DAUGHTER OF THE JUNGLE (1949)

 

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

I saw DAUGHTER OF THE JUNGLE so long ago I remembered nothing about it. From the few online reviews, I assumed it was just a one-off "jungle queen" story that would go through the motions of the usual jungle-adventure story. Yet strangely, the character of Ticoora (Lois Hall) has more in common with the jungle-melodramas of Dorothy Lamour than with the adventure-stories of Bomba and Jungle Jim. 

Ticoora was a small girl when she, her rich father and the pilot of their plane all crashed in some obscure part of Africa. The three white people were unable to make the difficult trek out of the wilderness-- I think because there are hostile tribes all around-- so for something like the next ten years Ticoora grows up with only vague recollections of civilization. 

Ticoora is sort of an anti-Sheena. In the origin of Sheena, the heroine's father dies and the young girl is raised by a native tribe, and thus she becomes a savage fighter. But though Ticoora doesn't receive training from natives, much less from animal adoptive parents, she's often seen swinging around on vines like it's second nature. She and her father eke out their living by treating natives with superior white medicine, but this earns them enmity from the local witch doctor (Frank Lackteen).

Then another plane crashes, and Ticoora meets her first new white men in ten years: Two are cops who have custody of the other two plane-passengers, both of whom are criminals being transported to prison. The four men want to get back to civilization, and I think they're willing to risk the dangerous trek because they have handguns. Ticoora goes with them-- but the meaner of the two crooks, Dalton (Sheldon Leonard), has plans to make sure he also escapes imprisonment.

There's very little action in DAUGHTER, and I rate it a subcombative adventure because there aren't any significant fights involved as the heroes try to escape both hostile natives and fierce animals. Ticoora wears an outfit that allegedly was recycled from the 1941 serial JUNGLE GIRL, presumably so that the filmmakers could re-use scenes from that chapterplay. But the heroine of JUNGLE GIRL could fight a little bit, while the only real action DAUGHTER swipes from the serial is a hard-to-see scene with Ticoora slaying a crocodile in a river. Overall she shows no true toughness, screaming when accosted by a gorilla and failing to hit back when Dalton slaps her, requiring one of the cop-characters to come to Ticoora's defense. The only significant metaphenomenality in the flick follows the trope "exotic lands and customs," if only because the witch doctor keeps ranting about using "voodoo" on the outsiders.

DAUGHTER was listed in the Medved Brothers' FIFTY WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME, but it's too dull to deserve that distinction. Its only assets are the good looks of Hall and the gangster-schtick of Leonard. George Blair also directed the oddball fantasy-flick SABU AND THE MAGIC RING and some ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN episodes, but the main distinction of his career was helming the 1960 horror-film THE HYPNOTIC EYE, which I remember fondly though I've not yet found the chance to review it.

INVASION U.S.A. (1985)

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

I only re-screened this lowbrow piece of "Cannon fodder" (bet that's not the first time someone made that pun to put down a Cannon Films release) because its concept bears some resemblance to that of the previous year's RED DAWN. I stated that I deemed the world of DAWN to be an "alternate world" portraying "a United States that can be easily invaded by ground forces armed with no artillery greater than helicopters with rocket launchers." INVASION's star and co-scripter Chuck Norris asserted that he made the film in response to articles about terrorists running wild in the U.S, and it's certainly possible that he never saw RED DAWN, though it was the 20th high-grossing films of 1984.

Certainly nothing about the script follows the beats of DAWN's plot. There's no sense that a major war has broken out; it's just evil Russian Rostov (Richard Lynch) abetting various crazed terrorists to attack Florida. If there was a stated point to the invasion, I must have missed it.

Ex-CIA agent Matt Hunter (Norris) happens to be working in the Everglades. and you would think that all this terrorist activity would affect him like a fire-engine bell to a retired fire-horse. But Hunter ignores the situation until the dirty Commies kill one of his friends. The setup would've perfect for the line "This time it's personal," but sadly, this immortal phrase wouldn't be coined until JAWS THE REVENGE came out two years later.

The action is much more workmanlike than Norris's Cannon film from the previous year, MISSING IN ACTION, which enjoyed the same director, Joseph Zito. This may be a consequence of the script's emphasis on guns and rocket-launchers rather than Norris's signature martial-arts moves, and if one had never seen a Norris film before, that viewer would never think he was any sort of kung-fu actor. Lynch makes an eminently hate-able villain, but Norris, after easily wiping out most of the terrorists, vanquishes the Big Bad much too easily. Norris, though never known for even decent performances, gives one of his most robotic renditions up to that point.

Melissa Prophet plays a spunky American reporter who looks like, but does not become, a romantic interest for Hunter.

FURY OF THE CONGO (1951), SAVAGE MUTINY (1953)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *marvelous,* (2) *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*



Thanks to Youtube I finally managed to re-screen the only two JUNGLE JIM films I had not reviewed yet.

FURY OF THE CONGO is one of the liveliest, albeit most nonsensical, entries in the series. Jim (Johnny Weismuller) starts out rescuing a man named Cameron from a crashed plane. Cameron's on a hunt for Dunham, a lost biochem professor. Actually, the professor's mission sounds more like a naturalist's specialty, since Dunham went into the Congo looking for a strange hybrid beast, the Okongo, which is a cross between an antelope and a zebra. (Naturally, the film uses horses with fake stripes.)

Jim guides Cameron into the wilds of the Congo. A scene-shift informs the viewer that Dunham has been captured by evil white hunters. The hunters have also captured a bunch of Okongos, because the beasts have a special narcotic juice in their glands, as the result of eating and converting native narcotic plants. The crooks force Dunham to harvest the drug, as well as drafting many of the local native men to help with the Okongos-- though the viewer doesn't really see the native men doing much of anything to justify the trouble they later cause for the villains.

