GOLDEN QUEENS COMMANDO (1982)

 

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

This Hong Kong genre-mashup was one of the first teamups of director Chu Yen-Ping with writer-producer Geoffrey Ho, as well as one of the first "girls with guns" flicks from HK. Like most of the Ho-films, QUEENS is erratic in plot and confused in its characterization, not least because it supposedly takes place in World War Two even though all the characters (who aren't in military uniforms) have eighties hair and clothes.

Black Fox (Brigitte Lin) brings together a dirty half-dozen of criminal specialists, all women, whom she finds in a Manchurian women's prison. This works out well because Fox wants the specialists to help her destroy a weapons plant in that country, and it's not beyond doubt that Fox somehow gets all of the other women set up for jail just so Fox can recruit them. 

Like the original Dirty Dozen, the specialists only reluctantly join the team, though by the climax the ladies become more bonded than the male soldiers did. Most of the women have mundane talents-- expertise with guns or explosives-- but there's one character, Brandy (Hao-Yi Liu), who can perform various katana-stunts-- but only when she's drunk. But as if the script doesn't want to play her up too much, her stunts aren't wild enough to verge into the realm of the uncanny.

Similarly, there's only one other potential metaphenomenal content of QUEENS. During the nearly aimless progress of the commandos toward their target, they come across people dressed up like ghosts. Are they crazy priests, or bandits? The phony ghosts appear so briefly that I can't even consider them part of the main narrative.

Some of the music is also derivative of the eighties, with a few strains stolen from John Williams' "Raiders" theme. However, the main aesthetic influence (if one could call it that) is clearly Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, with many swipes from Morricone's "Ecstasy of Gold."

Given that it's such a wild devil-may-care adventure, I'm surprised that the stunts and fight-scenes are pretty mediocre for an eighties HK flick.

THE BLACK COIN (1936)

 

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

Though in 1936 there hadn’t been a silent serial for about eight years, THE BLACK COIN feels more like one of those creaky chapterplays. Though there certainly were important serials that lacked any metaphenomenal content—the original PERILS OF PAULINE being a case in point—the format certainly seemed to be at its best when it made use of extravagant fantasies, whether by adapting established works like Flash Gordon and Fu Manchu, or coming up with oddball originals like THE PHANTOM CREEPS and KING OF THE ROCKET MEN.

COIN combines two mundane plotlines: government agents investigating marine smuggling-operations, and a hunt for a fabulous treasure. The treasure-seekers can find their bounty if they assemble twelve silver coins, all of which have turned black with age (making one wonder why the title was singular rather than plural). Much of the serial involves heroes and villains seeking out different people who have one or more coins in their possession, in order to put together the ersatz treasure map. This trope quickly turns into a dead-end routine, in part because both heroes and villains are dull sticks. Two government agents, played by Ralph Graves and Ruth (daughter of Tom) Mix, add no excitement whatever, and while Dave O’Brien projects good machismo as central hero Terry Navarro, he’s just as dull with his “I’m gonna find the man who killed my dad” schtick.

COIN has only two points of interest. The first is a cool setup, as the viewer is informed that the twelve coins were originally Muslim currency from the time of the Crusades. The coins were then co-opted by Crusaders who stamped Christian symbols on the metal, and thus all Muslims view the coins as accursed. This might have been used to set up a continuing trope in which the coins might appear to be unlucky for anyone who owns them, but the script never exploits this potential. Thus the superstition about the coins registers as a naturalistic version of a culturally imposed "phantasmal figutation," since Muslims impute an evil nature to the currency.

The other interesting element is that COIN boasts one of the lamest “cliffhanger cheats” in the history of serials. At the end of the second chapter, seagoing thugs knock out Navarro, shove him into a sack, and then hurl him into the ocean, where hungry sharks lurk. But at the beginning of Chapter 3, Navarro’s sack somehow manages to stay afloat on the surface of the ocean—and not only do the thugs on the ship sail away without seeing this, a handy rescue-boat shows up to succor Navarro in jig time. Lame as this twist is, it’s at least a little more novel than the customary cheat in which the hero jumps out of the careening car before it goes over the cliff.

THE COVER GIRL MURDERS (1993)

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


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

As with my review of APRIL FOOL'S DAY, there's no way I can address the phenomenality of this item without revealing the story's big secret: that the "murders" depicted are all a big fake, and that there is no psycho-killer, just a hoax-- though not for the same reasons seen in the psuedo-slasher, and with none of the "uncanny effect" of the earlier film.

Magazine owner/fashion photographer Rex Kingman (Lee Majors) is so domineering that he has "king" in his name twice. He rides herd over a covey of models, including his editor/ex-lover Kate (Jennifer O'Neill), and he desperately needs to score big with his next magazine publication, to prevent his being bought out. He and a few assistants fly Kate and the models out to a deserted island for a photo shoot. In jig time, the group gets stranded on the island and models appear to be die off, though very little blood or gore is ever seen.

This time, the lack of gore isn't just because this is a TV-movie; it's because the models are part of a cabal, organized by Kate, to drive the tyrannical magazine-owner into desperation. Kingman's a heartless user who doesn't care about his "ten little Indians" getting knocked off, or even, apparently, about whether he might be a target for death himself. But in due time he gets weirded out enough by the crusade of the "pseudo-psycho" that he signs away his magazine to Kate and the others, and then has to cry in his beer when the hoax is revealed. The end.

