GONE WITH THE WEST (1969/1974)

 

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

In 2012 I did a quickie review of this film, but on rewatching it this year, I decided to write a new one. After I finish this one I'll delete the previous version.

By all accounts director Bernard Girard completed this western, starring James Caan and Stephanie Powers, under a different title in 1969, when the influence on Italian spaghetti westerns on American cinema was at its height. It was finally released in 1974, probably to play off Caan's rising star, and then recut with a frame story and re-released under the title LITTLE MOON AND JUD MCGRAW. Over time a lot of fans have dubbed GONE as one of the worst westerns of all time. However, while it isn't good, it did pick up on the social anomie seen in the original Sergio Leone movies, and formulated the same basic situation seen in 1973's HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER-- that of a pitiless avenger destroying a corrupt town-- long before HPD went into production. I imagine there were other possible ancestors for both. not least Dashiell Hammett's 1929 RED HARVEST.

Also, GONE is not an adventure-story as I previously labeled it, but an irony, just like DRIFTER. One or two IMDB reviews complained of tonal changes in GONE, when it seemed to shift between comedy and ultraviolent adventure. But GONE is an irony, in which everything is meant to have a double meaning. I'm not saying GONE is a good or incisive irony, the way that DRIFTER is. But a lot of the tropes I identified as "fallacious figments"-- like the cutesy end-scene where Caan's character Jed shoots the film's cameraman-- are meant to convey a pseudo-artsy sense that anything-can-happen. 

The flick begins mundanely enough, with Jed being released from prison for some unspecified crime. His mental flashbacks tell us that he holds a man named Nimmo (Aldo Ray) responsible for his sufferings, as well as for the murder of Jed's wife and child. Jed makes a beeline for the unnamed town where Nimmo rules with an iron hand. Jed watches from afar while the corrupt townsfolk carry on at a cockfight, and pitilessly watch as a young Indian female, Little Moon (Powers), is raped. Later Little Moon retreats to a craggy area overlooking the town, where Jed has made his camp.

Jed watches as Little Moon washes herself in a mountain lake. He doesn't watch her nude display too long, for he announces himself by tossing a rock in the water. Moon gets dressed and attacks him, only to be dissuaded by a threatening fist. But because he doesn't show any desire to rape her, she starts hanging out with him, even though she only speaks Spanish. 

Jed makes a few opening assaults on Nimmo's henchmen. This doesn't seem to upset Nimmo, though one of his cronies seeks out the ridge-area. This guy does try to rape Moon, claiming he didn't get his chance earlier. We then get another "fallacious figment" as Jed comes down like Tarzan, swinging down on a rope attached to who-knows-what. Nevertheless, Moon gets the victory because she just happens to have a sling and kills the rapist with a stone.

The rest of the film is just, as others have said, just a smorgasbord of incoherent violent scenes, though one does have the distinction of being among the best catfights in cinema. In short, Nimmo's regular hooker-girlfriend (Barbara Werle) takes objection when another whore (Elizabeth Leigh) tries to get with Nimmo. It's a really well choreographed fight, and I like to think the participants were doing their best to boost their careers as stuntwomen with this big fight. On a minor note, Sammy Davis Jr has a few scenes as a slick gunfighter employed by Nimmo, but Davis has no real impact on the story.

Jed and Moon attack the town with rocks flung by catapults that they whipped up out of nothing. Then Nimmo's men find and capture Jed, which is the first time Nimmo even learns who his nemesis. He's tied to a cross in the center of town, but Moon comes to his rescue, riding into town and lassoing the cross, so as to drag it away. No one seems able to pursue her. Finally Moon somehow devises a kite from which she can drop sticks of dynamite (how?) on the town. This clears out all the corrupt maggots and makes possible a final fatal clash between Jed and Nimmo. Then the triumphant hero kisses his damsel before they walk toward the horizon-- aside from shooting the cameraman, that is.

Though it's naturalistic aside from the injection of "figments" you're not supposed to believe in, the arty approach still places GONE in my category of "weird westerns."      

ASSASSIN (1976)

 

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

Twenty minutes from the end of this film, I was ready to describe this obscure Taiwanese chopsocky as an entirely naturalistic martial drama, about noble Chinese patriots seeking to assassinate Mongke Khan (Bai Ying), the head of a Mongolian invasion force attacking China. But at that point in the film, the Chinese leader decides that he wants one of his commanders, Ling (Tien Peng), to impersonate a Chinese officer who's been condemned for betraying China to the Mongols. And how does the official want Ling to bring about this imposture? Why, he brings in a tanner who usually cuts off animal skins and asks the guy to cut off the traitor's facial skin, which Ling then wears into the Mongolian camp-- a gambit which is for the most part a big success. This is ASSASSIN's only enjoyably brain-fried moment, though, for most of the rest of the movie is dull.

At the film's outset, Su Mei (Hsu Feng), girlfriend of Ling, has planned an imposture of her own. After some breast-beating about the danger of the mission, Su takes the place of a concubine who's going to be sent to Mongke. Once Su gets close to the enemy leader, she can pull a Chinese version of the Biblical Deborah by slaying Mongke with her knives. Before she gets there, we're introduced to Mongke, who seems to be a tough, resourceful leader, with a sister, Ha Shi Li (Chia Ling), who's also a martial artist. However, Mongke figures out the plot and ambushes Su. Armed only with two short daggers, Su makes hash of several Mongolians, but Mongke himself easily masters her, even though he doesn't do any impressive kung fu stunts. He then imprisons her, clearly thinking about making use of her, though somehow, he never quite does so. 

 Ha Shi Li, however, signals some possible sibling issues, for she seems very jealous of Mongke's attentions to this Chinese lady assassin. Li corners Su in prison, where she could stab Su to death with ease. However, perhaps to prove her martial superiority, Li simply cuts Su's bonds and challenges her to a duel, Su's double knives against Li's sword. It's a very cool diva-battle, better than the two actresses' fight in THE GREAT HUNTER, and easily the best scene in the movie, including the wacky face-stealing scene. Mongke and his guards forestall the duel's conclusion. However, prior to that, Su cleverly plants a seed in Li's mind, that if she's so great she ought to go challenge Ling to a contest at the Chinese camp. Li does so, and though she doesn't defeat Ling she does slice up a bunch of no-name soldiers, so that both kung-fu divas get an equal chance to shine. Indeed, though Hsu Feng is pictured as being more glamorous than Chia Ling, both are really the only good reasons to watch the film.

The final general dust-up is nothing special, but it has one curious moment. Mongke fights Ling, and Ling manages to stab the Mongol. Su comes up from behind Mongke and also stabs him, at which point Li tries to stab Su from behind. Mongke, who's apparently fallen in love with Su in some off-camera scene, flings Ling and Su away from him, and flings a dagger at-- his sister, in order to save Su. This might have made a little sense had Mongke actually forced himself on Su, only to become so besotted with her that he valued her life over his own, or his sister's. But if that was the intention, the filmmakers totally muffed the execution.       

THE SISTER STREET FIGHTER TRILOGY

 

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

Though the trio of films starring a character called (in the English dub) "Tina Long" are given the rubric "Sister Street Figher," there's no actual connection between this series and that of Sonny Chiba's STREET FIGHTER series. Chiba, who worked with star Etsuko Shihomi on several projects, does contribute a minor support-role, but he's in no way compared with his "Terry Tsurugi" character. There's also no attempt to give the Tina character any psychological depth; she's just a loose cannon that the authorities unleash upon a band of evil drug-smugglers.

