bloth's relentless pursuit. 

The design-work for PIRATES-- costumes, vehicles, flora and fauna -- is as good as most animated fantasy-films, and the voice-work is excellent. But as is usually the case with TV serials, the continuing characters evolve certain "tics" that become their reasons for being. Niddler complains about not having enough to eat, chauvinist Ioz makes some rude comment about women at sea, Tula snaps at him, and Ren tells them all to stifle themselves.

Similarly, the "guest stars" aren't much better, and so only a few episodes stand out in terms of characterization. In "A Drop of Darkness," the crew encounters an elderly sorceress named Cray. Ren is surprised to learn that Cray may have had some relationship to his father Primus, though Primus rejected Cray for Ren's mother. Cray wants to relive her life, using Dark Water to restore her youth and trying to romance the naive prince. And in "Sister of the Sword," the heroes meet Ioz's kid sister Solia, who's as larcenous as her brother and who incites Tula's jealousy when Solia outrageously flirts with Ren. 

Yet too often the motives of the guest stars don't bear close scrutiny. The last episode, "The Living Treasure," presents Tula becoming wroth with Ioz's chauvinism. By the wildest coincidence, the treasure-hunt drops the hero-pirates in the laps of a tribe of man-hating Amazons, who enslave Ioz and Ren but invite Tula to join their ranks. Though it's not a horrible story, it's very predictable. At the conclusion, the good guys find a treasure that suggests a way that the Dark Water may be nullified. But then the series ended, so that only devoted fans could complete the abbreviated epic via fan-fiction.

               

           

VIRTUAL COMBAT (1995)

 

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

Hyde Park Entertainment came close to PM in terms of churning out reams of STV products for cable and video rental stores. PM tended to concentrate on action movies, while Hyde emphasized softcore thrillers like the NIGHT EYES series. That said, the redoubtable Don Wilson made three flicks for Hyde Park. I've found a number of Wilson programmers to be passable formula entertainment. But though I've not seen them all, VIRTUAL COMBAT may be the worst thing Wilson ever did, though the fault surely lies with the guys behind the camera.

COMBAT takes place in the near future, and like most such action-fare, it's really just the modern world with one or two SF-tropes added. VR technology has become the big thing in future-Las Vegas, so much so that local cops like David Quarry (Wilson) and his partner John spend most of their time hanging out in VR parlors-- though John avails himself of VR sexcapades, while David hones his martial skills by battling VR opponents. One opponent is Dante (Michael Bernardo), and he kicks real boy David's ass in their first bout. Unfortunately, a world-beater named Burroughs (first and middle names "John Carter," hah hah) has his scientists invent a way of bringing VR programs into the real world-- sort of the 3-D printing of the 1990s. Burroughs' main purpose seems to be to corner a new market on VR prostitutes, both creating regular good-lookers like Liana (Athena Massey) and "specialty types" like whip-wielding dominatrix Greta (Dawn Ann Billings). But the same tech that births cyber-babes also unleashes cyber-villain Dante, and one of his first actions is to kill David's partner.

Avenging his partner then becomes David's only motive in life for the rest of the film, though he finds a little time for a nothing sex scene with Liana. But director Andrew Stevens's idea of a plot is that of providing minimal connective tissue between a bunch of mediocre fight-scenes. Even Liana and Greta get to throw down a little. But only the climactic combat between David and Dante shows decent choreography, which may stem from the two actors working to their strengths. But Dante's never very threatening, not least because he doesn't utter his own lines, but strides around close-mouthed while his dialogue is uttered by the booming voice of Michael Drn.

Eventually all the rogue programs are destroyed, even "good VR" Liana, though David can still visit an iteration of Liana. Where? Why, in the VR sex parlors! And so COMBAT ends by coming "full circle"-- or is that "full-circle jerk?"                 

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST (2006)

 

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

I'm sure Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer saved a ton of money by shooting this movie and its sequel back-to-back, and since audiences loved Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow, both films made bank at the box office. But director Gore Verbinski and his team sure sacrificed the simple, elemental appeal of two good-hearted but conventional lovers who have their world turned upside down by a roguish pirate with a heart of fool's gold.

It's a year later since the events of the first film, and Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley) are due to be married soon. However, a Navy official named Beckett shows up at Port Royal, ordering the arrests of the two lovers for having aided the escape of wanted pirate Jack Sparrow (Depp). Beckett's also looking for former Naval officer Norrington, but this is merely a plot-device just to let the audience know that the character will show up later in the story. Beckett has zero need for Norrington, because his real plot is to use Elizabeth's captivity to blackmail Will into finding Jack Sparrow.

After the first hour, it becomes clear that the poor excuse for a plot is just a series of "go find something" tasks. The crude assemblages of goals put me in mind of the old kids' song "The Old Lady Who Swallowed the Fly:"

Will follows Jack Sparrow to find Jack's compass,

And they use the compass to find a key,

And the key they use to open Dead Man's Chest, 

And in the chest they find a heart

From another chest, that of Davy Jones,

And with that heart they can win their desires--

I understand that most pirate adventures owe a debt to TREASURE ISLAND, but all these different doodads become tedious, particularly since they're just there to pad the film's running-time. The supernatural being Davy Jones (Bill Nighy with an octopus-face), a former human transformed into a keeper of dead souls (and the captain of the Flying Dutchman), holds control of the seven seas. Anyone who can gain custody of Davy Jones' heart will also control the oceans-- which is Beckett's endgame.

After about an hours' worth of pointless stunts, Will does find Jack and reunites the querulous captain with his crew and his ship-- as well as new crewman Norrington, who nurses old grudges against both Will and Jack. While they head off to find the Flying Dutchman-- which is crewed by a bunch of fish-men-- Elizabeth wins free of prison and goes looking for Will.

The makeshift mythology here includes not only Davy Jones, but also a goddess called Calypso and a giant Kraken. I recall that these matters get a little more exposition in the third film, but I imagine the audience just rolled with it all while waiting for Johnny Depp to show up and be funny. Will has a subplot in which he meets his long-lost father, now a member of the Dutchman crew, and Elizabeth once more appears to be slightly tempted by Jack's chaotic charms. Elizabeth gets to swordfight this time, as well as handily tricking tricky Jack, while the best stunt in the film is a three-way blade-battle between Jack, Will, and Norrington. But there were also a lot more boring scenes that one should expect from a Jerry Bruckheimer production.