This "phantasmal figuration" is inexorably naturalistic. Even though there is an attempt to suggest the presence of a psycho-killer, the phony killer lacks any uncanny aspects, and therefore is more in line with naturalistic types of "perilous psychos" like those in FRENZY and THROUGH NAKED EYES.
In place of bloody mayhem, the telefilm offers assorted sexy photo-shoot scenes, though the banal direction robs these scenes of any real punch. Jennifer O'Neill is the only actress who projects real charisma, and she has the best single scene, which is actually a "cheat," since it involves Kate dreaming that she's being attacked by a masked psycho, despite her knowledge of the hoax. Lee Majors, however, is beyond awful. No matter how many vile, heartless things he says, his delivery is the same as it was for the Six Million Dollar Man, which makes it impossible for the viewer to properly despise Kingman. However, given the lack of even an imaginary psycho like "Buffy St. John" of APRIL FOOLS' DAY, Kingman is by default the movie's central character, not unlike the more eminently hissable victim of 1947's SCARED TO DEATH.

ONE BODY TOO MANY (1944), HAUNTED HOUSE (1940)

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


ONE BODY TOO MANY is one of a handful of programmers designed to test Jack ("Tin Man") Haley's potential as a lead comic actor. BODY is probably the only one of his comedies that anyone remembers today, but it's because of his supporting co-stars, the inimitable Bela Lugosi. Bela doesn't have a lot to do, as this is another of his "red herring" roles, but the script does provide him with one worthwhile running gag. That's more than most such roles afforded the actor. For good measure, he also gets a scene in which he loftily puts down Haley's character, a frazzled insurance salesman pulled into solving a mystery.

Like many such "old dark house" programmers, this was revolves around the death of a rich patriarch, and what his heirs do to compete for his legacy. The mystery isn't memorable, but at least the film fits well into my "weird families" motif. After the patriarch's death, the heirs have to stick around the mansion while arrangements are made for the late man to buried in a glass coffin so that he can be turned to "look at" the stars at night. The other members of the dead man's family aren't especially weird, and even Lugosi's red-herring isn't as creepy as usual. Watch it for Bela and forget the rest.

HAUNTED HOUSE, as a few IMDB reviewers have pointed out, has no haunted house in it, nor is it metaphenomenal in any way. It's a mild story in which two teenagers in an Andy Hardy sort of town-- a copy body and the niece of a newspaper's editor-- set out to find a murderer. The courts have condemned a nice old man known to the copy boy, so the young man doesn't believe he's guilty, and the niece agrees with him because she likes the copy boy. Not surprisingly, the teens show up their elders.

There is a tiny justification of the title in one scene-- shown above-- wherein the two teens explore the house of the murder victim at night. They half-convince themselves that the house is "haunted" by the victim's ghost, though there's no evidence for this whatsoever. So this is a naturalistic "phantasmal figuration" of the sort I've examined in my review of HAUNTED RANCH.

DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE (1980)

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

I confess that my only interest in reviewing DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE-- the only film produced by writer-director Robert Hammer-- lay in deciding whether or not it was an uncanny horror-film, given that it focuses on a serial killer preying on women in Los Angeles. My verdict is that it is not a horror film at all, but a thriller with horrific elements, more or less in the vein of NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY.

PHONE became a minor cult-film thanks to the vibrant performance of Nicholas Worth as the killer, Vietnam vet and pornographic photographer Kirk Smith. The "phone" angle implied by the title actually involves little of the story. When Smith begins his crime spree, strangling women while roaming the streets of L.A., he begins calling a talk-show hosted by a female psychologist, Doctor Gale. Even by 1980 I would say this motif-- that of the psycho who announces his crimes to a talk-show host-- was pretty common, as was the trope that the host is usually female, and is ultimately the psycho's ultimate target. It's as if the madman has to work himself up through the ranks of "common women" before he aspires to slay an upper-class female, who also happens to be his "mother confessor." Hammer's script doesn't really do much with the cat-and-mouse relationship of Smith and Gale, though. The writer-director's main concern seems to be with detailing the seamy world in which Smith dwells, which Hammer managed to capture via "guerilla filmmaking"-- i.e., filming sites in L.A. without express permission.

The character of Smith is probably influenced by that of Travis Bickle in Scorcese's 1976 TAXI DRIVER. Both Hammer and Scorcese seek to give the viewer an anatomy of a disaffected loner, though Hammer is usually content to do no more than allude to the culture that made Smith, as opposed to analyzing its sociological content. Nor does Hammer draw upon the "slasher-film" conventions that were being formulated in this period. Smith wears a stocking-mask during a couple of his murders, but there's nothing uncanny about the killer or his methods.  There's a lot of violence and hard language during the slayings, and the psycho dies in a bloody fashion, but it's all very six-o'-clock-news.

There's one odd moment in the film, when the cops pursuing the stalker have to interview a psychic who claims he can help find the psycho. The psychic does seem to know things that he should not know, but he only exists for comedy relief, in that the cops arrest him on suspicion. There's no firm evidence that the psychic has faked his feats, but given that this possibility is left open by the script, this part of the film conforms to the naturalistic trope of "phantasmal figurations," The character's a little like "the robe of Christ" as it's presented in DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS, which addresses the question "does the robe have special powers" with more of a "probably not" than was the case in THE ROBE.

SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE (1929, 1935, 1947)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1, 3) *drama,* (2) *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

I reviewed the 1929 version of the cinematic war-horse SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE back in 2012. However, due in part to some discussion on the CLASSIC HORROR FILM BOARD regarding the thriller's three sound incarnations, I began to reconsider my 2012 reckoning of the film as "uncanny" in terms of both the "phantasmal figurations" and "weird societies" tropes. I appended a 2017 note at the end of the 2012 post to this effect. I don't plan to re-review the other film covered in the earlier post, because I think that 1983's HOUSE OF LONG SHADOWS succeeds in transmitting the uncanny vibe, for reasons I'll cover later.

I have not read the original Earl Derr Biggers book, or seen either the play or the three silent films based on the book. That said, I'm going to guess that the 1929 flick, the first sound version, is probably reasonably close to the model of book and/or play. The "Barker version" (that is, directed by Reginald Barker) is fairly stagy despite depicting its basic situation with a light tone, and I said of it:

Richard Dix plays a writer challenged to finish a novel at an isolated inn, the Baldpate, but his isolation ends when an assortment of characters gain entry to the inn and distract him from his purpose with their assorted melodramas... Barker maintains a light tone, as well, which made it even harder for me to invest much emotion in the film, given that I knew the Big Reveal: that all the intruders are actors hired to harass the writer for fairly dubious reasons.  Though there aren't any overly spooky moments in this version, and the actors supply a naturalistic explanation for the "weird-society" aspects of the story, I still categorize this as an uncanny film based on the Gothic concept of tricking a victim with the appearance of weirdness.

I should have stated the nature of the "weirdness:" that the writer (whose name, McGee, remains constant in the sound films) suffers. Despite McGee's having being told that he's been given the only key to the door of the Baldpate Inn, six other strangers, in the course of one night, also utilize keys to enter the inn. Some of them seem to be innocents-- including a misogynistic hermit who likes to don a sheet and pretend to be a not-very-convincing ghost-- while others seem to be criminals involved in a complicated pay-off scheme. As played by Dix, McGee is a fairly witty fellow who doesn't seem all that flummoxed by the appearance of armed men at the deserted inn, and he frequently makes arch remarks about how all these melodramatic occurrences resemble events in his novels.

In my assorted commentaries on the "phantasmal figuration" trope, I've ferreted out at least three "variations" of the trope. One of them does not relate here: that of works like HAMLET, where something supernatural seems to happen though no one can explain its provenance. But the Barker film has both of the other two variations. One variation is akin to what we see in 1943's LEOPARD MAN, where a character projects the illusion that a panther has committed a killing in order to cover a crime, and this is comparable to the way in which actors-- hired by the man who bet McGee that he couldn't finish a novel in one day-- pretend to be dangerous gangsters. The other relevant variation is supplied by the hermit who plays ghost with a sheet over his head: this is the sort of half-baked ghost-imposture one sees in HAUNTED RANCH (also 1943), where no one but a child or a cretin could possibly be convinced by the illusion.

Eight years later, the 1935 BALDPATE, directed by William Hamilton and Edward Killy, totally drops the first "naturalistic phantasm" trope, for the gangsters that invade the security of McGee (Gene Raymond) are entirely for real. Only the female lead is still keeping up an imposture, and this time she's a newspaper-woman looking for a story, which was perhaps borrowed from a minor character in the 1929 film, or some even earlier source. The hermit who dresses up as an unconvincing ghost is still in the film, and he's arguably one of the film's highlights, as he's played by Henry Travers, a supporting actor who attained immortality as "Clarence the Angel" in 1946's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, so a "naturalistic phantasm" is still in this film.

There's some irony in the fact that a lobby-card for the Barker version calls that film a "farce melodrama," for it's nothing of  the kind: it's a thriller-drama with a somewhat light touch. Hamilton and Killy, however, go full-tilt comedy, as if they were trying to distance their work as much as possible for earlier versions of the creaky old story. The script dispenses with the long set-up seen in Barker's film, wherein McGee makes the bet to stay at the supposedly lonely inn. Instead, Hamilton and Killy start with McGee arriving at a train-station in the locality of Baldpate, where he meets his leading lady (rather than meeting her at the inn). Every attempt is made to "amp up" the proceedings, with lots of close-up  shots (a good early shot shows a face looking through a foggy window, the better to draw the viewer in) and a black cat who hangs around the inn to provide "jump scares." Gene Raymond's version of McGee is much more in the mold of Bob Hope; he's not just making the occasional witticism, but slamming out bon mot after bon mot. Moreover, a lot of other characters begin uttering whimsical lines-- a cop has a line that goes something like, 'Ya can't have a murder without a corpus"-- and for the first half-hour the score plays jaunty, comical music. The real gangsters are defeated and McGee hooks up with the reporter-lady with none of the complications that attended the Barker version.

Since neither Hamilton nor Killy enjoyed any major successes as principal directors, it's surprising to me that the 1947 version is not nearly as good as the one from 1935. The last of the SEVEN KEYS films (at least, the last to sport that name) was directed by the venerable Lew Landers, later celebrated for some outstanding if formulaic works, particularly the 1935 RAVEN.