Tina's a private citizen, renowned as a martial arts champion, and when her undercover cop brother Lee goes missing, the Hong Kong cops assign Tina to go find him, because I guess that's what HK police do in those situations. The thin thread of logic relates to the fact that drug-boss Kakuzaki keeps around a stable of killers with disparate kung-fu styles (the gangster considers it his hobby, the way other rich guys keep stables of horses). Thus Tina can use her fame to infiltrate various kung-fu haunts-- though, truth to tell, the bad guys obligingly come looking for her. By the way, though most drug-lords just kill off undercover cops, Kakuzaki keeps Lee a prisoner and pumps him full of heroin, just to be a sadist.

That's all the plot one gets, as the rest of the film is wall-to-wall action. All of the uncanny content comes from the gangsters. One group of female karate-killers dresses up with face-masks and jaguar-pelt costumes and weird devices include a spear-pistol, a blowgun, and a metal claw-hand that Kakuzaki wears in his final fight with Tina. The latter is almost certainly a callback to ENTER THE DRAGON, whose main villain sports a similar weapon. In essence, Kazuzaki is just a reprise of that character, switching his venue of operations from an island-tournament to the mean streets of a big city.

When SISTER was a hit, the company rushed out a sequel, subtitled HANGING BY A THREAD, and the new boss of Tina's enemies, Osone, is once again both a drug-smuggler and a collector of exotic killers. This time an official asks Tina to take on the smugglers to save the official's daughter, with whom Tina is also friends. However, in case a family friend doesn't seem like enough-- and since the cop-brother died in the first film-- this time Tina has a sister who gets mixed up in the drug trade. And though there's no Sonny Chiba this time, Tina gets help from another prominent male fighter, played by well regarded performer Yasuaki Kurata.

There aren't nearly as many wild gimmicks in this film, though there are enough to keep up the uncanny phenomenality. There's another spear-pistol and a woman who has poisoned fingernails, but they don't poise major threats. I thought I saw something like a shuriken that spurted acid demonstrated, but nothing like that was ever used against Tina. Osone doesn't seem as formidable a villain as Kakuzaki, though the script gives Osone a weird fetish for putting out the eyes of his enemies-- which almost guarantees the method of his demise.

The trilogy wrapped up with RETURN OF THE SISTER STREET FIGHTER the next year. Curiously, Tina is asked for help to find the missing sister of a cop named Cho (played by Sonny Chiba's brother Jiro), but he perishes early on. This leaves Tina to both go looking for the missing woman, one Shurei, while also playing nursemaid to Shurei's grade-schooler daughter Rika.

Again Tina encounters the inevitable gang with lots of martial artist thugs, though at least this time, they're smuggling gold instead of drugs. The main evildoer this time is the wheelchair-bound Mister Oh, and once again in deference to the model of evil Master Han of ENTER THE DRAGON, this villain stages a mini-tournament for eight prospective bodyguards, to whittle the applicants down to four. (This sequence is the only one to use really exotic costumes.) Once Oh has his four bodyguards, a late entry named Kurosaki (Yasuaki Kurata) horns in, kills one of the four, and claims he's the only one able to kill Tina.

Kurosaki comes close to doing so, but when he fails, Oh has Rika kidnapped to lure Tina into a trap, Supposedly the idea is to have Tina cornered by Kurosaki in a wooden building, but whether it's Oh's idea or that of the bodyguards, the henchmen fire the building, intending to trap Kurosaki, Tina and Rika inside. Kurosaki enables Tina and Rika to escape but seemingly perishes in the blaze. (However, he turns up at the climax with no explanation.) 

Oh proves himself the stupidest fiend in the series. After gratuitously shooting Shurei in front of her little daughter, Oh has Tina strung up by her heels from an A-frame that's just standing out in the open for some reason, and then-- leaves her behind to starve and be picked over by crows. Tina of course escapes and she and Kurosaki join forces to thrash all the villains. Incidentally, Kurosaki reveals some hard-to-follow info about Oh being a Japanese WWII officer who absconded with the gold somehow, but how he knew this, no one knows. This end-battle is the only decent fight in this, the least of the trilogy, and it also contains the only uncanny device. Calling out to Master Han AGAIN, Oh reveals that he's not only not crippled and doesn't need his wheelchair, one of his hands is solid gold and capable to crushing skulls. Of course he still loses and dies clutching at his illicitly-acquired gold bars. Kurosaki disappears, so his agenda remains up for grabs, while Tina ends her adventures by becoming a new mother to orphaned Rika. A fourth film with the "Sister" moniker came out but in it Shihomi played a different character. 

THE STORY OF DRUNKEN MASTER (1979)

 

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

In 1978 Jackie Chan catapulted to worldwide fame thanks to his breakthrough hit DRUNKEN MASTER, in which his protagonist, despite initial reluctance, learns the "drunken fist" style of his master Beggar So (Simon Yuen) and so conquers his enemy.

Since this film-- also known as DRUNKEN FIST BOXING-- cast Yuen in a role with the same name and appearance, there's not much question that he was selected to coast on the fame of the Jackie Chan film. But maybe the producers feared some legal reprisal if they followed the template too closely, for there's only a minute or so of drunken boxing, and that comes at the very end, from a supporting character.

The main characters are a brother and sister, Chi Wai (Casanova Wong) and Gam Fa (Yeung Pan Pan, who are perpetually training under their aged master Beggar So. I think Chi runs a pawn shop while Gam performs an acrobatic act at a local saloon, so they don't have any heroic motives for their training. So is seen imbibing wine a few times but not teaching any drunk-fu. 

However, So has an enemy from an earlier encounter, a nasty martial arts master named Bill Chan. Chan wants to humiliate So by attacking his students, and one of Chan's pupils wants to get busy with Gam. So most of the film concerns a series of peripatetic conflicts, though not that many full-fledged battles. One comic scene, for example, involves Gam "accidentally" inflicting small injuries on her unwanted suitor. However, because the suitor has money, Gam's dick of a father encourages her to marry him. 

The meandering plot is of no consequence, and the only good fighter by my reckoning is the athletic Yeung Pan Pan. The actress never had a major breakout success in old-style kung fu films, but became somewhat better known in the Hong Kong "girls with guns" genre. The minute or so of drunk-fighting comes courtesy of a third So-student, Ah Chong, who drinks So's wine and briefly confounds Bill Chan in the big end-fight-- though Gam and Chi are the ones who earn the real victory. A couple of times fighters use weighted ribbons or belts as weapons, but there's no uncanny effect and so they register only as naturalistic.

HURRICANE SWORD (1969)

 

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

One online review compared this South Korean swordplay flick-- supposedly one of the first of its kind from that nation-- to a Zatoichi imitation called "Crimson Bat," in that the main character is a blind swordswoman. However, I've seen a couple of the "Bat" films, and SWORD is better, at least as good as an average-level ZATOICHI film.

For convenience I'll use the names applied to the characters from the English dub, since I haven't found Korean credits online. Elaine (Sa Mi-Ja) is the young blind heroine whose sword-skills are not very well explained. At some point in her younger years, Elaine's father died somehow, possibly as the result of Elaine's mother running off with another man. Elaine is raised by her Uncle Louie, but when she reaches young womanhood, Louie is slain by gangsters for some past offence.

The backstory is related after a "media res" opening, in which another older man is being chased by sword-wielding thugs. The thugs come across Elaine and give her some lip, so she kills them all. Only afterward does she find that the thugs' quarry was an old fellow she eventually calls Uncle Hong, whom she clearly substitutes for the real relative she lost.

However, Hong has some problems into which Elaine is soon drawn. Twenty years ago Hong, a single father, left his infant daughter Su Ann with another family for raising. Unfortunately, once Su Ann was older-- about the same age as Elaine-- the family sold Su Ann to a brothel run by a madame named (I think) Fa Something. Hong found out and wants to liberate the daughter he's never known.