The absence of the men from the local tribe does make for some Amazonian activity, when Jim and Cameron are netted by the women of the tribe, led by the sprightly Leta (Sherry Moreland). Despite the women's spears, Jim wins them over with his jungle charm, and then he, Cameron, and Leta are off to set both the native men and the Okongos free. On the way Jim has to kill a very large spider-- possibly the phoniest in cinematic history, given the way it's transparently dragged across the ground via wires. Jim eventually learns that Cameron is actually the villains' leader, which begs the question as to what he was doing in the plane earlier. Despite all these reversals, Jim succeeds in his mission, leading to the film's best action, where the white hunters are killed by the spears and arrows of the native women.

In contrast, SAVAGE MUTINY is an entirely naturalistic adventure in the Jungle Jim canon, as well as a strange apologia for nuclear bomb-testing. Even before Jim is called upon by his country to aid a British/American nuclear-testing project, the white hunter keeps busy by ferreting out some Communist spies in the Congo.

Afterward, the scientists tell Jim that they want to test their bomb on a particular island off the coast of Africa. It's really important to test the bomb on this isle, since the scientists want to get valuable data on the effects of radiation on the plant life there. However, the island is inhabited, so the scientists need Jim to persuade the natives to be relocated.

Jim has no problem with this duty, and he even challenges one of the headmen of the tribe to a fight to get the natives' respect. However, more Communist agents are still loitering about, and they get the idea to score a propaganda victory over the West. The Commies attempt to sabotage the evacuation so that either the test will be prevented or the tribe will be bombed into extinction. Jim manages to prevent both fates. The final words of the film are the one saving grace of the otherwise tedious tale, since the writers managed to make it seem like the West's freedom to test bombs on primitive isles marked the very apogee of the cause of freedom.

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (2009)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *superior*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

From time to time I've debated, like many others on the web, the question as to whether or not all works in the tradition of the "alternate history" fall into the domain of what many call"fantasy and science fiction"-- or, as I term said domain "the metaphenomenal." I plan to write another essay for my theory-blog soon about the reasons why INGLORIOUS BASTERDS is an example of a purely isophenomenal "alternate history" film, so I'll dispense with any detailed theoretical justifications in this review. However, like some of the naturalistic films I've reviewed here, BASTERDS is relevant in that it uses many of the same tropes one would find in an "uncanny" version of an alternate-world narrative, such as (to cite a quick example) Philip Dick's THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.

BASTERDS is also a work of superior mythicity, and as such, it contains too many levels to explore in a single blog-post. In contrast to the vast majority of war-films set in the Second World War, Tarantino only follows recorded history up to a point, and then "rewrites" it by showing Hitler and his high command suffer violent deaths in a movie theater. In 2009 a number of small-minded reviewers became indignant about this rewriting, claiming that playing games with the facts was tantamount to wishing away the Holocaust. These critics obviously paid no attention to the fact that Tarantino, by executing the Nazi high command in such a place, was in effect saying, "Yes, of course this is a fantasy: not only is it a movie about Hitler being killed prematurely--  by Jewish executioners, no less-- but the slaughter takes place within the confines of a French movie theater." No professional critic could have missed the dozens of arcane cinematic references crammed into BASTERDS-- with particular attention to the formidable history of German cinema-- but some critics chose to use this fact as ammunition against Tarantino for his supposed escapism, rather than as the underlying context of the entire film.

The complex cinematic references supply much of the film's mythic structure, but they're not the very heart of the story. BASTERDS anticipates many of the moral and symbolic strategies that I analyzed in Tarantino's 2012 DJANGO UNCHAINED here. In both BASTERDS and DJANGO, the writer-director begins with an aspect of history that tends to be portrayed in cinema in polarizing good-vs.-evil terms-- the Holocaust in 2009, American slavery in 2012. At no point does Tarantino redeem either the politics of Nazism or of slavery, but in contrast to more unimaginative filmmakers, he makes it abundantly clear that the people who devote themselves to these political movements do not perforce lose their humanity. For instance, one of the major plotlines of BASTERDS follows the arc of French Jewess Shoshanna, who flees Nazi persecution and becomes the mistress of the aforementioned theater. Only one factor makes it possible for her to have the chance to destroy the Nazi high command: the fact that Frederick, a young Nazi soldier, becomes besotted with her and moves heaven and earth to help her improve her fortunes.

Had Frederick appeared in a morale-building film within the sphere of the actual war, Hollywood would have made him the lovelorn Nazi a preening fop or a violent asshole. At best he might have been an honorable but still patrician type, like Conrad Veidt's character in the 1939 SPY IN BLACK.
But Frederick, rather like Calvin Candle in DJANGO, appears to be a generally pleasant young fellow who just doesn't have any awareness that he's doing anything wrong. Indeed, whereas Candle is less sympathetic in that he ignores the sufferings of his slaves, Frederick is simply oriented on defending his own people against invaders. Indeed, if anyone within the arc acts like the stereotypical Nazi, it's Shosanna, during a scene where she and her aide Marcel use violence to force a Parisian citizen to help them in their plot against the Nazis.

The film's main source of ultraviolence, however, are the "Basterds" of the title: a Special Service commando force operating in Nazi-held territories. Possibly because the group's leader Aldo Raines (Brad Pitt) boasts some Apache blood, the Basterds specialize in scalping many of their victims, the better to spread waves of superstitious terror. By a series of very involved plot-devices, Raines and his people end up participating in Shoshanna's assault. Although the Basterds are technically the "good guys," they too are seen doling out as much, if not more, brutal violence than the Nazi soldiers -- though once again, it should be obvious to any viewer that they are on the right side of history.

I should mention that the killing of the high command is also only made possible through the collaboration of Nazi defector Hans Landa (Christoph Walz). Despite being something of a villain to both sides-- he persecutes Shoshanna, but turns on his own people when it suits his needs-- Landa is also the source of much of the film's humor, partly because he's sort of a Nazi "Sherlock Holmes" in terms of his perspicuity.