Like the scripters on the Hamilton-Killy version, the writer for the Landers version plays a little mix-and-match with elements from the earlier iterations. Once again, the gangsters who invade the inn are the real thing, though this time the film plays up the menacing aspects of one particular malefactors, played by the always sinister Eduardo Cianelli of MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN fame. Again, only the leading lady is putting across an imposture, but instead of being a reporter, she's an actress who has been explicitly hired to throw McGee off his game so he'll lose the bet. This might be seen as a skewed salute to the main gimmick of the original property. That said, even though the "naturalistic phantasm" is back in this adumbrated form, the Landers film only makes indirect reference to the hermit's attempts to pose as a ghost. Maybe by 1947, no one could buy the idea of the bedsheet angle. The last BALDPATE is probably the weakest, though, for Philip Terry's McGee is the least interesting. True, his rather nebbishy take on the role is more realistic than anything from Dix or Raymond-- but it's neither engaging nor funny. Though Landers incorporates stuff from the 1935 version, notably the train-station opening, he doesn't keep up the comic ambience and so the film transitions back to the drama-category.

In conclusion, 1983's HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS is the only version I've seen that uses the acting-troupe to portray an uncanny phantasm, since the SHADOWS actors are portraying members of a significantly weird family.

DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS (1954), BARABBAS (1961)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *naturalistic,* (2) *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) *poor,* (2) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, metaphysical*

After 1953's THE ROBE made good box-office, 20th-Century Fox rushed a sequel into production, which came out in the summer of 1954, also to good box-office. Whereas the first film was based on a novel, DEMETRIUS simply picks up with the titular character, again played by Victor Mature. Demetrius inherits the robe of Jesus Christ from his former master Marcellus, who was executed for his Christian sentiments at the end of THE ROBE. The Emperor Caligula, who ordered the execution and wanted nothing to do with the "bewitched" robe of the supposedly risen Christ, changes his mind and decides that because he's a god, he ought to be able to derive great powers from regaining the cloth.  Though the robe manifestly has no powers-- it doesn't even give whim-whams to the guilty, as it did in the first film-- Demetrius manages to conceal the robe amidst other Christians. This leads to the "and the gladiators" part of the title, for the Christian Greek is sentenced to gladiatorial school.

DEMETRIUS pays a lot more attention to the sensual and violent domain of Rome than the first film did, and though it's clear that Christianity will triumph in the end, no miracles take place within the scope of this movie's narrative.. Indeed, Demetrius loses his faith for the latter half of the film when he thinks that God has failed to intervene to save the life of an innocent. He garners great fame in the gladiatorial arena, where his name begins to overshadow that of the Emperor, and he allows himself to be drawn into an affair with Messalina, wife of future Emperor Claudius, portrayed here as a mild-tempered old man who doesn't want either power or sex.

There's an eleventh-hour save for Demetrius, and it involves the robe coming back into the story in a fairly contrived manner, and the preservation of the life of the innocent who was believed to be dead-- also a pretty large contrivance. It's interesting that during his apostasy Demetrius remains hostile to pagan gods, reviling Messalina's god Isis as an abomination. Peter (Michael Rennie) makes an appearance but doesn't do much of anything. Considering how quickly the film was turned out, production values and performances are decent all around. Jay Robinson repeats his role as Caligula from the previous film, and enjoys the script's juiciest lines as the representative of the ultimate hubris in the Christian world, that of a man pretending to be God.

BARABBAS, produced by Dino de Laurentiis in his salad days, isn't nearly as by-the-numbers as DEMETRIUS. The 1961 film is, like THE ROBE, based on a novel whose purpose was to expand on the drama of minor characters connected to the Christian Passion. Barabbas is mentioned in all four Gospels as a man imprisoned by Roman authorities in Judaea, though it's not clear if he's a mere bandit or someone actively involved in rebelling against Roman power. In accordance with Passover customs Pilate offers the citizens of Jerusalem the choice as to whether to release Jesus or Barabbas from captivity, and the citizens choose Barabbas.

I don't know about the Par Lagerkvist novel, but the film never makes clear why Jerusalem is so anxious to free Barabbas (Anthony Quinn). This version of Barabbas is simply a common thief who exists in a world that countenances nothing supernatural, though the title character is somewhat flummoxed when his own girlfriend turns Christian. In addition, the thief witnesses the crucifixion of Christ and beholds the "darkness at noon." He also meets the risen Lazarus and hears testimony as to Christ's rising, but refuses to become a believer. Barabbas then endures a tumultuous life, being condemned to slavery in the mines, battle in the gladiatorial arena, and finally, the "imitatio dei" of dying upon a cross for the sake of the True Religion.

As an actor Quinn tended to "dog it" at times, as one may see in his rather lazy performance in 1954's ULYSSES. But Quinn does seem to fully inhabit the character of the bemused thief, and never more than in his scene alongside Lazarus. I presume that the portrayal of Lazarus in the film is in line with the novel, and it's an odd one. Lazarus's response to being raised from the dead is not recorded in any Biblical narratives, but it seems rather odd that the film portrays Lazarus as being little more than a zombie, showing no interest in the world of the living. It may be one of the creepiest scenes ever seen in a film devoted to the wonders of Christian grace.

