NATSUKI CRISIS BATTLE (1994)

 

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

YouTube's programming guided me to this two-part anime, of which I'd never heard. A manga and a game were produced around the same time, and while there's probably no authoritative reference as to which of the three was out of the gate first, I suspect that the game was paramount. For once, the OVA and the manga are equally brief, consisting (from what I can tell) of just two episodes.

And while most anime productions remain close to their manga source material (or vice versa), here it's as if someone said to the respective creators, "Do what you like, as long as you're telling the story of a high-school karate expert named Kisumi Natsuki." The manga shows young Kisumi getting into fights with male opponents, some of whom are just fellow judo/karate students, while others are more aggressive challengers, such as the school's sumo club. The anime pits Kisumi against a rival school, some of whom wear masks during an attack on Kisumi and a friend, But NATSUKI the anime is probably only thirty percent about the heroine battling male opponents, and seventy percent about Kisumi contending with female opponents. The first part of CRISIS largely deals with Kisumi bonding with a female student adept in wrestling, name of Rina, even though the two girls are feisty enough to fight one another. In the second part, Kisumi and Rina are both challenged by another girl wrestler, Kandori, who's somewhat exceptional for the time in being a FBB (though preceded by another lady bodybuilder in 1989's ANGEL COP).  

Kandori is allied to the bad high schoolers and has some vague relationship with Kisumi's current judo sensei, but there's no love-stuff in the anime, while there's only a tiny bit of potential romance in the manga. Of the two, the anime is much more enjoyable for the kinetic battle scenes, though story-wise it's absolutely average. 

SISTER STREET FIGHTER: FIFTH LEVEL FIST (1976)

 

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

Possibly Toei Studios thought the Tina Long character (called two different names in different releases) was played out, for though they used the SISTER STREET FIGHTER rubric for this movie, star Etsuko Shihomi played a new character, name of Kiku, There's also a move away from the wild pulp fantasy of the trilogy, with a heroine taking on a variety of disparate kung fu practitioners. 

Kiku exists in a fairly ordinary world, practicing kung fu while her parents pester her to get married. She has some sort of job, the nature of which I couldn't figure out, but somehow she's assigned to be a translator for an American bigwig coming to Japan. In this way she unwittingly meets a group of criminals who will become her enemies, and a Japanese cop, Takagi, with whom she shares some possible romantic sentiments. 

The villains are drug smugglers again, but this time they operate in a Japanese movie studio, where it seems like the majority of employees are in on the illicit practice. One of their minor employees, a half-Black, half-Japanese guy named Jim, is made by Takagi's anti-drug unit. So the gangsters just kill Jim so he can't roll on them.

However, the late Jim's half-sister Michi (Mitchi Love, who appeared as a different character in the first and third Tina films) is also a member of Kiku's martial arts class. Michi seeks to avenge Jim and gets captured. Takagi can't find her, so Kiku decides to launch her own investigation. She takes the role of an extra on a current studio movie, finds Michi, and then it's action, action, action for the film's last half hour. Only two elements reflect the pulpiness of the earlier films. Instead of warriors dressed up in archaic garb, some of the actors in the gang remain dressed in traditional Japanese garb, and one particular guy, wielding a real katana, looks to me like a ringer for LONE WOLF AND CUB's Tomisaburo Wakayama. The second element is that when Kiku is captured, the villains tie her to a fully functioning sawmill, implicitly a prop, yet as capable of slicing a heroine in half as any sawmill from ancient "mellerdramas." Sadly, no one makes any knowing comments on the hoariness of this death-trap.

There are a few liberal political touches here. One is Jim's alienation from his mother's people because he looks Black. Another is a scene in which Takagi urges Kiku to be more traditionally feminine. He's not seen to complain when the two of them join to take down the movie-gangsters. But Kiku doesn't get a chance to crow, because strangely the film ends on a freeze-frame, implying that Takagi may die of gunshot wounds. And so on this curious note the SISTER STREET FIGHTER franchise came to an unequivocal conclusion.

TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS (1968)

 

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

LONG LONG LONG SPOILERS

This English-dubbed French thriller, despite its exploitative title, boasts a distinguished lineage. The source material is partly from a legend from French history: that, in the 14th century, Margaret of Burgundy, wife to King Louis X, committed adultery within a Parisian guard-tower, the Tower of Nesle, for which offense the unhappy French queen was imprisoned for the remainder of her life. A writer named Frederic Gaillardet dramatized the incident, though Alexander Dumas rewrote the play, possibly because he'd become famous for a stage-success in 1829, prior to his later fame as a novelist. However, the Gaillardet-Dumas story only takes various names and places from the historical account, concocting a wild hybrid story I'm tempted to call a "psycho-swashbuckler." I have not read any version of the prose source material. But I theorize that one of the authors borrowed a folklore-tale about Cleopatra, which asserted that the Egyptian queen had the habit of taking male lovers into her boudoir for one night of passion, only to have them executed afterward. 

TOWER, like the play on which it's based, spins out the idea that Queen Margaret-- who, according to the story's dynamics, ought to be in her middle thirties-- uses the deserted Tower of Nesle for a series of one-night stands with young Frenchmen, whether they are or aren't "virgins" like the title says . In fact, there are usually three such encounters each night, since Margaret (Teri Tordai) sets up liaisons for her two handmaidens as well. Then comes the "screaming," as Margaret's main henchman Orsini and various hooded thugs slay the male victims and toss them into the Seine River. I don't know why any of the henchmen, or Margaret and her ladies for that matter, affect any sort of masks, since they expect all to be killing off any and all visitors. The attempts at secrecy don't keep the locals from getting the sense that nasty things are happening at the "Tower of Sin," as they call it.

Then a celebrated war-hero, Captain Bouridan (Jean Piat), approaches Paris. On the way there, he meets and chats up a cute young noblewoman, the curiously named Blanche DuBois (Uschi Glas), finding out that she plans to petition the king's court for her father's inheritance. Blanche provides a subplot to TOWER as she gets drawn into the life of the Queen's lady-in-waiting, due to the machinations of the lust-minded Orsini.

In a tavern Bouridan's master swordsmanship saves the life of a naive young man named Philippe, who came to Paris with his brother Gautier for obscure reasons. The captain noticed that both young men have strange marks on their wrists but makes no comment on it. By chance a procurer for the Queen talks both Bouridan and Philippe into attending one of the tower-parties. Bouridan already has some suspicions about the "Tower of Sin" but doesn't try to talk Philippe out of participating. The upshot is that although Philippe sleeps with the Queen and is subsequently killed, Bouridan escapes both being bedded and murdered. And this sets up a series of complicated revelations, double dealings, high and low intrigue, and many more swordfights than one would expect of a film titled TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS.

In fact, there are so many complicated revelations that I've belatedly decided to devote a separate ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE essay on them to explore how TOWER does or does not satisfy my criteria for mythicity, and why I call it a "psycho-swashbuckler." I will note that the swordfights, while plenteous, are just okay, as is most of the acting-- though director Austrian director Franz Antel, best known for lots of Euro-sex flicks, does a fine job of selecting pulchritudinous women for even very minor roles. In my opinion the script softens Margaret too much, given that we know she's callously sent countless young men to their deaths just so that she could have a few rolls in the hay while her husband the king was away. There are no special murder-methods used to slay the victims, nor do any of the disguises serve any purpose by that of concealment, and many critics would not consider this film metaphenomenal at all. I argue that this particular "bizarre crime," while maybe not uncanny in Cleopatra's Egypt, is definitely beyond the pale of the ordinary in 14th-century France. And although Margaret and her tower occupy a lot of screen time, Bouridan's courageous cavalier is undoubtedly the star of this show.

STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER (1975), DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS (1971)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Though I've not hesitated to give away the conclusions of films if I thought it important to my analysis, I feel particularly free to do so with director Andrea Bianchi's STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER. Some critics have called NUDE an almost stereotypical giallo thriller. However, most such films make at least a token effort to generating clues and red herrings as the viewpoint characters try to unmask a killer. Neither writer Massimo Felisatti nor director Bianchi (who, according to a DVD extra, did not actually contribute to the script but who was so credited in order to "share the blame") make any effort to provide such ratiocinative details. Thus, I don't feel bad in stating that the main distinction of NUDE is that it's one of the few giallos in which the masked killer is female. To be sure, the shots of the leather-clad, motorcycle-helmeted serial murderer is just lean enough to suggest femininity.