Rather than making a historically accurate film that would merely tell viewers facts they could find out from history books or Internet sites, Tarantino has made one in which history and fiction play off one another, in a manner analogous to their interaction in real life. It's more than just "metafiction"-- a lazy critical term for any sort of narrative that suggests self-consciousness about its own status-- but is rather an unblinking look at the way good and evil intermingle in human nature.

Like most war-films, this partakes of the nature of the drama more than any other mythos. In terms of the naturalistic trope the film uses, the "exotic lands and peoples" trope comes closest to describing BASTERDS' historical rewriting-- but this time, it's not the natural inhabitants of the land who seem exotic, but rather the "Jewish Indian" invaders of that land-- though the exoticism of the "Basterds" pales before a similar "tribe" of characters found in the uncanny film RED DAWN. 

KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1950)

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


The 1937 adaptation of Rider Haggard's classic novel KING SOLOMON'S MINES was remarkably faithful to the source, even allowing for the fact that the film includes a gratuitous female character to provide the movie with a feminine lead. However, the plot was substantially the same, as were all the elements that gave it an uncanny phenomenality-- the exotic feel of the African terrain where Allan Quatermain ventures with his European expedition, and the weird customs of the people they encounter: the Kikuanas, a tribe so isolated that its people have never seen white people despite Europe's considerable incursions into the "Dark Continent."

However, both the script and direction of the 1950 film take pains to avoid any of the book's uncanny content. In this essay from my literary blog I mentioned how the novel invoked the exotic sense of a pair of mountains known as "Sheba's Breasts:" However, in the 1950 film the mountains are seen from a very great distance, even though they're still used as a functional marker for the expedition's entry in Kikuanaland. The mountains in the novel are also a prefiguration of Quatermain's encounter with a "terrible female," the gnarled old witch-finder Gagool, also the main villain of the story. This versions of MINES not only de-emphasizes the tribe's superstitions about witches, Gagool only appears as a male adviser to the film's main villain, evil chieftain Twala, Even Kikuanaland's mystique as the purported land of Solomon's mines is played down.

The main concern of MINES is a jungle-trek romance, in which married woman Elizabeth Curtis (Deborah Kerr) hires Allan Quatermain (Stewart Granger) to find her lost treasure-seeking husband. During the trek the two romantic leads both bicker and fall in love, even before Elizabeth knows that her husband's dead. The film's only concern is this sort of banal "will-they-won't-they," with barely any attention to Elizabeth's moral struggle as a result of falling out of love with her lost husband. I mentioned in my review of the 1937 film that its version of Quatermain was true to the book, having him played as a fifty-something man, but the 1950 film goes with a young he-man image for this version of the Great White Hunter.

Because of the concluding combat between Twala and his goodguy nemesis Umbopa-- whose role is also diminished-- this is a combative adventure, but only in the naturalistic mode, in contrast to both the 1937 version and the goofy one from 1985. 

WHITE CARGO (1942)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *good*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*



SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS


Though politically I don't agree with the tendency of modern critics to cry "racism" at every negative portrait of a given ethnicity-- see THE BAD APPLE DEFENSE for details-- there's no question that WHITE CARGO is one of the most unadulterated racist films ever made.

To be sure, the story was a recrudescence of attitudes that went largely unquestioned at the time it was first written. CARGO began as a 1912 novel, "Hell's Pavement," by Ida Simonton. Thus the narrative, involving white traders presiding over an African rubber plantation, took place at a time when British imperialism was assumed to be the same as natural law. Roughly ten years later Leon Gordon allegedly ripped off aspects of the novel for his successful 1923 play "White Cargo." Simonton sued Gordon and the courts found in her favor, with the result that the credits for the Hollywood film acknowledge both novel and play while using the title of Gordon's play.

Perhaps in an attempt to distance the pro-imperialism sentiments of the narrative, the movie starts in the present, in a dialogue between traders on a 1942 rubber plantation. After a quick reference to current events-- the need to produce rubber to defeat the Japanese threat-- one character begins to reminisce about his experiences when he first came to the plantation in 1910. The main action then takes place in a flashback, with a brief return to 1942 after the story has been told.


The opening scenes of the flashback show Langford, a new employee, arriving to oversee the native workers. As Langford arrives, the man he's replacing leaves, and it's plain that he and his boss Witzel have bad blood between them. Witzel almost immediately takes a dislike to Langford as well, assuming that he's going to be too "green" to prove useful. The conflict between Langford and Witzel dominates the storyline, though neither of them is really the film's main character. Rather, it's the mysterious Tondeleyo, a native woman who was apparently Witzel's lover at one time, and who gradually worms her way into Langford's affections.

Tondeleyo is in every way a caricature of European (and American) beliefs about African natives. She is vain, foolish, and untrustworthy. She knows how to use her sexuality to manipulate men, but doesn't have the ability to care about anyone: the only things she cares about are receiving men's gifts of jewelry or geegaws, which are the only things that reinforce her sense of self. It's purely for this reason that she seduces Langford and gets him to marry her, but she soon grows bored with married life. She may even possess a mild feminine masochism. At one point she recommends that Langford ought to beat her regularly, so that afterward they can make up. But Langford refuses to shoulder the white man's burden: that of curbing the worst traits of the dark races by disciplining them-- and it's for this reason that he's also a failure at controlling the misbehavior of the native workers, all of whom are truculent savages who shirk their labors and pretend not to understand English. Ultimately, Tondeleyo is so bored that she decides that she will murder her husband by introducing gradual amounts of poison into his food. Witzel finds out in time to save Langford, and he dispenses "jungle justice" by forcing the native girl to imbibe a killing dose of her own poison. Langford is shipped back to Europe as "white cargo," which is as good a name as any for a white man who has "gone native."