Elaine tries to help by gathering enough money to buy Su Ann's contract. The blind heroine does so by betting on a cockfight administered by Mistress Fa, and seeing through Fa's fixing the fight. Elaine gets lots of money but her action angers Fa, who sends men (and one woman, armed with a bladed mace) to kill Elaine. Hong tries to free Su Anne on his own but things don't work out well for either of them.

In the grand tradition of Victorian melodrama, it's revealed that Fa is the bad mother who left Elaine behind, but the mistress deeply regrets her deed upon seeing her grown child. This fortunate coincidence works out because Fa's current lover is also the man who both stole Fa from her family and had Uncle Louie killed. Elaine manages to gain vengeance for all of her injuries, though total tragedy is averted. Fa is wounded but not killed, and the film ends with the suggestion that Poor Elaine may still have a chance at some sort of family.

The battles are pure sword-play with no hand-to-hand fighting at all, and I found them adequate if unremarkable, while Sa Mi-Ja did a good job charting her character's emotional tumult. Compared to the many piecemeal chopsockies I've encountered, SWORD is refreshingly linear in its melodramatic basics.

THE RIBALD TALES OF ROBIN HOOD (1969)

 

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

The above lobby card asserts that this film came "from the same company that brought you THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF ZORRO." I have only a dim memory of the latter film, but as I recall that Zorro-flick was just one of many softcore comedies spawned by the liberalization of the American market re: adult films in the late 1960s. Some of these were set in some exotic historical period, like medieval Europe or the American West. I fully expected a movie with the title RIBALD TALES OF ROBIN HOOD would also be a dimwit T&A comedy set in medieval England.

Well, HOOD is no better than most of these low-grade quickie efforts, but it's peculiar in that it's not a comedy, nor an adventure in the dominant "Robin Hood" mold. There are comic moments in it, with lusty wenches baring their goods for the doubtlessly merry men of Robin Hood. Yet HOOD is unusually serious for a sex-flick. Grindhouse films of the sixties sometimes focused on modern-day people enduring lives of quiet desperation, but I've never seen a depressing medieval sex-film.

Most of the usual Robin Hood routines are in place: Robin (Ralph Jenkins) and his merry men hide in Sherwood's deep forest from the authority of King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham while robbing from the rich in order to ransom King Richard (who never actually makes it back to England here). However, whereas most Robin-iterations show Maid Marian hanging out chastely in the leader's company, these rebels have various camp-followers hanging around and, of course, hanging out of their blouses whenever possible. 

Meanwhile, King John and the Sheriff can't figure out their next move, even with assistance from John's evil sister Lady Sallyforth (Lynn Cartwright).  First, for some reason I didn't entirely follow, she and the Sheriff travel into Sherwood and get captured, but Robin releases them in order to humiliate them, bound nude back-to-back on a donkey. (Before the release, one of the bosomy camp-followers suggests she wants to mess with Sallyforth while she's tied up, only to spit on her instead. Naturally, Sallyforth gets even later.) This segue wasn't strictly necessary, because immediately afterward, secondary villain Guy of Gisborne comes up with the main plot against Robin Hood. The evildoers persuade the hero's former fiancee Maid Marian (Dee Lockwood) to enter Sherwood and talk Robin into giving up the outlaw life. Maid Marian does so, taking along a lady in waiting. Once the two women enter the Sherwood camp, neither lady has to wait very long before they start getting busy; Marian with Robin and the other girl with Little John.

All of this sounds like your typical goofy comedy. Yet though there are mildly humorous moments (two camp-girls fight with quarterstaffs upon a river-bridge), the tone is dominantly grim. Maid Marian doesn't do anything to betray her lover, but a disloyal camp follower gives away Robin's plans, and the hero is captured and imprisoned at John's castle. In addition, Tina, Little John's conquest, is raped and killed by the Sheriff. The villains, hoping to find Robin's cache of stolen gold, force Marian to interrogate him in the dungeon. He thinks she betrayed him, and slaps her a couple of times, though in the end his deep feelings for her overcome his sense of betrayal. Robin then escapes the dungeon, thanks to Marian letting him wear her heavy cloak so that the guard lets Robin out, thinking it's Marian. (Said guard also pinches "her" butt as "she" leaves.)

When the Merry Men in due course invade the castle to free Robin, they slay most of the male villains, and they also end up freeing Marian from the tender mercies of Lady Sallyforth. The villainess takes a definite sapphic delight in tormenting Marian, alluding to the "soft girl things that your traitorous Robin and his arrogant maleness couldn't possibly know"-- which is definitely the one line in the whole script worth committing to memory. In another unusually dramatic touch, Robin gives Sallyforth to his men to deal out punishment. Little John has the chance to rape (at the very least) the woman partly responsible for the demise of his beloved. Yet he demurs, clearly not willing to touch her sexually, and leaves her punishment to two other outlaws.

Though there is a lengthy fight at the end, it seems clear to me that director/co-writer Richard Kanter barely cared about these scenes next to scenes of male grief at the loss of their beloved women. The streaming version I saw also omits a traumatic moment from other versions, in which Robin as a child watches the Sheriff and his men slay Robin's father and despoil both his mother and sister. HOOD may not formally good for a "Robin Hood drama." But I give Kanter props for trying something different in a market devoted to sedulous imitation.

One of Sallyforth's torture methods constitutes a naturalistic "diabolical device:" a bed of spikes over which the victim is suspended by chains. However, this device inspires IMO only fear, not the dread that is summoned forth by the most well-known torture device in English-language fiction: Poe's uncanny combo of The Pit and the Pendulum.

THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972), SWEET SUGAR (1972), TERMINAL ISLAND (1973)

PHENOMENALITY: (1)*naturalistic* (2,3) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: (1, 2)*fair*; (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*


As escapist as the early seventies WIP are in essence, it's interesting as to how often they explore the sexual politics between males and females.

THE BIG BIRD CAGE was a conceptual "sequel" to 1971's successful THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, also directed by Jack Hill. However, this time there's no weirdo warden in charge, and Hill's script emphasizes trippy, goofy scenarios far more than Don Spenser's grim script for HOUSE. Like HOUSE, the women's prison is situated in some tropical country, and events unfold before the eyes of an innocent "new fish" (Anitra Ford's character "Terry"). This time, as if to counteract the hot lady convicts' ability to charm their captors, all of the guards guarding the prison are homosexual. The ladies labor in the shadow of a huge mill, the "bird cage" of the title, where at least some of the characters perish, metaphorically being ground up in the mills of commerce-- that is, when the prettier ones aren't being pimped out to rich guys in the city.

Opposed to the corrupt local regime are a team of quasi-Marxist revolutionaries, led by Blossom (Pam Grier) and Django (Sid Haig). However, these are no liberating forces, for Blossom and Django only want to free the female convicts for the same reason the capitalists do: to prostitute them for the cause. At this point in Grier's career, she had yet to play starring roles in films like COFFY and FOXY BROWN, and perhaps for this reason, even when she gets herself sentenced to the cane-fields, she never really seems a part of the ensemble of "birds." Indeed, whereas HOUSE was fairly strong in creating a group of simple but memorable "types," none of the characters in CAGE stand out very well, despite a sprightly comic scene involving a tall lesbian trying to beat up a shorter girl who continually tempts and mocks her. There's a muddy catfight between Blossom and a blonde chick that reverses the verdict of HOUSE, and a final shootout at the climax, but it's all pretty unfocused.

By contrast, Don Spenser followed up his seminal contribution to WIP films by contributing the screenplay to Michel Levesque's SWEET SUGAR. (A writer named R.Z. Samuel, with no other IMDB credits, is credited with the original story, but there's no telling what he did at this late date.)