Much like the prototypical BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, the murders revolve around an Italian fashion house (but in Milan rather than Rome). However, this time the murder-victims are pretty evenly divided in terms of gender representation, even if the female victims are more dramatically sexualized. The viewer knows that the violence is somehow initiated by the death of a woman resulting from an abortion gone bad, but neither the police nor the viewpoint characters-- a male-and-female couple employed at the agency (Nino Castelnuovo, Edwige Fenech)-- know anything about the initiating event. All the models and their managers are sleeping with, or attempting to sleep with, one another, and even before the big reveal it's implied that the killer views the fashion house as a microcosm of Milan, itself a city of corruption.

None of the victims are strongly characterized, though Felisatti made them all look maladjusted in one way or another. A standout example is the overweight manager of the fashion house who comes close to raping a model, only to be unable to perform when she allows him to do his thing. There is copious nudity, though none of it is there to give pleasure to the murderer, as the title (both in Italian and English) suggests. The murders are just basic stabbings, but the killer's outfit is outre enough to propel this film into the uncanny domain, making her into something of a dark avenging angel. However, NUDE is a long way from Bianchi's best collaboration, 1972's WHAT THE PEEPER SAW.

Just as a contrast to the above "uncanny masked killer film," DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS provides a naturalistic iteration of the same trope. In other posts I've addressed the problems inherent in trying to distinguish between these phenomenal iterations, but here it's fairly easy. Though HEELS, like NUDE, sports a masked killer who commits some brutal murders with a knife, it's clear from the earliest scenes that HEELS is a crime-film, not a horror-film, largely because some or all of the villains are pursuing a cache of stolen diamonds. (Note: the masked man also uses a voice-changing instrument to make sure none of the people he simply threatens can identify his speaking voice, but the artificial voice serves just as mundane a purpose as his ski-mask.)

Though this movie IS a mystery that pays a lot of attention to clues and red herrings (including a mysterious woman in the titular "high heels'), I won't go into a lot of detail about the plot of HEELS. I will note that though it starts off with a female viewpoint character who's unwillingly involved in the diamond theft, neither she nor the canny police inspector who solves the crime are the main characters. That honor falls rather to the masked man. I will give away that the female viewpoint character, who is suspected of knowing the diamonds' location, is initially attached to an age-appropriate young man. Then, when she suspects him of being the killer, she flees into the company of a wealthy older man. However, this action only propels her deeper into the maze of the criminal conspiracy. Because of the concentration on the resolution of the mystery, HEELS has less emphasis on sex and violence than the more horror-themed giallos.

THE BIG DOLL HOUSE (1971)

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


Though BIG DOLL  HOUSE was not the first WIP film, it was arguably the one that defined the genre for the 1970s and subsequent decades. And one thing that makes it stand apart from the rest is that, although it's in no way a metaphenomenal narrative, it does use tropes that, given a different approach, could have been aligned with the uncanny.

HOUSE sets up its action with many of the usual patterns seen in WIP films from earlier decades: the new fish (Judy Brown) enters prison to do time for an offense that the audience doesn't think is so bad (in this case, killing a scummy husband). She meets a set of predictable yet still vivid character-types: the tough girl (Roberta Collins), the revolutionary idealist (Pat Woodell), the lesbian and her heroine-addled partner (Pam Grier and Brooke Mills). There's a sympathetic prison doctor, who's pretty much the only decent male, a couple of comical delivery guys (one of whom is played by Sid Haig), and a bunch of cruel guards, all women. But for once there's a little mystery: though a woman named "Miss Dietrich" is nominally in charge, there's also a mystery man, Captain Mendoza, who is supposedly the real warden, though the prisoners never see him. The audience gets to see Mendoza as a weird masked figure who presides over the frequent tortures of prisoners: whippings, electroshock, and torment with snakes (the last two providing naturalistic versions of "bizarre crimes," even as Mendoza's outfit is a naturalistic "outre outfit.")

Since all of the women are impossibly glammed-up, it's hard to take even the violence very seriously, and a constant stream of one-liners reinforces the lighter mood, with the stand-out being the oft-quoted "You'll get it up or I'll cut it off!" There are some mild subtexts of feminine liberation here, roughly linked to the then-popular vogue for proletariat revolution, though these too don't bear strong examination.