It would be interesting to study in detail Hollywood's depictions of non-white races during the period when America was at war. Almost certainly there would be some works that were relatively progressive, while others, like WHITE CARGO, were entirely regressive. It seems likely that Hollywood's main interest in the story was largely to find another "exotic" role for Austrian-born Hedy Lamarr, who had become a major star with the release of 1938's ALGIERS. At the same time, there was a limit on how "exotic" a Hollywood actress could pretend to be. Interracial marriages were forbidden by the Hollywood Code, and so Tondeleyo-- apparently originally conceived as a full-blooded "negress" by Simonton-- was rewritten to be a half-Egyptian, half-Arab girl, so that Langford would be able to marry her. Nevertheless, the theme of the original novel is supported in spite of the rewriting: Tondeleyo's bad habits stem from having been raised by the local Black Africans, and so any marriage between the dusky native woman and a white man can only produce a spiritual miscegenation. Interestingly, nothing is said in the movie-- though I can't speak for the play or the novel-- about the prospect of Tondeleyo bearing children. Possibly the idea was omitted because any mention of motherhood might have softened the film's portrait of the character as the demonic incarnation of idle, soul-corrupting femininity. The only aspect that might be even slightly positive is that, whereas most Black African female characters are nearly invisible, Tondeleyo is almost as mythic a temptress as any European witch or siren.

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.

MR. MOTO TAKES A CHANCE (1938), DANGER ISLAND (1939)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*



SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS


I've reviewed a smattering of Charlie Chan films, which generally tend toward the naturalistic but sometimes include uncanny tropes as well. In contrast, Chan's greatest competitor in Hollywood films-- the "Mister Moto" series from 20th-Century Fox-- would seem to be entirely naturalistic in attitude.

MR. MOTO TAKES A CHANCE is one of the best of the eight Fox mysteries, all featuring the redoubtable Peter Lorre as the Japanese agent whose interests usually coincide with those of his Western allies from America and Europe. The movie packs a lot of characters and situations into its tight 63 minutes. Aviatrix Victoria crashlands in French Indochina, near the village of Tong Moi. Moto is already there, posing an archaeologist studying ancient ruins, and so are two American movie-makers, a portly rajah who gets a yen for Victoria, and Bokor, the local medicine man-- whose name is apparently swiped from the Haitian word for "evil sorcerer."

The complicated shenanigans end up being about guns being smuggled to Indochinese rebels. In the real world, I would have thought that a Japanese spy would have been trying to help the Indochinese kick out the French, in order to further Japan's mission for the "Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere." Nevertheless, Moto is working to support colonialism here, and in keeping with this ideology, the only authorities one sees are the corrupt Rajah and the superstitious Bokor. Asian culture as a whole isn't given a bad name here, though the trope of "exotic lands and customs" remains at the level of the naturalistic.

Moto, already undercover as an archaeologist, assumes a new identity as "Guruji," a wandering Buddhist monk. He appears in time to save the Americans from Bokor's wrath. This scene includes a naturalistic version of the "enthralling illusionism" trope, in that Moto proves his monkish powers to the natives by first charming a snake and then appearing to resist the heat of a burning brand pressed to his skin. The film doesn't explain how Moto performs these feats of illusionism, but they are conveyed to the viewer as being entirely naturalistic, as opposed, say, to the use of hypnotism and stage magic in the Charlie Chan film BLACK MAGIC.

On a side-note, heroine Victoria, as played by Rochelle Hudson, is a little more gutsy than many mystery-heroines. The character here turns out to be a spy (big surprise), and by coincidence the real-life actress apparently participated in some level of civilian espionage, as well.

DANGER ISLAND, one of the last three Moto films released in 1939, is a rather weak-by-comparison story of the spy-detective investigating diamond smuggling in Puerto Rico. Ordinary the "exotic lands" trope wouldn't be worth noting for this type of mundane mystery. However, there is a brief reference to certain local swamps being "haunted," and a moment in which the director shows the swampland looking "spooky." However, this never registers as anything but a vagrant impression. The scene is roughly the equivalent of those scenes in Charlie Chan films in which the comedy-relief characters would blunder into wax-museums or carnival "haunted house" attractions.

The best thing about DANGER ISLAND is its own comedy relief. Wrestler Twister McGurk (Warren Hymer) takes a liking to Moto after the agent continually bests McGurk with judo moves. The sight of the clueless American towering over, yet following in the wake of, the diminutive yet subtle "Asian" is the highlight of this routine entry. 

DEAD MEN TELL (1941), JUNGLE MAN-EATERS (1954)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *drama,* (2) *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: (1) *psychological* (2) *sociological*


Though I rate DEAD MEN TELL's mythicity as poor, it's still a moderately entertaining Charlie Chan mystery that serves up the necessary number of red herrings and pseudo-Chinese homilies.  The crimebusting ambitions of Charlie's son Jimmy lead the Oriental sleuth to a ship in a stateside harbor-- possibly New York, where the previous film took place.  Though many Chan films exerted themselves to explain why Chan wasn't in his homeground of Honolulu, TELL doesn't even bother with this detail.

Chan's dense son Jimmy gets the idea that some crime is brewing on the ship, and for once he's right.  The ship's old-lady owner Miss Nodbury relates the legend of the ghostly "Black Hook," the spirit of a pirate-ancestor, who visits his descendants to guide them to the other world.  In short order a spectre in peg-legged pirate-gear visits Mss Nodbury, and she dies of heart failure.  Charlie and his son discover that Nodbury and all the guests aboard the ship planned to journey in search of a fabulous pirate treasure.  She and certain guests shared sections of a treasure map, and now Chan must keep all the would-be seafarers confined to the ship until he can ferret out the ghost-impersonator.