The film is named for its heroine, comely Sugar Bowman (Phyllis Elizabeth Davis), but although she fills the role of the "new fish" sent to a cane-cutting tropical prison, Sugar is clearly meant to be the star of the show, while all of the other lady convicts who aid her comprise her retinue. From the first Sugar is portrayed as a seventies version of an independent woman, having sex with anyone she cares to but ostensibly never doing it for money, or even just for dinner and a movie. But for obscure reasons she's framed and sent to cut cane. This time, there's not a lot of talk about pimping the ladies out-- some of them are even allowed to go into town when they finish their labors-- but Doctor John, both the warden and the prison doctor, has another purpose. He's the epitome of a mad scientist, working on various esoteric projects for no stated reason. At one point he hooks Sugar up to a testing machine while injecting her with a female hormone, but her sexual paroxyms break the machine, probably a swipe from a similar scene in BARBARELLA. Later for even less reason he injects cats with a local drug to make them crazy, and then has the cats tossed at rebellious convicts. There's even a moment when he seems hip to the traditions of voodoo, for when Doctor John executes a voodoo-worshiping male convict, the crazed physician starts rambling about the voodoo god Ghede for some reason.

Most of the other guards and prisoners are nugatory characters, so that all the best scenes are those in which Sugar, the self-assured hot girl, keeps putting down the nutty doctor despite the power he wields over her and her fellow inmates. In contrast to many WIP films of the time, Sugar escapes her tormentors and returns to her normal life unscathed.

TERMINAL ISLAND might be termed a very minimal form of "science fiction," in that it takes place in a near future, when capital punishment has been outlawed in the U.S. However, the government has solved prison overcrowding by sentencing a couple dozen convicted murderers to sink or swim on an isolated island. "New fish" Carmen (Ena Hartman) provides the audience with a viewpoint character, and I would think that Hartman was trying to do a "Pam Grier tough girl" performance if it wasn't for the fact that the two movies were shot about the same time, with COFFY making it into theaters only a month or two ahead of TERMINAL. However, director/co-writer Stephanie Rothman doesn't maintain her focus on Carmen, on the island's only doctor Norman (a pre-stardom Tom Selleck), or on much of anyone. By the time Carmen gets there, the convicts seem to have separated into "really vicious murderers" and "not so bad murderers," and for the rest of the movie Rothman simply depicts a series of intermittent conflicts between the two groups. I suppose the "not so bads" comprise the film's ensemble of central characters, but I could hardly keep track of who was who. Marta Kristen has a nice scene or two as a lady scientist who helps her allies make gunpowder, and Phyllis Davis rubs royal jelly on a guy's dong so that the local bees will sting him into impotence. But nothing really hangs together; it's a bunch of random, poorly-staged fight-scenes and fleeing-scenes that aren't up to the standards of even a mediocre WIP flick.

Though all three films contain a lot of violence, none of them are organized enough to be considered in the combative mode, though SWEET SUGAR comes closest to the model.

THE WHITE BUTTERFLY KILLER (1973)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*


This film's heroine-- Pao, played by prolific Hong Kong actress Hsu Feng-- is never called "White Butterfly Killer" in the English version of this HK film. The title made me wonder if it might be an example of metaphenomenal cinema, since many HK films of the period touch on such material, even if it's only in terms of kung-fu avengers who wield unusual weapons for justice.

Pao is first seen running a tavern with three female companions, and all four of them display considerable kung-fu talents when local gangsters try to give them trouble. However, Pao is after more than serving drinks. Years ago, she was raped by the head of the local crime syndicate. Though the film doesn't explain how she or her employees acquire top-level fighting-skills, evidently Pao does train herself for the purpose of avenging herself on her rapist and his allies.

Female avengers were not extraordinary in 1970s Hong Kong films, but for once, the female lead isn't simply raped for the purpose of giving her a motive to beat up a lot of villains. To be sure, Pao does kick a lot of asses. But the script, so far as I can judge from the dubbing, devotes some effort to capturing her inner torment. When her romantic interest confesses that he can't credence her lust for vengeance because she seems so "soft," Pao smashes her fist into a wooden door, and asks if he thinks her softness makes her weak. Later, having been counseled that her rage will never be dispelled by seeking vengeance, she beats down one victim but starts to grant him mercy. However, the fellow then tries to jump her when her guard is down, and so pays the price.

The one element of the film that's almost metaphenomenal involves a memento from the time of Pao's rape, for the rapist cut off her queue. Apparently Pao somehow reinforced her ponytail with hide or metal, for when she battles her principal opponent at the climax, she hits the villain with the queue as if it was as hard as a flail. But because this element is used only at the film's end, I decided that it doesn't qualify as an uncanny form of an "outre device."

SON OF ALI BABA (1952), ALI BABA AND THE SEVEN SARACENS (1964)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*



Here are two pieces of cheese: one American, one Italian, and both invoking the name of the Arabian character Ali Baba-- though it seems that the peplum originally used the name of "Sindbad."

SON OF ALI BABA presents Tony Curtis as Kashma Baba, whose dad was the original leader of the Forty Thieves-- and not, as in the Arabian Night, a fellow who ended up bringing doom to the thief-band. This bit of narrative confusion extends to every other aspect of this rather dull swashbuckler, for its script mingles aspects of DON Q SON OF ZORRO (hero is a member of a military guard, framed for wrongdoing) to Robin Hood. (One of the hero's prominent aides is a female archer, seen above with Curtis and another actor, who wears attire more befitting medieval England than medieval Araby).

In cinematic circles, the film became the source of a popular joke at the expense of Curtis' Bronx accent, in that he supposedly speaks the line "Yondah lies the palace of my faddah da king." Curtis' accent isn't the least convincing as an Arabian prince, but it's no worse than that of anyone else in the film, and he doesn't even speak the supposed line.

Though some Ali Baba tales invoke the one metaphenomenal aspect of the original tale-- the cave whose door magically opens to give the 40 thieves a hiding place-- there's no reference to that story-element. The original Ali and the thieves appear as old men, whose role is simply to advise the fierce young Kashma and his allies against their enemies. This is such a dull by-the-numbers swashbuckler that not even the presence of several sultry temptresses (among them Piper Laurie and Susan Cabot) can assuage the tedium.

According to IMDB director Emimmo Salvi-- perhaps best known for DAVID AND GOLIATH-- made a 1962 fantasy-film called THE SEVEN TASKS OF ALI BABA, though from descriptions it doesn't sound like it had much to do with the original Arabian Night. Then this film, originally SIMBAD CONTRO I SETTE SARACENI, was retitled, possibly because the 1964 shared some of the same cast as the earlier film. Certainly neither of the Arabian Nights characters inspired anything about this story, which is simply about medieval Arab warlords fighting one another for supremacy, with Ali Baba (Dan Harrison) as the good warrior and Omar (Gordon Mitchell, seen above) as the bad warrior.

The flick is just as formulaic as SON OF ALI BABA, but the action is better mounted and the costumes, while probably not accurate, don't look like they were recycled from films about other historical periods. The most interesting thing about SARACENS is that it's one of the few times that hostility between the film's "heroine" and "villainess" actually eventuated in a little hand-to-hand violence. Usually in this type of Italian film, the heroine's helplessness is emphasized, but the character of Fatima challenges bad-girl Farida at least twice to a fight, and the film delivers the claw-fest, though it's not a particularly good one. Another rarity is a scene in which the girls of Omar's harem rebel and beat up their guards, though this too is rather weak tea.