THE BLACK CAMEL (1931), CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OPERA (1936)

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

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

In addition to their other accomplishments, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, Hollywood's "Kings of Horror," both crossed paths with master sleuth Charlie Chan, albeit about five years apart from one another. Not surprisingly, because both had played a number of "heavies," neither one turns out to be the main murderer whom Chan must detect by film's end.

I read Earl Derr Biggers' THE BLACK CAMEL years ago, but remember nothing much about it, so I can't say if the 1931 film is a serviceable adaptation, though both stories concern a female film-star being murdered in Chan's neck of the woods. This was a rare circumstance for the movie-Chan, who tended to hop around the globe in search of murder-suspects.

Neither the mystery nor its staging is particularly compelling, though Lugosi has a good scene with Warner Oland, as a phony psychic who can smell a cop from a mile away.  He also has one scene using a crystal ball to help a wealthy woman seek to contact a departed soul-- but even though Lugosi had scored with the public as Dracula a few months prior to CAMEL, even he can't invest the psychic or his modus operandi with any intimations of the uncanny. This is the first film in which I've found a "phantasmal figuration" of this specific type-- that of occult divination-- to fall entirely into the naturalistic domain, in that it's unlikely any audience-member identified with the hocus-pocus even for a moment.

For me the main interest of CAMEL is that the story, following the novel, saddles Chan with an incompetent junior officer of Asian descent-- anticipating the similar but far superior employment of the character of Charlie's son Lee Chan, who debuted in 1934's CHARLIE CHAN IN PARIS as essayed by Keye Luke.

Lugosi may have been relegated to playing the sort of "red herring" he'd played in his early Hollywood years, but Karloff's character gets major exposure, for all that he too is not the story's main villain.

Gravelle (Karloff) is introduced in his room at an asylum, where he's been confined due to his total amnesia for the past 13 years. He sees a newspaper item about a famous opera diva and suddenly remembers who he is, impelling him to break out of the asylum and to begin haunting the opera, seeking revenge on those who sought to kill him and caused his memory-loss instead. Chan, who is a fan of the diva, is consulted on the case. Chan's bumbling son Lee comes along for the ride, though most of the picture's funny stuff comes from short-fused Irish cop Kelly (William Demarest), who is slow to appreciate Charlie's talents and calls him things like "Chop Suey."

The script strikes a deft balance between the backstage complications of the opera's production and the mysterioso appearances of the deranged Gravelle, who is himself a former opera-singer. Fittingly,
the opera chosen is a version of "Faust," giving Karloff the chance to dress up in the devilish costume of Mephisto. Despite the fact that the murder committed at the opera isn't of his doing, Karloff's cadaverous aura of menace proves more memorable than the film's final detection-scene.

That said, it's still Warner Oland's film, and in Chan's longest scene with Gravelle, Oland's skillful underplaying actually makes Karloff's "mad act" seem a trifle overdone. Chan also shines in finding a way to allow Gravelle the kindness of seeing his grown daughter again, even though the young woman is utterly unaware of being related to the operatic madman. Even the dimwit Kelly is redeemed to some extent, as he realizes that Chan is a superior detective and admits it-- surely a sociological moral that the filmmakers encouraged the audience as a whole to embrace.

HAUNTED RANCH (1943)

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


I've never had a great fondness for the ultra-cheapie B-western serials, whether featuring well known cowboy-stars like Rogers and Autry or mostly forgotten characters like "the Range Busters," the trio of horse-opera heroes who star in HAUNTED RANCH. Probably the only ones that interest me much are those that have, or seem to have, relevance to my NUM theory, like the ones about masked heroes like the Durango Kid, or stories in which cowpokes encounter weird societies, like RIDERS OF THE WHISTLING SKULL.  

There's also a handful of "weird westerns" in which owlhoots pretend to be ghosts. Sometimes these fit the uncanny version of the "phantasmal figuration" trope, but HAUNTED RANCH falls into the naturalistic domain for reasons I find more interesting than the movie.

To summarize as quickly as possible, Dusty, one of the trio of do-gooders, impersonates a murdered man, one of two heirs to a ranch-bequest, in order to learn the secret of a hidden treasure that the murderers are seeking. There's one nice comic moment when Dusty meets-- and takes a shine to-- the other heir: Helen, a young woman who's never met the man Dusty impersonates. Dusty likes Helen so much that he's sorry to find out she's "his" cousin. In the film's only moment of wit, she rushes to mention that the two of them are not technically related, since she was adopted, which is a cute way for the script to show that she reciprocates Dusty's interest. As Dusty investigates the murder, he learns that the ranch that he and Helen have inherited seems to be haunted, though the only character who truly believes this is Snowflake, the comic-relief "scared darkie" cook. Eventually Dusty and his partners-- one of whom carries around a ventriloquist's dummy for more comedy relief-- find out that the murdering treasure-hunters are behind the haunting. There's a mildly rousing climactic fight in which the good guys trounce the bad guys, one of whom is the venerable Glenn Strange, best known for playing Universal's Frankenstein Monster and "Sam the Bartender" on GUNSMOKE.

The reason I find the "haunting hoax" to be naturalistic is akin to my verdict on the 1942 British war-comedy KING ARTHUR WAS A GENTLEMAN: because the hoax is so simple that only a child, or child-like person, would fall for it. The owlhoots' ghostly imposture consists of concealing themselves in the basement of the ranch-house and projecting their voices, or accordion-music, to give Snowflake the heebie-jeebies. True, these effects disconcert a few of the white characters. But their reactions are so mild next to Snowflake's comic conniptions that RANCH's "darkie humor" seems much worse than the average film in this subgenre.