Among the crowd of suspects are two film heroes, George "Superman" Reeves and Kay "Nyoka" Aldridge, but the most interesting character is a neurotic passenger names LaFarge, whose unstable psyche is cared for by a female psychologist.  Skeletal Milton Parsons plays LaFarge with a sepulchral voice and a twitchy personality, making it impossible to know whether or not he's a criminal or just a kook.  As for the mystery, it's serviceable enough, dotting most of the 'i's' as they come along.  Sidney Toler's Chan is a little less paternal toward Jimmy here than in some entries, showing barely any interest when Jimmy tries to show him how he was sapped on the head.  Director Harry Lachman, who had helmed one Oland Chan film and did four with Toler, makes good use of closeups to compensate for the limited sets, and the scene in which the old lady is frightened to death by a hook-handed pirate is a worthy evocation of the uncanny.

JUNGLE MAN-EATERS is the last, and probably the least, of Columbia's "Jungle Jim" series.  Though Columbia's contract to adapt Jungle Jim ended with this film, the studio simply made three more jungle-films also starring Johnny Weismuller, but billed as "Johnny Weismuller."  The title JUNGLE MAN-EATERS seems to have been dreamed up prior to the script, for though Jungle Jim does fight a lion and a crocodile in his approved post-Tarzan style, no man-eating animals are central to the script.  Jim's foe is Leroux, a greedy white man who colludes with a savage African tribe, the Moros, in order to drive another tribe, the Kazembis, off their land so that Leroux can mine the diamonds on their land.  Jim is brought in by white authorities whose first concern is that no ilicit diamond-trade upsets the European diamond-market, though to be fair these scenes take place prior to the attempt to dispossess the Kazembis.  There's also a new young Kazembi prince whose wife is pregnant with a son, who in turn is cared for by a white doctor-lady.  She in turn has a rather pointless dislike for Jungle Jim, apparently because his chimp gets into her things, though MAN-EATERS doesn't bother with a lot of tiresome chimp-comedy.  All of these elements are simply tossed into the pot and are kept boiling to no particular good effect.  The only interesting scene is one in which the "old order passes," as the good prince of the Kazembis receives a stamp of approval from the colonial white government.  Like most Jungle Jim films, this one is pretty unconflicted about the merits of colonialism.

ARABIAN NIGHTS (1942)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

 

 

ARABIAN NIGHTS is one of many naturalistic sword-and-sandal pictures produced by Hollywood in the 1940s, no better or worse than most.  For fantasy-fans it may sustain a little more than average curio interest because it derives a substantial part of its plot from one of the decade's great fantasy-movies, Alexander Korda's 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD.

 

The 1940 film, more a rethinking than a remake of the 1924 silent original, places its royal protagonist King Ahmad in jeopardy when his evil vizier convinces him to go among the people in secret-- thus emulating his ancestor Haroun-al-Raschid, a real-life Islamic ruler prominently fictionalized in the tales of the 1001 Nights.  Ahmad, having willingly divested himself of his royal identification, is hurled into a dungeon by the vizier's agents and condemned to die, only to be rescued by Abu, the young Thief of Bagdad who protects him and eventually makes it possible for Ahmad to wed a beautiful princess.

 

Similar events come about in 1942's NIGHTS, albeit by accident.  This time it is a very fictionalized version of Haroun al-Raschid, the Caliph of Bagdad (Jon Hall), who takes the Ahmad role from THIEF OF BAGDAD.  As the film begins, Haroun has just put down an uprising by his bastard brother Kamar (Leif Erickson).  Kamar is being slowly executed by being hung in the sun.  Haroun feels guilty and looks as though he might spare his envious brother.  However, adherents of Kamar attack the execution-site. Haroun is forced to flee, but a thrown knife by an enemy soldier wounds him.  Ali Ben Ali, an acrobatic performer in a traveling circus, witnesses Haroun's wounding and takes the injured ruler into the circus while concealing his identity.  Throughout the film Ali-- played by the actor Sabu, the same actor who essayed Abu in THIEF-- becomes Haroun's faithful protector.  In contrast to THIEF, where the low-born thief rescues the king because he forms a personal liking for Ahmad, Ali risks his life for this king without much motivation beyond "that's what faithful retainers do." 

 

Meanwhile Kamar's forces take over the city (wonder where all these soldiers were, during the earlier uprising?)  Kamar and his flunkies believe Haroun has been slain, but Kamar has another ambition beyond ruling Bagdad.  He's fallen in love with a famous dancer, Scheherazade (Maria Montez), and so he wishes to present her with the throne despite her common birth (which mirrors his bastard status, though this never comes up again after the opening).

 

Dancer Scheherazade happens to be with the very circus into which Ali has smuggled the wounded Haroun.  From her opening dialogue, she's something less than appealing: she tongue-lashes the circus-manager (Thomas Gomez) like a modern-day diva.  She bears no love for Kamar, she merely wants him to rescue her from her low status.  However, she softens when Ali shows her his unconscious prize, and persuades the circus-manager to take Haroun along, both of them ignorant of Haroun's true status.  Later, when Haroun comes to, he and Scheherazade rapidly fall in love.

 

Once Kamar sends for Scheherazade to join him on the throne of Badgad, the plot has to use a number of contrivances to keep the dancer and the hidden king out of his hands for a while.  The main contrivance consists of the circus-troupe being sold into slavery, though in due time Scheherazade is separated from the group and brought to Kamar.

 

The tribulations of Haroun and his fellows are played with a light touch; they break free from the slave-pens with ridiculous ease and have various near encounters with Kamar's soldiers.  Eventually Ali reveals Haroun's identity to his fellow performers, who also selflessly risk their lives in an attack on Kamar's camp, conveniently far from the armies with which he conquered Bagdad.  The assault results in the death of Kamar and Haroun's reunion with Scheherazade.