There's more implied than actual sex, and catfights are featured far more than gunfights, including a classic battle between Collins and Grier (the last time Pam Grier would ever lose a filmic fight). The revelation of the mysterious warden's identity is pretty obvious, though the script adds a twist by showing that the corrupt official has a psychological hangup against the sexual proclivities of the female convicts. Though I used to think that the next-year follow-up THE BIG BIRD CAGE was the better of the two productions, I've come to feel that the latter is a little too jokey, and thus misfires when it comes to providing good sleazy melodrama.

PHANTOM OF THE WEST (1931), THE VIGILANTES ARE COMING (1936), TAILSPIN TOMMY/GREAT AIR MYSTERY (1935)

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


THE PHANTOM OF THE WEST is a fairly lively western sound serial. Tom Tyler is a cowboy out to avenge his father's death at the hands of a gang ruled by "the Phantom," a mysterious figure in a black cloak and slouch hat.  This Phantom doesn't have any special weapons, though for some reason he sends message to his enemies with special darts that make a whistling sound. (This device was recycled three years later for MYSTERY MOUNTAIN.)

It's pretty much standard western action. Tyler would go on to face yet another "Phantom menace" in 1933's THE PHANTOM OF THE AIR, and then followed that up by playing THE PHANTOM.  Of minor interest is a scene in which Tyler's character detains the horse-riding heroine (Dorothy Gulliver) for questioning, and she smartly responds by smacking him with her riding-crop. She doesn't do much else in the reminder of the serial except be menaced by the Phantom, though.

There's also a minor mystery to a group of masked riders who may or may not work for the Phantom, and a thoroughly unfunny comic relief with a stuttering gimmick.

Republic Studio's THE VIGILANTES ARE COMING seems very much like a Zorro manque, though apparently no one had done a Zorro film since DON Q, SON OF ZORRO, and the next one, THE BOLD CABALLERO, would appear about four months later from the same studio, in December 1936. Perhaps someone sought to test the waters for Zorro-like action before actually taking the step, for by next year Republic launched the first of its five "modern Zorro" serials, starting with 1937's ZORRO RIDES AGAIN.

Unlike the later serials, VIGILANTES does take place in 1844 in Mexican California, which is fairly close to the milieu of the original Zorro stories. However, all the major characters are Caucasians with no Hispanic heritage, including the main hero, who takes on the masked identity of "the Eagle."  Here the threat is that of a contingent of Russians seeking to colonize California for its rich resources. However, the title's emphasis on vigilantes may remind some of the original Zorro novel THE CURSE OF CAPISTRANO, which mentions Zorro's legion of aides far more than do the two silent films. Again, the action is decent but unmemorable, and star Robert Livingston proves rather bland, doing somewhat better with the real Zorro in the feature film BOLD CABALLERO.

Finally, there's the second and last of the TAILSPIN TOMMY serials, TAILSPIN TOMMY IN THE GREAT AIR MYSTERY.  These were the first two sound serials to be adapted from a comic-strip franchise, and their relative success probably paved the way for the same studio, Universal, to do FLASH GORDON a year later.

Aside from that minor place in serial-history, GREAT AIR MYSTERY is just another air-adventure serial. in which the characters generally project a rather "gosh-wow" attitude. As in VIGILANTES the heroes, get involved in attempt to head off an evil group of schemers from plundering the oil reserves of a fictional South American country. Though Tailspin Tommy (Clark Williams) is the senior pilot, he and his buddy Skeeter (Noah Beery Jr.) are treated as equals, there being no explicit comedy relief here. In addition, both partners have girlfriends who are skilled pilots and who make no bones about flying into danger alongside the guys. (One of the two characters is played by Jean "Dale Arden" Rogers.)

The baddies are pretty bland, though there's are two masked mystery-men here-- the Eagle, who ends up being on the good guys' side, and Double X, who is more briefly seen helping out the villains. Both men wear oddly patterned flight-helmets but are otherwise uncostumed, and though the Eagle's plane is supposed to be a breakthrough model, it can't do anything that other planes can't. I find that these masked pilots don't really have the bearing of either masked heroes, like that other Eagle, or masked villains, like the Phantom of the West, and thus MYSTERY's phenomenality is naturalistic.