In most cases the audience viewing a film that offers a "phantasmal figuration" trope usually strongly suspects that the phantasm involved-- be it the Baskerville Hound or the Spooky Space Kook-- is not going to be a bonafide supernatural presence. Nevertheless, the filmmakers have to put some effort into coming up with some sort of credible phantom-- not to convince the audience of its reality, but to convince the audience that one or more fictional characters might believe it's a real gh-gh-gh-ghost! Only through the medium of such characters can audience-members experience the feeling of the uncanny, assuming any audience-members are open to it.

But when characters fall for an extraordinarily simple deception-- like Snowflake, or like the hero of KING ARTHUR WAS A GENTLEMAN-- or, for that matter, when they manage to scare themselves, like Laurel and Hardy in their short THE LIVE GHOST-- I don't think that channels any sort of eerie vibe. The audience remains removed from the spectacle of the goof who puts easy credence in ghosts, magic swords, or similar chimerae, because it's evident he has no discriminatory powers.

I might find the uncanny trope in even the most threadbare "phony ghosts" possible, like the various bedsheet-wearing goons who appear in certain Three Stooges shorts, because at least there's some buildup of an eerie atmosphere. But there's nothing uncanny in this ordinary Monogram oater.

THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN (1966), KING ARTHUR WAS A GENTLEMAN (1942)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny* (2) *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair*, (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: (1) *psychological* (2) *sociological*


THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN is very probably the most well-remembered of Don Knotts' short spate of starring films in the 1960s. All of these were essentially big-screen television movies, though these films weren't as solidly aimed at juvenile viewers as Knotts' 1970s flicks. I like CHICKEN as much as the average baby-boomer, but it doesn't reward many repeated viewings.

The plot is one with the many "phantasmal figuration" films of the Classic Hollywood period. Knotts' character Luther Heggs (great name!) is a typesetter in a small Kansas town, but he yearns to graduate to the higher social status of a reporter. Luther, like most Knotts characters, is perpetually nervous and the butt of jokes from the town bullies. He also yearns after local cute-girl Alma, who is being dated by one of Luther's rivals at the newspaper. Luther does make some progress with the girl, but the junior reporter's not overly thrilled when his editor wants him to promote the paper by spending the night at the supposedly haunted Simmons house.

The spooky old house and its faux-horrors, accompanied by the eerie score of Vic Mizzy, come close to stealing the show from Knervous Knelly Knotts, who witnesses all manner of ghostly sights but then can't reproduce them for anyone else. It's surprising that director Alan Rafkin and his scripters do so well with the scary stuff, for all were basically laborers in the fields of episodic television, and none of them have strong metaphenomenal credits. Yet the near-climactic scene, in which Luther, alone and deserted by everyone else, hears the eerie music again and forces himself to brave the forbidding house, is arguably better than many similar scare-sequences in the "old dark house" movies of the 1930s and 1940s.

Knotts' jittery routine does get a little tiring at times; personally, I think his most well-rounded movie performance was in 1968's SHAKIEST GUN IN THE WEST, also directed by Rafkin. The explanation of the "ghosts" via gimmicks-- in particular an organ in the old house that can play automatically-- is given a mild send-up. At the film's conclusion, when Luther and Alma are being married, the organ in the church-- which one would not expect to be "gimmicked-up" begins to play as if by invisible hands and continues to do so through the remainder of the credits.  This, however, is not an intrusion of a short-lived marvel, as I've written about here; rather, it's simply a "fallacious figment," which is not meant to be taken seriously within the film's diegesis.

The British wartime comedy KING ARTHUR WAS A GENTLEMAN pretty much deserves its obscurity. A winsomely named wimp named "Arthur King" enlists in the army and proves himself a screwup of the well-meaning kind. The only thing that keeps ARTHUR from being a routine service comedy, filled with far too many forgettable musical numbers, is a gag that Arthur's barracks-mates play on him-- a naturalistic "phantasmal figuration," as it were. The other soldiers find a rusty old sword in the trash, and, knowing that Arthur treasures various fantasies about the archaic King Arthur (whom he deems to have been "a gentleman"), they convince the bumbler that the sword is the real Excalibur.

The real joke is on them, though. While the sword evinces no magical powers, Arthur becomes more formidable on the battlefield while holding it and even captures a squad of Germans while wielding the blade. This is the film's one interesting sociological theme: portraying a blundering goof as being able to tap into the moxie of King Arthur, particularly at a time when enlisted Englishmen were facing the realities of World War II.

Since the hoax about the sword is naturalistic, and only works because of Arthur's belief in it, it's likely that it's never been listed in any fantasy-film concordance. However, it does have another "fallacious figment" that comes a little closer to the world of the marvelous. After Arthur is informed of the hoax, he tosses the sword into the nearest body of water-- whereupon a feminine hand, implicitly that of "the Lady of the Lake," reaches up from the waters and pulls the sword back down into her domain.