 

I'll argue that the romantic battle of Haroun and Kamar over Scheherazade owes something to THIEF's model as well.  In the 1940 film, Ahmad and the evil vizier Jaffar will come into conflict over the aforementioned beautiful princess, but it's actually Jaffar who sees her first in his magic crystal. It's implicit that one of Jaffar's main motives for unseating Ahmad is to become a ruler worthy of approaching the princess' father for the lovely lady's hand in marriage, though she never sees him until the day of said proposal.  In NIGHTS, Kamar sees and falls in love with the ambitious Scheherazade long before Haroun knows her as anything but a name, if that.  In both cases, the villains' plots backfire, causing the respective heroes to encounter their respective heroines and to win the heroines' hearts. 

 

This was the first Arabic-flavored archaic adventure in which either Hall or Montez starred.  Hall is adequate.  In this film at least I found Montez's beauty rather cold and unappealing, even after she's supposed to have lost her ambitious desires in favor of true love.

 

In comparison with the strong comic touches of THIEF, Sabu's role as Ali is played straight, aside from one humorous moment where he's dunked in a pool by several harem-girls.  Most of the comedy is supplied by two circus-performers playing versions of "Sinbad" (Shemp Howard) and "Aladdin" (John Qualen); the former won't stop yakking about his fabulous adventures while the latter keeps thinking that every lamp he comes across ought to contain a genie.  These routines aren't very funny, but toward the end Qualen's Aladdin has a good comic dialogue with one of Kamar's soldiers, whom he torments with lines like, "Why come back later?  Why don't you come back now?"

 

Oddly, this reverse-logic may be the closest thing in ARABIAN NIGHTS to anything from Islamic lands, as it reminded me of a similar reverse-logic joke from the legendary storyteller Nasrudin:

 

 Nasrudin walked into a shop one day.
The owner came forward to serve him.
"First things first," said Nasrudin; "did you see me walk into your shop?"
"Of course."
"Have you ever seen me before?"
"Never in my life."
"Then how do you know it is me?"

 

 

THE MOONSTONE (1934), THE MOONSTONE (1997)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *naturalistic,* (2) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*


Wilkie Collins' 1868 THE MOONSTONE presents some interesting problems in terms of phenomenality-categorization.

There's one element of the book that qualifies as a *marvelous* one-- on which I'll comment below-- but it plays a very small role within the narrative.  Because of the presence of this element, I would have to classify the novel as "marvelous," in the same way that I classified this film as *uncanny* even though it only possessed two very minor elements of the uncanny.  I noted in the cited essay that I term such small-beer elements to be "the marginal metaphenomenal," and that applies just as well to Collins' novel.

The famous plot of THE MOONSTONE deals with a fabulous diamond, originally from the head of a Hindu idol, which is stolen from India by a reprobate British officer.  After the thief dies he leaves the diamond-- rumored to be cursed-- to his niece Rachel, a heiress being courted by her two first cousins Franklin and Godfrey.  (Nowhere in the novel does anyone remark on this level of consanguinity: one assumes that both Collins and his original English audience found it unremarkable, at least for the aristocracy.)  A trio of Indians, dedicated to returning the holy diamond to India, haunts the steps of Rachel and her protectors.  Because the unnamed Indians are so fantastically dedicated to their unique task, Collins' novel *might* be classified as uncanny because the Indians' "bizarre crime" (which is only a crime in the technical sense of the English law, of course) makes such a strong affective impact on the reader, and takes on a near-supernatural aspect at the conclusion even though technically nothing supernatural occurs.  The same logic applies to the "exotic lands and customs" trope.

The one aspect that propels the novel into the "marvelous" category appears early in MOONSTONE and never comes up again.  Because Collins wanted to give his Indians an almost supernatural ability to be wherever he wanted them to be-- and because he surely knew that they would hardly blend in well with British society-- Collins has one of his characters overhear the Indians using an unnamed English boy in a divinatory ceremony.  It establishes the possibility-- which the reader must take seriously even if no one in the novel does so-- that the boy is a real medium who can tell the Indians at all times where to locate the diamond.  It's a clever device, and I personally consider it veracious enough to classify MOONSTONE as "marvelous," even though I realize most readers won't take note of it.

The first English-langauge adaptation of Collins' novel, filmed by Monogram Studios, does not aspire to be much more than a routine mystery.  The film shifts its location shifted to America, but keeps most of the character-names but with altered functions.  The script-- directed by Reginald Barker, best known today for 1929's SEVEN KEYS FROM BALDPATE-- essentially sticks to adapting one of the novel's opening plotlines, the actual theft of the diamond, and quickly solves the theft without any of the characters ever leaving the "old dark house" where the crime's committed.  Possible Indian fanatics are mentioned but never surface; one Indian manservant of the Franklin character appears but proves to be innocent of the crime.  Some reviewers have enjoyed Barker's MOONSTONE on the basis of how much it does on a low budget but I still found it boring, possibly because leading man David Manners (as Franklin), having no stronger talents on which to lean, sucks up the air whenever he speaks.  The only interesting change is that in deference to American feelings on cousin-marriage, Franklin, sweetheart to Rachel, is no longer related to her.  However, Godfrey is still her first cousin, and actor Jameson Thomas gets one nice moment where he leers lustfully at the unsuspecting Rachel-- though one never knows if he's more interested in her body or her bank account.  Despite the mystery trappings, nothing suggesting the strangeness of "the uncanny" ever transpires.

In contrast, the 1997 MOONSTONE-- the third of three British adaptations of the novel-- is far truer to the novel's events, even though, in order to condense the book into two hours, many characters and plotlines are omitted. Not surprisingly, Collins' divination-device is dropped, thus excluding the film from possessing any claim of marvelous metaphenomenality.  The Indians are present this time, and though they aren't as prevalent as they are in the book they do convey the same uncanny aspects presented in Collins' book.  Nevertheless, though the film does a creditable job of adapting all the salient elements of the novel, it's as disappointing as the Monogram flick.  None of Collins' deeper myth-themes-- the sympathy for the outsider, the psychology of the English classes-- receive more than cursory treatment here.  The professionalism of the acting and directing suggests that the production might have been able to convey some of Collins' themes, and that the film's failure to do so comes down, as much as the Barker film, to concerns of time and money.