Though the original screenplay can't possibly have predicated on the story of Ali Baba, by sheer coincidence an unusual door plays a big part in the tale. But rather than a magical cave-entrance, it's a huge rock door in Omar's fortress that is raised and lowered by mechanical devices. Sometimes devices like this carry an "uncanny" vibe, but in this case it's a purely naturalistic contrivance.

THE VANISHING LEGION (1931), GOVERNMENT AGENTS VS. PHANTOM LEGION (1951), THE KILLER ELITE (1975)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: (1,2) *poor,* (3) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


I'm not devoting any great space to these three naturalistic thrillers except as they pertain to my NUM theory, given that all three make use of visual and auditory motifs that seem to suggest the metaphenomenal.

By its title alone THE VANISHING LEGION seems to conjure with fantasy-tropes, and similar expectations are raised by the fact that the film's protagonist Happy Cardigan (Harry Carey) must contend with the Legion's master, a criminal known only as The Voice.  However, the Legion is just a bunch of men on horseback, and The Voice is only a voice being relayed to his men via radio. It's rumored that the whispery villain-voice was provided by an unbilled Boris Karloff, but this is the closest the serial gets to fantasy. 

Carey is personable enough as he comes to the defense of a young boy whose father is framed for murder. However, the action-scenes are dull and uninspired, though some of the fights may prove a relief from the overly mechanical fisticuffs of Republic serials. 

Speaking of overly mechanical Republic serials, GOVERNMENT AGENTS VS. PHANTOM LEGION not only takes the same strategy as the 1931 film-- jazzing up a mundane thriller with a colorful title-- but it even has a mystery villain. He too is called "the Voice," though only in the film's promotional materials, and he orders his "Legion"-- a bunch of suit-clad crooks adept in hijacking crimes-- to start preying on trucks that carry valuable governmental materials.  There's a nugatory attempt to give these truck-heisters the cachet of endangering the government's status through their activities, but this patriotic angle is largely dropped in favor of rock-'em, sock-'em action.

Like VANISHING LEGION, the mere fact that the film has an unseen villain who disguises his identity with a weird voice is not enough to push it into the realm of the metaphenomenal. GOVERNMENT AGENTS's best asset is a stalwart performance from its dependable lead Kirk Alyn, who had better material to work with in two other Republic serials, also released in 1949.

THE KILLER ELITE is not one of director Sam Peckinpah's best-regarded films, and I'm not going to argue in its defense. I've no information on the source novel adapted by the film's two writers-- one of whom, Sterling Silliphant, had already evinced some interest in the martial arts, having collaborated with Bruce Lee in a couple of American productions.

ELITE appears two years after the celebrated American "kung fu craze," and feels a bit like Peckinpah and his company taking a shot at the martial arts genre. James Caan's character Locken, formerly associated with the CIA, undertakes to protect an Asian political figure and his entourage from assassins. Though the Asians in the entourage seem to sport Chinese names, at least one of them, called "Tommie," dresses up like a ninja, as do some of the assassins.

The script continually emphasizes the inefficiency of ninja skills in the modern world of sniper-scopes, which is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn't allow for much of a cultural exchange. But then, the script is far more focused on the relationships between Locken, his allies, and his enemies. 

Peckinpah delivers a degree of action at the end, making this a combative film. But his mundane rendtion of the ninjas-- whom seem to be idiots, using swords to attack enemies with automatic weapons-- keeps this film strictly within the isophenomenal domain.

MEN OF THE DRAGON (1974)

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

Some kind soul finally posted this moldy oldie on YouTube, so that I was finally able to see the whole film for the first time since its television debut forty years ago.  I remembered little about it except that it was nearly a beat-for-beat reprise of 1973's cinematic success ENTER THE DRAGON, and that leading lady Katie Saylor was more enjoyable to watch in her kung-fu scenes that her low-wattage co-stars, Jared Martin and Robert Ito.  I was curious, though, as to whether the telefilm had any of the touches that caused me to label ENTER as a film in the uncanny domain.

As in ENTER human trafficking plays a big part in the plot. Evildoer Balaslev (Joseph Wiseman, best known for his role as the title character of DOCTOR NO) maintains his own island where he processes abducted women for sale overseas. In contrast to ENTER's villain, this one's not involved in holding any martial-arts tournaments, nor is he a practitioner of the arts himself. Still, like the ENTER villain, Balaslev keeps around a small army of Asians clad in karate-gi get-ups, though their utility as guards seems dubious since none of them carry guns.

The heroes are brought into Balaslev's machinations in a very straightforward way. Martial artists Jan and Lisa Kimbro (Martin and Saylor) arrive in Hong Kong to visit their old training-buddy Li-Teh (Ito). Some of Balaslev's thugs spot blonde Lisa and decide she's prime stuff, so they wait until she's alone and kidnap her. Jan and Li-Teh go looking for her and find their way to Sexual Slavery Island (not really "white slavery," since most of the victims are Asian girls).

It's no less odd here than in ENTER to see a human-trafficking ring merged with a martial-arts dojo, but in neither movie does the villain's gang receive enough narrative emphasis that it would qualify as a "weird society" either in the naturalistic domain or in its uncanny counterpart. Balaslev doesn't use any super-villain-ish traps or weapons; and the closest he comes to an "outre device" is a drug that he uses to sap the wills of his slaves, including Lisa. But since roughly equivalent drugs exist in the present-day world, I have to view the will-sapping drug as naturalistic.

Though some viewers wondered if the telefilm might have been planned as a back-door pilot for a series, the script doesn't give the three principals any more background than is needed to explain why they're all martial-arts whizzes. None of the fights are particularly exciting, except a duel between two of the heroes. In Balaslev's only really memorable evil deed, he separates the captive Li-Teh and Jan, tells each of them that his buddy is dead, and then hoaxes them into fighting one another with their eyes covered.

There's not much in the way of sociological East-meets-West myths here. There's one moment in which a Chinese girl, implicitly Balaslev's favorite, becomes piqued when he seems to be bestowing his attention upon cute blonde Lisa. But one could easily blink and miss said moment. There's also a very odd scene in which Jan tries to give his aging martial-arts mentor advice on how to update his dojo for the modern age, and unfortunately that scene is both longer and more painful to sit through.

THE DEATH KISS (1932)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

It would be easy to resent this minor mystery-thriller as a harbinger of Bela Lugosi's future marginalization in Hollywood. Lugosi is reunited with two co-performers from 1931's DRACULA, David Manners and Edward Van Sloan, but both actors are given much better lines. With Manners it's understandable, for he's the real star of the show.  When a much-disliked actor is killed on a film, Manners' character, a smart screenwriter named Franklyn Drew, makes it his business to solve the crime in order to clear his actress-girlfriend.

DEATH KISS is pretty standard for this type of fast-paced murder mystery, and Manners is reasonably entertaining trading quips with the investigating cops, who of course are all idiots. Lugosi is merely a studio manager seeking to keep his place of employment from suffering bad press. I imagine the producers merely wanted to suggest a slight aura of horror by casting him in a minor role. But there's nothing horrific in the script as such, and I disagree with any concordances that deem this a "fantasy-film"  simply because it has Bela Lugosi in it. The suggestive title also adds up to nothing, for "Death Kiss" is simply the title of the movie that's being filmed when the victim is killed. As a very slight irony, though the source of the "death kiss" is an evil temptress in the film's script, the actress playing her is entirely likeable, if dull.

The only slight claim DEATH KISS might have to metaphenomenal status is the method of the murder.  I've rated some mystery-films, like THE JADE MASK,.as "uncanny" if the murder-devices suggests the quality I've frequently called "strangeness." But not every "infernal machine," as some authors call them, are automatically (heh) uncanny. In this essay I referenced one naturalistic "machine"-- a gun rigged to shoot a victim at a certain time. To make such a mundane device "strange," one needs some sense of its being given a peculiar tonality-- which I did find in one of the films reviewed here. 