INTO THE WEST (1992), ONDINE (2009)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: (1) *good,* (2) *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological, metaphysical*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Though many of the films I've listed under the trope-category "phantasmal figurations" deal with things like phony supernatural phenomena, I specified in my essay on the 1948 HAMLET that the trope could also take in any narrative in which there was some ambivalence about what the phenomenon was. In that essay I held forth on the reasons I thought the academic Todorov was wrong to see such films as subsumed by the world of reality:

Todorov's original category [of the uncanny] encompasses works in which phenomena that seem fantastic are proven to be either delusions or a mortal-made hoax, his most dominant examples being the fake horrors of Radcliffean Gothics. In my conception, Radcliffean Gothics still evoke the affectivity of the metaphenomenal in spite of the fact that it's proven that the ghost is actually Uncle Ephraim in disguise. Further, my "uncanny" also takes in many works Todorov placed in his transitional category "the fantastic," in which the reader/audience cannot be entirely sure whether or not to take the fantasy-material at face value. What the "ghost of Uncle Ephraim" of some imaginary Gothic and "the ghost-or-maybe-devil" of HAMLET have in common is a similar affectivity; of something that seems wondrous but which does not, in the end, have the same boundary-altering effect on the mortal realm that "the marvelous" does.

At the same time, I have to ask, are there times when "the big reveal" doesn't sustain the feeling of the wondrous, but instead does purely return us to the realm of the naturalistic?  By the logic of my argument, all of the tropes I've formulated should have both naturalistic and uncanny versions, but to date I've only isolated one naturalistic version of the trope, the 1943 LEOPARD MAN-- and this is not a good parallel to the example of HAMLET, where something supernatural does seem to be going on but the audience never knows just what. Perhaps Shakespeare's RICHARD III would be a good contrast, since the audience doesn't tend to believe that the spirits seen by the titular character are anything but his fevered imaginings.

INTO THE WEST, though, presents a more modern example of the "ambivalent uncanny," where one may be able to read the narrative in a naturalistic fashion if one pleases, but where the narrative is oriented toward presenting something wondrous despite that possible reading. I won't deal in depth with the psychological ramifications of the film's characters, except to say that the basic plot resembles that of Disney's THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA. In THOMASINA as in WEST, the audience is introduced to two children who have a troubled relationship with a widowed father, and who seek to gain deliverance from this uncomfortable situation though a relationship with a beloved animal.

But where Disney's Thomasina is a cat who can think as coherently as a human, one never entirely knows what the strange white horse "Tir Nan Og" is.  The juvenile heroes of the story, older brother Tito and younger brother Ossie, receive the horse from their grandfather, who is aware of his son's mordant outlook. Unfortunately, the ownership of the horse comes into question, and the police become involved. Tito and Ossie flee civilization on the back of the strange white horse, forcing their father to abandon his mourning and show his concern for the living. As a bonus, this upset of conventional mores brings about the father's union with a possible replacement for the boys' lost mother, just as a similar plotline did in THOMASINA.

Tir Nan Og never demonstrates any marvelous powers or capacities, not even the ability to act as if he understands human ways. But at times he disobeys his young masters, carrying them where he pleases despite their protests. No one in the film mentions the myth of the Celtic pooka, a fairy-horse with a reputation for carrying its riders into fairyland-- i.e., death. But it's hard for me to believe that the writer had no knowledge of this tradition, when the film climaxes with the horse making straight for the sea with his young riders. The boys' father appears on the scene and saves them from this fate, while Tir Nan Og disappears into the waves. Since the audience never actually sees a strongly naturalistic denouement, in which the horse is proven to be nothing but a horse washed away in the tide, INTO THE WEST maintains the sense of a wondrous thing that alters our familiar boundaries, even if there is no proof that anything marvelous has occurred.

Not so the 2009 film ONDINE. This film also deals with Celtic/Germanic folklore, and if anything excels WEST in terms of its lush photography of Ireland's natural beauties.  But it's a good example of a work in which the possibility of the marvelous is raised in such a way that it is ultimately discredited.

An Irish fisherman named Syracuse, out trawling for fish with his nets, finds a strange, stunningly beautiful woman caught in those nets.  She calls herself "Ondine" but offers no explanation as to why she was swimming about in the ocean. Syracuse takes Ondine back to his home, but she begs him not to reveal her presence to anyone-- a typical enough request for a creature of faerie.

Syracuse obeys her request, keeping her hidden from most of his Irish village, including his drunken ex-wife Maura (note the name, a homonym for certain words meaning "the sea.") But his precocious young daughter Annie discovers Ondine. Annie, who suffers from kidney disease and can only get about in a motorized wheelchair, takes note of Ondine's mythical name and begins wondering if she is really a "selkie," a Celtic version of a mermaid, one who becomes human only when she takes off her seal-skin.  In addition, Syracuse notices a strange man in the village, and is apprehensive when Annie tells him that most selkies have husbands in their ocean-world.

Ondine herself does little to build up her mythic persona; both Syracuse and Annie want to believe it, perhaps to escape their own mortality and limits. However, in the end it's revealed that Ondine's name is the only thing mythical about her. She is in reality a Romanian drug-mule who lost her last shipment. She fled to Ireland to escape her vengeful bosses, but the stranger in town spots her and brings in his confederates, resulting in a fight between the drug-runners and Syracuse.