JUNGLE MANHUNT (1951), VALLEY OF HEADHUNTERS (1953)

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


My impression of Alex Raymond's JUNGLE JIM comic strip is that most of its stories fall into the naturalistic phenomenality.  However, its adaptations in films and comic books have gone in all possible directions.

Putting aside the 1937 JUNGLE JIM serial, Sam Katzman's low-budget series of potboilers were the first feature-film adaptations of the character.  JUNGLE MANHUNT, the seventh in the series, starts out with the suggestion that it may possess the uncanny phenomenality, as it begins with a peaceful village being raided for slaves by warriors led by "skeleton-men" (men in obvious costumes).  Jungle Jim, a hunter who apparently protects the jungle from evil in his spare time, investigates the raiders while simultaneously guiding a snippy girl photographer in search of a white man who became lost in the jungle.  At one point Jim and reporter Ann encounter a pair of "dinosaurs" (the usual lizards filmed to look big), but though they have nothing to do with the story, their presence alone would push the flick into "marvelous" territory.  However, as Jim and Ann find their way to the raiders' camp, they encounter another science-fictional element, in an evil doctor who's using native slaves to mine radioactive materials.  It turns out that the evil doctor is making synthetic diamonds, and his explanation of the process certainly should have won any 1951 award for Best Scientific Goobledygook.

MANHUNT is at least moderately pleasurable to watch, in that it has a fair amount of action (though none of the natives are Black Africans, instead looking like South Sea Islanders).  Also, Ann is one of the more sharp-tongued heroines, but Jim gets back some of his own by constantly needling her about her mercenary motives for coming to the jungle.  Coming to Africa to look for a lost football player doesn't seem all that blameworthy, but at least their exchanges, and good direction by Lew (THE RAVEN) Landers keep the pot boiling.  In the end Ann hooks up with the lost football player, who's been playing "white god" because he has a paternalistic feeling for the villagers who took him in.  As with most jungle-adventure films there's a strong emphasis on distinguishing the "good white interlopers" from the bad ones.

VALLEY OF HEADHUNTERS, however, lacks even these relative high-points.  Jim is enlisted by the local jungle constable to help him secure mineral rights from one of the local tribes.  It seems that these natives used to practice headhunting, but though they gave it up they still don't trust the white men.  Jim and the constable can't make a very good case, for a local jungle bandit named "Arco" is constantly raiding local villages to steal women, and he too wants the valuable mineral rights.  The only relevant trope in VALLEY is that of "exotic lands and customs," but though headhunting is referenced, no evidence of it is seen, not even so much as a shrunken head.  In addition, both the acting and action are pretty dismal.  The constable gets a missionary's daughter, but for all the importance she has to the plot she might as well not have been there.

UTOPIA (1951)

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

My only reason for writing about the last Laurel and Hardy film here is because the film gets mentioned in some compendia of fantasy-films, notably John Stanley's CREATURES FEATURES guides.

However, the film really has no fantasy-elements, not even those I would categorize as "uncanny."  The most I can say is that because it revolves around Stan and Ollie building a new country on an atoll newly-risen from the sea, it does loosely fit the intent of the "exotic lands and customs" trope.  Still, in all ways both the atoll and its inhabitants are entirely naturalistic and mundane in their presentation.

One of the more curious plot-aspects of UTOPIA is that it starts with Stan and Ollie journeying to a real island, which they've inherited along with a yacht that can take them to it.  (They also inherit some money, but government taxation empties their pockets before they can touch so much a dollar.)  But instead of reaching that island, they-- along with various other societal castoffs-- get stranded upon the atoll.  The essential idea here was that because the atoll was new land, it was the only place the script could put forth its one idea: that of the two eternal bumblers attempting to form their own country.  The best joke to arise from these muddled goings-on is that of the five people who make the atoll their home-- Stan, Ollie, a cook, a stowaway and a girl fleeing her fiancee-- all four except Stan elect themselves to offices, leaving Stan to be "the people."

Naturally the pacific state of affairs can't last.  Uranium is discovered on the atoll.  Possibly this is a "science fictional" element that also causes Stanley and others to include UTOPIA in their fantasy-film lists, but if so, I think such a reason has even less justification than any "exotic lands" trope.  In any case, get-rich-quick types flock to the island, and "the Boys" can't do anything about it, because their Utopia has no laws (and, parenthetically, no taxation).  After they gallantly come to the defense of their female friend, they get their skulls clonked by the usual L&H bully, who then decides to take over the atoll and hang the previous owners.

After assorted skirmishes, the Boys and their allies escape.  Their three friends go back to their regular lives for the most part, while S & O finally reach their inherited island-- only to find the hand of the Tax Man is once again a long one. 

As many others have observed, this French-Italian outing isn't very funny, though I'm no test of it as I'm one of those rare viewers who just doesn't get much out of Laurel and Hardy.  I acknowledge that they had something special, but it doesn't reach me.  I will say that the constant animadversions on the evils of taxation are a little amusing, and definitely different from most of what the Boys had been doing in Hollywood.  Allegedly Laurel, who was in ill health during the film's production (as was Hardy), encouraged some re-working of the original script, but it seems there was only so much he could do with the proverbial sow's ear.

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.

HAWK OF THE WILDERNESS (1938)

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

SPOILERS alerts as the ending is discussed in detail.

HAWK OF THE WILDERNESS makes an interesting contrast with the earlier serial TARZAN THE TIGER in that it shows how the trope "outre outfits skills and weapons" can be rendered in a mundane fashion so it lacks the quality of strangeness-- even though HAWK is unquestionably patterned upon the success of the ERB Tarzan books, and even has one of the film-Tarzans essaying the role of the main hero.