But KISS' murder-method-- a simple derringer loaded into a camera-- didn't suggest any strangeness for this viewer. I don't recall that anyone makes the obvious pun about finding a "shooting iron" in a device meant for "shooting actors" in a non-fatal manner.

CODE OF SILENCE (1985)

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


Memory's a strange thing.  I hadn't watched this routine Chuck Norris vehicle in thirty years, but had a dim memory that it was an adequate action-opus, with the odd touch that at one point Norris' city-cop hero makes use of an automated crook-catching vehicle to help him take down some gangsters.  When I rewatched it, I found it a complete waste of time, even though the director Andrew Davis went on to do high-powered adventure-flicks like 1993's THE FUGITIVE.

Norris, playing a routine maverick-cop named Cusack, attempts to save an innocent young woman, daughter of a known mobster, from being killed in a gang war.  The gangsters' motivations are singularly opaque, and one can only figure out that Henry Silva's character is the main villain because he stands around gloating over the latest rub-outs.  I don't expect a lot of motivation from the hero of a Chuck Norris vehicle, but the karate-expert gives one of his worst performances here, apparently trying to put across Clint Eastwood's signature affectless attitude.  When Norris shoots for this attitude, the actor merely looks dispeptic.  Norris' performance in SILENT RAGE is no classic either, but at least it doesn't seem to be a rank imitation of someone else.

It's extremely unlikely that any modern city would be foolish enough to turn law enforcement over to a robotic vehicle-- one equipped with machine guns, no less. Probability aside, I had to decide whether this particular manifestation of a robot could be considered "marvelous" in any way.  It's instructive, though, that Cusack isn't able to use the robot for very long: it assaults a bunch of thugs with its machine guns for a few minutes, and then shuts off, having completed its demonstration cycle.  Because of this, I decided that at best this film's robot has been portrayed as being within the sphere of modern, non-marvelous technology, such as I described in one of my ARCHIVE essays:

Only one type of robot might be acceptable to this [naturalistic] standard: one that has already been constructed for use in current scientific laboratories, like the ones seen in the essay FIVE REAL ROBOTS THAT OUTPERFORM HUMANITY.  

THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1939)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *good*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

The second of 20^th-century Fox’s two period Sherlock Holmes ranks as one of the best adaptations of the famed sleuth into cinema—surprising, given that it builds upon an unlikely source, the same William Gillette stage-play that resulted in the mixed bag of the 1922 SHERLOCK HOLMES.  It would appear (given that I’ve only read summations of the play) that the producers of ADVENTURES reached their level of excellence by throwing out everything in the play except the core idea, that of Holmes tilting lances once more with his old foe Professor Moriarty.

Many of the Sherlock Holmes tales and films fall within the Fryean mode of the “drama,” in that their thematic focus is less upon the hero’s invigorating accomplishments than on the nature of the mystery he must solve.  ADVENTURES is a rare Holmes that matches up best with the “adventure” mythos, however.  In comparion to both Fox’s previous HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES and the later Universal films also starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, ADVENTURES presents a Holmes who fights and shoots like a pulp hero.  To be sure, this Holmes is still much more restrained than the modern Robert Downey Jr. incarnation.  But the epic combat of Holmes and Moriarty is played for all its worth here, rather than being “seen” via indirect means as in Doyle’s “Final Problem,” or reduced to a crime-melodrama as in the 1922 silent film.

As in the stage-play, this Moriarty (George Zucco) plans a great crime to baffle his frequent foe.  But the writers of this Holmes film give audiences a Moriarty who isn’t just a criminal, but a near-Nietzschean worshipper of strength alone.  An opening courtroom scene presents the sight of Holmes frustrated in his attempt to bring Moriarty to justice for murder.  The enemies’ subsequent verbal sparring establishes their grudging respect and Moriarty’s determination to tempt fate, to thwart Holmes in an even more humiliating fashion.  In a later scene, Moriarty mocks one of his minions even as the man has a shaving-razor to the villain’s throat. Such is his mental strength that he’s not afraid of a weak man even when the latter has total advantage.

A further development from the play is that this Moriarty decides to put forth a complicated ruse to distract Holmes from the villain’s real target—a ruse that involves Moriarty using an agent to kill one innocent man, and then threatening the victim’s sister Ann  Brandon (Ida Lupino) as well.  Lupino, a few years away from stardom, nevertheless gives a strong performance as an ordinary woman who fears the power of the murder-plot against her and yet does her best to help Holmes where she can.

Moriarty’s assassin—not seen fully until a climactic “reveal”—comes very close to edging the film into the phenomenality of the uncanny.  Though he’s a purely human killer, given the name “Mateo” in the credits only, he’s always either seen at a distance in the omnipresent London fog or heard as he plays a monotonous tune—described as an “Incan death-dirge”—on his flute.  Because he not only kills Ann’s brother but may have had something to do with the previous death of her father (the script seems vague on this point), Mateo takes on the resonance of a death-spirit stalking his prey.  He also projects the image of freakishness, in that he leaves footprints resembling those of a clubfooted man, but this turns out to be another ruse.  His method of killing is almost exotic enough to qualify as an “outré device” that fits the mode of the uncanny. However, the weapon-- a South American bolas-- doesn’t come up to the level of uncanny devices examined elsewhere on this blog, as noted in (for instance) my review of THUNDERBALL.  An uncanny device in my reckoning has to be an artifact that seems overly complicated in terms of pure utilitarian aims, as with the electric chair that the villainous Blofeld uses to off one of his underlings in the Ian Fleming book.

The entire cast distinguishes itself as much as the aforementioned Lupino, with standout performances from Rathbone, Bruce, and George Zucco.   Both Holmes and Watson are a little more fleshed-out here than in many of the future Universal films, which tend to make the characters into not-quite-so-human icons.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2011)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

On one of my ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE posts, entitled THRILLER KILLING, I wrote:

the SILENCE OF THE LAMBS film also seems to have more in common with the suspense genre than that of horror. Hannibal Lecter is certainly mad, but it's questionable as to whether his madness is as grotesque and transformational as that of Norman Bates. Both characters inhabit essentially realistic worlds, but Hannibal's madness has far less mystery to it.

If I ever get around to reviewing the 1991 SILENCE I'll be reversing the above judgment.  Though it's true that in narrative terms SILENCE owes a lot to the structure of the "serial-killer thriller," I've determined that the madness of "Hannibal the Cannibal" is just as grotesque, etc., as that of Norman Bates, and that both SILENCE and PSYCHO belong in the ranks of metaphenomenal "psycho-films."

Not so THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, however.

I viewed DRAGON (henceforth the abbreviation for the David Fincher-directed version only) without having either read the Steig Larsson novel or seen any of the earlier Swedish film adaptations. Immediately I found myself intrigued at seeing how many tropes of the serial-killer thriller have been inverted in the Fincher film.

For instance, as I've brought up Jonathan Demme's SILENCE already, I may as well use it as a counter-example (though I'm not proposing any direct influence between it and any version of the Larsson story).

Whereas many psycho-films have involved female victims relentlessly pursued by mad murderers (usually though not invariably male), SILENCE's female lead is FBI agent Clarice Starling, who makes her business to pursue the psycho known as "Buffalo Bill."  However, to do so, she must play a game of "quid pro quo" with another serial slayer, the charismatic Hannibal Lecter.  Lecter's help does enable Starling to bring down her target, though by film's end Hannibal escapes to "bite another day," so to speak.  One leaves this particular film with the sense of a strange hero/villain relationship having been forged between Starling and Lecter.