The film's script, then, invokes supernatural beauty only to dispel it in favor of the naturalistic beauty of both the mortal Ondine and Ireland, which becomes her adopted land. Naturalistic love is also preferred as well, as Syracuse has fallen in love with the woman, not the myth. Annie receives two non-magical gifts: a better "mother" to replace the old one, and a new kidney, which becomes available, very indirectly due to Ondine's presence in the village. ONDINE is a very enjoyable romance, if one can penetrate the thick Irish accents of the players, but in no way does it belong in the category of the uncanny.

LEOPARD MAN (1943)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *high*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

(SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS)

In my reviews of two other films in the repertoire of producer Val Lewton, SEVENTH VICTIM and GHOST SHIP, I've noted a motif I called the "Jane Eyre" myth, in which one character must supplant another in order to gain romantic happiness. I find the same myth present in Lewton's CAT PEOPLE, but not in the equally-feline subject of this review, LEOPARD MAN, though I do think there's a strong related motif, in which feelings of envy are passed from character to character like a supernatural curse. Since LEOPARD MAN is purportedly a reasonably faithful adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich novel BLACK ALIBI, it may be that the novel's close but not identical thematic focus were what interested Val Lewton in the property.

The opening scenes of LEOPARD MAN fairly drip with one kind of envy or another. In the fictional Mexican city of Ciudad Real (a "fake city" name for Mexico City), we first see two women backstage at a club, one a cigarette-girl, the other Kiki Walker (Jean Brooks), a singer-performer at the club. There's a moment of envy expressed by the cigarette-girl as to Kiki's superior position in the pecking-order, but the two ladies join in dissing a third woman; the Mexican castanet-shaker Clo-Clo (Margo), because she's popular with the club-patrons due to her exoticism. As the cigarette-girl leaves, in comes Jerry Manning, who's decided to take a rash action to help Kiki upstage Clo-Clo. Minutes later, while Clo-Clo is still performing on stage, Kiki, clad in black as the illo shows above, enters the club with a black leopard on a leash.

Unfortunately for Kiki and Jerry, Clo-Clo reacts badly to being upstaged: she clacks her castanets so loudly that she frightens the leopard. The animal breaks free of Kiki and vanishes into the city. Jerry, who has hired the leopard from a local animal trainer (the first person to be called a "leopard man"), is duly remorseful for having brought about a danger to the public, but he puts off paying the wrangler for his animal in the hope that the creature may be recaptured. However, the creature, confused by its freedom amid the lights and noise of the city, goes berserk and kills a lone girl, at which point the local cops start looking for it a lot more assiduously.

Lewton had gained some repute for "stalking scenes" of the type seen in CAT PEOPLE and SEVENTH VICTIM, and the one with the lone girl is the best here. Interestingly, shortly after the leopard gets loose, a fortune-teller draws the ace of spades for Clo-Clo, but after she greets the young girl in the street, it's as if she passes her fate on to the girl. Later yet another girl is killed while trying to hold an assignation with her lover. The fortune-teller's next prophecy involves Clo-Clo getting money from an older man, which does come true, but it doesn't do the performer any good, for her deferred fate finally catches up with her.

Given the film's title, I doubt that any viewer in 1943 expected the film to be purely about the depredations of a leopard on the loose, even before Jerry suspects that there's some human agency behind some of the killings. The animal trainer, having passed out once during the second killing, wonders if he's committed some horrible act, and asks the sheriff to lock him up-- which, as any good filmgoer should realize, is the filmmakers' way of exonerating him when the third murder takes place.

The script doesn't provide many other suspects, so there's no big surprise when the "leopard killer" turns out to be Jerry's confidante Dr. Galbraith, who was once a "zoologist" before he unaccountably ended up running a small museum in Ciudad Real. Galbraith happens to have seen the "broken" and "mangled" body of the leopard's first and only victim, which inspires him to become a serial killer, though one sane enough to attempt leaving clues to incriminate the leopard. In truth, Galbraith actually shoots the leopard in the country and leaves it there, making it possible for Jerry to destroy that alibi. It further comes out that Galbraith's thinks of the leopard as something of a totem of violence, invoking the Aztecs' similar thoughts on the jaguar. Jerry, accompanied by the bereaved boyfriend of the second victim, overtakes the killer, and the boyfriend saves the city the expense of a trial.

I found the moral compass of SEVENTH VICTIM fuzzy, but I admire the moral theme of LEOPARD MAN. Although Jerry and Kiki might be accused of having been rash in trying to play the publicity game, they're both clearly conscience-stricken by the damage they've (literally) unleashed. To some extent, Jerry's quest to unveil a human agent has the added effect of exonerating him from some of the fatalities, though it could be argue that he's still responsible for bringing Galbraith's insanity to the surface. Still, the two Americans don't dodge their responsibilities and do their utmost to correct the situation.

As I've detailed elsewhere, all of my ten tropes are capable of having either "naturalistic" or "uncanny" manifestations. If the leopard as presented in LEOPARD MAN had been the sole menace, this would have been a purely naturalistic manifestation of the "astounding animal" trope, for there's never any suggestion that the leopard is anything more than an animal. However, Galbraith participates in "uncanny" versions of both the "perilous psycho" and "bizarre crimes" tropes. However, with respect to the "phantasmal figuration" trope, this would be a "naturalistic" manifestation, because the criminal is covering his actions with the appearance of normality, rather than (say) pretending to be a ghost, smiling or otherwise.