Aside from one short story I've never read the William L. Chester novels on which the Republic serial is based. I don't imagine there are any serious divergences. Whereas ERB's Tarzan is raised by apes, the foundling Lincoln Rand Jr. is cast from a sinking ship (on which his parents perish) and ends up on an uncharted volcanic island inhabited by an Indian tribe that's never known white civilization. The Indians raise Lincoln as one of their own, naming him "Kioga" (Herman Brix). But though Kioga becomes a mighty hunter he makes some enemies, such as the war-crazed Yellow Weasel (frequent film-villain Monte Blue).

Then an American expedition travels to the island via a hired ship, seeking to learn what happened to the Rand party. The expedition members include middle-aged Doctor Munro, his pretty young daughter Jill, a black "comedy-relief" servant named George (Fred "Snowflake" Toones) and a somewhat upper-crust fellow named Allen. Unfortunately for the expedition, the crooked sailors manning their ship get the idea that the doctor and his friends are after treasure.

Kioga befriends the (mostly) white visitors. However, most of the serial concerns his efforts to defend them both against the warmongering people of his own tribe as well as the piratical sailors. As with many Republic serials this leads to a good number of well-staged fight-scenes. Brix's lean athleticism works to good effect throughout these scenes, though in less action-packed scenes he fails to convey the charisma of a Crabbe or Weismuller.

Apart from the sheer kinetics of the battles, HAWK is a sociological myth about an encounter between whites, Indians, and a white man who dresses and acts like an Indian. (Interestingly, ERB himself mined this trope in two "white Indian" novels written prior to the success of Tarzan.) Usually the serial doesn't dwell at all on the culture clash, though there's one amusing exception. Kioga, talking to one of his Indian friends, is perturbed to find himself attracted to Jill, in spite of the fact that she doesn't look strong enough to do the average women's chores. Clearly Kioga's Caucasian "nature" triumphs over the Indian tribe's "nurturing," so that he rejects their standards of attractiveness.

Toones' black servant "George" deserves a little attention. The best thing one can say about George is that he doesn't evince too many anti-black stereotypes, aside from the usual default of being scared to muck about with burial grounds, spooks and the like. George isn't particularly bright, but that in itself doesn't have to denote a racial characteristic; most comic servants are funny for being dim. However, in one chapter George, captured by hostile Indians, almost gets a chance to enjoy heroic action. Despite having had his hands bound behind his back, George seizes a chance to escape and head-butts not just one but two of his captors into dreamland. He then loses his chance at glory by mistaking a totem pole for a third adversary, and so knocks himself out.

The best sequence takes place as Kioga and his allies seek to repair a small plane to escape the island, even as they're being pursued by both bad Indians and greedy white men *and* while the local volcano is about to blow its stack. When Doctor Munro announces that the plane can't carry the whole expedition, plus Kioga, his two friends and his dog, the spirit of cooperation becomes strained. Jill staunchly determines that they will all leave together, but Allen-- hitherto a minor character-- suddenly decides to get rid of the dead weight. He makes an attempt to "accidentally" kill one of the Indians, and when Kioga catches him, he rants against "dirty Indians" even though Kioga is his own race. In the exciting wrapup both Allen and one of Kioga's allies are killed by the vengeful Yellow Weasel, whom Kioga then executes. Following this drastic reduction of the fugitives' party, the plane successfully takes off with all the heroes, and the volcano goes off, implicitly killing off all the villainous Indians and white men.

Though Kioga is a strong hero, he has none of Tarzan's unique skills, and even his going around without a shirt carries no strong associations beyond the notion that "that's how Indians dressed." In contrast to the exotic societies portrayed in both TARZAN THE TIGER and WILD WOMEN, the Indian tribe seen here is a pretty conventional one, and thus never realizes its potential for "strangeness" through the trope of exoticism.

THE SPIDERS (1919-20)

PHENOMENALITY: *atypical*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

In my review of the 1929 TARZAN THE TIGER, I categorized it as having uncanny content in terms of two motifs: "outre outfits, skills and weapons" (for Tarzan) and "exotic lands and customs" (for the setting, which included the lost civilization of Opar).

In contrast to the TIGER, director Fritz Lang's earliest extant work shows how one can use the same motif and divest it of any fantastic expressivity.

THE SPIDERS that we have now is a compilation of two interrelated films that were originally released separately in Germany, entitled THE GOLDEN SEA and THE DIAMOND SHIP. Four parts were originally projected to be filmed but though only these two were made they succeed well enough in terms of coming to a reasonably satisfying conclusion. SPIDERS isn't terribly satisfying in most other respects, though.

Many reviews note similarities to Indiana Jones, in that the stories concerns amateur adventure-hero Kay Hoog traipsing around different exotic lands as he tries to foil the evil plans of a multinational criminal organization, "the Spiders." But in terms of phenomenality, there's little here to suggest the metaphenomemal dimensions of the RAIDERS series, the TARZAN stories, or even the progenitor of all "lost-civilization" stories, Rider Haggard's KING SOLOMON'S MINES.

Indeed, in the first part of SPIDERS, the hero and his adversaries do stumble across a lost Incan civilization full of treasure. But Lang's script plays the lost Incans down so much that they might as well have been any contemporary South American tribe. Lang's orientation here would have less in common with Indiana Jones than with more mundane globe-trotting types like Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt.

And the organization of "the Spiders" is no SPECTRE, for that matter. The only villain who makes any impression is the group's leader, whose name, Lio Sha, is implicilty Asian (or faux-Asian). Lio Sha is played with commendable energy by one Ressel Orla, and is far more worth remembering than the rather stuffy hero.

The only mythic symbolism evident here falls into the psychological pattern, in that, just as in TARZAN THE TIGER, the doughty hero is torn between a "good girl" and a "bad girl;" somewhat remarkably, both of them are dead by the end of the story. But Lang's screenplay and scenarios here are too picayune to inspire much excitement in any department. At best THE SPIDERS may be seen as training-ground for future, better endeavors.