DRAGON allows no such romanticism.  The "girl" of the title, young Lisbeth Salander, ends up helping her co-protagonist Mikael Blomkvist expose a psycho in the latter half of the film, but she never has any love-hate relationship with this serial killer.  Initially Lisbeth pursues the killer because Blomkvist has hired her to help him research the fate of a young girl who disappeared from a wealthy Swedish home forty years ago.  However, as Lisbeth and Mikael make connections between the missing girl and a rash of unsolved serial killings, Lisbeth becomes an avenger of All Wrongs Done to Women.  The psycho-killer, for his part, isn't a compelling figure like Hannibal or Norman Bates; his lust to kill women, at least as portrayed in Fincher's DRAGON, seems less his particular psychology than the embodiment of All Patriarchal Oppression. 

I don't capitalize these storytelling tropes to make fun of them; I could do the same to the personas involved in Demme's SILENCE as well, or with pretty much any other narrative.  I invoke the capitals to make clear how much Fincher, following Larsson, departs from the more standard narrative opposition of the Psycho and the Lady Victim-- who not infrequently a version of what academic Carol Clover termed "the Final Girl," the female who survives the rampage of a modern-day Bluebeard.

Indeed, the psycho in this film receives far less narrative attention than a more mundane figure of Patriarchal Oppression.  Because in earlier years the punkish Lisbeth got into trouble with the law, a government caseworker manages to gain control over her. This oppression culminates in Lisbeth's violent rape by the caseworker, a scene which Fincher dwells on in gruesome detail, presumably to prevent the viewers from dismissing it as one of many generic-looking fictional rape-scenes.  Lisbeth gains the upper hand over her oppressor, and subjects him to a punishment that fits (but does not extinguish the reality of) the crime.  In a sense, when the psychotic killer dies in the film-- indirectly due to Lisbeth's actions-- the psycho suffers the fate that the audience would like to see befall the caseworker as well.  But because Lisbeth doesn't trust the law to avenge rape, she has to satisfy herself with a less emotionally satisfying revenge.

Fincher's DRAGON is a strong thriller, although at times even he can't find that many ways to spice up the many talking-heads scenes influenced by the novel.  However, Fincher serves the source material here much better than Dan Brown was served by the cinematic adaptations of his even talkier thriller-novels.

Another note on the phenomenality employed here: late in the film, the killer employs against Blomkvist that old standard of Saturday-morning serials: the Chamber That Fills With Gas.  And if this sort of gadget were presented as a marker of the narrative's "irreducible strangeness"-- as I argued that similiar gimicks were in ACE DRUMMOND-- then such a device could qualify DRAGON to be a film of "the uncanny."  But DRAGON's villain not only isn't in a league with Hannibal and Norman, he's not even in the same league with Ace Drummond's villain-- who, by coincidence, sported the name of "The Dragon."

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN (2011)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

In one of my ARCHIVE posts I caviled at R.G. Young, author of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASTIC FILM, for being too careless in his (unexplained) judgment of what he chose to label as "fantastic."  His tome contained dozens of thrillers, melodramas and adventure-films that in my view did not in the least shade into the domain of the fantastic (or, as I constantly rechristen it, "the metaphenomenal.")

Nevertheless, there are some adventure-films that are so wildly cavalier in their near-defiance of rationality that I can see the temptation to include them under in the ranks of "fantasy films," particularly swashbucklers like THE BLACK PIRATE and THE CRIMSON PIRATE.  Yet in my estimation such films finally fail the test of "irreducible strangeness" that should be characteristic of metaphenomenal works.  And despite the medium of Steven Spielberg's THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN-- in essence a cartoon, however computer-generated-- it too essentially lacks that "strangeness."  To reference a remark by C.S. Lewis-- examined in depth in this essay-- Spielberg's TINTIN is all about the threat of tigers, with no ghosts or gods even suggested.

This is not only an interesting contrast to Spielberg's previous high-adventure brainchild Indiana Jones-- who was usually if not invariably stumbling across arcane magical doodads-- but also to the original TINTIN stories, many of which included metaphenomenal fantasy or SF concepts.  I'm told that ADVENTURES OF TINTIN reproduces (with some reshuffling) and combines the events of three separate TINTIN albums. Not having read these for many years, I can't comment on the artfulness of Spielberg's adaptation, but for the most part the film's basic logic and clarity of events is admirable, particularly in a film-market where FX-films are assembled out of incoherent bits and pieces (2004's VAN HELSING, for example).  Given that Spielberg had held the rights to TINTIN since 1983, it would seem he had more than a little time to map out just how he wanted to do it.

Like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, ADVENTURES is a treasure-hunt film, with young reporter Tintin (Jamie Bell) seeking to find the lost pirate treasure of Sir Francis Haddock before the evil fortune-hunter Sakharine (Daniel Craig) and his hired thugs can do so.  Tintin makes common cause with the modern-day descendant of the famed privateer, but said descendant, Captain Haddock, is a drunken reprobate whom Tintin must constantly watch over and chastise in order that they may reach their common goal.

From my recollection of the French comics, I believe that Spielberg does a good job of realizing the "child playing father to the grown man" aspect that made the Tintin-Haddock relationship so fruitful, but it's arguable that Spielberg's version of Haddock represents a type that the director has often favored.  Haddock is in Blakean terms the face of "experience:" man at the end of his tether, symbolically one with Sam Quint of JAWS and Roland Tembo of LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK.  Haddock, fortunately, is redeemed by an avatar of innocence in Tintin, and for the most part manages to pull himself out of the bottle (although his sottishness is played for all the humor it's worth) and become a hero like his much-envied ancestor.  The backstory of Sir Francis Haddock even references a curse put on the Haddock line by a contemporaneous enemy-- pirate Red Rackham, the ancestor of modern-day Sakharine-- but in the end the curse is shown to have no substance.  Whatever effect it's had on Haddock's mind is banished when the captain chooses to follow the example of the indomitable boy reporter.

Tintin is, in essence, the incarnation of youthful beliefs in one's own immortality.  Thus, in the show-stopping Bagghar chase-scene, the young hero indefatigably pursues a flying hawk with such cavalier disregard for his own safety that one would almost think that he had knowledge of his own cartoony invulnerability.  But in essence these feats of derring-do may have less in common with those of Indiana Jones than with those of Buster Keaton.  Tintin isn't as flamboyantly skillful as Jones or similar swashbuckling heroes; rather, he seems to master all the realms he encounters-- the skies, the desert, the seas-- by a Keatonesque force of will.

None of the follow-ups to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK equal the first film for thrills and fun.  However, ADVENTURES is very nearly the equal of RAIDERS in sheer kinetic terms, though it lacks some of that film's deeper philosophical touches.  Again, I'm not sure what if any sequences in ADVENTURES are original with Spielberg, but even when channeling the spirit of Herge through the magic of computer animation, the director shows that his skill at blending humor and suspense remains undiminished.

SHERLOCK HOLMES (1922)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable."-- Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity."

As an intro the 1922 SHERLOCK HOLMES begins with the first two sentences of this Doyle passage and reworks the third sentence portentously warning the audience of an impending conflict between "good and evil."  Unfortunately, there's nothing in the film-- adapting the successful William Gillette play-- to justify this attempt to evoke a mood of "strangeness."

Many of Doyle's Holmes tales inhabit a world between the naturalistic and the uncanny.  In contrast to many detectives, who seem merely clever, Holmes repeatedly conveys the impression of an all-knowing psychic.  However, this impression is always (both in original stories and media-adaptations)  quickly dispelled by Holmes himself explaining his intuitions in terms of empirical observations.  Holmes' deductive skills thus always register in the naturalistic mode and never in the uncanny.