BLONDE SAVAGE (1947), THE INTRUDER (1933)

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


Though I know that "white-jungle queens" appeared in comic books and B-movies well into the 1950s, BLONDE SAVAGE still seems a pale copy of such 1930s flicks as TRADER HORN and THE SAVAGE GIRL, both of which hinged on the capacity of white explorers to "tame" savage women. BLONDE SAVAGE is in the same naturalistic mode as both of these films, for even though jungle-girl Meelah is decked out in Sheena-garb, she's no "noble savage." She's also not really any sort of white goddess. She's simply a child who's been reared by a black tribe after the death of her parents. Pilot-for-hire Blake (Leif Erickson) arrives at the plantation of Harper, who happens to be the man guilty of killing Meelah's parents, and who wants Blake's help in recovering the victims' bodies. Instead of helping Harper, Blake falls for Meelah and helps her bring Harper to justice.

Meelah has no special skills or empathy with jungle-life, so even though she's the focal character of BLONDE SAVAGE, the adventure is both naturalistic and subcombative. Erickson makes a good leading man, and while Gail Sherwood makes a meager Meelah, she does get to sing for a crowd of appreciative African tribesmen, who for once are not particularly nasty or superstitious.

THE INTRUDER takes place on a desert island, when a group of stranded ship-passengers and a man who's been on the island so long he's gone a little nuts. There's one moment that suggests the uncanny, when a passenger asserts that the madman's howls sound like those of a damned soul. However, there's no concerted effort to make the madman an uncanny threat, so this too falls into the naturalistic phenomenality.

Lila Lee plays a brassy blonde with one good line, along the lines of, "If you don't like blondes, just wait a while, and I'll oblige you."

IVANHOE (1952)

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

On my philosophy-blog I've devoted two posts to Walter Scott's most famous novel IVANHOE: here and here. Despite the book's status as a classic-- as well as being Scott's best-known title-- neither it nor other Scott works get many props for their complexities. Scott is often dismissed as a writer of lightweight adventure novels, which IVANHOE at least is not. But one could easily get that impression from the 1952 MGM film-adaptation of the book, even though it's probably the best-known of the cinematic translations.

Only one element of the novel even comes close to proving relevant to this blog's phenomenological concerns: the fact that for most of the book a mysterious "Black Knight" interacts with the hero, his opponents, and his allies, and his identity is not revealed until close to the end. Neither the Knight's general appearance nor his use of his armor to conceal his identity move the book into the realm of the uncanny; both are naturalistic, for the same reasons I discussed in this essay with regard to the "Masked Rider" of Zane Grey's RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE. The movie elides the figure of the Black Knight, though oddly, the hero Ivanhoe appears in all-black armor for the tournament-scene, and he duplicates some of the actions of the novel's character in that scene.

In the essay regarding centricity, I disagreed  on another essayist's notion that Ivanhoe was not the hero simply because he wasn't all that interesting, though I admitted that Scott devotes much more authorial attention to two supporting characters. One is Rebecca the Jewess, who falls in love with Ivanhoe even though he's pledged himself to the Christian Rowena. The other is the villainous knight Bois-Guilbert, who falls in love with Rebecca. The knight's love for the Jewish maiden proves his downfall. At the climax Rebecca is accused of witchery, and can only escape burning if a champion defends her in combat. Bois-Guilbert is put in the unhappy position of fighting for the side that wants Rebecca burned, while Ivanhoe-- wounded in an earlier battle-- volunteers to contend for Rebecca's life. This leads to an unusually subdued contest for such a battle-heavy adventure-tale, for the first time Bois-Guilbert crosses weapons with Ivanhoe, the evil knight falls dead, killed not by any would but by the "contending passions" between obeying his superiors and preserving the life of Rebecca.

Apparently someone involved with the 1952 film agreed that both Ivanhoe and Rowena were rather dull characters in the book, for the film's script builds them up to function more like the typical lead hero and heroine of the average swashbuckler flick. Robert Taylor (a very athletic looking 41 years old) does a credible job building up the image of Scott's noble knight. Joan Fontaine's Rowena has more scenes that the prose version did, but trying to make Rowena more than the typical "hothouse flower" is a doomed endeavor.