Some of the mysteries Holmes solves do have strong elements of the uncanny, which could justify the opening appeal to the idea of life's infinite strangeness.  However, the Doyle story from which playwright Gillette largely cobbled his play's plot-- which in turn director Albert Parker followed-- isn't in this mode.   Said plot-influence stems from the very naturalistic "A Scandal in Bohemia," in which the Great Detective meets Irene Adler, a woman perhaps as clever as he is.  She seeks to keep Holmes from recovering certain incriminating love-letters which could set off an international scandal.  Parker, following the lead of Gillette, changes Adler's name to Alice Faulkner and downgrades her from the position of adversary to love-interest-- the better to place emphasis on Holmes' encounter with his famed nemesis Professor Moriarty, though said encounter takes a very different shape than the version seen in the Doyle canon.

Going on my memory of the two Doyle stories in which Moriarty is an active presence, I classify him as a naturalistic villain.  He takes on uncanny or marvelous aspects in other adaptations: the Universal film THE WOMAN IN GREEN for the first, Alan Moore's LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN for the second.  But Doyle's depiction of Moriarty never goes beyond the natural, and so neither does the depiction of the character in the Albert Parker film.  Despite Moriarty being characterized as a "giant menace" by Holmes, the muddy plot never gives the audience much of an idea as to what end the villain seeks to gain.  Apparently it has something to do with having control over foreign affairs in some manner, but the script doesn't dwell on this much.

Some of Holmes' villains, notably Grimesby Roylott of "The Speckled Band," commit crimes that are weird enough to qualify as "uncanny."  But the only "bizarre crime" that this Moriarty commits is an attempt to flood Holmes' house with natural gas in order to asphixiate him-- complete with a Sadean line about how the villain wants the hero to expire slowly.  That's not quite bizarre enough in my book, and though the film strains to depict the clash of Holmes and Moriarty in Biblical terms, their personalities are too thinly drawn to sustain the hero-villain myth Doyle created.  I will note that actor Gustav von Seyffertitz is made up to look like such a Dickensian grotesque that his appearance reminds one of star Barrymore's own makeup in 1920's DOCTOR JEKYLL AND MISTER HYDE.

Speaking of Barrymore, his take on Holmes lacks much conviction.  The Gillette play takes away the image of Holmes as an oracle of empiricism.  Here he's simply a brilliant student who drifts into detecting-work (somewhat based on his image from A STUDY IN SCARLET) and who ultimately makes it his life-work to bring Moriarty to justice.  Unlike Doyle's Holmes, this one mourns some unspecified lost love, and promptly finds romantic surcease of sorrow in the character of Alice (Carol Dempster).  Many Holmes fans were aghast at seeing their confirmed-bachelor hero depicted as a romantic swain.  I'll only say that I could live with the notion if it were well done, but the romance angle of the script is pedestrian.  Moreover, Barrymore and Dempster possess zero chemistry.

The most I can say of Parker's direction is that for a film based on a stage-play, it doesn't seem excessively stagey; there are a good number of outdoor scenes that break up the talking-heads scenes.  Von Seyffertitz gives the most memorable performance, though it's noteworthy that this was the film debut of both Roland Young (in a very brief turn as Doctor Watson) and an almost unrecognizeable William Powell.

THE ALPHABET MURDERS (1965)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

"This is London. Nothing will happen."-- Tony Randall's Poirot in ALPHABET MURDERS


This is the first "naturalistic phenomena" film I've reviewed since changing my blog-name and my term for this type of phenomenality, formerly called "atypical." The above quote, though, catches some of the problems for this type of film. The line is spoken by Randall's Poirot directly to the members of the audience as he endeavors to convince them not to follow him, implying that everything in London is ordinary; "typical." Of course, as the educated audience-member will anticipate, everything that happens in this Frank Tashlin-directed comedy-mystery is thoroughly "atypical." Next to ALPHABET, THE THIN MAN is a kitchen-sink drama. Still, here as with most mysteries, the important aspect of their phenomenality is that they're dominantly naturalistic. ALPHABET is no exception: no matter how oddball the occurrences in the film, they're explicable within a naturalistic framework-- except for Poirot's brief address to the audience, which I'll address later.

Poirot's first contact with the burgeoning ABC murders-- which begin with a man having the initials A.A. and then proceed to other alphabetically alliterative names-- is the most memorable scene in the film. As Poirot relaxes in a steambath, perilous psycho Anita Ekberg enters the room and attempts to strangle him while identifying herself as "ABC" and pleading for his help. A steambath-attendant intervenes, only to get (very unrealistically) judo-tossed to the floor by crazy Ekberg. She flees when Poirot's aide Hastings (Robert Morley) chases her. Soon Poirot and Hastings are attempting to trail the apparent madwoman, while more deaths take place, given a rather "outre" touch through Ekberg's use of an air gun that fires poison darts. Eventually Poirot identifies the woman as one Amanda Beatrice Cross, whose name, her psychologist asserts, has led to her becoming obsessed with the alphabet. But no mystery worthy of its genre would really allow the crime to be solved as easily as, well, ABC...

I haven't read the Agatha Christie "Alphabet Murders" in many years. I can say that this film substantially duplicates the main plot-idea of the book, but certainly Tashlin's film carries none of Christie's boundless fascination with puzzles for their own sake. In keeping with Tashlin's career as a former cartoon-director, the formal aspects of the narrative exist merely to generate comic episodes (Hastings trapped in a car-trunk with a pretty girl, Poirot at a bowling-alley, trying to dodge rolling balls in order to retrieve an item from the lanes). If I hadn't known that ALPHABET debuted roughly a year before the first season of the BATMAN teleseries, I might have thought that Tashlin was attempting to produce a "camp" comedy in reaction to that cultural fad, in that the "comic" scenes are too arch to be funny. Tashlin had scored a critical hit in 1957, teaming up Randall with Jayne Mansfield in the comparatively sophisticated comedy WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? But ALPHABET has more of the feel of the many Jerry Lewis comedies Tashlin directed before and after HUNTER-- except that some of those were funny. Whatever comic talents Tony Randall possessed, he was not a physical comic like Lewis, and scenes like the one in the bowling-alley fall embarrasingly flat.

In addition, while Randall earned modest plaudits playing a variety of somewhat-jokey personas in George Pal's SEVEN FACES OF DOCTOR LAO the previous year, here his attempt to do a jokey version of Christie's famed "Belgie" detective proves excruciating even to a viewer like myself, less than a hardcore Christie fan. In addition to trying to leech off of LAO, the film attempts to continue the construction of Tony Randall As Hollywood Leading Man-- a construction would founder not long after ALPHABET. More, the producers of ALPHABET surely hoped that if successful they might launch a profitable series of Poirot films in emulation of the successful "Miss Marple" films. But the closest ALPHABET ever gets to that success is a cameo-scene in which Margaret Rutherford (in character as Marple) passes Poirot in the street and the two Christie character give each other the fish-eye. ALPHABET, in the end, has no identity of its own, being too much of a rag-bag of conflicting influences.

Except for Robert Morley, who gives his usual performance of dour Britishness, the other actors don't come off any better. Ekberg is particularly weak; her fleeting scenes never convey any madness, though she may have wondered to herself how she could have been crazy enough to have agreed to do the picture.

The only time the film flirts with the metaphenomenal would be the "actor's aside" I mentioned earlier, where Poirot speaks to the audience. There are films where such an intrusion can be significant enough to put the film in the "uncanny" category, as I touched on with my review of 1937's ALI BABA GOES TO TOWN. But here it's about as incidental as similar actors' asides in Shakespeare plays.