Sadly, the script drops the ball regarding Rebecca (Liz Taylor), her tragic love, and her representation of the Jewish people's travails in 12th-century Christian England. The novel dramatizes the sufferings of the scattered Jewish people under the Christian aegis; the film barely touches on Scott's theme of ethnic equality. Further, Taylor's Ivanhoe never nurses even a secret attraction for Rebecca; he just remains dully loyal to dull Rowena. And although Bois-Guilbert is allowed to express passion for the Jewess, the filmmakers unfortunately cast George Sanders in the role. Sanders had his virtues, but his urbane persona didn't allow for much expression of passion.

Other plotlines involving Robin Hood and the Knights Templars are minimized or eliminated, though the scripters did come up with a way to unify Scott's sprawling novel: emphasizing the heroes' goal of rescuing England's rightful king, Richard the Lion-Hearted, from his imprisonment in Austria. But although the film was nominated for an Oscar, it seems pretty workmanlike, except for the cinematography and the action-scenes. In keeping with audience-expectations, the climactic battle of Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert is not forestalled by the villain's achey breaky heart. Ivanhoe fights the villain and wins, though Bois-Guilbert in death is at least given a final scene to express his unrequited love for Rebecca.

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.

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.

NABONGA (1944) and THE SAVAGE GIRL (1932)

PHENOMENALITY: (1)*uncanny;* (2) *atypical*
MYTHICITY: (1)*fair*; (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Going by the two illustrations from these jungle flicks, one might think they were pretty similar: your basic "girl, guy, and a gorilla" films. But though both of them are unassuming potboilers, there are some structural differences between the two that illustrate why my tenth and last trope, "astounding animals," can appear as "uncanny" in one framework but "atypical" in another.

One significant difference is that though SAVAGE GIRL does have a white girl palling around with a chimpanzee for no textually-explicable reason, there really isn't anything "astounding" about the chimp (aside from his looking much bigger in the art than he is in the film). The chimp hangs around with the leopardskin-clad "Savage Girl" (Rochelle Hudson) and then pretty much disappears as the film concentrates on its real theme: whether the girl gets tamed by leering reprobate Alex or "nice guy" Jim. There are a couple of references to the nameless girl as a "white goddess," but she does nothing to foster that impression: probably the writers tossed out this familiar trope to implicitly explain why the African natives left the girl alone. But this "white goddess" lacks the imposing qualities given a similar character in 1931's TRADER HORN. Thus, despite her being loosely patterned on other, more extraordinary jungle foundlings, Nameless Girl doesn't measure up as an uncanny heroine despite wearing an "outre outfit," and the natives in her bailiwick lack any exotic tropes, despite the script's hilarious allegation that they practice "voodoo."

NABONGA isn't written much better but it does take more advantage of the "girl and her gorilla" myth-theme. True, in contrast to the familiar TARZAN paradigm, in which rape-happy apes constantly grabbed young white girls as objects of lust, the viewer never quite knows why the gorilla (Samson, played by Ray Corrigan under the peculiar nom de gorilla "N'bongo") is attached to Doreen (Julie London), who lives in the jungle in the wreck of her father's plane and also wears a leopardskin onepiece. Samson's relationship to Doreen seems cribbed more from ANDROCLES AND THE LION, since the gorilla first meets the girl when he's been wounded by white hunters and she offers to help him. Thus their relationship seems more like that of siblings than mates. And although Samson does try to kill white hunter Ray whenever he gets close to Doreen, she has only to command Samson to stay away and the gorilla obeys: acting more like a surly brother than a jealous would-be-lover. Most of the film concerns the attempts of Ray to learn the truth about Doreen's embezzler father, while two villains, white hunter Carl and bargirl Marie, attempt to trap Samson for sale to a zoo. In the unsurprising end Ray gets away with Doreen and Samson tears apart both Carl and Marie, their death-agonies discreetly offscreen.
Discretion, however, suggested more than mere violence to author Alex Vernon, who in his book ON TARZAN alleged that Marie does get not just killed, but also raped, by the ape.

And yet, even though nothing in the script overtly suggests Samson as being warm for the human form, there's one mythically-intense moment early in NABONGA, in which a rogue gorilla intrudes on Doreen's home and Samson savagely drives the rival away. At this point alone, NABONGA does stray into the psychological terrain of Edgar Rice Burroughs' and his rape-happy apes. Thus Samson, because he is at once an ape and yet seems like something more as well, does qualify for the trope of "astounding animals," and shifts this otherwise routine film into the realm of the uncanny.